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Tuesday, August 05, 2008
PENNIES AND EYEBALLS 

Producer Noah Harlan of 2.1 Films just came back from the Sundance Producer's Lab and forwarded these comments about some of the topics discussed there. Like every producer, Harlan is trying to figure out what the new digital distribution landscape will look like for independents. I particularly responded here to his attempt to parse the revenue possibilities for the streaming and ad-supported models -- a topic you've read about on this blog previously. For now, though, here's Harlan.


I just got back from the Sundance Producer's Conference and had a few thoughts that I wanted to share with some of you. There was, not surprisingly, a lot of time given towards online distribution, self distribution and new media revenue models given the presence of folks like Ted Sarandos (Netflix), Rick Allen (Snag Films), John Sloss (Cinetic Rights Management) and others. There were a lot of different views and ideas getting kicked around but I have the following thoughts and questions.

1) As people thrash about looking for a revenue model that works the notion of ad-paid content is rising. A stunning statistic came up at one point which no one followed up on and it has to do with Hulu's ad-generated model. Hulu places 4-6 ads on your content for a feature film and you get paid 50/50 with them at $40-$60 CPM per ad that is viewed (ie: if the viewer doesn't watch the whole movie you don't get paid for all the ads, only those that are watched). That means, assuming everyone watches your film all the way through, and you are getting the most number of ads at the highest pay rate, the absolute maximum that 100,000 views of your film will pay you is only $18,000. If you take the case where 100,000 people watch your movie all the way through but it's only 4 ads at $40 per ad then you're making only $8,000. Let's say you are making cheap independent features then you're probably spending, when it's all said & done, somewhere between $150,000 and $600,000 minimum to make your film. In an ad-based model you would need a minimum of at least 800,000 viewers and possibly as many as 3.3 million just to break even.

2) We refer to these systems (Snag, Hulu, youtube, etc...) as online distributors but in fact they are not. They are online exhibitors (portals as Rick Allen was saying). Some are destination sites like youtube, some send the content to you (Netflix's box) and some allow you to move the movies around (Snag) but at the end of the day they are exhibitors. The consequence of that is that you, as the producer/filmmaker, are now the distributor. If you are the distributor then you are now responsible for residuals to SAG and the outcome of the negotiation with the AMPTP is going to mean some form of streaming and download residuals. SAG generally requires a residuals bond of some sort and now that responsibility is going to fall you the filmmaker. I imagine we will see SAG taking the cast shooting bond and just rolling it right over into the residuals bond and you will never see that cash released (or at least not for a long time). This means that the films that most need these self-distribution models (small movies) are going to have an additional cash burden placed on them at the time of production. This is an obstacle to the small filmmaker really making it in the new revenue marketplace. Add to the bond issue the fact that you will also be giving up a few percentage points of your revenue and you're going to see the numbers from point 1 (above) come down even further.

So what does this mean for the independent filmmaker:

1) I think there is a real future out there but it's going to be a couple years at least until the industry coalesces enough to provide reliable revenue which can be shown to investors. This means that between the lack of data in the new models, the low revenue from the streams, the paucity of viewers in each portal, and the global credit situation we are going to see a tough road in the near-to-mid-term for indie financing, particularly the private equity model.

2) Powerful players are going to be securing the major exhibition models with huge companies like AOL (Snag), Netflix, Apple, Amazon (Reframe) and GE (Hulu) staking hard to replicate claims on territory. There will be some room for small niche players (Jaman?) but generally we'll all be on the big-boys' formats and we'll likely be on more than one of them at a time. This means that the real play for those looking to stake a claim in online distribution is in the marketing space. The people who learn best how to market on the web, drive eyeballs to films and get them to tune in, rent or buy are going to be the new distributors. The Weinsteins (of the 90's) for the 2010's will be people who are great at crawling the internet to find communities and putting video in front of them in the audience's chosen format.

3) The mid-term mistake of Cinetic Rights Management and other similar ventures is that they are going to be eclipsed in value by the companies that bring the marketing muscle (read: dollars) and savvy to the table. Figuring out what platform you should be on is akin to figuring out what theater to program a film into. It is a good skill but one that is of marginal use if no one shows up at the theater. What really matters is the company that can get it to the right theater and then market it. This means that we will see something that will look a lot like what was before. Companies like Strand, New Yorker and Criterion will flourish if they can secure their libraries and make the leap to marketing digitally since they will no longer be saddled with prohibitive print costs and market-by-market advertising. If they don't make the leap then they will be eclipsed by a new breed with a purely digital focus.

4) Michael Barker made the point (while sitting across from Mark Gill of course) that the sky is really not falling. Or if it is, it is no different from all the times it has fallen before. We are in for a few tough years but out the other side are more eyeballs and the possibility of making real revenue in a global marketplace. When the home video was introduced the wholesale price was high and the units that moved were low. When DVD came along the wholesale price plummeted but the units moved skyrocketed and it wound up being far more valuable than the video market distributors were clinging to. The same will happen here. We'll have more viewers but we'll get less for each ($.18 a piece for Hulu apparently right now). That's good. The question is who is going to find those viewers for us.

Just my $.02.

Noah Harlan
2.1 Films
New York


# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/05/2008 05:46:00 PM
Comments (21)

 
The problem with all of this is the insistence on pure digital delivery -- and by that, I mean downloads and VOD.

If I'm somebody who's put my time and effort into making a movie (and making it look good), then why would I only want it to be seen via an inferior quality platform? From my experience, even down-rezzing to SD DVD is an insult to the picture quality. Downloads offer not only poorer image, but poorer sound as well.

There's just too much emphasis being placed on online distribution. It should be seen as just another revenue stream. Not THE revenue stream. I would demand that any deal I make, whether I go theatrical or not, require DVD and Blu-ray distribution so that viewers can experience a higher quality version than is likely to be found through downloads/VOD.

In fact, LG just introduced a new Blu-ray/VOD player. It seems to me, a model like that is more the future than one over the other -- a player that provides both VOD rentals and a built-in 1080p player.
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous @ 8/05/2008 6:41 PM  

 
I don't think this discussion is about picture quality. If that were the sole criterion, everyone would agree with you. It's just that there's the perception growing that the marketing costs involved in theatrical distribution are overwhelming for the majority of indie titles out there. Fewer companies are feeling that they can make a business by operating in this space, and with the technological possibilities of digital delivery come people who feel that it may provide a better (i.e., economically rational) way for films to enter the marketplace. As for your deal demands -- if your film is deemed worthy of a theatrical P&A spend, more power to you. What Noah's post is talking about is the problem of marketing films in the digital space that aren't deemed worthy of theatrical distribution but are still worthy of an audience.
# posted by Blogger Scott Macaulay @ 8/05/2008 8:17 PM  

 
Not so much a theatrical thing. Just seems a lot of the VOD/downloading talk omits traditional home video -- which isn't going anywhere. My feeling is that if theatrical is out, any other type of deal should also include DVD/Blur-ray and not focus solely on VOD/downloading.
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous @ 8/05/2008 9:28 PM  

 
I would also add to Scott's point about options that the current state of video quality is in flux. HD is becoming more and more prevalent and though it is largely 1080i the move is towards higher and higher resolution. Blu-ray is good today but I think that it will be eclipsed, ultimately, by other forms of digital delivery. Remember, all digital formats are 1's and 0's - it's just a question of how they get into your home.
# posted by Anonymous Noah Harlan @ 8/05/2008 9:54 PM  

 
Interesting text, Noah. thanks for reporting this from the Sundance Conference. I just wanted also to throw in my 2 cents. Films Transit operates primarily as a sales agent in the domestic and international cable and broadcast market.

Broadcast and cable revenue is still, no matter what people say, the only relatively solid and substantial revenue stream there is for the independent filmmaker.

Increasingly these cable and broadcast outlets require on-line components and increasingly if you cannot give these rights to them ( for which they often dont pay extra!) you have no deal.

If you start giving your film to on-line platforms for a few eyeballs and a few pennies, you might torpedo your cable and broadcast opportunities, as they increasingly say 'no interest' if a film is already widely avalable online. It has gotten even worse: a broadcaster recently said no to a film, because it was coming out on DVD....

My advise for filmmakers with new films is at least for a year or 2, keep gambling on the traditional media: festivals, theatrical, dvd and broadcast before you start to make the film accessible to the world online.


Jan Rofekamp
Films Transit/ Montreal/Canada
# posted by Anonymous Jan Rofekamp @ 8/05/2008 10:25 PM  

 
Blu-ray is usually 1080p not 1080i, though a lot of cable channels do 1080i or even 720, HD downloads are usually 720.

I don't envision a scenario anywhere in the near future where an internet distributed file equals that of physical media. Didn't happen in music, won't happen in movies. A 1.25GB SD 480 file won't compare to the image/sound on an 8GB DVD. A 4GB 720p file won't compare to a 25GB Blu-ray at 1080p.

This isn't as simple as saying it's about 1's and 0's. Unfortunately. It's about file sizes. Compressions. Bandwidth. And viewing habits.

This whole digital distribution thing sounds to me like a daydream utopia people have concocted.
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous @ 8/05/2008 10:43 PM  

 
A few comments:

Anonymous, I get what you're saying, but I think your argument that digital distribution is some kind of illusory daydream utopia is predicated upon a belief that other people value high-end picture quality as much as you do. The history of technology as it relates to consumer choice, however, suggests otherwise. There's always a pendulum swinging between improvements in sound and picture and other innovations that may add for the consumer value in other -- and sometimes competing -- ways. A prime example is the MP3. I haven't seen statistics, but I'd wager that a lot if not most time spent listening to music today is spent listening to it on MP3s through an iPod or other digital player. MP3s do not have great sound -- something that is masked by the poor quality of most iPod headphones, which deteriorates the sound even further. Still, the extreme portability of the iPod, the ability to quickly sort through one's entire music collection, and the ability to casually rip and swap music led many people to devote listening hours to music in this format as opposed to on their high-end system. Neil Young, who is a real audiophile, recently blasted Steve Jobs at a conference. Here's what he said: "The CD was great when came out. Music could go to a little disk. but that same convenience has taken us on a detour down the convenience highway and quality has taken a complete back seat now."

I'd argue that the same thing is happening now with the movies. The question is not whether people desire quality or not. They do. For many people going to see "The Dark Knight," they'll head to the IMAX theater to see it on the biggest screen possible. But for those same people when it comes to a little indie they've barely heard of and, honestly, which doesn't promise visual spectacle, they'll opt for the convenience of getting it quickly and checking it out on their computer as opposed to pre-buying a ticket for the next day on the IMAX screen.

One of the things that's breaking down now is the notion that we know where independent film fits on the spectrum of consumer behavior. It used to be that indie film signified something cool that you read about from your favorite film critic and made a point to go see at a special theater. And yes, that world still exists, but it seems to be shrinking, and a lot of people are feeling that consumers are shifting in their desire of when and where to see a non-mainstream movie.

One more point, and this riffs on what Jan wrote. One problem with straight-to-video where the video goes through an established video distributor is that the industry standard royalty agreement for DVD and home video is very, very poor for the filmmaker. I think one of the reasons that people in the indie community are excited about digital distribution is that it may open up a new way of dividing revenue -- one that's better for the filmmakers.
# posted by Blogger Scott Macaulay @ 8/05/2008 11:40 PM  

 
I second what Scott is saying about the choice among digital formats. However to Jan's point, I have a mild disagreement. I think that the importance of protecting your rights and deciding the sequencing of licensing is vital however the notion that TV is a significant revenue stream for independent films is quickly vanishing.

The amounts paid by TV outlets like IFC have shrunk by an order of magnitude and the international sales market has similarly collapsed - witness the scarcity of deals overseas for US product at Cannes this year. There will always be room for genre content and mainstream movies but for the indies that once could look for six figures on TV they are now looking at mid-five figures and that stings.

Back to the sequencing idea. It should be noted that we will likely see an emerging hierarchy amongst the online portals. Venues like Netflix, in exchange for exclusive windows will push a movie harder in their recommendation engine and place it on the home page with greater promotion. An example of this is the deal with iTunes on "Purple Violets". So just as you now give a window to pay cable, followed by premium & basic cable and broadcast you will ultimately run down the line with windows for Netflix, iTunes, Snag, Jaman, etc...

That hierarchy has yet to be defined but I would venture that 24 months from now we will all have a sense of what it is.
# posted by Anonymous Noah Harlan @ 8/06/2008 12:39 AM  

 
OMFG!

I have the solution!

A filmmaker could just...actually make a good movie! A really good movie that people want to see!

I'm a genius! I gotta patent that shit!
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous @ 8/06/2008 1:06 AM  

 
I don't disagree with Noah that the broadcast market is shrinking. Among us, the sales agents we sarcastically joke when we talk about the costs of our work: "every goes up except the license fees". I am right in the middle of it and I feel the crunch. What I was saying that in spite of all of this, if you do have a good doc with a good international subject, for the next couple of years it remains worth it to check out the traditional broadcast market instead of throwing it onto the Net. I agree that very few films will make it. But if you are selected for a good international festival, you do have a window into these traditional markets and I think you shoudl look into this. Yes,the money has gone down, but filmmakers and people like us we still find the sales in many European countries. Due to the many docs on the market, the films that get 20 or 25 countries sold are rarer and rarer but there are still many docs that sell 10 countries....the doc buyers still travel all over the world and it is sour to see a 4000 euro Swedish or MoreFour deal disappear when you say that the film is available worldwide on the Internet. Sometime in the future many of these markets will get more used to each other and the question of exclusivity will be better sorted out. For the moment many of these markets are afraid of each other and it urges the filmmaker and ourselves to be careful.
# posted by Anonymous Jan Rofekamp @ 8/06/2008 5:45 AM  

 
I agree with the third anonymous. DVD may be shrinking, but it's still the only real way to watch a film now. As I said a few threads back, and I've read this in Filmmaker, and other places, straight-to-video has to gain some legitimacy. Especially in the main stream press.

There are very good films that are not getting played in theaters. Remember the 80's, when home-video outfits paid for indie films? Financially, it still makes sense, but there's such a stink to it that no one wants to do it. Why?
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous @ 8/06/2008 9:24 AM  

 
I called a producer's rep/sales agent colleague to ask him what he thought of this thread.

First, he said that my point about the industry standard DVD royalty vs. a download royalty is kind of a non-starter. Yeah, he said, people will start at the 20% rate but it's easily negotiable and if someone wants to distribute the DVD they will offer a better deal.

With regards to rejuvenating the direct-to-DVD market, he thought that was kind of hopeless for films that don't have stars. He didn't think a Times review made a big difference. He said the problem lies with the Blockbusters and big-box retailers that sell and rent so many DVDs. Distributors have to think about what works for the customers of these places and for these people that is films with stars. If a film doesn't have a theatrical release but still has stars, it will seem enough like a "real movie" to prompt rentals. Without stars, it's too easy for the renter to simply move his or her eyes to the next title on the shelf.

About the digital download space, he was slightly more optimistic. He called it a "more democratic platform" and said that, as Noah said in his original piece, the identity of the portal site was important and that there were more ways to potentially hook a renter/buyer on a web page then there are in a video store.
# posted by Blogger Scott Macaulay @ 8/06/2008 8:56 PM  

 
I think the real problem with all of this is... what type of independent film are we talking about?

It seems like we're discussing DV micro features or mumblecore or small docs. Is that what independent film is now? Is that what we see as the future?

It seems like in this discussion we're preparing for movies to take the indie music route: Produced for nothing in people's homes or cheap studios, sold on websites for download or disk.

I don't see distribution as the thorn in indie's side. I see quality as its biggest shortcoming. Seriously. Where are the filmmakers with the ambition to makes sex, lies & videotape or She's Gotta Have It or Reservoir Dogs or Clerks or Gas Food & Lodging or Blood Simple or Stranger Than Paradise or Pi or whatever else?

Those movies weren't just made for nothing (though the budgets and name actors varied), they were GREAT MOVIES made by directors who really had personality and style.

Yeah, it's great that technology is more democratized. It's great that it's easier to make movies. All that is fine.

But none of that matters unless you have great filmmakers that audiences believe in. And until those guys emerge and lead the way, indie will be stuck in a rut.
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous @ 8/06/2008 9:31 PM  

 
I agree with the general tenor of your comment about quality, and I think one of the biggest problems independent films have faced recently is the perception that often they are low quality.

That said, I would also argue that of the list you mentioned, half of those films would not have gotten theatrical offers if they premiered at Sundance 2007. Of the other half, the majority would have gotten an IFC offer.

But in a way, what I just wrote is almost beside the point because the culture has changed so much. When "Stranger than Paradise" came out, it was a revelation, and it captured on screen a kind of downtown NY sensibility that felt really new at the time. The film connected not just as an entertainment or as something that spoke to other movie lovers but as something important in the culture at large. These days, it seems hard for so many indies to accrue that kind of cultural validation. People talk about "The Dark Knight" as being an important film before they'll argue that an indie has to be seen if one wants to participate in a conversation about the current culture.
# posted by Blogger Scott Macaulay @ 8/06/2008 11:23 PM  

 
I suppose I have a couple comments here. The first pertains to the question of the type of films this applies to and the second to the notion of the internet's long tail.

We are really talking about a number of different independent films here but the key thing to understand is that films between $1.5M and maybe $6M are going to disappear with a few exceptions - and those exceptions will be the films that have well known cast. The point about quality is well taken and that certainly was a theme in Mark Gill's speech - one I won't contest. That being said, look at Frozen River - it got lucky, won a big award at Sundance and will go out with SPC however it is just a hair's breath away from having to find it's own audience. It is a quality film, made for $500K and no stars. They got lucky (their talent helped enormously) and they are getting the muscle of SPC but how many very strong films don't get that break.

Sundance received 3,624 submissions for the 2008 film festival and of those only 121 were accepted. Of those only 20 or so sold during the festival. I haven't checked to see how many more have sold since then but let's triple it and say 60? That means that there is a 3.3% chance of your film getting into the festival and a 1.6% chance of selling your film there.

That leaves a lot of films looking for ways to recoup their investment and, while plenty of those films are probably terrible, somewhere in there are some gems, no?

It should also be noted that one of the 20 films that sold during the festival was BALLAST which got such a weak deal from IFC that the filmmaker canceled the deal and has decided to self-distribute.

As to the long tail question. The real question for content creators in a long tail economy is where is the inflection point between the short and long tail. It's great to be out in the long tail but you are only making money out there as the content aggregator, not as the creator.
# posted by Anonymous Noah Harlan @ 8/07/2008 12:25 AM  

 
An addendum to my follow-up on the quality issue. I've said this before, but it bears repeating -- I actually think we're in a fertile period right now when it comes to quality independent films. These films just don't seem to breaking through and connecting to audiences in the way films of similar quality did 15 years ago.
# posted by Blogger Scott Macaulay @ 8/07/2008 12:32 AM  

 
All this talk of quality and talent means nothing when you measure success in financial terms. If it did, Sandra Bullock wouldn't have a career. Part of the problem with the film world, and the world in general, is that money is the measure of the success of a piece of art. Any crappy Hollywood movie makes more in its first weekend than virtually any indie or foreign film makes in its entire run. Hollywood has total domination of the theatrical market. They decide that the budget of the film, and it's B.O., is what measures the quality of the film.

There was something in Sight and Sound about Stranger Than Paradise, which played at Directors Fortnight in Cannes this year, which said something like, it showed how bland and uninteresting American indies had become since then. I would hope that Scott has an optimistic view of American film today, but he has access to films that most of us don't. He's right when he says, there's no way a film like Stranger than Paradise could break through like that film did then.

But then that film cost less than 100,000 dollars. Which is also part of the problem today. An indie film now has to look and act like a Hollywood film or it's a non-starter. Costs are part of the problem here. Get the costs down, and there are ways to make money.

About the NYT review, maybe it doesn't make that much difference as it, although I would disagree. What I think is needed is an approach more like the Book Review, where DVDs are selected for review by the editors (not the distributors, as they), and given some legitimacy that would separate them from the mass of stuff out there. A NYT Book Review means a ton of sales for a book, and I can't imagine it wouldn't mean a lot for a film, especially if the budget of the film was low.
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous @ 8/07/2008 9:19 AM  

 
The reason that late-80s/early-90s indie scene was so exciting is because that was the most innovative sector. Mainstream movies had become boring, formulaic, uninspired. A lot of younger people saw indie film as a breath of fresh air -- filmmakers were doing interesting things with time, dialogue, style, etc. It was thought of as where the best new directors came from -- directors who had their own voice and maintained control over their work.

I think, in part, the success of that period led the younger generation (Gen Y, let's say) to go into film school. By the late-90s, it seemed every school had film programs. Those guys shifted comfortably into the industry and went for the money instead of indie glory.

Digital should've been a huge boon to indie. It should've allowed filmmakers to be truly creative at bargain prices. Instead, what happened was that indie went the lowest lo-fi it possibly could, with handheld DV and improvised scripts/performances. Now, if you're going to the movies, would you rather see something that took time and money to create, or something that was made by some friends over the weekend?

As it is right now, yes, there are some promising indie filmmakers out there. But they're not in a position yet to really bust out and make a difference. In the meantime, I don't really blame audiences for choosing big FX blockbusters over indies -- the filmmaking is mostly more creative, if not as artistically reputable.

Mumblecore was good in that it gave indie a movement to promote. But it was bad at the same time because average people looked at it as lo-fi crap.

What I'm interested in is Gen 2.0 of the DIY prosumer era. Now that the initial wave is past, I want to see what really creative people like Tintori or Stuart or Zeitlin are going to pull off -- people who have great ideas and great visual sensibilities. The reason so many older indies broke through was because people were really impressed by what was done with so little. The tools are better and cheaper now. When indie can start impressing average viewers again, it will rise again.
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous @ 8/07/2008 11:55 AM  

 
"The people who learn best how to market on the web, drive eyeballs to films and get them to tune in, rent or buy are going to be the new distributors. The Weinsteins (of the 90's) for the 2010's will be people who are great at crawling the internet to find communities and putting video in front of them in the audience's chosen format."

Great article and discussion, Noah and Scott, and I think this is your key paragraph. Good films and bad films will always be made, and now we have more of both. So the main question is how will the really good indie films without marketing muscle stand out from the pack? That's where internet marketing comes in to supplement the hopefully great buzz from festival premieres and reviews.

Until filmmakers can show investors where the return will be via online distribution, it has to be seen mainly as promotion. What stage the film is in its shelf life is a factor in how widely to let the film out (which is probably why Hoop Dreams is all over the internet now). The exceptions are mainly calling card films with no theatrical possibilities and documentaries where the filmmakers have an urgent message to get out.

A few random thoughts: Would be much more enticing to producers if online distributors provide links from the downloads to where the filmmakers are selling the dvds.

We need broadcasters to stop requiring exclusive digital rights in their contracts. It's going to be impossible to get dvd deals in the future if filmmakers don't start holding onto their digital rights and making it a seperate negotiation point. As Jan pointed out, many doc makers get their funding from broadcasters, so this is a shout-out to that community in particular.

Finally, would be nice if digital rights management contracts didn't include E&O coverage as a deliverable. Am I really going to pay thousands in insurance for a projected return of hundreds?
# posted by Anonymous Doug Block @ 8/07/2008 12:39 PM  

 
I have a question about indi film distribution. I recently produced a film entitled, "Strive For Happiness," and it is currently available on indieflix. I found createspace as well but I am not sure if there are any other companies out there where I can distribute my film online through download or via companies who will produce and ship a DVD of my film. Does any list of these distributors exist? Can someone share? Thank you so much.
Rich
www.striveforhappiness.com
# posted by Anonymous Rich Patricia @ 8/09/2008 12:42 AM  

 
Hi Rich-

I created this list in 2006 to keep tabs on places where film and video producers could sell their stuff. (Yes, it needs an update.)

And I also just wrote this post about selling through iTunes and CreateSpace.

One question for all of you: in the early days of cinema, it was independent producers who moved beyond one-reelers into two-and-three reelers, when the members of the Motion Picture Patents Company (the "Trust") were convinced that longer movies would hurt the audience's eyes. (See pages 8 and 9 of this PDF document for some of this incredible history.)

Then, it was pioneering producers like Walt Disney who started making content exclusively for television, in shorter half-hour and hour-long formats.

Today, I would argue that the smartest independents are thinking about how to produce content exclusively for the Internet, iPods, and cell phones -- rather than thinking about how to keep making full-length features with full-freight budgets, and then trying to earn a positive financial return on the Net.

Wouldn't it be much easier to turn a profit on a five-minute short, or a series of five-minute shorts, using services like Hulu, Revver, YouTube, and iTunes, rather than a $1 million budget indie feature?

This seems to be the direction that Joss Whedon is heading.

Scott
# posted by Blogger Scott Kirsner @ 8/09/2008 12:37 PM  

 
Hey all,

Fantastic post. As a member of the acquisitions team for IndiePix, I live this conversation every day. If I have two cents to throw in, it's this:

Low budget does not have to mean low quality. The 'independent' moniker has been thrown around in ways that devalue truly independent work. The truth is, LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE was not an indie film, at least not in the way that most filmmakers I deal with relate to the process of making non-studio films. You can make a good film for under a million. You can make one for under 100k, if you have a clear vision, an incredible script, and a strong team that believes in the film. Modern technology has actually made that MORE achievable now than it was in the 80s & 90s.

Secondly, we all know that the online revenue stream is still developing. IndiPix distributes both traditionally (DVD, retail, broadcast, limited theatrical and non-theatrical) and online through these emerging platforms. We currently have around 30 films available on Snag, and though the dollars from ad-supported streaming may not be anything significant yet, they will be there eventually. Generally, people go to the theaters because they want spectacle, but they look for independent films because they want to be challenged. Our mission is to get quality independent films in front of an audience that may not know they exist, and show them why they should pay attention. This will take time. In the meantime, as was said above, the power of the internet for marketing should not be ignored. It's jam-packed out there, but quality initiatives will rise up and be noticed. It takes inspiration -- not just in filmmaking, but in distribution.

The most important difference in mind mind is that it's no longer good enough for a filmmaker to just be a filmmaker. He/she must understand and appreciate marketing, distribution strategies, and most importantly, must know their audience. This isn't anything new -- you can bet that Tarantino knew exactly who he was making RESERVOIR DOGS for, and probably had pages of notes on how to get the film to that audience.
# posted by Blogger Jason Tyrrell @ 8/14/2008 1:06 PM  

 
In the argument of good vs. bad I think what we're missing is that the question isn't how do bad films make money but, rather, how do we ensure that the good ones have a future and can make money.

If the model is dysfunctional enough that someone who makes the next Stranger Than Paradise or Pi can't make money then the equity to make those films going forward will become increasingly scarce. Film isn't a charity (at least not in the US, we can all debate the approach of the French CNC and similar organizations - man, I would kill to have their Intermittent Du Spectacle for indie producers in the US!). Investors need a return or they will go elsewhere and, frankly, that's reasonable. They risk, they deserve reward - otherwise they might as well place their money in an savings account. The question is how do the good films make money. Bad films will always be deserving of losing money, no matter what the model (Ishtar & Pluto Nash anyone?).

Also, while great films can be made for little money (one of my favorite films of the past few years was the micro-budget PRIMER), generally they have an aesthetic that is quite different from the larger and more accessible fare. While audiences are becoming more adventurous with indie films, the number of films with more "raw" aesthetics that have truly broken through are very, very few and generally have been genre fare (BLAIR WITCH, OPEN WATER).
# posted by Anonymous Noah Harlan @ 8/15/2008 2:21 AM  


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