"Indie Film Is Dead. Long Live Indie Film."

From Anne Thompson via Indiewire:

I saw one movie after another that was unreleasable in the current climate. As lovely as many of them were, they weren’t commercial enough. (Anthony Kaufman, Todd McCarthy and Karina Longworth weigh in.) It costs too much money these days to make a dent, a mark, an impression that will create enough urgency in filmgoers to make them go out and see a movie. While Ted Mundorff insists that business is up at indie-branded Landmark Cinemas around the country, and Apparition’s Bob Berney is hopeful that exec changes at Cinemark and AMC will bring a new awareness to booking the right movies in the right locations, the indie market needs help. “Movies that rise above like A Single Man or Bright Star will have a theatrical life for quite a while,” insists Berney. “For financial reasons, not enough good films were for sale for buyers. A lot of films were misses. If a film is not really special, there is no in between. It will not get a theatrical release. If it’s a half-way movie, audiences will skip it and watch it at home.”

To paraphrase the great Lee Falk regarding his creation, The Phantom:

"Indie Film is Dead, Long live Indie Film."

Yes, the days when companies bankrolled movies of $10M or more about rabid masturbators living in their mother's attic who just happen to be artistic geniuses sculpting rat feces are dead.

Yes, the days when you just make the movie and don't actually think about who's going to see it and why are dead.

Yes, the days when you put a film in a theater and pray for a good review while going into hock are dead.

Yes, the days when a distributor paid nothing upfront for a movie and took all rights are gone.

Gone. Dead. Stick-a-fork-in-them over.

We have no more time for festival "darlings" (Filmmakers, Distributors, Films) who are living a lifestyle that we can't afford.

The (R) evolution is declared. And it's time to choose a side.

And for those of you thinking that this is going to a bloodless revolution? Sorry. No. Some of you are going to lose your jobs. Many of us already have.

But if we win...

You'll live in a world that's real. A world where you can make a movie or a tv show and make money from it. Where you can make a living entertaining people in all sorts of ways and means and from anywhere in the world.

All you'll have to do is be good (and responsible).

This Is What's In My Head As I'm Staring At You

Wassamatta U?

Ted Hope has a great post today by guest blogger/filmmaker Jamie Stuart. I am going to pick at the post's carcass a bit, but there's plenty here to chew on throughout the weekend so go read the entire thing:

Now, however, the paradigm has shifted to a situation where filmmakers are making small, dirt-cheap movies for niches and their friends; the debut film isn't as important so much as slowly building a track record. In this model, indie film has essentially become regional folk art. I think we need to return to the prior model, but there are some things holding that up. Like:

Yes, it has shifted away from the bottleneck of just a few festival darlings making their way past the gatekeepers and out into the Elysian fields of the distribution marketplace. In the regional folk art metaphor you propose, you neglect to mention that now more people can participate from wherever they are at, instead of having to be in Los Angeles or New York or other large urban center. The bottleneck has widened (for good and for bad).

I think we need to re-think how movies are made. Micro-features and DIY productions use crews in a much different manner than movies made for 7-8 figures, and I think producers need to study what people like myself are doing...

Not that I expect larger budgeted productions to use the exact method I did (they wouldn't have to if they had money), but there's got to be something that can be learned and adapted from what I and others have done.

Absolutely! And how does one most effectively share these ideas, paradigms and innovations? Why through the internet of course!

Now, if you combine all of the above, you get another problem. It used to be that aspiring filmmakers started with a small budget, either on a short or a small feature, and that was used as a calling card to get a larger budget. The issue here is that due to the drop in budgets based on prosumer cameras and editing, producers don't seem to take those projects as seriously. What they mistake, however, is that you're getting an equivalent production value as before, only it costs a fraction of the amount. But producers aren't saying: "Wow! Look at what so-and-so did for so little. Imagine what they could do with a larger budget? I want to work with him!" Instead, they seem to be looking at the budget, and on that basis alone, writing it off: "Let me know when you've moved on to bigger things, but for now, you're a small fry."

I would agree that this is ture in the United States, but there is a growing movement of production and distribution professionals in the UK that are embracing these micro-budget productions and filmmakers with financing and expertise. We cannot count that out.

The internet is great for sales and marketing, but it's a lousy delivery method. The quality is terrible. I've never looked at the internet as anything other than a means to get exposure and establish myself -- so I can get OFF the internet and make real features.

People understand the quality loss. They measure it against the convenience and are just fine with it. Excuse me but exactly what is "a real feature?"

I think a lot of the indie community still believes in the film festival model: If you're a serious filmmaker, you need to submit to festivals. They seem almost fundamentalist in this regard. And it's holding up progress.

Yes, it is. The indie filmmakers have become the establishment they rebelled against in the 80's and early 90's.

All of that said, I'm still of the belief that the biggest problem in indie film right now is simply the product. When indie film was booming in the '80s/'90s, young people like myself were drawn to it because it seemed to be the most creative arena in filmmaking. Not now. Young people look to big FX blockbusters as the most creative arena. People now equate indie film with poor production values, cheap-looking handheld photography, amateurish acting, etc. They look at it as a joke. I approached the prospect of DIY filmmaking from the view that ambitious films could now be made inexpensively -- I've always used tripods, dollies, cranes, special FX. But DIY filmmaking on the whole went in the opposite direction -- small, handheld slices of life. And while that aesthetic certainly has its place, it's never going to find a larger audience, in my opinion. Until we shift out of this phase and DIY filmmakers start creating ambitious pictures at dirt prices, the movement will remain derided. And until the bigger people start lifting up the small, there's going to remain a major class divide.

(emphasis mine)

Absolutely. I double that for web series that rely on the backbone of being parodies of existing material. If I see another 20-something wannabe comedy web series set in an office, apartment complex or similar locale - I am going to get violent. Ditto for the trope of directly addressing the camera or the simply allowing the "action" to unfold without camera movement or editorial. It's lame.

Dr. Horrible (which I loved) has been a hit on the web NOT because it was entirely original, but because everything else up to that point was lame. The web audience deserves better. They want better and yes, they will pay for it.

I am writing a movie now, that while not entirely original (what film is?) is geared to push the boundaries in terms of production value, energy and fun. A creative new look at some old tropes in genre film. That's what we - the pulp filmmaking community - needs.

As well as effective ways of getting that new pulp out there so people can embrace it...at their convenience.

The Evolution of 'Indie Film" : From Limited Entertainment to Manufactured Product

Mike Curtis recently posted a rant on the ProVideo Coalition website regarding the death of Indie film. As I promised, I'm going to pull out some bits and pieces from his post and try and address the issues he has with the topic.

"As somebody mentioned in an email to me about this, moviemaking digital tools came along to help reduce (some) costs of moviemaking, but other digital tools came along that stripped away the marketability of those films even faster (bootleg downloads, too much content, competition for time from internet/cable/DVDs/games/etc.) and the math isn’t working out favorably right now.

Supporting evidence below:

update - a lot of the commenters (and about 60+ comments so far) are saying indie film has ALWAYS been tough and risky. I AM NOT DISAGREEING. I am saying it has become ESPECIALLY brutal in the last couple of years, the non-viability is ramping up, making the proposition even worse. Also, personally, I’m defining indie as non-studio fare, probably self-financed or independently financed, and seeking distribution by any means profitable. What are YOUR experiences with distro? Chime away in the comments! I’ve posted and rebutted extensively in the comments as well, more stuff in there. End update."

Little history/sociology here:

The independent film business has transitioned from a business that looked to distribution as the holy grail (In order to make money you had to get distributed somehow) to marketing and brand awareness as the holy of holies. From "getting it seen" to "getting it seen by the right audience."

The fact is there are many free tools for you to now distribute your film in myriad ways and means. One only has to look at the "Marketing & Distribution" area in my sidebar and you can see the opportunities there.

In regards to piracy, we have anecdotal evidence that downloading isn't harming the industry the way people think it has. It's simply culling the herd in a more efficient manner than critics' reviews or press. Piracy - in order for it to be eliminated - is going to have to be rethought from the ground up. The same way that indie film financing has to be rethought.

So here's some (re)thoughts:

1. Quit thinking of a theatrical release as necessary for the success of an indie film. Sure it could be used as a special event sort of one-time affair, but the numbers show that any theatrical release these days, unless extremely lucky and targeted, LOSES money for the producer and the studio and is simply a marketing campaign for the DVD and other media where the real money is to be found.

2. Find your audience first, then make the movie. Any entrepreneur will tell you that the best businesses are the ones that fill their niche really well. The problem with indie film is producers/filmmakers very rarely figure out who they are playing to and why. They are a product that no one feels the need to want.

3. Quit thinking like the studios. Seriously. You are better, and more efficient than that. You don't need a film print. You don't need newspaper advertising. You don't even need to pay for publicity. You just need to connect with your audience and deliver them the entertainment they want, the way they want it. Above, Mike talks about his friend whose film was pirated on GoogleVideo. I sent that filmmaker an email and hope to hear from him about his experience because deep down in the back of my dark pulp marketing mind, I think there were ways he could have used the pirates the way they used his film.

4. Perhaps if we started to think of entertainment along the lines of a magazine publishing model instead of a production-distribution model, then maybe we would be better off.

More on all that later.



1st in this series.

This Headline Is What Is Wrong With The Indie Film Business:

From Variety:

More Star Power at Sundance

Rethinking Indie Financing...from Variety.com

I am going to slice the article from Variety below because it's worth seeing in its entirety. Thanks go to Dade Hayes and Sharon Swart:

(My comments in red)

Rethinking independent film financing

New money, distributors can't help runaway budgets

By Dade Hayes

People use different words to describe the turmoil in the indie and specialty world depending on how hard they've been hit.

Whether this is a correction, a shakeout or a cyclical downturn, everybody agrees it is time to rethink many of the assumptions of indie finance. No longer can the tide of new money and new distributors compensate for runaway budgets and best-case-scenario revenue models.

What has happened is that the "indie guys" became just like the institutions they originally eschewed. They made small, quirky, very niche films for a very limited audience, thinking that throwing money at it would bring them a hit. They forgot where they came from.

While institutional and hedge fund coin has been pulled back and some studios (notably Paramount and Warner Bros.) have also retreated, ample capital still exists. But credit markets remain tight, and the record level of liquidity and lending power of a couple years ago has dried up considerably.

"As mezzanine and debt markets go up, the cost of making movies goes up," says Jim Stern, head of Endgame, the company whose portfolio includes Todd Haynes' "I'm Not There" and Rian Johnson's "The Brothers Bloom."

Absolutely and utterly wrong. The cost of making movies HASN'T gone up. The cost of making movies THE STUDIO WAY (read "old") way has gone up as has the fees for actors. The actual physical cost of making a movie from start to finish has gone down dramatically thanks to digital evolution.

The ballooning of overall P&A spending in the specialty arena, especially on the titles viewed as Oscar bait, has upped the ante for everyone. For instance, the collective tab for marketing "There Will Be Blood" and "No Country for Old Men" approached $100 million.

That's the cost of success. But piling up in even greater numbers are the meltdowns that often result from the unholy combination of free-flowing private equity coin chasing ambitious projects whose subjects are tough to market. Such was the case with pics like Participant's "The Kite Runner" and "In the Valley of Elah," funded by Samuels Media.

In the "good old days" these movies would only be booked in niche venues and costs kept to a minimum. This was the birth of the "art house circuit." This ensured that a movie was screened theatrically, qualified for Oscar consideration and Union restrictions while keeping profit as the main goal. $100 M for just the ad campaigns? Sheesh.

And they justify that ad cost by saying, "We have to spend that much in order to make our money back. The movie cost too much to make."

Does anyone else see the epic fail here?

One solution, of course, is fewer movies -- and a reduction in the logjam that sees six to 10 specialty pics cannibalize each other on a single weekend. Fox Searchlight and Focus Features, among other specialty labels, are decreasing annual output.

Or perhaps you know, take a lesson from history and make movies as cheaply as possible so that your yardstick to profit isn't so long? Or maybe releasing films on DVD and online THE SAME DAY they hit theaters so you only have one marketing campaign that covers three tiers of revenue?

Stateside slates are getting leaner, and product that must sell worldwide has to hit more marketing quadrants as well. "The films are going to look more commercial," says Bob Yari, whose YFG imprint both distributes domestically and sells pics overseas. "We're going to do fewer of the tweeners that are harder to market."

Foreign sales remain a key hedge, but as the international biz has grown more sophisticated, buyers aren't just looking for any kind of film. Overseas territories have increased local production, leaving less room for anything but major studio releases or product that looks like studio fare.

Or take another lesson from history (AIP, Roger Corman- I'm looking at you guys) and do co-productions in other countries and split the costs and rights? Genre productions?

Brian O'Shea, who heads up foreign sales for financier-producer Odd Lot ("The Spirit"), notes that American indie films are having a tougher time around the world. "People are looking for movies that break out," he says. "You have to have the elements in place that make (foreign buyers) believe they will have a breakout success."

Small budget, big look, accessibility ("the hook") ... do these things mean nothing to indie producers anymore?

Then again, those film financiers soldiering on despite the roadblocks have widely divergent agendas for deploying their resources, which also makes it difficult to completely rationalize the process.

As Stern puts it: "More people have made money earlier in life, and a lot of those people want to do something other than pure philanthropy. Some have a mission and want to make a statement" through film.

Oh. My. God. Get. The. Fuck. Out. Now. (pretentious) Idiots.

"They're not in it to lose money, but they're not in it really to make money either," says Hal Sadoff, head of ICM's international and indie film department, about the high-net-worth investors who've entered the pic biz, Stern and Yari included. "They make money in other businesses. Yes, they want to protect their downside. But they're not getting deterred from this business."

No matter what the motive, it is crucial to get everyone's expectations in line, says Nathan Kahane, prexy at Mandate Pictures, which backed pics such as "Juno" and "The Grudge."

He also posits that financiers are less at fault than distributors and marketers for the current downturn.

"I don't believe market fundamentals have changed one iota," he says. "Consumer demand has not changed. There just were not very good distributors in the marketplace."

Nor indie producers. No wonder the indie world is in "flux" - they've forgotten everything they were supposed to learn after they made their first film!

Indie distribution executives - take a lesson from VW: Think small.

It will only help you when you plunge headlong into the internet. Keep the cost of everything low. Remember where you came from. Get the most bang for your buck. Stay small and nimble - able to respond to market changes if necessary or weather an economic storm by having a loyal audience eager for your work.

Do what YOU do best. Don't try to be the other guy.