Sundance Observation

Ted,
I'm not sure if I should scratch my head much longer, trying to figure out how to make films and make a living in the current landscape, because I might just start bleeding. I've been in the film business for 40 years, and while some might say it's "in transition" I believe it's dead for most independent filmmakers who want to make entertainment films. So, I'm going to sit back for a while and "see what develops" in the newscape of film and media, and when things are a little more clear, I'll get back on the horse and see what I want to do next. Wish someone was out there "leading the charge" up this hill, but I don't see that either. Frankly, I don't think anyone has a real clue what to do next. No concrete ideas leading to anything looking like a "new model." Not even the studios know what to do. Everyone is grasping at straws, and you can't build a house of straw. Remember what happened to one of the three little pigs?! I really hope that there's a credible solution to the present dilemma for most of the professionals like myself working in the film business. But from my present point of view, I just can't see it. Keep up the good work with this site, Ted. It's an important place for this discussion to continue. Ron

Until corporations figure out how to monetize new media and alternative distribution, the field is wide open for innovation. Ted’s model of the artist-entrepreneur is striking, positive, intriguing and most of all Hope-ful. Whatever successful paradigm emerges will likely be corporatized, and the Indie cycle will begin again.

Cinema as we know it or imagine it peaked years ago; most of the work conceived and executed outside Hollywood for the last 25 years has had no basis in art or high intelligence. It's been sold, if at all, on novelty -- and the principal novelty of American indie film has been the heroism of the production, not the movie itself.

One thing, and one thing only, sustains an art-house tradition: public funding. Audiences will not sustain cinema. This has always been true, though it just takes Americans 20 or 30 years to realize that the free market is not a source of redemption. A few minutes later, they forget.

Other countries figured out what sustains art cinema requires many, many years ago, and they weather the long stretches of mediocrity and repetition, to that end.

We, however, are so devoted to our orthodoxies, that we're incapable of learning anything.

Cinema, in the American indie sense, is a vocation and has always been a vocation. If it ceases to be a vocation, there's no great loss.

Pango -maybe 200k is way, way over the mark. Try 20k and reduce the team to eight, cast and crew included... then the answer is: the director and his audience fund the film, through something like Kickstarter, or the whole thing is a loss-leader for a film maker who keeps his academic job teaching Final Cut Pro to the next generation who won't even bother to imagine stories that require a larger-than-a-new-toyota budget.

I am imagining how radically things CAN change because they might just go that way. In a year or so you may have two choices: AVATAR part Two or else Hannah's second cousin from Haiti Takes the Stairs. And which would you chose if the ticket prices were pro-rated?

Ted, I love Greg, and I loved ADVENTURELAND but for argument's sake isn't it possible that it could have been made for less than what DAYTRIPPERS cost? It had some t-shirts and a carnival after hours... plus a basement and a parking lot for locations, and starred what should have been 19 year old actors, who, let's face it can afford to work for free in exchange for the opportunity they are being given. (Is that a sustainable model? I don't really know. What exactly are we trying to sustain?)

GOODBYE SOLO and CHOP SHOP are the future of this cinema we're all pondering. Raising the right amount of money is the key. Abbie Hoffman once said, "In a revolution, as in pool hustling, the key is to only use as much force as is necessary."

And yes, it could change back to something more like what your favorite union Key Grip is used to working on, but imagine we are in wartime France. (Screen SAFE CONDUCT if you have not seen it.) You have a choice: work under the Nazis and keep your head down for a few years and emerge with your craft skills and livelihood intact, or leave the business altogether until things improve, at which time you will find yourself hopelessly out of step. Clearly one choice is to do the former while joining the resistance. (another is to make CHILDREN OF PARADISE, by whatever means necessary.)

Maybe I am overstating the stakes and the situation. But maybe I'm not.

Well said. I have to say it's always nice to read comments that approach current changes in the industry as being inevitable and positive. I too often run across pessimists spending more time talking about how there isn't a model yet or how they think the changes happening now and coming over the horizon are little more than a fad that will fade with time.

Thanks.

I think you have a good opinion Tommy, Dreamspace is a good way to put it. Futurist Raymond Kurzweil,listed seven stages in the life cycle of a technology, which for a moment we'll borrow for our distribution model:

1. Precursor
2. Invention
3. Development
4. Maturity
5. False Pretenders
6. Obsolescence
7. Antiquity

In the precursor stage, ideas about a new technology exist, but have not been implemented (e.g., DaVinci's helicopter). Invention gives the ideas concrete form. Development hones the technology into a practical form (e.g., automobile technology at the turn of the last century). Finally the technology reaches maturity and is practical and useful. Maturity can last for years, decades, or centuries depending on how well the technology meets the need for which it was invented. (From -- http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/d... )

Using these stages in relation to our present situation, leads me to believe that we are in a real pickle.

As filmmakers and artists it feels like we are stuck in a mish-mash of the stages (Or maybe notions) of False Pretenders, Obsolescence, Antiquity AND Precursor.

It IS probably going to take a redefinition of cinema to get into the invention and maturity stages from where we are now, but as technology accelerates (and it keeps accelerating) new methods of distribution are introduced seemingly on a quarterly basis.

But to redefine anything there needs to be some foundation to build on and right now it seems that the ground keeps shifting while architects are trying to plan.

There needs to be some kind of crazy zero base thinking to get a handle on this.

Pericles

Yeah, but who is financing these 200K and less films? I mean, besides uncles and dentists. Is it really a viable investment for a film company?

Spot on, Ted.

It seems like there's a certain dreamspace a lot of people are still within, that you can go and raise a few million dollars and make a film the way we've always done.

That's gone. There's a lot of intermediaries, from sales agents to reps and distribs who are also pretending it's still alive.

The redefinition will only come from the originating sources, film makers who choose to turn the other way and work directly with their audiences, sharing and building as they go.

Ted,

This might be the best, most succinct explanation of the changes in the industry and the challenges facing filmmakers today. Well put!

If filmmakers need any more of a push, they should note that the studios are already realizing this fact. Imagine just signed up their first ever first-look deal (not for them, but the first deal under them) and it is with a 'transmedia' production company. Paramount pushed Paranormal Activity through viral marketing and is starting a no-budget production wing for budgets under 100k.

If even the slow-to-change studio system is catching on, we all better take notice.

Keep writing and keep the great ideas coming!

-The Future of Movies

There's a scene in the documentary Food Inc. where reps from Wal-Mart try to soften their tarnished rep by pushing organics. I have a feeling once a viable business model (actually I don't think it will be just one it might be more like 2-4 different variations) emerges you will see the industry, meaning studios, follow suit the same way.

I believe that what you say is right about the seismic shift, but I can't help feeling that the redefinition of cinema has a limit - redefine it to a point and it is no longer cinema.

LIC