I recently had one of the top sales agents explain to me that the only indie film that gets made or sold these days are those projects that make absolute sense. Okay, granted what he was referring to was only within the mainstream indie business — the type of films that he and his cohorts commission — but it is worthy of our time to delve a bit deeper into this. What indie film project makes absolute sense?
The agent said there was no room for guess work in today’s mainstream indie business. If you want to get your film made, you have to have to make it for a price that all concerned feel it will certainly recoup at. ”Absolute sense” is this regard is a film that will inevitably make back what it cost. ”Absolute sense” can also mean a project that a company feels it has to have, usually due to the people involved or the timeliness of the concept, but those “packages” are frankly even harder to come by than those that seem to be inevitably recoupable. You are looking for the needle in the haystack with either, and need to build it yourself if you want to hope to come close.
My last few projects all were designed to remove any guess work for financiers. Between foreign sales estimates, tax credit rebates, and the undisputed value or attraction of the stars, if you want to be sure your film will get made, your project needs to read that the value of the work will exceed the cost of creating it. Value in this regard, is strictly business related, and not cultural (sorry art-for-art’s-sake fans, this isn’t going to be one of those posts). As much we can understand or even accept, those words though, what is the math that adds up to this formula? And where do the numbers even get their value anyway?
Even with 39 or 40 (and still rising) films selling at Sundance this year, the first take away from it is [...]
The NYTimes has a nice article on Matt Porterfield’s truly free film PUTTY HILL. I got to moderate a discussion around the film last year after its Berlin premiere and again this year for our screening series at Goldcrest — yet the movie had a significant change during the time that passed. The Times piece touches upon it: The Rolling Stones wouldn’t even enter into discussions about licensing “Wild Horses” to Matt and his team.
Why is it if you are an artist whose art is singing other people’s songs, our culture has worked it out in the most frictionless way manageable? But if you are an artist whose art is filming artists whose art is singing other people’s songs, you have to go to herculean tasks to gain permission? [...]
This pretty much sums it all up. Thanks Mr. Cheyefsky! Thanks Mr. Lumet! (and thanks Amanda Johnson-Zetterstrom for the tip!)
Let’s celebrate! The prospects look good for a lot of smart money to be available again for appropriately budgeted indie films. The key now being the “appropriately” part of the equation.
The days of Machiavellian moves to maximize an limited audience art film’s budget seem thankfully over — and as sad as I will be to seem some friends’ films become obsolete, I smell another golden age brewing. Filmmakers and investors seem to have both embraced the “less is more’ ethos. Expect may more films to be made in the lower than $5M bracket, and far fewer indie works in Mark Gill’s former sweet spot. The large indie finance companies of 5 years ago, had to make films at higher budget levels in order to justify their overheads and salaries. Those companies have crashed and so did the silly models of $20M art films.
The Film Biz is coming off two consecutive extremely robust film markets. Toronto 2010 saw almost 30 deals close during the festival. Sundance 2011 exceeded that mark. Surely there were quite a few deals done post market too (I have not seen any reports to track this; let me know if you know any). Coming off of two years where the prudent would not expect anything for US rights, this an exceeding positive change. With a well produced and well positioned films, investors can reasonably hope to recoup — and then some. Now the challenge for producers will be to be disciplined enough not to allow the budget creep to return.
There are other factors, beyond the sales market itself, that heighten my optimism. The [...]
Okay, okay. I stand corrected, but it was a good headline, wasn’t it? And I am not sure if $385Million per year in the US of online renting and downloading is cause to rejoice.
Besides, if you noticed, my post was really a jumping off point to try to address how we want to watch, or at least like to watch. We do have to offer our work for single transactions, but we have to recognize that is not how most people are choosing to watch. And yes, as many noted, we should not judge the lack of traction on YouTube for online rentals as representative of much. As Scilla Andreen pointed out, you need to honor your work with appropriate placement. YouTube has done so well building a community of generators and viewers accustomed to watching for free, it may be antithetical to the experience to pay anything ever there.
Discovery is deeply connected to relevance. In our time-challenged culture, getting quickly to the meat of the message is crucial for attention gathering (granted, deep context is required fo true understanding, but that’s an issue for later). You don’t want to just send your friend an article, but you want to tell them why you find it interesting. The same holds true for videos, but it has been difficult to tell them what point of the video demands their attention. Problem solved! BlipSnips to the rescue!
TechCrunch reported late last month on the new video tagging tool BlipSnips:
BlipSnips allows users to mark “moments” within videos that mark specific events. Users can also caption these moments with comments and descriptions.
Another unique capability within BlipSnips is the ability to [...]
This site could not have been built without the help and insight of Michael Morgenstern. My thanks go out to him.
Help save indie film and give this guy a job in web design or film!
