January 22, 2009 – Hope For Film

Models & Experiments In Indie Distribution

I was bummed that I missed the Sundance panel on the New World of Indie Distribution.

Luckily, Scott Kirsner has the audio for download on his CinemaTech site. If you see me walking to work, crossing on the orange hand, headphones burrowed into my ears, you know they are speaking well of the future. Check it out (and I guess I should take a cue from Scott and start to record the panels I partake on…).

The Film Panel Notetaker has a few posts up too on some of the other panels. There is enough going on in the panels to fill a full year of film school curriculium. Still, I was hoping to find some more sparks.

I participated in “The Panic Button” and for all the heavyweights participating, I would’ve thought they’d be more coverage; I guess The Inauguration pulled the press away. Go figure. Maybe the biz is getting tired of hearing the old white guys speak. Reuters was there though. IndieFlix too. I did my best to get the business side (I was the only filmmaker) to recognize that they have to start giving back to the community a bit more if they don’t want to see what’s vibrant vanish, but Reuters only got the start of that argument.

Four-Eyed Monsters’ Arin Crumley commented on my recent speech over at IndieWire. I reprint it here for your reading pleasure:

Great Talk Ted!

So here are the big picture to-do items from this talk:

• We need a third party entity to handle payments between exhibitors and filmmakers. (Note this is a very delicate thing as it has the potential to be totally corrupt if it’s not a non-profit organization or some how decentralized.)

• We need a repository of information that filmmakers share with each other. (workbookproject.com is the start of this.)

• Exhibitors need to get digital projection and digital delivery systems installed. There are some missing standards still since DCI seems like overkill. But it is possible to have dual systems, DCI for big films and plug another cable in to bypass that system to play back WEB delivered HD content.

• We need to protect the open freedom we currently have on the internet so that it can be used build social connections around film and so it can be used to get HD files to the theaters. We made a video about this you can see here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP_3WnJ42kw

• We need the mechanism in which exhibitors and filmmakers can mine audiences and know who sees your film or comes to your movie theater.
In my mind this is simple, we just allow people to bookmark films they want to see and review films they’ve seen and have all that data be structured along with geo stamps. That way anyone online knows the films in each city people want to see. Then those people could ask to be notified based on variables they define. So they could set a service up that looks at the films they want to see and the local calendars and they could set an alarm that goes off when the two synchronize.

All of these ideas have been part of the think tanks we’ve been doing with From Here to Awesome and DIY DAYS and are simply awaiting sponsorship or funding to actually build the above missing components. Anyone who wants to jump on board with this effort should email fromheretoawesome (at) gmail (dot) com with your thoughts and what you can contribute and lets make this happen.

Ted can give us hope, but only if we all work together can we make these ideas a reality.

Arin Crumley
co-founder
From Here to Awesome
co-director
Four Eyed MOnsters
Director
As THe Dust Settles

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