When I was in Sydney, Australia to lead a two day workshop on producing for Screen Australia, I was asked by Screen Hub journalist Andrew Einspruch what the best way for an indie filmmaker to make money these days. I replied:
I think the question should probably be something a little bit different, or they’re going to get trapped along the way.
The answer to that question is
DARK HORSE cracked iTunes top ten independent films last night. It’s because of you. But only you can get it up…
http://ituneschart.com/itunes-movies-chart/independent-movies/
Editor’s Note: When I discover new platforms for filmmakers to get their work seen, I tend to invite the innovators to write a post to introduce our readers to the service. This is not an endorsement, but I do find it thrilling there are so many options!
by Colin George, Editor-in-Chief, Cinecliq.com
The lights are down. The score swells. Unbelievable — that guy three rows down is texting again.
How many times has this happened to you? Moviegoing, real moviegoing, is an increasingly alienating experience, thanks in part to smartphone dependency and our addiction to social media. We can’t even go cold turkey for two hours. Watching movies can and should be a communal experience, but that white rectangle three rows down illuminates the face of an outlier, not a participant.
So how do we reconcile our shared love for cinematic storytelling with our growing need for 24/7 connectivity?
Todd Solondz’s latest is on digital. You can watch it on iTunes, VUDU, Amazon Instant, YouTube (Movies), Microsoft Zune, Sony Playstation.
Please do. I produced it.
Vimeo to offer Creators Two Flexible Payment Options
Vimeo® today announced two new features that enable creators to earn money from their films and videos. Available now, Tip Jar allows viewers to show their appreciation to creators by voluntarily contributing money to support their work. Over the next several months, Vimeo will also roll out an open pay-to-view service that allows creators to sell their work behind a paywall.
Vimeo’s focus on quality and creativity has allowed it to become one of the Web’s top 10 distributors of video online [1] with more than 75 million monthly unique visitors [2] and one of the world’s largest creative networks with over 13 million registered members. Vimeo’s introduction of Tip Jar and its upcoming pay-to-view service provide a clear path for video creators to build businesses around the films and videos they create.
“Empowering creators to make money from their videos is a logical next step for Vimeo as a service and an opportunity to expand the overall marketplace for video creators and viewers,” said Vimeo CEO Kerry Trainor. “Established creators and emerging talent alike can connect directly with their audiences without the need to conform to industry standards around video format, price or timing releases.”
Vimeo’s Tip Jar enables video creators to crowdsource funds to support works directly from their viewers. Tip Jar will allow anyone to give tips before, during or after watching a video; Vimeo will pay 85 percent of the gross revenue to the creator. Starting today, Vimeo Plus or Pro members can choose to activate Tip Jar.
Vimeo’s pay-to-view service will be an open platform for video creators to sell access to their films and videos. Expanding on traditional rental and Video On Demand models, Vimeo’s pay-to-view service gives creators customizable options to sell their films and video content directly to their audiences and provide control over pricing, rental duration distribution location and other settings. Vimeo will begin rolling out its pay-to-view service in beta preview this fall with a curated series of films. Vimeo will make the pay-to-view service available to all Vimeo PRO subscribers in early 2013.
“Creators have asked us for quite some time to help them monetize their work, but we think it needed an approach that put the controls back into the hands of the creators themselves,” said Dae Mellencamp, President of Vimeo. “We designed these tools to allow video creators to be as flexible as possible while providing the ability to financially succeed at various levels of viewership.”
For more information about Vimeo’s new creator monetization tools, please visit https://vimeo.com/blog/post:523 or watch https://vimeo.com/49684456.
About Vimeo
Vimeo® is the home for high-quality videos and the people who love them. Vimeo’s mission is to empower and inspire people around the world to create, share and discover videos. As one of the world’s largest creative networks, Vimeo reaches a global audience of more than 75MM each month. Founded in 2004 and based in New York City, Vimeo, LLC is a subsidiary of IAC (NASDAQ: IACI)
[1] June 2012 Comscore
[2] August 2012 Vimeo Internal via Google Analytics
To effectively serve, preserve, embrace and enhance film and film culture, we must examine, participate, and evolve the broadest definition thereof. Film, as an art, culture, community, business, and science is consistently evolving – it may be a cliché, but it’s a fact that film culture’s only constant is change. Film’s evolution needs to be embraced and experimented with –not feared.
Large well-financed interests are heavily committed to maintaining the status quo and as much as those corporate and business entities are the filmmakers’ & film cultures’ allies, those who love film first for the art and culture must act for the artists’ interests over those of pure profit.
