This pretty much sums it all up. Thanks Mr. Cheyefsky! Thanks Mr. Lumet! (and thanks Amanda Johnson-Zetterstrom for the tip!)
Category: Truly Free Film
We are on the verge of a new film culture and infrastructure.
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.
Categories
Everything Is A Remix
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
Earlier this year I proposed what I saw as the five most critical questions for someone to answer in order to have a fulfilling and sustainable career producing films. I went on to list out eighteen more. I think the answers to these questions don’t have a right or wrong answer; they should be profoundly personal. Yet I also think it is very hard to answer these questions on your own. Frankly, I think the answering of these questions should be part of any film school curriculum — but I am also not sure that film school is a necessary component for all producing careers. Anyway, I thought it might be helpful for those considering this path to have someone try to answer these questions. Today that someone is me.
Producing benefits from having addressed certain moral and ethical challenges before they actually confront you. Hell, what field or way of life doesn’t? I have encouraged the consideration of some of these “challenges” before in virtual party game manner, but I do think it is always worth considering. I think it comes down to the questions of “what do you value?” People? Money? Principles? Property? And how much do these matter to you?
If you’ve set your values — or at least have a firm handle on them–, if you then seek to make the product of your labor (i.e for a film producer, your movies) reflect your values, you will be on your way to still feeling good about what you are doing twenty years from now. Essentially this is the “Know-what-you-care-about-and-reflect-that-in-your-work” approach. But it alone is not enough to carry you through the twenty years. It is the content driven approach and you will have to also consider the process and the environment you inhabit to stay satisfied.
To feel as good twenty years from now as you do today (and that is assuming you feel good today of course), it is not just
As I write this The Weinstein Company’s top rental on YouTube is Michael Moore’s SICKO, with a whopping 151 views. In reading PaidContent’s article on the TWC/YTube alliance, you can’t help wonder if there IS any business to be had in online rentals. Is the online one-off transactional content-rental business completely non-existent? And if so why?
I think we are starting to move away from the impulse buy mentality.
