Ted Hope DIY Days from ZAFFI Pictures on Vimeo.
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Category: Truly Free Film
We are on the verge of a new film culture and infrastructure.
On Baseline Research Blog is an article entitled “DIY Doing You In” (thanks to @Shanipedia for tipping me off to it). The author, Jeremy Juuso, states:
to have a decent shot at breaking $1 million in lifetime box office, your Q2 specialty film needs to open at better than $15,000 per weekend venue. The bad news is, if you’re engaging in a self-release or service deal, this will be a very tall order, as only 5 such films in all of 2009 managed to open so.
Chris Dorr returns today with another guest post.
Much of the most important innovation on the web today occurs within what some call the Golden Triangle.
The three sides of this triangle are social, mobile and real time. Though the poster children for this triangle are Facebook, the iPhone and Twitter, this innovation extends far beyond these three companies.
This triangle is creating a major shift in how people experience the Internet.
Today’s guest post is from producer Smriti Mundhra. I confess I have been slow in my posting and should have run this last week!
If the sun came out in New York City this past Saturday, I didn’t see it. Instead, I spent the day in Columbia University’s Uris Hall with about two hundred fellow filmmakers participating in The Conversation, an all-day conference about the future of independent film funding, marketing and distribution. There was a lot to talk about.
The program for The Conversation consisted of panels, discussion groups and breakout sessions, each featuring both indie fllm stalwarts (Eugene Hernandez, Scott Macaulay, Bob Hawk) and new media trailblazers (Lance Weiler, Arin Crumley). But it was Ira Deutchman, CEO of Emerging Pictures and professor at the university’s graduate school of film, who dropped the first bomb in his opening remarks when he quoted a businessman with whom he recently had lunch: “Film? That’s not a business, that’s a hobby.”
I am giving the keynote today for DIY DAYS. This is it, devoid of any adlibs.
It is inspiring to be in this room with all of you for this:
The first edition of DIY DAYS NYC.
All of us. Together.
Here.
It took me almost 30 years to get here. Thanksgiving Weekend. 1980. The Clash’s Sandinista! Godard’s “Everyman For Himself” and Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull” They all came out on the same weekend and I was home freshman year for break. Seeing, hearing, absorbing all that I thought:
”This is what I want to do: intense, hard-hitting, challenging, personal, political self-expression. “
I didn’t know how. I didn’t even know what the first step could be, I just felt that want. That DEEP DEEP need to create something of my own.
Have you ever recognized that you are in the right place at the right time? The exact right place? In the exact right time? With the exact right people? I have felt it, a few times, and that feeling has pushed me, pushed me forward, in a big way that has brought others along with it.
New & upcoming speaking gigs! Come join me. Check it out here.
Collen Nystedt of MovieSet pointed this lecture (2/7) out to me via Facebook. It’s not a pretty picture.
You have to skip the 4min corny intro, but amidst the doom mongering, Peter Dekom puts an interesting position out there. He describes the current industry situation as the “antichrist of independent filmmaking” (end of pt.3). Unfortunately he’s not referencing Lars VT either. Dekom doesn’t put much stock on the long tail, but illustrates how the industry is built around movies that do well theatrically (pt.4). Without theatrical success, there’s not much else that can happen from a business perspective with a film these days, he says. So much for the hope of a VOD salvation…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_5lCDiDsOs
The main thrust is that our industry is in a serious disconnect from our audiences. It is clear that the model consumers like least is pay per use — yet Hollywood is still dedicated to this. Dekom argues that we have to wake up both our business models and our copyright laws (and I wish he explored this latter part more) to adjust how people actually behave. Embrace reality! Wake up and smell the instant coffee!!
