Is indie film dying?

Bryan

Bryan

Well-known member
Thought this might make for an interesting discussion.

Indie film is dying -- unless it isn't - http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/btm/feature/2008/06/24/indie_death/index.html

Film Department's Mark Gill: "Yes, The Sky Really Is Falling." - http://www.indiewire.com/biz/2008/06/irst_person_fil.html


Then there's the fact that while enthusiasm, access to technology and an eagerness to become famous may be widespread, talent and craftsmanship are not. As anybody who's ever served on a film-festival selection committee learns the hard way, most of those movies should never have been made in the first place and definitely should not be inflicted upon the public. There has indeed been an explosion of ultra-low-budget filmmaking -- just try to wade through the self-produced movies available on YouTube -- but so far it has not revealed a nation full of unheralded Orson Welleses in embryo. If anything, it has produced a deluge of abysmal crap that makes the genuine discoveries harder to see. As Gill acidly observed: "The digital revolution is here, and boy does it suck."
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Ouch. And it's worrisome to think because of the sheer number of indie films it makes it harder to find the good ones.
 
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Some rise to the top because they are bloated with gas. Some float on the top like pond scum or an oil spill. The talented gems are buried under a ton of crap, and they have to sloooowly work their way to the top...unless they get dug up. Lucky. But all that friction coming up through the crap polishes these gems to a fine sheen, so that if they finally manage to emerge into daylight...they will be radiant.
 
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Funny story...I actually had a meeting with Mark Gill about a script me and two of my buddies wrote when Mark was at Miramax. We then later had a meeting with this blowhard Spanish producer who was highly offended we met with Mark because he had a professional altercation with him. All through the interview, this producer kept stating in his thick Spanish accent, "Mark Jill, to me, is THE ANTICHRIST!!!". Whenever I want to get a laugh out of my friend, I say, "-Insert name here-, to me, is THE ANTICHRIST!"...Anyway, Mark's appraisal of the industry confirms everything I felt was happening and really is making me consider getting out while the getting is good...Wish I didn't love it. As General Patton said in a different context, "God help me, I do love it so."
 
I hope so. I hate people bugging me to work on their indie film.

9 times out of 10 it is disorganized...
- u work for free or a payment that is less than someone working at McDonalds
- the movie will never be accepted in a decent festival
- never gets finished in post
- you are bugged to do the post work while in production
- you watch and think that u could have directed this better
- you eat cheap pizza for the "catering"
- the idea for the film started because someone was high
- you were told "everyone" is going to help out, but find that you and 2 other guys came
- you hear the term "we will fix that in post"
- the footage has lots of shots that are underexposed or overexposed
- people argue to shoot it 24pn because it "might" be put back on film
- one or more of the actors is someones "buddy"
- the pre-production on the movie was finished in a day



Did i miss any?
 
Mark's keynote at the LA Film Fest deal was really good and seemed right on the money.
 
after_effects said:
I hope so. I hate people bugging me to work on their indie film.

9 times out of 10 it is disorganized...
- u work for free or a payment that is less than someone working at McDonalds
- the movie will never be accepted in a decent festival
- never gets finished in post
- you are bugged to do the post work while in production
- you watch and think that u could have directed this better
- you eat cheap pizza for the "catering"
- the idea for the film started because someone was high
- you were told "everyone" is going to help out, but find that you and 2 other guys came
- you hear the term "we will fix that in post"
- the footage has lots of shots that are underexposed or overexposed
- people argue to shoot it 24pn because it "might" be put back on film
- one or more of the actors is someones "buddy"
- the pre-production on the movie was finished in a day



Did i miss any?
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I dont think so.
 
Batutta said:
Yeah, but what the article says is that, basically, the studios are all that's going to be left.
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from the indiewire article, i got a different impression... that the audience is there, the content is there, and the studios are doing a terrible job of selecting films to distribute. the convention is a "push" model where distributers determine what audiences see by ushering them to market. but we are evolving (and the folding of studio indie divisions is proof of this, i think) toward a "pull" model, where the digital revolution increases access to more films, and the audience chooses the content that shows up on their tivo, or in the multiplex, or on their iphone.

maybe this is just me thinking beyond the article, but i see this lull as the result of a period of time where things are changing and no one knows how to make any money off it... not yet anyway.
 
Zak Forsman said:
from the indiewire article, i got a different impression... that the audience is there, the content is there, and the studios are doing a terrible job of selecting films to distribute. the convention is a "push" model where distributers determine what audiences see by ushering them to market. but we are evolving (and the folding of studio indie divisions is proof of this, i think) toward a "pull" model, where the digital revolution increases access to more films, and the audience chooses the content that shows up on their tivo, or in the multiplex, or on their iphone.

maybe this is just me thinking beyond the article, but i see this lull as the result of a period of time where things are changing and no one knows how to make any money off it... not yet anyway.
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Yeah, but in the "pull" model, where does the financing come from to make independent films? That's really why they alarm bells are sounding. If funding isn't there for Hollywood indie divisions, where is it going to come from for real independent producers? The only pocketbooks left are going to be the studios.
 
The extreme point of view is never the right one. I think Mark Gill knows as much about independent film as I know about $300 million studio epics - which is not very much.

And I'd actually believe the stuff he's saying if I hadn't witnessed the Avi Lerners of the world selling total crap to foreign markets, making money hand over fist, and having 20 movies in production per year.
 
How many of us have ever seen (or been in) a band that sucked? This is no different. Nearly every bar in every city has sheer dreck pumping out of it on a nightly basis. What does that mean? Some crappy bands get signed and wind up on the cover of Rolling Stone. Some kick-ass bands never get out of the garage. There are many factors beyond our control, including the sheer volume of nonsense that gets thrown around as a "film". Focus on the stuff that you can control, like learning your craft, doing your homework, and forming professional relationships. Make something that you believe in and then the chips will fall where they may.

The market and methods are changing, but there will always be a place for quality content, whether it's on a screen or in a cocktail lounge.
 
I think the exact opposite is happening. There is so much "indy" now that "indy" is mainstream.

"Indy" means a film that was produced outside of the Hollywood studio system -- which is almost everything except for most blockbusters these days.

The studios do the distribution because with a few exceptions that's all their is (because they have a lock on the theatres). When we finally get decent internet distribution this all will change.
 
Zak Forsman said:
maybe this is just me thinking beyond the article but i see this lull as the result of a period of time where things are changing and no one knows how to make any money off it... not yet anyway.
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I think you nailed it right there.

Some of the things that I heard on Saturday or have been experiencing:

-Right now, its easy to get a film made.. nearly impossible to get it released.
-One billion TVs on the planet.. two billion cel phones <---
-Unfortunately, 'quality' is a sub-genre.
-"Make fewer better" - Goldwyn via Gill
 
I think it has more to do with the fact that for every talented filmmaker there are at least 1000 talentless hacks out there. So you give millions access to various cameras and editing software, and next thing you know, there are thousands upon thousands of terrible filmmakers, and only a handful of great ones.

It doesn't give rise to the ones that are talented, it just creates more static.
 
Seems the movie industry is at the same place the music industry was 10 years ago.
The irony is that the artist were bitching about having to deal with "the man", and when technology made it possible for the average artists to create without "the man" the result is just a bunch of crap by people that felt they could create and had a few empty credit cards laying around ( the good stuff is the exception to the rule of course).
What I've come to realize is the system that was in place to supposedly keep the artist down came about via natural selection- it weeded out that crap/wannabes- and not because some suit and ties thought it up to reign over the little guy.
Having run a recording studio for the last 15 years or so I used to be the biggest anti-establishment, anti-label kind of guy. Now I actually miss the days when the labels ruled......
 
I think that eventually, interactivity is going to be the holy grail of entertainment. Eventually the cinema world is going to merge with the video gaming world. As technology gets better online distribution models will emerge. Think On-Demand or Xbox Live / Playstation Home type models.

These are different than the web since they are controlled by a single party. The only free content on there is content that is offered that way by the service. itunes store is the same basic thing as well. Yes YouTube will always be around. But the thing about YouTube is that it is very random. If you want an episode of Monk or Battlestar Galactica then you can't count on it being there, or if it is, then the next episode might not be there. Also, most people like to sit on their couch and watch a movie or TV show instead of hunched over their computer screen. Also, bear in mind that the itunes or On-Demand model is still relatively new. DVD didn't automatically replace VHS right away. It took about 5-6 years for DVD to really catch on. The online models are still rough and new to people. Once they have been refined, the general public gets used to them, and overall bandwidth is increased it will become a much more stable distribution channel.

This will open up not only ways for indies and studios to distribute content, but to do it in a much more dynamic way. For example, you will be able to download different cuts of the same film. Maybe contests will be held that let viewers re-edit parts of the film. The audience then votes for their favorite remix of the official version. Or, how about the filmmakers will shoot some scenes in a different way or from different angles. A randomization pattern will reconstruct the scene, causing it to play differently.

Also, recent games have shown that complex and intelligent stories can be told using interactive media (Bioshock, Mass Effect, GTA 4, Metal Gear Solid 4). I suspect cinema will take on some of these characteristics eventually. Now, this means that the theatrical experience will certainly fade away. This seems to be starting already to some extent. Since the future is most likely home-based entertainment, various downloadable content pacs and alternate versions of interactive cinematic media could be purchased and downloaded.
 
I am really good enough to chime in here, But I am not really qualified to do anything else, so I will keep making movies and selling them out of the trunk until I get good enough to seek financing.
 
taormina said:
I think Mark Gill knows as much about independent film as I know about $300 million studio epics - which is not very much.
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Yeah, he only worked directly under Harvey Weinstein for 8 years as President of Miramax. Sounds like an idiot.
 
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