Barry_Green
Moderator
There's lots of talk about how the digital projector can change things for the exhibitor -- live NFL SuperBowl parties on a 40' screen, for example. And there's definitely some logic to that.adaml said:
[rant on]
(my apologies in advance, but now that I'm all wound up, this'll be a long one!)
The thing about movies and theaters is this: movie theaters are not in the business of showing movies. (stick with me on this, as it's vital to understanding the whole industry). Movie theaters are in the business of selling popcorn and renting seats. They are not in the business of showing movies. Did you know that theaters typically have to turn in something like 90% of the opening weekend's gross ticket sales to the studio?
They rent seats and they sell "food" (in quotes because -- come on, "nachos"? microwave pizza? $4 popcorn?) Theaters don't make any money off the movies, they make it off the popcorn and the ads.
Who in their right mind would walk into a public place, plunk down $10 to sit in a chair and eat $4 popcorn and drink $4 drinks? Hmm, the business model doesn't necessarily work, so they had to add another angle onto it -- which is that they show movies. They'll show whatever they need to, or do whatever they need to, to get you to sit in that seat.
So Hollywood exists to promote the living daylights out of itself. You love Jessica Biel, you must see her in this next film. You cannot live without seeing Sam Jackson yell profanities at snakes. Your day will not be complete without watching Sylvester Stallone climb back into the boxing ring at 60 (sixty!)
So goes the marketing -- so screams the headlines of People, US, Entertainment Weekly, etc. So goes the office talk around the water cooler. So buzzes the internet. And where can you get this experience? Where can you experience these things?
At the theater, of course. So the theater lets you in under two conditions: rent a seat, and (hopefully) buy some grossly overpriced comestibles. Oh, and now you have to sit through 20 minutes of ads too before the show.
How does this all factor into "backyard cinema" and Red? Well, here's the thing: WHY do you go to the theater at all? Because popular culture tells you you *must* experience this experience and do it now; don't wait for the DVD or you'll be out of the loop and a social misfit. And how does popular culture accomplish this? Through Hollywood -- the marketing industry that has made us revere our movie stars as "America's Royalty". Remove that element and the whole system stops working.
Imagine this: walk up to the movie theater and pick out a film you've never heard of, ever (it's not that easy is it? Movies you haven't heard of don't make it to the theater very often... hmmm...) But assume you could do that; now think to yourself on the spot: do I really want to spend nearly $36 bucks ($20 for two tickets, two hours of you & your date's time, and $16 for popcorn and drinks), to watch something that you have no idea what it is or what it's about?
Of course not. And that's the dilemma facing "backyard cinema". Without the marketing industry, no success will come. No impetus to see it is created (unless it's the one-a-year "snakes on a plane" or "blair witch" or "napolean dynamite", but considering there's thousands of indie films made per year and only one per year (if that many) gets that kind of buzz, that's akin to winning the lottery. In other words, a lousy business plan to go counting on that kind of success.) And how will Red level that playing field? It won't, of course. It'll let us make better-looking projects than we could before (just like the HVX and the DVX before it) but is that really what's holding us back? I'm all for better tools, obviously, but keep an eye on the bigger picture (hah!)
So, indies dream of the day that theaters will be equipped with digital projectors, when satellites will be beaming content directly to the theaters, and when ticket buyers will be lined up around the block to see their latest opus. Ain't gonna happen. Can't happen. You wouldn't go to the theater now to see a film you haven't heard of, would you? I mean, maybe on a lark a small percentage of you would, but the public in general? No way.
And without that draw, without that demand, without that "I gotta see it" mentality in the public, the theater owners don't have the draw to justify their seat rental prices and popcorn and making people sit through 20 minutes of ads. Without the revenues from the ads and the overpriced "food", the theater goes bust and the whole system comes crashing down.
So the system will persist. We will see the movies that are heavily advertised and who feature people that we think of as larger than life royalty. We will continue to buy records from American Idol contestants because we've seen them on TV and read about them in "People." And backyard cinema will be no more a threat to the hollywood system than it ever has been. Make a film that people will pay to see (or that hollywood believes they can convince people to pay to see), and hollywood will snatch it up from you and happily distribute it. The trick is to make a film that people would actually pay to see -- it's much harder than most people believe! I mean, with all the resources at their disposal and the best filmmakers and geniuses in the world, how often does Hollywood get it right? Not that often, percentage-wise.
But Youtube... see, there's the difference. You don't have to shell out money for a ticket. You don't have to shell out cash for overpriced popcorn and overpriced drinks. You don't have to commit two hours of your time, you can just close the window if the video stinks. So you're much, much more willing to try stuff out, right? A world of difference. But how do you sort through all the videos to know which ones to watch? Just like Hollywood, there has to be a system. It's developing. Part of it appears to be something like Yahoo's "The Nine", where they have a little video to introduce you to the hottest web videos. And there will be ads... oh good golly moses will there be ads. Then there's viral marketing and e-mail. Those are all the techniques backyard cinema makers are going to have to master if they want to have success distributing their products, but -- youtube's free. Free to the viewer, which means no moolah to the filmmaker. And filmmaking is expensive and a LOT of work. A preposterous amount of work. So unless you're just in it for the ego-stroke, what's the point of going through all the effort?
There's got to be a revenue stream for the filmmaker or they won't continue to do it. Right now $10 ticket prices and $20 DVDs deliver that. The Hollywood moguls fly around in private jets, the movie stars walk on red carpets and get botox injections and get married or divorced or adopt kids and these events cause headlines around the world, and we the customer pay to see the films they're in, and that paying goes to pay the filmmaker salaries and the whole system keeps turning.
Hollywood distribution isn't going anywhere. It'll change, it'll adapt, but it won't disappear. If you're a conspiracy theorist, look into "net neutrality" to get a glimpse into how it may change -- charging people by the bandwidth they use could be a way that Hollywood inserts itself into the chain of net distribution and ensures their ongoing take. After all, streaming video will be about the highest-bandwidth usage one could do, right?
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'cause 
, one small point about the small theater concept: these theaters can potentially bring to smaller markets movies that have already found distribution but only to major metro areas. When I lived in NYC I could almost always find something interesting to see. In most of the rest of the country this isn't the case. I live a city of over 100,000, with more than a dozen screens, and we get almost no independent movies or even pseudo-independent movies, and never any foreign movies.