The next step: Distribution

[TheDingo]

KS/IGG I think is more open to one-off successes

I think KS/IGG is a good model for Indie features, which will usually take the better part of a year or more to complete.

where as for video success on YT I think you need new content pretty much weekly in order to have a chance a building a following.

It seems that YT success boils down to a few key ingredients...

- Post weekly
- Your content must be unique in some way ( always better to be the first one out of the gate )
- Your content must be able to connect to your audience on an emotional level
- Your content must appeal to both a male and female audience
- Your content must appeal to the under 25 year old demographic ( the majority of YT subscribers are young )

 

[Jawa Ex Machina]

My point is not that it will help unknowns, or make billions. Just that the already established producers can hopefully put out something besides the main fare we see coming out of Hollywood. It's really been pretty homogenized since the 80's or so.

In all fairness though, since independent films are in the vast majority nowadays, they're actually much more homogenized than studio films.

I don't know how many low budget indies I see every time I go to a festival about five people trapped in one room, but it's a pretty common theme. Makes sense, because it's a cheap way to make a film.
Or mumblecore indie dramedies.
Or, you know, zombie films.

It's easy to blame "Hollywood" as some abstract entity, when it's actually a bunch of competing companies with a responsibility towards their shareholders, using a business model that more often than not works to the best of their ability.

Truth is, to be really blunt, independent filmmakers need to be even more aware of market fluctuations, trends, other filmmakers on the same budget level, and they have to be even more commercially driven than a Hollywood studio, because it's harder for an independent film to be noticed.

If you make a $200 000 000 scifi action adventure film, you have to recoup a lot of money, so it has to appeal to a wide audience.
But you're only competing with a handfull of other films.

If you make a $500 000 relationship drama or arthouse film or zombie slasher, it's true you don't have to appeal to as many people, but you're competing against hundreds of similar films, all fighting for people's (and distributors, and festivals) attention.

 

[Gillvane]

I think KS/IGG is a good model for Indie features, which will usually take the better part of a year or more to complete.



It seems that YT success boils down to a few key ingredients...

- Post weekly
- Your content must be unique in some way ( always better to be the first one out of the gate )
- Your content must be able to connect to your audience on an emotional level
- Your content must appeal to both a male and female audience
- Your content must appeal to the under 25 year old demographic ( the majority of YT subscribers are young )

I would add that many are using existing IP as a springboard for interest. FreddieW uses a lot of popular video games, and so do many of the popular youtube videos, especially things like Machinama, Halo spoofs, etc.

Popular video games already have a built in young audience and may yt channels build off of that rather than create something from scratch.

Easier to get some publicity for your latest Minecraft spoof than do something original.

 

[Gillvane]

In all fairness though, since independent films are in the vast majority nowadays, they're actually much more homogenized than studio films.

.

I'd like to see more grindhouse, experimental, off the beaten path type films. The 70's produced tons of really strange and interesting movies, and then that all sort of went away and turned into mainstream fare. It's not just about ratings, but also the themes and subject matter.

I agree that even indies aren't making many films that follow the beat of a different drum, instead they often just emulate the Hollywood homogenization.

I don't see many movies like Valley of the Dolls, Pink Flamingos, the old Hammer movies like
[h=1]The Karnstein Trilogy of vampire movies, and stuff like that. [/h]
I recently watched The Holy Mountain and it's awesome.

I want directors and producers, distributors to be able to put stuff out like that even though it won't make a Billion dollars or appeal to everyone in India.

 

[robmneilson]

The 70's were a special time (plus it helps that the manager of the Beatles funded The Holy Mountain) since if you made a film, you could get a distribution company to look at it. Where today, any unsolicited screeners are likely sitting in a pile in a storage room.

 

[Jawa Ex Machina]

I'd like to see more grindhouse, experimental, off the beaten path type films. The 70's produced tons of really strange and interesting movies, and then that all sort of went away and turned into mainstream fare. It's not just about ratings, but also the themes and subject matter.

I agree that even indies aren't making many films that follow the beat of a different drum, instead they often just emulate the Hollywood homogenization.

I want directors and producers, distributors to be able to put stuff out like that even though it won't make a Billion dollars or appeal to everyone in India.

The difference between the 2010s and the 1970s though is the sheer volume of work that is put out.

Between 1970 through 1979 (according to IMDb), 28,467 feature films were released.
Between 2010 through 2013 (again, according to IMDb), the number is 31,879.

Imagine what the number will be when we get to 2019.

I agree that it's not about ratings, but it is about getting seen, recouping costs for production, marketing and distribution, and hopefully maybe even turning a profit so you can make more than one film in your life.

This is very difficult right now, and I think these numbers, together with the problem of online piracy, is a big reason why.

 

[TheDingo]

This is very difficult right now

Hmmm... I see this from a different perspective.

Today, the financial barrier to being able to afford to fund feature film production has shrunk considerably compared to making films a decade ago.

We have these huge no-cost/low-cost social promotion vehicles that anybody can utilize, something that film-makers only dreamed about 10 years ago.

From my perspective it looks like anyone who has their sh*t together and understands these new social venues can be quite successful, without having to worry about bringing in deep pocket investors to finance their film.

The paradigm has changed, so money is much less relevant now, which I think is a very good thing.

 

[j1clark@ucsd.edu]

The difference between the 2010s and the 1970s though is the sheer volume of work that is put out.
[/qutoe]

Another difference between 'then and now', is that for films, one could only reasonably see a film in a theater... unless one is discussing 8mm/16mm 'stag' films. And on that topic, until the late 60's, early 70's 'stag' films were borderline criminal, if not outrightly so, and so one had to find a bookstore in 'that section' of town to obtain them.

There was also a completely different distribution system in place. Until Tom Laughlin's "Trial of Billy Jack", most films were 'open' in prime markets first, then over the course of the year cycled out to the hinterland. Laughlin 'opened wide' first day 'mass' showings, along with national ad campaigns, and was quickly taken into the 'mainstream' with "Jaws"(1975).

Laughlin was able to do that, because of the success of his previous film, "Billy Jack"(1971), gave him an amount of working capital to make the requisite prints and pay for the promotional ads.

I don't know if the equivalent for the modern era would be for a major distributor to put a film up for streaming, at the same time it appears in Theaters, and charge 1-5 bux per view... That would kill 'theater' attendance... but it would put far more bux from those viewers who don't typically go to theaters, and wait for the various disk or Internet distributions to come.

I think a 'deep' analysis of how things are going with "Game of Thrones", where nearly simultaneous with the cable connected viewing, one can 'stream' the show, if one has access to HBO-GO, will yield a 'pointer' to the future.

Again HBO isn't going to undercut the cable 'distribution system' at this time... but once the distribution systems truly take on the role of just 'conduits'... perhaps there will be a direct subscription option.

How this could work for the 'independent'... would be for some entity like HBO to 'open up' the HBO-GO to exploitation by others, and charge a schedule of fees ranging from 'streaming' to 'promotions'.

This is sort of the model that Google has been built on, such as one has the ability to have one's site 'place' in the search results higher, and higher, given paying of more fees...

Or obviously existing streaming entities like Netflix, or Google (Youtube...), and more commercially oriented services.

Obviously none of this is going to be for 'free'... but it will be a matter of how much, and 'can I afford that'... rather than 'begging' at some Hollywood studio door...

 

[Jawa Ex Machina]

Hmmm... I see this from a different perspective.

Today, the financial barrier to being able to afford to fund feature film production has shrunk considerably compared to making films a decade ago.

We have these huge no-cost/low-cost social promotion vehicles that anybody can utilize, something that film-makers only dreamed about 10 years ago.

From my perspective it looks like anyone who has their sh*t together and understands these new social venues can be quite successful, without having to worry about bringing in deep pocket investors to finance their film.

The paradigm has changed, so money is much less relevant now, which I think is a very good thing.

Right. Technology has made it cheaper to make films as well as easier to make films cheaply (or make cheap films).
Internet has spread the knowledge of how to make films, and how to make them cheaply, so again it's even easier.
The digital revolution has made film obsolete, so now movies are shot, cut and spread digitally, which again makes it both even cheaper and easier still.

But it's not about making films, it's about Supply and Demand.

Right now, the supply is higher than it has ever been. Like, ridiculously high and skyrocketing.
The public's demand for the Feature Film format is not.

Nobody is sitting at home, saying "Damn. I wish they made MORE low budget independent films!"

 

[TheDingo]

Right now, the supply is higher than it has ever been. Like, ridiculously high and skyrocketing

...And that genie is never going back in the bottle, so you either adapt and learn how to survive in this new environment, or you let others take your place.

I for one am very happy that artificial financial barriers have fallen, which levels the playing field for everybody.

 

[Kholi]

...And that genie is never going back in the bottle, so you either adapt and learn how to survive in this new environment, or you let others take your place.

I for one am very happy that artificial financial barriers have fallen, which levels the playing field for everybody.

This... it's hard to read this and not sigh...

The only barriers that have fallen really are the more arbitrary ones. It goes hand-in-hand with people commenting on gatekeepers losing power... they have more power than ever now, they're just figuring out how to harness it. And one they do, which they will, things will stabilize.

They have the money, "we" do not. This is very basic.

 

[j1clark@ucsd.edu]

...The 70's produced tons of really strange and interesting movies, and then that all sort of went away and turned into mainstream fare....

Having come of age in the late 60's, I will say, from my observation, 'children' today are far less likely to take a risk than during the 60's. One does not see too many under 18 year olds participating with their elder 'young people', who may have been all of 20 or 25, in protests about the state of the society. One still has drugs, but I think it is largely for 'escape', than 'enlightenment' (never mind that the 'enlightenment' was often an excuse for 'escapism'... but I digress...).

In the classes that I've attended at the local junior college, there is almost no 'social consciousness' at all. In the 60's it pervaded all things... conversations at the Hip Bagel, to the home... well at least in Californica... perhaps in the mid west folks were hunkered down waiting for the ragtag hippies to invade their homes...

Even at the local UC, UCSD which once had Herbert Marcuse as a professor, and Angela Davis, if anyone can remember those names and the 'revolution' they imported... it is pretty much 'dead' for anything but a bio-tech-science degree...

The 'liberal arts' are dead.

As for specifically John Waters... here's a quote from an interview with Waters, promoting his book titled "Role Models"
---
As Waters puts it in his essay, "Tennessee Williams saved my life." For the 12-year-old Waters, growing up in suburban Baltimore, Williams was more than a naughty writer whose books carried the ominous stamp "See Librarian" at the library. "Yes, Tennessee Williams was my childhood friend," writes Waters. "I yearned for a bad influence, and Tennessee was one in the best sense of the word: joyous, alarming, sexually confusing and dangerously funny."
---

How many 12 year olds these days would say they had to 'sneek around to get a book that hand 'see librarian' stamped on it'... or 'yearn for a bad influence'...

These days great measures are made to make sure '12 year olds' did not come in contact with such material, and should they, they would be subjected to years of 'therapy'.

 

[Jawa Ex Machina]

The only barriers that have fallen really are the more arbitrary ones. It goes hand-in-hand with people commenting on gatekeepers losing power... they have more power than ever now, they're just figuring out how to harness it. And one they do, which they will, things will stabilize.

They have the money, "we" do not. This is very basic.

I agree with this.

Also, this skyrocketing increase in amounts of feature length films can't keep going up like this forever.

 

[Kholi]

I agree with this.

Also, this skyrocketing increase in amounts of feature length films can't keep going up like this forever.

Actually, I sort of theorize that as the technology opens up the ABILITY to create a feature length motion picture faster and cheaper, filmmakers will learn how difficult it is to turn a meaningful profit on this alone and will quickly decide to pursue other avenues, some not related to art at all.

It's a lot easier to turn the "Dream" of filmmaking into reality now, and the reality of filmmaking is a far cry from the glamorous image fledgling or nine-to-fivers have in their minds. The faster people get the reality check, the faster they jump ship, the more the cinema economy begins to stabilize.

And, then, beyond that? Feature Films may very well end up as a fringe source of entertainment and education versus the mainstream source that it is today. The top side of the machine will simply walk away into big budget episodic content and live there, leaving the Feature Film industry as a "niche" that people fill in with educational content/documentaries alongside very very low to no budget narratives.

At least that's how it feels, to me. Could be wrong.

 

[pulpfiction007]

I do see both perspectives on this. While it's great that technology is allowing those who could only dream before to DO, the saturation of everybody's lives with choices for entertainment has reached huge proportions. No one can pay attention long enough to see "indie guy/girl x film". Seems many viewers are content to constantly " channel surf" on phones and computers looking for the latest 5 and 10 second sensations, rather than invest any time in a truly meaningful piece of work.

It sounds cynical, but that's just what I've noticed. Used to be..."hey did you see this movie?" Now it's "hey did you see that dumb mother...... on you tube?"

 

[jghenderson]

Actually, I sort of theorize that as the technology opens up the ABILITY to create a feature length motion picture faster and cheaper, filmmakers will learn how difficult it is to turn a meaningful profit on this alone and will quickly decide to pursue other avenues, some not related to art at all.

It's a lot easier to turn the "Dream" of filmmaking into reality now, and the reality of filmmaking is a far cry from the glamorous image fledgling or nine-to-fivers have in their minds. The faster people get the reality check, the faster they jump ship, the more the cinema economy begins to stabilize.

And, then, beyond that? Feature Films may very well end up as a fringe source of entertainment and education versus the mainstream source that it is today. The top side of the machine will simply walk away into big budget episodic content and live there, leaving the Feature Film industry as a "niche" that people fill in with educational content/documentaries alongside very very low to no budget narratives.

At least that's how it feels, to me. Could be wrong.

I don't see this ever happening. If the past 100 years have shown anything, it's that people really love the 90-180 minute format, it resonates well with us. Feature films will always remain the height of the medium, at least it better. The day we walk away from the theaters is the day the magic of movies dies.

 

[TheDingo]

The only barriers that have fallen really are the more arbitrary ones.

- Today you can own all the gear necessary to shoot a high quality feature for less than the price of a good car. This was not true 10 - 20 years ago.

- Today you can self distribute or work with Indie theaters without having to give everything away to Hollywood accounting. I read recently that semi-famous Shane Carruth broke 100K at the box office in the second week of Indie theater distribution for UpStream Color. Yes, he's an example of a home-run hitter, but it's possible for other film-makers to do the same. ( definitely not easy, but possible )

with people commenting on gatekeepers losing power... they have more power than ever now

How is that?

Today you can distribute your work through many different outlets ( i.e. DVD, Blu-Ray, Internet Streaming, Apple iTunes, etc... ) and by-pass most of the established infrastructure. This was next to impossible 10-20 years ago.

From what I've read more kids are watching YouTube content today than the traditional broadcast networks, and I can see this trend increasing as the quality of YouTube content gets better.

 

[TheDingo]

I don't see this ever happening. If the past 100 years have shown anything, it's that people really love the 90-180 minute format, it resonates well with us.

This is the old-school way of thinking. I've read many complaints from the 30 and under crowd that a movie is too long if it comes close to 2 hour format. I've seen some new releases that barely make it to the 70 minute mark, and the impact of YouTube on the generations that are coming is going to shorten their attention span even further.

I grew up with 3 hour spectaculars like "Ghandi", "REDS", "The Right Stuff", and I wish that films like this were still made, but sadly I don't think it's possible anymore.

I saw "Batman The Dark Knight Rises" twice last year ( in regular format and IMAX ), and both times I heard lots of audience members groaning about how insanely long it was as we were walking out of the theatre. I bet many people would have been a lot happier if Nolan had chopped it down to 90 minutes. ( not me, but I don't consider myself the norm )

 

[jghenderson]

This is the old-school way of thinking. I've read many complaints from the 30 and under crowd that a movie is too long if it comes close to 2 hour format. I've seen some new releases that barely make it to the 70 minute mark, and the impact of YouTube on the generations that are coming is going to shorten their attention span even further.

I grew up with 3 hour spectaculars like "Ghandi", "REDS", "The Right Stuff", and I wish that films like this were still made, but sadly I don't think it's possible anymore.

I saw "Batman The Dark Knight Rises" twice last year ( in regular format and IMAX ), and both times I heard lots of audience members groaning about how insanely long it was as we were walking out of the theatre. I bet many people would have been a lot happier if Nolan had chopped it down to 90 minutes. ( not me, but I don't consider myself the norm )

I love long movies (many of my favorites are 3+ hours), but even I thought TDKR felt long, because the pacing was pretty bad. It's only 13 minutes longer than The Dark Knight, and yet i've never heard a single person complain that TDK was too long, because it's a phenomenal movie.

And I have no doubt you are right that the younger generation has a shorter attention span, but I think we as filmmakers need to fight against that as much as possible. Make great films that teach them to let a story evolve naturally, instead of just giving in to their ADD minds.

 

[Drew Ott]

And I have no doubt you are right that the younger generation has a shorter attention span, but I think we as filmmakers need to fight against that as much as possible. Make great films that teach them to let a story evolve naturally, instead of just giving in to their ADD minds.

+1

I just said a similar thing in the "state of cinema" thread. Attention span is not some insignificant thing that naturally shortens over generations. I am 21. I see in my friends and myself a sort of chronic dissatisfaction because we are so addicted to stimulation. Nothing satisfies. Content creators, who rationally pursue stimulating content to seek individual wealth, have created a system where nobody comes out a winner. It is a social trap.

I agree with Roger Ebert, who said "no good movie is too long." If a person cannot sit through a 3-hour masterpiece of cinema, how will they have the attention to read a book? To raise a child?