HD For Indies

Raw notes on Future of Distribution

I'd been hoping this would encompass more of the REALLY future of distribution stuff, future stuff was certainly touched on but more time was spent on current distribution issues, for getting films made now distributed.

Turns out this was really interesting for how to get a current movie distributed, and some of the quirks involved, and the pitfalls of theatrical distribution.

So here's my raw notes from the panel:

Dallas based guy - gotta have an understanding of the distribution end and what sells

-went into theatrical distribution about 6 months ago,

John Martin - Pres/partner/CEO Alamo Drafthouse - (and somebody I used to work with at frogdesign. Great, GREAT guy, and I'll spare sharing the story involving a late night, the next day, and a piano. It's a good one, though. : D )
-started in mailroom of Orion
-worked in creative side/development
-Sony, Jersey Films
-big fan of the Alamo, so bought the chain w/a partner (Alamo Drafthouse picked as # 1 theater for doing cool new stuff in the country recently in a major magazine that I can't think of the name of at the moment)
-intent is to have a distribution run of some coolindie stuff, stuff that won't find it's niche in the AMCs & Regals of

Kelly Sanders of 2929

Truly Indie Program - programs that don't get regular distribution, will assist to get distribution, help get the film out up to 20 markets, started with 3 films: Tennis Anyone? is one film, Fall to Grace, Cavite

Michael Barlow - Paramount Classics - in a state of flux at the moment
-woked with the archives, became a reader, was a writer, producer, working with paramount classics for the last 6 years on creative & acquisition sides

DIGITAL PROJECTION

-Sho West, until there is an incentive for the smaller venues, $180K to update, nobody is going to do it until it drops, the outlet is really getting it onto smaller digital. They have 2000 lumen projectors

Landmark's (Cuban's) 1st quarter 06 - looking to go high def productions

-digital post production is becoming more standard, no longer a prohibitive cost

-shooting on digital isn't as important as digital post production

Michael Barlow - "conventional lab processing post production will not last very long, and is probably not a smart way to spend your money in independent filmmaking."

-real argument for digital projection is the cost of prints being deferred for the hard copies

-inefficient economics for the huge run of prints for the

-horrors of digital projection that doesn't happen with 35mm projection

Barlow again - "until the technology absolutely settles, it is a very dangerous thing to retrofit for $160K and then have some guy in Wisconsin come up with a better system"

$30K for filmout on a feature

-Video iPod - Barlow again - and off the Internet in general - building constituencies and audiences, but the anewr is that the actual way that somebody receives something other than the theater, there may be 15 ways to do that - how and will theatrical distribution survive"

-it is how you connect with the people that are interested in seeing what you've done

-the immediate opportunity is from the marketing standpoint - downloadable trailers has been a boon for the marketing efforts

-on shortening the release window

John Martin on Piracy and on exhibitor side - "here's a product and how long will it last out there" - trying to draw the largest group possible at all times - if it goes to DVD, that whittles down the # of people that will be open to see it. They try to have a series of events that works out to free marketing

-2929 is going to try out Bubble from Soderbergh on DVD at a premium price on same day as theatrical release

-Barlow has been thinking about this - it affects art house more than anybody else - in LA, 4 weeks ago, 2046 opened at the theater, the snotty video store had been selling for 3 weeks before, a beautiful Hong Kong Region 1 DVD of 2046. Many Asian films are available on DVD Region 1 before theatrical here. Sales for BOTH DVD and theatrical have been strong, "a fold in kind of effect" - to spend $35 on the Criterion on The Mood for Love after seeing 2046.

The downside is if you look at how arthouse theater started - "you could only see the movie on that day at that theater, otherwise you wouldn't get a chance to see it" - that created a film community by forcing them to come same time/same place. You could sustain and build on that. Build events around that. DVD revolution has completely changed that. The big challenge is to do what Alamo has done - to create events to go see it in a communal setting rather than the home theater. The challenge is to make it sustainable & ??.

Self promotion - spend marketing dollars on Amazon.com or NetFlix OR do a small, short theatrical run? If had $500K, how would you spend it? It is a narrative feature film. Barlow thinks the problem with theatrical distribution, and it's more acute every week, releasing it in other cities has very little purchase on distributors. It did great in Chicago doesn't give you much sense of 'wow I can do something with this picture.' Means relase NYC or LA. $50K to $100K goes to bad placement of ads in NYTimes and get it slammed in a review. Getting theatrical release NYC/LA is "incredibly ineffective"

Use the festival circuit - it has become a magnet for stuff. Go to festivals, try to win awards, the cumulative effect of five festivals is a LOT more effective to do a one week run in LA or NYC.

Internet becomes your strongest tool in terms of building audiences and connecting to audiences. Do anything you can to do get the email address of folks who see it to encourage their friends to see it.

"Amazon is an incredible model for all these kinds of efforts."

A lot of movies don't do posters, postcards, publicist, etc. If you're doing fetivals, do it RIGHT at a festival and have a campaign to raise awareness in the festival circuit. Get a critical review. Theatrical, DVD, or festival are the only venues to get a critical review done. Those get distributors attention to get considered for a

Top 10 markets is around $80K. If you can get distro, get it. Each company only has so much money to spend. There are some good films that go through festivals and don't get picked up, but they do get limited release to get reviews to use THAT as marketing for the DVD release.

Barlow on distributor's side of the equation: there are only so many slots. They picked up Winter Solstice and released it this year, and virtually no one saw it. The problem is that people within the business may have seen it, the problem is nice little movies, there are 9 little indies in NYC every weekend, and very little that tells an audience there's a compelling reason to see it. The pic becomes even more of a loss leader, and a harder case to get it into other cities, but makes it tougher to get stuff out there. House of Games had a horrible death in first theatrical release, and tested horribly (since people were disturbed by ending). Figures for theatrical were QUITE dissapointing. As it hit cable, HBO, VHS, and now it is perceived as a successful movie as having done well."It didn't" Money was lost on the theatrical release.

Eventually those movies get seen, somewhat, and eventually the producer would like to get PAID for those models.

W/in 2929, they don't make money theatrically, they make the money on DVD. Never seen a P&L that COUNTS on making money theatrical.

having something open in NYC to trigger a video payoff, is increasingly self defeating and impossible

Indies being able to distro on HD DVD and Blu Ray? Cost being prohibitive? Barlow - no idea - nobody gets the model right from the get go. Economic model evolves out of the marketplace. Very hard to tell how indies will work. The analogy is that there are any # of singer/songwriters and bands that were poor due to no distro, now they send out emailings, and sales, and penetration, without big 3 distro through their self marketing efforts. Big 3 distros are struggling to figure out how to get out there. EVERYTHING is on Amazon or allmusic.com. You can find any piece of music you want to find in 2 minutes.

Marketing is the biggest hurdle. If you go to a constituency, watchers will adopt you - I want to see Lucas & Coppola products in the 80s. Festivals due the same thing - "if you like this, you might like this too" - if that can be associated with a movie, that's a good thing

2929 package - get marketing assistance, get advertising at their rates, get folks at 2929 and Landmark looking at your title and get feedback about the appropriate market for different cities in terms of where your best shots. After theatrical, they may get into video/DVD division, but they are looking into it. They DO maintain the rights - the filmmaker maintains the rigths for DVD sales.

Mad Hot Ballroom - originally the focus was to make a movie about the teachers. The competition and the kids were taking over the interest - "The darth vader school in forest hills" - Sundance turned it down since they had too many dance films. SlamDance liked it and made it the opening film. Paramont Classics was restricted on what they could bid. They were allowed to bid aggressively so they got Hustle & Flow and Mad Hot once set free to bid competitively.

10 minutes of the movie was brought down over the next few months. Wanted to build as much viral interest, teaachers, dance group, etc. to build as much audience as possible. The marketing of it was a matter of marketing off the strength of the film. It was good that Spellbound that had already done well that opened up eyes to the possibilities. Indie docs can have more heat - Capturing the Friedmans changed the landscape. Everyone expected to be lectured to about something they already knew.

If you're looking for what will change the technology, look for what changes creatively - Jaws, Star Wars, Gone With the Wind, etc.

Q: Biggest obstacle to indie filmmakers - what's the biggest dilemna?
A: as an indie producer - a.) Money, b.) Cast. A distributor has to market your film. Some films will find an audience, but ultimately you're marketing the names & faces on the poster or DVD cover. Biggest challenge is to compete a marketable cast against the studios. Finding somebody known, working below usual rate, available to shoot when you have the money to make it, is tough.
A: 2929 answer - indie's die of anonymity - distros look and say how am I going to build a campaign around it? Sometimes they decide to anyway, but it is tough. With so many films made and never distributed. Barlow says cast is most pivotal issue. So many indies feature good actors that aren't good enough, or one actor that sucks and pulls down the rest of the film. De Niro & Keitel anchored the work of the NY indies from popular perception, not the Scorsese and De Palma's etc. there's a lot of promising work out there, that is good, but that isn't ENOUGH to compel folks to get out there and see a movie. Not just marketability, the actor has to deliver ENOUGH. Not having names is a handicap.

Interesting to note how much I focus on tech, and business, etc. in all this, and so much from panelists comes back to story, performance, emotionally compelling stuff.

-Woman Thou Art Loosed was a movie Barlow saw. Extraordinary performance by the lead woman, he enjoyed it and liked it, he thought the NYTimes would hate it, since he didn't know how to market it in NYC or LA. Didn't look up how much money that made. If you can find a constituent audience that likes your film, you're hugely ahead. There has to be SOMEBODY that has passion to go see your film. they should have paid attention to this- "everybody missed the boat with the Passion" - they didn't know how to associate and work church groups with Paramount, they couldn't think about how to make that work

-Q: Stars and faces - what about Napoleon Dynamite? A: "they did discover a star, maybe a weird little star" ND may be a lightning in a bottle phenomenon - it only happens once, or at least can't be reliably reproduced. That kind of performance doesn't usually happen with a lot of folks. It is a harder thing to break, and they had an fortunately good performance.

-ND - ran about 400 different screenings, lots of underground performance, had to discover the audience, and then RAN with it.

-using the internet to discover your audience is incredibly useful tool - feedback!

-there are very few websites that connect that well as ??? (unknown site)

-those who think that if you get it distro'd, you'll get paid, may be sadly mistaken.

get a distributor to PAY, whatever the terms are going in, change over time

GOSH, this all sounds like a horrible business to be in.

-exhibition has never been a business run by nice people

John Martin -if we had a guy in charge of shut down locations to try to buy those

Q: how important is a producer's rep
A: Schloss has become a major force in American film culture. Jeff Dowd is incredibly valuable as well. Most pix have gravitated towards one of the 5 or 6 people were talking about, and if it works, it is certainly worth having. Having Schloss involved is a strong backing cue - paid more attention to than non-Schloss stuff. A good film rep will create a good screening situation. If Barlow wants to see if first, and "John (Schloss) doesn't want to do that." it is the end of the conversation, even for Barlow.

-IPTV - VOD - is huge about looking at the landscape of distro of indie films. It's that interface - if it is iTunes that is the searching mechanism for music, the content as far as who owns the films, but HOW the consumer gets to the product is of interest. Major cable companies are working on better VOD.

Q: What kind of access to indies have to participate in that flow?

A:There are smaller players that are getting involved - West Park Foundries that has been licensing, have a relationship wtih set top box Akimbo - they license the film on a non-exclusive basis, and we'll pay you per download. Can access 10,000 titles - why go to a video store?