Ted Hope, who in the past has assembled lists of reasons to feel good about independent film, has posted the sobering opposite: a comprehensive list of
"38 American Independent Film Problems/Concerns." They include:
Lack of access -- outside of NYC & LA -- to films when they are at their highest media awareness (encourages bootlegging, limits appeal by reducing timeliness).
Distrib's abandonment (and lack of development) of community-building marketing approaches for specialized releases (which reduces appeal for a group activity i.e. the theatrical experience).
Emphasis on upfront compensation for star talent creates budgets that can't reasonably recoup investment.
HP&W fringe levels at too high a level to allow low-bud production to benefit from know how and talent of union labor.
Credit crunch has reduced ability to use debt financing for film investment.
Lack of media literacy/education programs that help audience to recognize they need to begin to chose what they see vs. just impulse buy.
No new business model for internet exploitation at a level that can justify reasonable film budgets.
Indie filmmakers mimic Hollywood's obsession with regurgitating past success models, by regurgitating past festival hits' story-lines or navel gazing. Cinema is 100 years old but we still tell the same stories in the same ways. Audiences get bored, move on, play video games.
The ego-driven approach to filmmaking vs. one of true collaboration generally yields lower quality of films and greater dissatisfaction amongst all participants.
America has no co-production treaties (other than Puerto Rico's Letters Of Understanding) that allow filmmakers to access foreign soft money subsidies.
Inability for filmmakers to influence iTunes editors to promote their work.
Read the complete list at the link.
After perusing this, I was amazed that Ted was able to enumerate all of these reasons in one piece. It's certainly a thorough enough list, encapsulating issues of artistic quality, marketplace saturation, production financing difficulties, and marketing and audience building challenges. Because everyone from Joe Swanberg to Peter Rice could probably find points on this list to call their own, it made me think again about how multi-headed our indie film hyrdra is. Depending on who you talk to, what we call "independent film" can encompass a giant group of makers including those only interested in artisanal, DIY models; those looking to enter the system via those models and "graduate" to bigger-budgeted, studio-based production; filmmakers interested in traditional narratives made within traditional production structures but without a controlling studio; filmmakers whose production methods are as experimental as their storylines; social issue filmmakers whose main goal is not a career in the film business but the addressing of a specific cause or issue; members of the "indie industry" who are primarily interested in developing sustainable business models around the production of specialty film/arthouse content; film futurists interested in the next formal and distribution iterations of non-mainstream content and its distribution; and many more both beyond and in between. At various points in its history the term "independent film" has been elastic enough to either partially or entirely throw its arms around all of these people. But has that been the product of true kinship or simply the fact that rising tides lift all boats? In other words, in the "up" years of the indie film economy, enough people were getting a little bit of action, and the difficult questions of which models to endorse going forward and which to let die did not have to be made. Now due to collapsing revenue and business models, they do. Independent film is, after all, content, and while having specific challenges of its own it also shares many of the troubles that all content, from scripted one-hour dramas to daily newspapers, is currently facing. So, one question I had after reading Ted's list is whether the loosely defined, loosely configured movement known as indie film will organize itself around the answers to these problems, or whether makers will decouple from the definitional tent of independent film and address them using entirely different paradigms.
I don't know, perhaps this is an obscure or semantic discussion... in any case, go read Ted' piece as well as its lively comments thread. And check out Hope along with producer Peter Guber, author Reed Martin (
The Reel Truth) and filmmaker Marina Zenovitch
discussing some of these issues on the Fox Business Report.
Comments (2)
Sorry, but this is a over-exaggeration of the challenges and shows very little to no thinking outside of the Hollywood Studio/Distributor box
Lack of access -- this assumes the only place to screen a film is in a theater chain. If there's a wall and electricity it can be transformed into a screening room.
Abandonment- this assumes that filmmakers are leaving their campaigns up to the studios and distributors. Anyone with an Internet connection, an email address and a cell phone can employ grassroots marketing and community outreach to tap into their audiences.
Star Compensation - no one has to pay any star anything. There are talented up-and-coming performers on the Internet and TV who have already connected with their audiences. Give them a chance and put some of the saved money into marketing.
Good credit - can be obtained by anyone and any entity.
Media literacy? - we're already choosing what we buy. The public is staying away from crap. This explains why so-called blockbuster movies crash and burn at the box office. No one will pay to see junk once word spreads.
Internet Business Model - (I've heard this one before) there's no business model because EVERY film seeking exploitation on the Internet must be handled individually and on its own merits and selling points. Why can't anyone see that??
Indie filmmakers are the one who will change the face of movies, if anyone will.
Ego-driven films will weed themselves out. If the quality is bad, no one will see or distribute it.
iTunes was built on a "brand." As soon as another resource sees the benefits of releasing the works of indie filmmakers on a scale as big as iTunes they will invariably jump in
I'm sure Ted Hope is a good guy, but these arguments are the same arguments we've seen at film festival panels, discussion boards, etc etc for years. It's the same because he is thinking the same. There are examples of indie film self-distribution success all around us. However, many people in the industry are taking a "the sky is falling" view of the changes in the industry, Why? Because there is a power shift.
A distributor can license my film, pay me nothing and make hundreds of thousands of dollars. And pay me nothing.
But through the Internet and smart shrewd marketing concepts I can thumb my nose up at the distributor, market my film online and put $5k, $10k, or maybe $100k in my pocket. Perhaps even a $1M. That's a power shift. It takes a lot of hard work, but the control stays with the filmmaker. That's what everyone is so afraid of.
Angelo
http://www.Angelo Bell.com
http://www.BrokenHeartsClubFilm.com
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posted by Angelo Bell @ 5/16/2009 9:57 PM
i firmly believe that the indie film community will find a way to survive. in the strictest sense, indie film is a "by the people" medium, and if there's one thing we know for sure, its that the people will always find a way. The people created YouTube and in its short history more people have viewed video on the site than have seen all the films and television ever made.
Right now we're seeing a lot of new distro methods being explored, DIY, Online via different streaming sites, iTunes, YouTube, selling straight to cable On-Demand services; all of these things will eventually find a natural flow and like the evolution of all business, some of these things might flounder out. Only when some of these methods prove to steadily profitable and reach a portion of the mainstream will we know which of them work, but we WILL find them. its part of what we do to continue doing what we do.
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posted by Raz Cunningham @ 5/17/2009 9:03 AM
