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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Peter Jackson interview...

Cool article. It seems to me like the distribution problem isn't one of getting product TO the theaters (ie: digital dispersion of media instead of film prints). But actually getting theater owners to play product that isn't a studio blockbuster. The system isn't in place to plug in movies that aren't packaged through a major distributor. Not being able to get your film opening wider than a local one week screening, or enough promo/advertising that people will know about its release is where the problem lies.
 
BradWright said:
I think Peter Jackson is a bit wrong about the business of making movies. Films become more profitable when you reduce the cost of production and marketing. Make more movies that are profitable and you make more money. The Red Camera allows people to make high quality movies on shoestring budgets. This gives a film a much better shot at becoming profitable.
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Human Resources though is always your greatest expense. While in theory making lots of small highly profitable films sounds like a great plan you have to find a lot of talented and profitable projects. There is limited talent so they are limited right there by how many really great projects can be turned out each year. So in a world where there are a limited number of great projects per year you have to make the most amount of money possible from what is created. So yes your indie film may have made 100% profit on $500k but the blockbuster only needs to make 5% profit to surpass that. And the blockbuster is a lot easier because you market it to just about everybody all at the same time. It has less competition with other products that you have to persuade customers to go see and you can release it in economies of scale. In order for the studio to make the same money on a 100 releases at 100% profit they would have to literally cover theaters in posters and promotional material or just hope that people find out about it and choose THEIR film from the 10k others.
 
Tim Whitcomb said:
I also love how you (Jim) still feel the need to "validate" what RED is doing. RED has sold more cameras than decades old Panavision EVER WILL. I think Arri building a CMOS RAW Camera based on J2 wavelet was all the validation RED needs.

imho RED RAY is the future PJ eludes too and Im not sure he knows whats its capable of... EFF the Congloms man, I truly hope Red Ray Pro is going to do what I think it does... and I dont even want to say why I think that, for fear of Sony and Panny trolls... all I know is the old guard better have some great early retirement plans.
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Panavision has never been in the selling business. Filmmaking isn't about number of cameras sold. It isn't even about putting "things" into people's hands. Let's face it, most people calling themselves filmmakers today are just owners of modern, inexpensive, high quality gear who DO NOT know how to make a film or even TELL A STORY.

Shooting on a R1 doesn't make your film or you a filmmaker. If you can't do the same movie on a Hi8 camera and get attention, you won't get it if you shoot 8 perf 65mm, D21 or whatever.... cameras and formats are tools for the cinematographer to use to realize someone's vision of the story.

If I could, I would gladly and immediately trade my R1 for a Panavision GII.
 
I think the issue is that in order to fill the theater seats, distributers think they need to spend tens of millions of dollars in marketing, (maybe they are right). A friend on mine produced two - million dollar films and ran into this wall. For the big business mentality - who is going to invest 20 million to market a film that had a budget of 2 million with no big stars. It's a catch 22 right now but I think alternative distribution - like the internet with Netflix, Hulu etc., is the future and should be the salvation of the smaller budget great films.
 
Gavin Greenwalt said:
Human Resources though is always your greatest expense. While in theory making lots of small highly profitable films sounds like a great plan you have to find a lot of talented and profitable projects. There is limited talent so they are limited right there by how many really great projects can be turned out each year. So in a world where there are a limited number of great projects per year you have to make the most amount of money possible from what is created. So yes your indie film may have made 100% profit on $500k but the blockbuster only needs to make 5% profit to surpass that. And the blockbuster is a lot easier because you market it to just about everybody all at the same time. It has less competition with other products that you have to persuade customers to go see and you can release it in economies of scale. In order for the studio to make the same money on a 100 releases at 100% profit they would have to literally cover theaters in posters and promotional material or just hope that people find out about it and choose THEIR film from the 10k others.
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Ah, the dismal science.
 
Rick Presas said:
The return of TRUE grindhouse theaters. Indy theaters that Indy filmmakers can distrubute directly to. Worldwide.

REDhouse?
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I dunno. Can you put posteriors in seats anymore? Oscar Micheaux used to drive around the country with a print and a projector in his car and show his films to one audience at a time, but I wonder if we aren't running into a brick wall at the distribution end these days.

I mean, Avatar exists because it's an experience that pretty much requires the audience to pay an admission and sit in a theater. Who wants to see Avatar in 2D? I'm sure there's someone, but not nearly as many someones, I'd imagine. And films that you aren't required to see in IMAX 3D for the complete experience are bootlegged like crazy. And you can't argue the point with the kids who believe that there's no such thing as intellectual property. There's this sense of entitlement regarding the "right" to be entertained at no cost. Of course I've yet to run into any of those champions of the freebie who'd actually worked on a film.

So how do you attract an audience, generate an indie distribution model and avoid being bootlegged out of business? There has to be some P.T. Barnum to the model or it won't fly. Hollywood sold people a myth of "American royalty" living on the far-away Left Coast, but that myth has been turned inside-out and tarnished beyond belief. I actually kind of wonder if Vegas isn't the new Hollywood, in a way. Makes a lot of sense that Red's there. Maybe a new myth of the anything-goes, what-happens-in-Vegas-stays-in-Vegas celebrity. Big "star-studded" events surrounding premieres in Vegas, perhaps with some live streaming events to indie affiliates. Things with an urgency and connectedness that won't be available to the bootlegger. Maybe. I dunno.

But it's all a pretty big issue and nobody seems to have good answers yet.
 
Robert Jackson said:
So how do you attract an audience, generate an indie distribution model and avoid being bootlegged out of business?
But it's all a pretty big issue and nobody seems to have good answers yet.
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It may be with iTunes or Netflix, like music, quite a bit is stolen but quite a bit is also paid for. I think and hope the paying segment is growing faster. Personally I am more than happy to pay a few bucks to watch a film or TV show online. It is also a model that will probably replace cable TV eventually.
 
Steve Sanacore said:
It may be with iTunes or Netflix, like music, quite a bit is stolen but quite a bit is also paid for. I think and hope the paying segment is growing faster. Personally I am more than happy to pay a few bucks to watch a film or TV show online. It is also a model that will probably replace cable TV eventually.
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An amazing amount appears to be stolen. It's apparently a lifestyle for a lot of people. I have friends who send me links to a movie or two a week that either hasn't been released yet or has just been released. Usually I don't follow the link, but particularly in the case of films that are released in Europe and sitting in limbo as far as a US release I'lll click the link. And it's almost always substandard quality, even when it's ripped from a screener. Lotta Xvid stuff and the codec is usually crushing the content to death and it's all blocky and washed-out. But they keep getting better and some people base their entertainment on downloading stuff like that and sending it around their home to media players.

The movie industry isn't like the music industry, either. Those guys have started having to base a big chunk of their income on touring, which used to be their loss-leader product used to generate publicity. My aunt worked at Columbia for 30+ years and talked quite a bit about bands touring at a loss to make as much noise as possible. Now touring and merch is the bread and butter. Unless studios want to start basing their revenue model on "Twilight on Ice" and taking shows on the road there really has to be some workaround for all this mess. Maybe 3D will really turn out to be the answer, at least in the short term. Hard to say. Nobody seems to be confident enough about anything to predict an outcome for any of the proposed solutions.
 
Robert Jackson said:
Maybe 3D will really turn out to be the answer, at least in the short term. Hard to say. Nobody seems to be confident enough about anything to predict an outcome for any of the proposed solutions.
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I think the biggest problem is that the studios treat the internet like an enemy. A far more sustainable answer is to offer very high quality 1080p versions of movies for something like $10. People would be far more likley to jump at the chance to get that than paying the outrageous prices they charge for Blu-Ray movies (most of them I've seen are around $40 in Australia, and there still are hardly any decent players for less than $400!)...

As for theatre attendance - given that some films are still breaking records for money made at the box office, maybe it's more to do with the quality of the movies that don't make back their budgets!
 
Robert Jackson said:
but particularly in the case of films that are released in Europe and sitting in limbo as far as a US release I'lll click the link. And it's almost always substandard quality, even when it's ripped from a screener. Lotta Xvid stuff and the codec is usually crushing the content to death and it's all blocky and washed-out. But they keep getting better and some people base their entertainment on downloading stuff like that and sending it around their home to media players.
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In Europe and especially in Finland its difficult and often impossible to download legally. There is no one offering anything. Even if I would want to buy something from USA it's not possible as it's restricted.

The film studios are making the exact same mistake they did in the music industry. They are too afraid of the difficulties of copyright issues when dealing with worldwide distribution and are going to ignore the potential of the internet until its too late. People will have gotten accustomed to everything being free and it will be difficult to change their habits. Especially with young people.
 
Sami S said:
In Europe and especially in Finland its difficult and often impossible to download legally. There is no one offering anything. Even if I would want to buy something from USA it's not possible as it's restricted.

The film studios are making the exact same mistake they did in the music industry. They are too afraid of the difficulties of copyright issues when dealing with worldwide distribution and are going to ignore the potential of the internet until its too late. People will have gotten accustomed to everything being free and it will be difficult to change their habits. Especially with young people.
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I don't think so. If the cost to rent a film is on a dollar or two, I think people would be more than willing to pay for it and see it in all it's glory. I guess there has to be a tiered system with new releases costing a bit more, like maybe $10 and then after a few months down to $2. Not much different than the DVD rentals are now with a new film on Pay-on-demand first, then moved to premium cable channels.

In any event, it will be the consumer who decides what will work and what won't work. The studio execs can argue and pound their fists all they like but in the long run, will only ever get what the movie fan decides what is best.
 
Steve Sanacore said:
I don't think so. If the cost to rent a film is on a dollar or two, I think people would be more than willing to pay for it and see it in all it's glory. I guess there has to be a tiered system with new releases costing a bit more, like maybe $10 and then after a few months down to $2. Not much different than the DVD rentals are now with a new film on Pay-on-demand first, then moved to premium cable channels.

In any event, it will be the consumer who decides what will work and what won't work. The studio execs can argue and pound their fists all they like but in the long run, will only ever get what the movie fan decides what is best.
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I've been in music business for 15 years. Already in the late 90's you could find most of the music in the world online for free. Movies were still a bit difficult to download because internet connections were slow. Napster came along in 1999 and things exploded. Music industry shot itself in the foot by sueing individuals and angering a lot of people who had bought loads of music. Downloads became an accepted form of mutiny against "capitalism". iTunes opened in 2003 and it went well. People bought lots of stuff and to date iTunes sells 80% of the worlds legal downloads. But it's still a minute number in overall music files shared online.

If the industry would have embraced the internet as a distribution medium it could have done something about it and we might not be in the "great depression of the music industry" at the moment. Hundreds of distros and shops have gone bankrupt all over the world. And I know for a fact that many people who have gotten in to the habit and ease of downloading illegally and continue to do so despite legal options are being made available.

This same pattern is being reproduced at this moment in the film industry. Most people have the bandwidth and speed to download a movie in 20 minutes to their computer or even stream it in real time. Pirate Bay begun in 2003 and is one of the many sites giving access to a vast number of free movies. Almost 6 years later and there's still only a handfull of legal online movie download sites. In Europe even less, you can count them with your fingers.

As soon as there are legal options many people will start using them. It's just a matter of when does the industry wake up and really start pushing this and using the technology and distribution channels it has been ignoring for years now.

There will be a backlash in letting things be available free for too long. If you were asked to pay for email, Facebook or Myspace now, would you? Professionals and people with steady income most likely would pay but young people and students with very little income? I have a hard time believing they would change their habits of the past ten years.
 
Sami S said:
There will be a backlash in letting things be available free for too long. If you were asked to pay for email, Facebook or Myspace now, would you? Professionals and people with steady income most likely would pay but young people and students with very little income? I have a hard time believing they would change their habits of the past ten years.
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It's probably going to come down to convenience. It's really convenient to use devices like Apple TV or Roku. If the price isn't too much or if there's some painless subscription method of getting content on demand it will probably start to be used more readily. Which will probably put the major studios in a position where they have to start monitoring churn and that may be a kind of feedback system for them. If subscribers aren't watching their content then it's a big warning sign that there's a problem with the content. Or at least in the marketing of the content.
 
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