Video interview with Ian Calderon of the Sundance Institute

Here's an interview I shot in 2009 with Ian Calderon, who since 1981 has been the chief digital guy for the Sundance Institute and Film Festival.

In the 17-minute video, filmed at DCTV in Manhattan, Ian and I talk a bit about the challenges and opportunities indie filmmakers face in the digital world.... how 3-D releases might impact the world of independent film...Twitter (of course)...and how difficult it is becoming to break through the marketplace noise, whether you are submitting a film to Sundance or uploading a video to YouTube.

New Directions for Independent Cinema: Ian Calderon from Scott Kirsner on Vimeo.

This video first appeared last week on Anne Thompson's excellent blog, Thompson on Hollywood. Anne's post alluded to a 2010 edition of The Conversation in New York, which is happening on March 27th. More soon...

At Sundance, some new thinking about distribution

I was really encouraged to see this piece in the New York Times today, 'At Sundance, New Routes to Finding an Audience,' Brooks Barnes. It suggests that at least a few filmmakers who've gained entrance to one of the most prestigious indie film fests are thinking about using it as a launchpad for their distribution strategy.

From the piece:

“We just want to encourage people to throw the traditional model out the window,” said Michael Mohan, the writer-director of “One Too Many Mornings,” a coming-of-age comedy that had its premiere here on Friday.

Simultaneously, Mr. Mohan let users at OneTooManyMornings.com download the movie for $10 and started selling DVDs for $20. For $35, customers get a DVD, a poster and a piece of the sofa featured in the film. Mr. Mohan is also selling the theatrical rights via the Web site for $100,000. “Forget a bidding war,” he said. “Whoever gets to their laptop the fastest gets it.”

YouTube introduced its long-awaited movie rental option at this year’s festival by offering five Sundance films as soon as they had their premieres. The rentals — including “One Too Many Mornings” and “Bass Ackwards,” another film that bypassed the theatrical window — will cost $3.99.

And for the first time, Sundance will make films available in about 40 million homes through cable and satellite on-demand services simultaneously with premieres. The program, Sundance Selects, includes “Daddy Longlegs,” about being torn between adulthood and childhood.

Catching Up: Peter Broderick Video, DVD Data, 'Inbound Marketing' book, SMPTE Talk

- Filmmaker Magazine this week published an interview I conducted with Peter Broderick at Sundance this year, talking about new approaches to indie film distribution. (You can tell I have the usual Park-City-in-January cold.) I'm planning to post the full 30-minute interview here soon. This video is part of a series I'm doing on the future of entertainment, underwritten by the nice folks at Akamai. The idea was to take some of the topics we discussed at The Conversation last fall in Berkeley and make them more accessible to people anywhere in the world. I invite you to embed the video wherever you like, link to it, or comment on it.

The Future of Indie Film Distribution: Peter Broderick from Scott Kirsner on Vimeo.

This video, of course, is also a nice little appetizer for the Distribution U. workshop Peter and I are doing next Saturday, November 7th, at USC.

- This NY Times piece from Monday is really worth a read: "Studios' Quest for Life After DVDs." Here's just one juicy passage from Brooks Barnes' story:

In the first six months of 2009, revenue from disc sales declined 13.5 percent, to $5.4 billion, according to Mr. Morris’s evaluation of Digital Entertainment Group data. A $200 million uptick in Blu-ray sales partly offset a $1 billion decline in DVD sales. Over all, home video revenue declined just 4 percent, helped by a spike in rental revenue.

That bleak picture has studios now openly discussing what they have known privately for a long time: DVDs will continue to play a role, but it may be a supporting one to digital.

“DVD is going to remain very viable, but you’ve also got a strong base of interest in digital consumption,” Mr. Chapek of Disney said. “I see a peaceful coexistence.”

- The best book I've read about marketing and social media in a long while was just published this month. It's called Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs. This is the kind of book I guarantee you'll find useful if you work in marketing or are trying to sell DVDs or downloads of a film (or other creative work.) It was written by two of the founders of a marketing firm in Boston called HubSpot, and the company also runs this weekly video podcast about Internet marketing, which you can subscribe to (for free) in iTunes. (That, by the way, was not a paid promotion...just an honest endorsement of something worthwhile!)

- Variety was kind enough to run some coverage of my keynote talk last Wednesday for the annual SMPTE Tech Conference in Hollywood. (This was a version of my talk about Inventing the Movies, with lots of movie clips. It was fun to have a few digital cinema pioneers in the audience whom I'd interviewed for the book back in 2006 and 2007.)

'Panic Button' Panel on Indie Film, and Post-Sundance Analyses

IndieWire offers up a summary of one of the Sundance panels I was sad to miss last week, 'Panic Button: Push or Ponder?', which looked at the future of the independent film business.

Producer Ted Hope, who was on the panel, offers his perspective, and links to the YouTube videos of the session.

(Sundance has also just posted video of my panel on new distribution strategies, along with most of the other panels from the 2009 fest.)

Here's the NY Times assessment of film acquisitions at Sundance this year. Total sales seem like they'll hit about $15 million, essentially the same as 2008.

And the Boston Globe's Ty Burr has a piece today headlined, 'The Magic Fades Away at Sundance.'

Interesting tidbit from Burr's piece:

Everyone agrees that the standard models of indie theatrical distribution and exhibition are broken; everyone at Sundance and in the industry is grappling with how best to replace them.

Some are even sure they have answers. Consultant and panelist Peter Broderick touted a brave new world of "hybrid distribution," controlled directly by the filmmaker that combines website direct sales, video on demand, Internet and TV deals, cellphone distribution - and, yes, a theatrical release when and if necessary. Much of this is already in place, Broderick pointed out, and, in some cases, has proven successful. What look like microprofits to a studio can be extremely macro to an independent director.

The most unsettling thought, though - the real game-changer - is that the movie theater audience may have gone away for good. Said panelist Mark Gill, head of the independent production company the Film Department, "My son doesn't care what format [a movie] comes in. He cares how fast he can get it and if it can come to where he is."

Do we want to treat that as a problem, or an opportunity?

Two-Sentence Reviews from Sundance

Just for kicks, every year I post two-sentence reviews of the films I manage to see at Sundance. Here's this year's crop:

Against the Current. Joseph Fiennes plays a grieving financial writer who decides that the way he’ll leave his mark as a person, and pay tribute to his late wife, is by swimming the length of the Hudson River over the course of three weeks. The film raises deep questions about how much we can influence the lives of our friends, but what keeps the proceedings from getting too heavy is the needling, sarcastic repartee between the two buddies at the center of this film, played by Fiennes and Justin Kirk.

I Love You, Phillip Morris. The movie seems to have some real points to make about the power of love, but any attempt at conveying a message (or even connecting with the audience) is overshadowed by the broad hamminess of the first twenty minutes, when a car crash convinces Jim Carrey to come out of the closet and acknowledge that he’s gay, gay, gay. To pay for his fabulous new lifestyle, he’s decides to become a con man.

Five Minutes of Heaven. Liam Neeson and James Nesbitt deliver incredible performances as two adults linked by a senseless sectarian killing committed by Neeson’s character in mid-1970s Northern Ireland. But the breathless intensity of the first fifteen minutes slackens into a very slow, pensive mid-section, which leads to an ending that is apparently much more pat than what transpired in real life.

Why We Laugh: Black Comedians on Black Comedy. Why wouldn’t a history of black comedy be roaring good fun to watch? When you search for social import in everything, hire Angela Bassett as your narrator (why not a comedian?), and sprinkle in talking heads from Congress and the NAACP explaining over and over again the boundary-smashing, pioneering role that was played by one comic after another.

We Live in Public. Brilliantly captures the Warhol-esque milieu created by Internet entrepreneur-artist Josh Harris in late-1990s Manhattan. Then, it ties Harris’ edgy, disturbing experiments with digital connectivity and surveillance to the current Facebook moment, when our smallest thoughts and doings are shared with a global audience.

Some Big Questions for 2009

I wanted to post a few rough notes from Sunday's Sundance panel on distribution, focusing mainly on some of the challenges that filmmakers and distributors and exhibitors are grappling with in 2009. Your ideas and comments are certainly welcome, below.

- Should festivals be used as a launching pad for new films, making them available immediately afterward? How can filmmakers prepare not just their finished film in time for screening at the festival, but make sure that DVDs and digital downloads/rentals and marketing campaigns are ready to go, too?

- If indie filmmakers experiment with release windows, making films available on DVD and digitally while they are still playing in theaters, will they be frozen out by exhibitors? Will that sort of experimentation -- trying to address by piracy by making films available when audiences want to see them, in whatever format -- kill the art house circuit? Is there a way to ensure that both filmmakers and exhibitors benefit, perhaps by sharing profits?

- If the influence and impact of newspaper reviews is on the wane, in part because of the decline in the number of movie critics on staff at papers around the country, what will supplant that? Will new voices emerge to help viewers sort through the thousands of indie movies that are released every year, to find the gems? Will it be a handful of new influencers, or a thousand bloggers covering a thousand niches? Will "established media" like the New York Times ever start reviewing movies that go directly to DVD or the Internet, without the requisite theatrical run in Manhattan? ("Princess of Nebraska," by Wayne Wang, represented a tentative toe-dip-in-the-water by the paper last year; that film went straight to YouTube.)

- Blogs and Web sites and social networks seem like they work well when a filmmaker is trying to sell DVDs or downloads, or drive online views of a film on a site like SnagFilms or Hulu. But can online work well when it comes to putting butts in seats at a movie theater? That was once the role that newspaper ads and reviews played... but the sense is that we need some new strategies for getting ticket-buyers out of the house and into theaters.

Audio & Video: Sundance panel on 'Models & Experiments in Indie Distribution'

Just wanted to post some rough audio from yesterday's distribution panel at Sundance... lots of good advice about theatrical, DVD, and digital distribution, including mini case studies of 'Ballast' and 'Good Dick,' two Sundance films from 2008.

The audio is a bit quiet at points (recorded on my iPhone), so crank it up. Sundance will usually post higher-quality audio to iTunes in a few weeks, and video often shows up on the Sundance site.

The MP3 is about 1 hour and 18 minutes long.

Update: The official Sundance video is now up on YouTube:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Last Week, This Week: CES & Sundance

1. A few last things worth reading about CES...

- Netflix CEO Reed Hastings talks about how his company's future hinges on integrating Netflix's streaming movie service into lots of new TVs, Blu-ray players, and set-top boxes.

- This NY Times piece summarizes some of the big trends from CES last week, including 3-D at home, Palm's new social networking phone, and Net-connected TVs.

- Variety colleague Ben Fritz and I were blogging last week from CES. I just posted some audio clips of a conversation I had with four studio home entertainment execs and some remarks that Jeffrey Katzenberg and John Lasseter made during the Sony keynote last Thursday.

2. Sundance starts this Thursday. The Journal offers a look at some of the films getting early buzz, and predicts a lukewarm year for acquisition action. The Salt Lake Tribune also has a look at what's different about this year's fest. Robert Redford seems perfectly happy to have a low-key year: "What might be a positive is that if there is less hoo-ha, less of a circus atmosphere," he tells the paper, "there will be more tendency to focus on what it is that we're really about, which is the independent filmmakers and the quality of the work."

3. And one more link... this NY Times piece is interesting because it is yet another article that suggests that the global credit crunch is slowing down the deployment of digital cinema and 3-D projection technologies to theaters.

Talking Indie Distribution, Next Sunday at Sundance

I'm thrilled to be moderating a panel next Sunday at Sundance, called "What's Next? Models and Experiments in Indie Distribution." If you're in Park City, it's at the New Frontier at noon on January 18th. If not, I'll try to blog/podcast, and Sundance eventually posts audio and video on their site.

Panelists are:

- Lance Hammer ('Ballast')

- Matt Dentler, Cinetic Rights Management

- Connie White, Balcony Releasing/member of the Sundance Arthouse Project

- Christian Gaines, Director of Festivals, Withoutabox, a division of IMDb

- MJ Peckos, Mitropoulos Films

- Cora Olson ('Good Dick')

- Steven Raphael, Required Viewing

The panel description is below. If there are any questions you think I should ask, post them here...

In today’s brutal marketplace, filmmakers and distributors are forced to think outside the box. From DIY theatrical to multiplatform releases and viral marketing, there are as many new strategies today as there are successful films. Join us as we showcase films capitalizing on the newest opportunities, as well as the distribution companies articulating the clearest visions.

Sundance Splits with Mediastile, Pioneering iTunes Aggregator

Mediastile was one of the first companies to be approved by Apple as an aggregator for movie content ... and they did a high-profile deal in 2007 to make short films from Sundance available on iTunes.

Unfortunately, they haven't been so great about actually paying filmmakers the royalties they're due, according to this searing IndieWire piece by Eric Kohn. In an e-mail to the filmmakers that participated in the Sundance deal, John Cooper of the Sundance Institute wrote:

"Our hope and intention were that Mediastile would be convinced that it was in its own best interests to comply with its contractual commitments, both to the [Sundance] Institute and to filmmakers. To our enormous disappointment, however, Mediastile has failed to do so, and we have lost confidence in its willingness and ability to perform to the level that all of us originally hoped and expected."

I suggested back in August that things didn't seem on the up-and-up with the company. Mediastile prez Jason Turner e-mailed me to insist that the company was still in business, but didn't return my phone calls.

Interestingly, Mitch Davis (son of music mogul Clive Davis) has erased his connection with Mediastile from his LinkedIn profile. Davis was the company's CEO. He's still listed as such on Mediastile's Web site, which says he is "responsible for managing company operations and strategic development." Does that include paying filmmakers?

Unfortunately, the problem of not being paid your share of a film's royalties isn't going to vanish in the Wonderful Era of Digital Distribution.

Sundance's Role as a Tech Proving Ground

The FilmInFocus Web site, run by Focus Features, has an exclusive out-take from Inventing the Movies -- essentially a short chapter about the role that the Sundance Film Festival plays in testing and promoting new technologies.

From the opening:

For ten days every January, Park City, Utah becomes a microcosm of the independent film world: there are ambitious young filmmakers vying to get their movies noticed, passionate cinephiles debating what’s worth seeing, and acquisitions executives looking to pick up the next 'Napoleon Dynamite' on the cheap, for eventual nationwide release.

The Sundance Film Festival wasn’t explicitly intended to promote the marriage of indie filmmaking and new technologies, but for more than two decades, since Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute took over an event that had been born as the Utah/US Film Festival, it has done more than any other festival to make that marriage happen.

“…I'm about storytelling and content,” Redford told an audience at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2005, “and technology is not to be an end unto itself, it’s a means to an end.” In his talk at the annual trade show in Las Vegas, Redford used the word “democratization” several times. He saw technology as a key that would unlock the door to filmmaking, making it easier for any talented storyteller who wanted to express herself do so. “…Now the artist is going to be freer and have more protections in terms of their own individual voices,” he said, “and Sundance is basically an organization, a non-profit organization, that supports the ability of new artists to have a place to work and to be free of restrictions, so risks won’t be considered a failure, it will be considered a sign of growth.”

You can keep reading here.

Is There a Future For Indie Film? Filmmakers and Festivals Will Decide...

Can we all concur that the business model for making and distributing independent films is in flux?

(Mark Gill certainly thinks so … and this article from the Wall Street Journal adds more detail to the picture.)

I’d like to humbly suggest that film festivals need to play a different, more muscular role in helping filmmakers earn money from their creative endeavors.

The model today, for filmmakers lucky enough to win a slot at high-profile festivals like Toronto, where acquisitions execs are prowling, is to hustle and hope for a distribution deal –- before, during, or after their festival run.

And yet we know that the majority of films – even those that win entrance to Toronto, Tribeca, or Sundance -- don’t ever get that deal.

So months later, the filmmaker is stuck trying to figure out a self-distribution strategy, or working with shady sales agents who may sell the broadcast rights to Bolivia for a few grand. (I know you’ll never believe this, but sometimes the filmmaker never actually gets that money.)

For most movies, playing at a festival (or two or three) is the most attention their film will ever get from the media, movie lovers, agents, and yes, potential distributors.

I acknowledge that some filmmakers will choose to continue playing “festival roulette”: spin the wheel and hope for a deal.

But I think smart filmmakers ought to consider using the highest-profile festival they can get into as the platform for launching their movie. During the festival, or on the day it ends, they should make their movie available through their own Web site, perhaps using DVD-on-demand services like NeoFlix, Film Baby, or CreateSpace/Amazon. Same thing for making downloads available: get that movie onto Amazon Unbox, B-Side, or iArthouse.

And I think festivals ought to do more to create opportunities for their filmmakers: a deal with iTunes, for instance, which puts movies into that popular marketplace (iTunes is notoriously difficult for individual filmmakers to work with), or a broadcast deal with a cable channel or pay-per-view service to put the movies on TV, plastered with festival branding, which would serve as a “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval” for movies that might not have stars or high production values.

From a filmmaker's perspective, it’d be good to have a movie available during the festival. If I read a glowing review of something playing at Toronto this weekend, I’m going to want to download it or buy the DVD right then –- and I may not feel the same way a week later, after the festival ends (I may not remember the movie at all by that point.)

From a festival perspective, I understand the fear that allowing movies to be sold online during the run of the festival might diminish that “I saw it first” feeling that festival audiences enjoy. They might prefer for distribution to begin only at the end of the festival. But if the DVD or download featured the festival logo as part of the opening credits, that could also serve as additional marketing for the fest.

So...wouldn’t distributing a movie during, or just after, it plays a festival totally torpedo any chance for distribution?

For some old-school distributors, yes. But the more forward-thinking distributors might look at strong sales of downloads or DVDs in the weeks following a festival as an indication of viewers’ interest in the movie. They might appreciate a filmmaker who has been collecting e-mails and ZIP codes of everyone who has purchased her film, since that data can be used to pick the perfect cities for a theatrical run, and to promote that run.

And distributors, if they want to work with a filmmaker, can always ask that she pull down the DVD or downloadable version of her film. (It’s important to ask DVD or download services whether you can do this; some require that you give them the movie for a specified period of time.)

I spoke earlier this week to a Sundance spokesperson, who said that nothing prohibits a filmmaker from selling his movie online during the festival, “although we wouldn’t recommend it.” She said no filmmaker had yet tried it, to her knowledge.

Toronto’s rules say that films can’t be available on the Internet prior to the last day of the festival. (It’s hard to tell if that refers just to downloads, or to DVDs sold through a Web site like Amazon, too. Even if that’s the case, the rules would seem to allow you to sell DVDs during the festival through Wal-Mart or Best Buy or another retail outlet, if you could cut that kind of deal.)

“We know certain festivals where it’s clear they discourage distribution during the festival, but I think that even those festivals aren’t going to discourage it for long,” says David Straus, CEO of Withoutabox, which helps festivals run their submission processes, and is increasingly getting into the distribution business. “I think festivals see that it’s important that filmmakers really have the ability to start monetizing their film at the festival, and they can be the catalyst to help them do that,” Straus adds.

I think it’d be great to see more filmmakers and festivals experimenting with these kinds of new strategies. (I wrote a bit about how the relationship between festivals and their filmmakers ought to evolve back in December, during the International Film Festival Summit.)

Of course, I could be totally wrong, and this could be a dead end. Some people believe that films that don’t get picked up for distribution at festivals are completely worthless, and that nobody wants to see them. (I don’t.) Some people believe that things never change, and that distributors will forever give the cold shoulder to filmmakers that pursue the kind of self-distribution strategy I’m proposing, to make the most of their festival buzz. Some people may feel that it isn’t part of a film festival’s mission to help filmmakers make a living.

And some people –- the real pessimists –- may believe that there will never be a new business model for independent film.

I’m curious what you think.

Why Aren't More Sundance Movies Pirated?

Slate has a story that poses that question.

Tim Wu observes that it's nearly impossible to find any of the hits from this year's Sundance Film Festival, or last year's, on any of the leading networks for pirated media. He hypothesizes:

...The simplest explanation is that it takes a critical mass of interest—lots of people who want to see a film—before it will get decent pirate distribution. There are a number of reasons for this, but, crucially, every step of the piracy distribution system relies on knowing that the film exists at all. Moreover, to get effective, fast distribution on a peer-to-peer network, you need lots of reliable peers—enough people willing to share the burden of distributing the film online.

In the end, it's a numbers game. How many people want to see the film? Of those, which will get access, break the protection, and put it online? How many will download it, and of those, how many will share the burden of allowing others to download it? These numbers determine whether a film is online at all and mark the difference between a BitTorrent download that takes one hour, and one that takes five days or doesn't work at all.

...What this suggests is that film pirates are not predators but parasites. They do not roam around looking for new and unknown films to eat, but rather prey on big films with name recognition. Some pirates also seem to take pride in landing the "big film," and, by that measure, documentaries about the Pentagon's classification policies (Secrecy) do not measure up. In a sense, this is more bad news for independent filmmakers. Forget about Sony Classics: It's not all that easy to get distribution on the Pirate Bay.

Reading the piece kept bringing to mind the quote from Tim O'Reilly: "Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy."

Talking with Brian Chirls about Online Audience-Building

Last Wednesday, I had a chance to sit down for a few minutes with Brian Chirls, the tech guru who helped Arin Crumley and Susan Buice build an audience for 'Four Eyed Monsters.' More recently, he has been working with John Sayles on the online marketing for 'Honeydripper.'

Brian's a smart guy... we mostly talked about the importance of collecting information about your fans (and who's a super-fan versus someone who's just mildly interested in your movie). We also touched on the deal that 'Four Eyed Monsters' did with YouTube and Spout, where YouTube offered the full movie for free, and Spout served as a sponsor, paying the filmmakers a buck for every new member who joined after watching the movie on YouTube.

My Two Favorite Films at Sundance

I only got to see 5.25 movies at Sundance this year:

- "The Deal"

- "The Wackness"

- "Man on Wire"

- "American Teen" (.25 of it)

- "Mysteries of Pittsburgh"

- "Towelhead"

Hollywood farce "The Deal" was too similar to the much better comedy "State and Main," which also features William H. Macy. I simply didn't care for any of the characters in "The Wackness," a two-hour-plus drug trip (purported to be a comedy), or find any of the plot points believable. Somehow, though, "The Wackness" won the audience award for best drama.

My two favorite films were "Man on Wire," the documentary about Phillipe Petit's walk on a cable strung between the twin towers of the World Trade Center, and "Towelhead," Alan Ball's directorial debut.

In the first, director James Marsh creates a really gripping portrait of an artist who clearly lives in the same world as all of us, but relates to it very differently. (During the Q&A after the film, someone asked Petit how he financed his adventures, and he essentially replied, 'What is money?') And the destruction of the WTC is a subtle undertone throughout the film; it's sweet to be able to blend the memory of Petit's timeless performance on his wire to all the tragic shards of 9/11.

Here's a video interview from Sundance featuring Marsh and Petit.

"Towelhead," the story of a 13-year-old girl's sexual development, is incredibly difficult to watch...If you didn't know what to expect (as many audience members at Sundance didn't), it could be nearly impossible to process, or sit through. It's not as well-rounded as "American Beauty," and the character of the girl's Lebanese father could use more dimensionality, but it's the kind of story that has never been told before on the screen. And it lends itself to deep discussion afterward; on the bus back to the Salt Lake City airport, I debated with the woman sitting next to me whether "Towelhead" is an exploitative look at the main character's sexuality, or an exploration of the tension between pornography, abuse, and a healthy sexual identity (my view).

Sundance Panel on Digital Opportunities for Creatives

This afternoon's panel at the New Frontier was a heap of fun. I especially enjoyed the interplay between Maria Maggenti, a writer/director in the true indie mode (her last movie, 'Puccini for Beginners,' was made with InDigEnt and shown at Sundance two years ago), and Evan Spiridellis, co-founder of JibJab, a digital "microstudio" in Venice Beach.

Maria talked about her experience making a three-minute film for cell phones -- she loved it -- but asked Evan a lot of questions about how JibJab has cultivated an audience (and an e-mail list) over time, and how they're making money from their work.

A few bullet points that stood out from the conversation (and the audience questions):

- It's still hard to find industry types who "get it," and are willing to experiment with new production/marketing/distribution models. Evan referred to Walt Disney's embrace of TV in the 1950s as a way to promote his movies... and I think it's still unclear which studio will follow in Disney's footsteps with the Net.

- Though Paramount and its MTV Films division could be a good candidate. MTV Films released 'Jackass 2.5' in December directly to the Net, as a full-length streaming feature. The Internet release (free, but ad-supported) was followed by a DVD and paid download offering. (The movie didn't have a theatrical release at all.) David Harris from MTV New Media said that there were three issues they encountered with the experiment: first was that someone posted the film to BitTorrent almost immediately, which meant that Paramount/MTV lost control over it (no way to tally views or deliver ads); second, that the site's age verification process created hassles for viewers; and third, that to watch the movie during its Internet premiere required downloading a new bit of software (Microsoft's Silverlight video player.)

- Evan noted that JibJab's goal when it makes its short animated music videos is to have one visual and one textual joke in every line of the song. I mentioned "Kirsner's 10-Second Rule of Internet Video," which says that if you don't give someone a reason for continuing to watch in the first ten seconds, they're going to close the window, and you've lost them for good. (Think about TV, typically thought of as the medium for short-attention spans. But when a sitcom or drama is starting, you likely give it a minute or two to get you involved. Not so on the Net.)

- David talked about the idea of navigable documentaries...MTV and Electronic Arts are working on one about videogamers, in which viewers will be able to dive deeply into topics (and games) they care about, skimming over those they don't.

- Someone in the audience asked about subscription models for indie content. We couldn't really think of any great examples (beyond porn and sports) of someone who is cranking out content and charging a monthly fee.

- John Pattyson with Ustream Entertainment sounded like he was happy to leave the world of Nielsen ratings behind; he and Evan agreed that it's nice to have real data about how many people are viewing your video on the Net (even if most sites still don't have good data about how much of it they're watching, versus just starting to watch.) Evan also said that having comments from viewers is nice, but the real sign that you've done something great is when they decide to pass it along and tell others about it.

- We reinforced the importance of collecting e-mail addresses (and perhaps ZIP codes, too) from people who express any sort of interest in your work. When JibJab's first viral video took off in 2004, they already had a list of 130,000 e-mail addresses that they could notify whenever they released new work. I likened it to LL Bean and Crate & Barrel: catalog retailers understand the importance of maintaining a mailing list; creatives are just starting to.

- Not every filmmaker is going to want to become a DIY demon and take control of their own destiny... there's a spectrum of entrepreneurship, and some will be game to think creatively about business opportunities, while others will want someone else (a studio or distributor) to do it for them.

- We talked about the model of releasing work on the Internet and then producing a DVD. JibJab did that with some success, and so has AskANinja.

- A filmmaker came up to me afterward and asked a few questions about promoting a documentary that won't be out for another year or so. I suggested that there was no downside in starting plant seeds around the Internet, sharing clips or full interviews (longer than what will end up in the film) with communities that care about the topic (it's about a paralyzed fellow -- didn't get much more than that.) Sharing this free content is a way of building interest and buzz, and also collecting e-mail addresses of people who'll appreciate a notice when the doc is available on DVD, or being shown on TV or in theaters.

- Joel Heller from Docs That Inspire was in the audience, and I saw him wielding a recorder -- so he may have audio at some point.

Thinking about pigeons and cardinals, at Sundance

I arrived in Park City yesterday afternoon, and I've been trying to pack in as many conversations and meals with people as possible, since my stay at Sundance this year is much too short.

The theme that keeps coming up (and maybe it's always me bringing it up) is an idea that I think of as "pigeons versus cardinals."

Have you ever looked at a pigeon and thought, "What a remarkable bird that is?" Probably not. Pigeons blend in. You often encounter them in flocks: dozens of pigeons, all moving the same, all looking alike, all pecking at cigarette butts on the sidewalk.

Cardinals stand out. It's hard to imagine the environment that they're designed to blend into, and you usually see them alone. It's hard not to notice a cardinal sitting in a tree branch.

For film- and video-makers releasing projects in 2008, the good news is that the distribution channels you need now exist. Without much work, you can find sites that will host your video for free, sell downloads, replicate DVDs, or insert advertising into a stream. With a little work, you might be able to get your work sold on iTunes, or delivered digitally onto TVs and mobile phones.

But that means that everyone else can use those distribution channels, too. Which creates far too many options, too many choices, for the viewer looking to be entertained or enlightened. We're in the midst of a "big bang" of video content. In the same way that desktop publishing made it easy for anyone to put out a 'zine or newsletter, and the Web turned everyone into a blogger, and MP3s made it easy for musicians to widely distribute their work, we're witnessing a real explosion of visual expression: one-off political videos, comic episodics, and full-length features -- we even see some mega-epics, I'm sure.

In 2008, standing out is now the challenge: getting people to first notice that your work exists, watch it, and then tell others about it. (Don't expect the number of choices your audience has to diminish any time soon.)

(In Park City, you pass bulletin boards where flyers promoting movies are stapled one over the other. There might be ten layers of flyers, and someone is inevitably stapling up another one as you stand there. That seems like pigeon thinking to me.)

There isn't going to be a formula that works for everyone. Creating a Facebook group might work amazingly for one project. Giving away the entire movie for free, in ten-minute snippets, on YouTube and other video sites (but selling the full work on DVD) might work for another.

One key is going to be focusing on communities of interest that might care about and support your project -- they undoubtedly exist online. Work with enough of these communities, and you'll have a core audience. (The major studios don't think so much about these niche audiences; instead, they try for big, broad demographic groups, like men under 25.)

I think we're going to see a lot of successful solutions this year to the problem of standing out and building audiences in a very noisy media environment. (If you've seen an example, or been working on one, post a comment or drop me an e-mail.) I also suspect that everyone who succeeds is going to do it by figuring out how to be a cardinal, not a pigeon.

Sundance's Tech-Related Panels for 2008

Here's the official schedule of the panels being held at Sundance later this month. I'm making a very quick trip, but panels on New Filmmaking Technology, Hollywood Adapting to the Web, and Digital Distribution for Indie Filmmakers look good.

Plus, on Monday, January 21st, BAVC genius Wendy Levy is doing a panel on Alternative Storytelling for New Digital Media Platforms.

And on Friday, January 25th, I'll be doing a panel at 12:30 called "Collision Course: Content Providers And The Creative Community Chart A Course For The Future." (Description and speakers listed below.) Say hello if you're in town...

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Collision Course: Content Providers And The Creative Community Chart - A Course For The Future

Friday, Jan 25, 12:30 PM
New Frontier on Main (MICROCINEMA)

In 2007, Hollywood chose to stop production over unresolved new media revenue issues. Instead, we at Sundance 2008 look forward. How do we quantify the distribution models? How do we share? Join industry and indie prognosticators as we examine subscription models, targeted advertising, rev-sharing, and other emerging business strategies. Moderated by Scott Kirsner of Variety. Panelists include John Pattyson (UStream Entertainment), Gregg Spiridellis and Evan Spiridellis (JibJab), David Gale (MTV New Media), Tiffany Shlain (www.tiffanyshlain.com), Maria Maggenti (writer/director and www.aworkingwriter.com)

Animator M dot Strange Discusses His Digital Vision

I shot some video last week with M dot Strange, the director of 'We Are the Strange,' which showed at Sundance this year. He's based in San Jose -- and he is what you'd call a dyed-in-the-wool indie. Very sharp guy.

We talked about his work...how he has used YouTube to cultivate a community...the origins of his name...the importance of collecting e-mail addresses online from people interested in your work (or enabling them to pre-order a DVD)...a new kind of digital multiplex that M dot envisions...the iTunes Store...drive-ins...digital cinema...and film festivals that continue to demand 35-millimeter prints from entrants.

My favorite quote from the conversation (which lasts about 20 minutes): "No one knows the value of my media, because no one has ever done it before."



(If you'd prefer to download the video and watch it later, you can do that here.)

Thursday links: Remix 'Star Wars' on EyeSpot...Streaming Media East...'Manda Bala'...and more

Just back from a one-day round-trip to Los Angeles...which is technically doable, but unwise.

Some links from this morning's news

- StarWars.com and Eyespot are offering up 250 scenes from the six 'Star Wars' movies for your remixing pleasure, starting Friday (not coincidentally, the 30th anniversary of the release of 'Episode IV.')

- IPTV Evangelist has some video interviews from the recent Streaming Media East conference in New York, including execs from Microsoft, Gotuit, and AOL Video.

- Cinema Minima notes that the Sundance Grady Jury Prize-winner 'Manda Bala' (which I wrote about here) has been picked up for distribution by City Lights. Look for it this summer.

- From Beet.tv: Apple TV's sales will stall at one million units, says Forrester Research analyst Jim McQuivey. Man, this guy knows how to get attention in the blogosphere!

- Yet another Joost announcement: a deal with CAA. Joost says the agency will help bring in more content.