'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?

Mark Gill on the Future of Indie Film

Anne Thompson of Variety posts the text of a keynote address that Mark Gill of the Film Department (and formerly of Warner Independent and Miramax) gave over the weekend at the LA Film Festival. It's worth a read.

I disagree with Gill when he says that studios need to focus on making fewer movies... but he's right that lower prices for digitally-delivered movies will help goose consumption. In his talk, he touches on the way that prices for DVDs dropped relative to VHS tapes, and that the same will likely happen again for movies in digital form:

When the movie business went from tape to digital, we dropped the wholesale price per unit from $65 to $10. And everyone said: “Oh my god, they’re killing the business. Our profit margins are ruined.” Well, the margin was smaller, but sales exploded. The studios made tens of billions of dollars on the difference. And consumers mostly like what they’re getting. So much so that movies are the second-highest rated consumer value for the money. Behind only chicken. Not so for albums, which are so far down the list you can’t find them.

The next big change will be when we start shooting movies to mobile devices in a big way. The wholesale price will drop again—probably to $3 per unit. But we’ll sell so many more of them that revenue will explode all over again. This has very favorable implications for getting past piracy problems that helped kill the music business: the charge for downloading a film will land on your phone bill. And the moviemakers can hold the phone companies accountable (whereas now internet providers duck and hide when we try to pursue them for what amounts to transfer of stolen goods).

Monday Links: Costner on the Web ... CustomFlix to Support HD DVD ... New Edition of Film Financing Book ... And More

- This is an interesting model: Kevin Costner is financing an animated Web series called "The Explorer's Club." It'll debut later this year, as 12 four-minute episodes, with Costner's voice. The goal is to later turn "The Explorer's Club" into a live-action feature. This approach uses the Internet as a proving ground for new characters and stories, before committing to make a feature -- something I think we'll soon see a lot more of.

- CustomFlix, part of Amazon.com, will now accept indie films in high definition, and sell them in the HD DVD format, according to the NY Times. From the story: "The company said it would waive processing fees for the first 1,000 films it accepts for production by its CustomFlix Labs subsidiary."

- Via Lance Weiler's WorkbookProject Web site, I learned about a new edition of The Film Finance Handbook. They're offering a free chapter online, too, which deals with using the Net to distribute movies -- one of my favorite topics. The authors' premise in this chapter is that the Internet is evolving into the seventh major studio. They write:

"...We have seen the gradual emergency, very loosely, of a seventh major studio-like power. It is neither owned by a single organisation or individual. It does not even have a manager. Rather it is a collection of tools, networks, information and communities which collectively could be said to be beginning to offer similar functions to a traditional vertically integrated studio. ...And of most interest to the independent producer, this 'studio' is neutral, largely meritocratic and completely global."

- This piece about Xbox users watching movies and TV shows on the system really annoyed me, because it contains not a single statistic about how many people have paid for TV shows or movies through Xbox...yet it's basically a wet kiss to Microsoft. If Xbox is doing so well, why not back it up with some data, guys?

- Robert Katz will be head of production at The Film Department, a new indie production company founded by Mark Gill and Neil Sacker.

Couple links: XLNT Ads, Starbucks, The Film Department, Jaman on AppleTV

I'm down in Mountain View at Under the Radar today -- lots of interesting company presentations. Coolest so far: XLNT Ads, an agency for user-generated advertising.

Some links worth looking at today:

- 'Starbucks Sticks With Film-Promotion Plan', from WSJ.com. From the piece:

The Seattle coffee chain plans to announce today that it has picked "Arctic Tale," from Paramount Classics and National Geographic Films, as its second movie venture. The film is about a walrus pup and a polar bear who grow up and find their frozen environment melting underneath them.

Starbucks's much-anticipated entry into the film business last year ended up a disappointment for the company. The chain marketed the uplifting spelling bee tale "Akeelah and the Bee" in its stores by printing hard-to-spell words on cup sleeves and asking baristas to tell customers about the film. Executives have conceded that the movie's ticket sales came in lower than they had hoped for.

- From Anne Thompson/Variety: 'Gill and Sacker Launch New Film Department.' The opening paragraph:

As the movie business slowly moves away from the outmoded inflated big-studio model, momentum is starting to shift to the stand-alone indies that are in a position to deliver to the studios high-quality mid-range commercial pictures for a price. Of course that's easier said than done. And many folks are having the same idea at the same time. So will ex-Miramax and Warner Indie Pictures exec Mark Gill and partner Neil Sacker, ex of the Bob Yari Group as well as Miramax, be able to pull off their new financing and production co. The Film Department, which they've raised $200 million to launch?

They plan to make about six films a year, at $10 to $35 million a piece.

- Jaman has figured out how to get its indie movies onto AppleTV, reports Om Malik.