Movies You Can't Buy Online

Ever try looking for some of your favorite movies on iTunes, Amazon Unbox, Movielink, or any of the other legal download destinations?

Odds are good that you won't find them.

I wanted to write about the issue, so I put together a list of fifty great movies (celebrated by the AFI, Roger Ebert, and Time Magazine) and all-time box office champs that you can't buy or rent online.

Here's the Variety article on the topic. One reason that you can't find movies like the James Bond series, 'The Godfather,' and 'The Lion King' is likely that they haven't yet been released on Blu-ray disc yet, and the studios are sure they'll make more money on selling high-def discs than they can with $9.99 iTunes downloads.

My favorite quote in the piece is from Jim Flynn, who runs the download sites EZTakes and iArthouse: "The pirates in general have a download exclusive," he says. "These movies are available as downloads -- just not legal ones."

Here's my list of fifty great movies you can't buy or rent legally on any of the major download sites (iTunes, Unbox, Movelink, and CinemaNow). Have you discovered others? Add them in the comments.

Fifty Movies You Won't Find Online (Legally)

Almost Famous
Amadeus
Annie Hall
Apocalypse Now
Brazil
Brokeback Mountain
Bubble
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Citizen Kane
City of God
Double Indemnity
Drunken Master (1 or 2)
E.T. The Extra Terrestrial
Fantasia
Farewell My Concubine
Fargo
Forrest Gump
The Godfather I-III
Gone With the Wind
The Graduate
It’s a Wonderful Life
A Hard Day’s Night
Hotel Rwanda
Jaws
King Kong, 1933 original and Peter Jackson’s 2005 re-make (the 1976 Jessica Lange version is available)
La Dolce Vita
Miller’s Crossing
Munich
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
My Fair Lady
Nashville
Notorious
Pulp Fiction
Purple Rose of Cairo
Raging Bull
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Rear Window
Roger and Me
Saving Private Ryan
Schindler’s List
Sex, Lies & Videotape
Shrek 1, 2, and 3
Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs
The Sound Of Music
Star Wars Episodes I-VI
Titanic
The Wizard of Oz
12 Angry Men
2001: A Space Odyssey (but 2010: The Year We Make Contact is available)
28 Up

How to Get Your Indie Film on iTunes (...It's Not Easy)

If you are a filmmaker who wants to self-distribute your work in digital form, there’s probably nothing more frustrating to you than Apple’s indifference to helping you do that.

You may own a Mac. You may use Final Cut Pro for editing. You may carry an iPhone or iPod in your pocket. You may have a MobileMe or .Mac account.

But Apple doesn’t seem to want to help you do business online.

I’ve harped on this issue since 2005, the year that Apple first started selling movies and TV shows on iTunes. Since then, iTunes has become the dominant marketplace for legal movie sales and rentals; in June, Apple said iTunes users were renting or purchasing 50,000 movies a day. (Apple’s rivals, like Amazon Unbox, Movielink, and CinemaNow, have never disclosed how many movies they sell and rent – but my belief is that they’re bit players.)

So how do you get your movie sold on iTunes?

It’s not easy, and Apple doesn’t make things any easier by supplying absolutely no official information to filmmakers who’d like to sell their work on iTunes. (By contrast, here’s CreateSpace’s crystal clear explanation of how to sell your work on Amazon Unbox – the best non-iTunes option that exists today.)

Here’s the scoop: Apple’s strategy thus far has been to only work with aggregators, or services that will collect a number of indie films and then deliver them to iTunes. They don’t want to work directly with filmmakers. But there is no aggregator yet that will take just any finished film and deliver it to iTunes, in the same way CreateSpace (which is owned by Amazon) will take any finished film and sell it on Amazon Unbox.

So, who (aside from indie-majors like Lionsgate and The Weinstein Company) is working with iTunes today? Here's my list. (If you know of others that would be interesting to indie filmmakers, mention them in the comments below.)

- New Video seems to be getting a lot of full-length features onto iTunes, including “King Corn” and “Bomb It,” both recently-released docs, and Henry Jaglom’s “Eating,” from 2004. They also connected Ed Burns with iTunes for his latest film, "Purple Violets." One filmmaker who got his doc onto iTunes via New Video told me the split is 70/30, with 70 percent going to the filmmaker; he’d initially contacted Apple about selling his movie on iTunes (he has been self-distributing DVDs, and selling tens of thousands), and was told to get in touch with New Video. Here’s their contact info. And here's a recent story from Video Business about their relationship with iTunes.

- Shorts International in the UK has distributed a few dozen short films through iTunes, including the recent Oscar-winner “West Bank Story.” Here’s the page that explains how to submit your film.

- The Independent Film Channel (IFC) has a handful of features on iTunes, including “Four Eyed Monsters,” “Does Your Soul Have a Cold?” and “Before the Music Dies.” Oddly, all of them are priced at $3.99 instead of the usual feature film price of $9.99. Contact info here, here, and here.

- Mediastile is the company that offered Sundance short films earlier this year on iTunes. One of these films, “Sick Sex,” is currently #2 on iTunes’ list of best-selling shorts, sandwiched in between two Pixar shorts. Mediastile also handled “The Tribe,” a short film that played at Sundance in 2006, and was briefly an iTunes best-seller last year. I’m not aware of any feature-length films that the company has handled, and no one at the company’s Lake Tahoe headquarters answers the phones, returns messages, or answers e-mail. (I happened to have the e-mail address of their president, and he did e-mai me to insist that the company is still in business, but didn’t return my phone calls.) I wonder what would happen if you wanted to call them to ask about getting paid? Their Web site, for the bold and courageous, is here.

So this is the best that Apple can offer indie filmmakers? Apparently so.

I’ve been told for the past year that other aggregators will soon, any day now, begin working with iTunes. Some of them may be more open to submissions than the four I’ve listed above. (By open, what I’d like to see is an aggregator accepting any finished film where the filmmaker can guarantee that there are no rights issues that will result in lawsuits… or at the very least any finished film that has played at least one festival.)

Here’s who else could soon be delivering films to iTunes:

- The Independent Online Digital Alliance. Already distributes music to iTunes. Their online application is here. IODA chief Kevin Arnold says via e-mail that they are "working on initial deliveries and ingestion now. No solid ETA yet though."

- Film Baby. Film Baby’s sister company, CD Baby, already distributes music to iTunes.

- IndieFlix. Co-founder Scilla Andreen told me this week that she expects a few IndieFlix titles to show up on iTunes in the fourth quarter of 2008, at the earliest.

- The guys at Cinetic Rights Management say they're close to a deal to work directly with iTunes.

Again, Amazon.com's CreateSpace is the best option today for selling your film in digital form, in my opinion. But you'll have to drive customers to your work -- unlike iTunes, where the customers are already buying movies in big numbers.

And if you know of other routes to getting onto iTunes, or have opinions about the ones I've listed, post them here!

In Variety: "Studios' Digital Dilemma"

I have a piece in Variety this week that is basically a state-of-the-market report on digital downloading of movies. It argues that Apple is becoming the Wal-Mart of this new medium -- and that that has big implications for studios and independents. From the opening:

Like Wal-Mart, Apple seems to be flexing its muscle to dictate terms to studios and indie producers. iTunes is a digital "big box" store to be reckoned with, and the choices Steve Jobs' company makes and the conflicts it faces will likely shape the way movies are consumed over the next decade.

More from the IFP Filmmaker Conference

Lance Weiler moderated a great panel yesterday afternoon that was supposed to be about "Consumer Viewing Habits" but wound up being more about the economics of supporting one's creative work, whether it involves full-length features (Arin and Susan from 'Four Eyed Monsters' were there), short-form funny videos (Andrew Baron from Rocketboom), or documentary (Brett Gaylor of Open Source Cinema).

Some very random notes:

Arin mentioned to Brett how important it is to collect ZIP codes from people interested in your project. That way, when you're doing theatrical screenings or events (or trying to figure out where you should do these events), you have a sense of the geography of your fan base: do people love you in Madison, Wisconsin, while they couldn't care less in Portland, Oregon?

Brett showed the trailer for his doc, which garnered applause -- a good sign. It should be finished next year, he says.

Andrew said that Rocketboom is one of YouTube's advertising partners, and that YouTube will share revenue from the ads it places on Rocketboom. But none of the ads have started showing up yet. Lance suggested that one reason why is that someone created a hack for Firefox that allows you to strip the ads off YouTube's videos. I suspect there may be other reasons, too. Afterward, Baron told me that the ad payments are based on impressions (not click-throughs), and that YouTube would be splitting the revenue roughly down the middle with its creators.

Arin and Susan shared a lot of financial info about 'Four Eyed Monsters.' They've grossed about $135,000 from the movie so far (but are still trying to erase some credit card debt.) About 69 percent of that has come from selling DVDs, movie tickets, and downloads, and 31 percent has come from selling t-shirts, posters, and other merch.

Afterward, Hunter Weeks (director of the doc '10 MPH') came up and we talked about distribution a bit. He said he hasn't really been selling many downloads on Amazon Unbox, even though an Amazon PR rep told me recently that his films was among the best-selling indie downloads on that site. (They had 12 downloads in the month of August through Unbox...and yet a representative for Amazon's CreateSpace division, which handles the indie content on Unbox, told me that month that they were "in the top 20 Unbox titles." What does that say about how well Unbox is doing?) Hunter said he also sells digital versions of the movie on his own site using a service called E-Junkie, which charges $80 a month to host the movie -- and nothing per transaction.

Then there was some hanging around in the lobby...I spoke with a couple knowledgeable folks about when, if ever, indie movies will appear on iTunes. The smart money is on 2008 -- not this year. iTunes is supposedly still more focused on trying to get more studio content. (It is now almost two years since I wrote this opinion piece in the San Francisco Chronicle arguing that Apple is being hypocritical by not allowing independent creators to sell their film and video on iTunes.)

Then there was a dinner that Slava Rubin of IndieGoGo organized....which brought together the 'Four Eyed Monsters' team, Lance, Brett, and M dot Strange...basically, an incredible about of DIY filmmaking smarts gathered around one long table.

National Archives + CustomFlix: Two Drawbacks

On Monday, CustomFlix (a division of Amazon) started selling thousands of historic films from the National Archives, via the company's DVD on demand service. Here's the AP coverage, and a story from Video Business.

Making these films available is a great step forward for the Archives (and for researchers and history buffs.) One problem, though, is that there's very little description of what's on each disc -- and no video preview. You just get a still frame, and the dates that the disc covers (here's an example.)

If we've learned anything so far about video on the Internet, it's that you need lots of metadata surrounding the video to help people find it, and understand what they're going to get if they watch it or purchase it: summaries, cast lists, tags, keywords, and previews all help.

The second issue with this new video library is that it isn't yet available as a download from Amazon's Unbox service -- unlike most other CustomFlix titles.

Tuesday Links: Blockbuster's New CEO ... Grouper Becomes Crackle ... DVD Still On Top ... 'Simpsons' ... Digital Cinema ... YouTube Ads ... And More

Catching up here: Some news from the weekend, and Monday:

- The NY Times writes about how Blockbuster's new CEO will compete with Netflix, video-on-demand, and the TiVo/Unbox combination. From the piece:

“The opportunity for Blockbuster is to provide true total access whether in the form of physical stores or mail delivery or digital distribution,” [James] Keyes said. “The goal for Blockbuster would be to be the preferred provider in whatever venue is preferred by the customer.”

- Grouper, the Sony-owned vid-sharing site, is now Crackle. And they're now paying video-makers. Not just any videomaker. But chosen videomakers. This is very similar to what AtomFilms has been doing for a few years now. From the NY Times story:

Other sites have tried this approach. Revver, for example, promised to share advertising revenue with video producers, but foundered. Sony will instead offer upfront cash payments to some producers. These will range from a few thousand dollars to well over $10,000 a segment, Mr. Feltzer said. That is somewhat more than some other sites, like Heavy.com, that have been paying for video segments.

Sony has created a unit called Crackle Studios, with 15 employees, that will produce its own segments for the site. One example is Judgment Day, a reality show in which a person judges other people, then interviews them to find out if their first impressions were correct.

Crackle will also invite submissions from users, and all of them will be posted unless they violate the site’s terms of service. But since the user videos are meant to be added to Crackle’s existing channels, Mr. Feltzer said he hoped they would be in the spirit of the site.

People who submit unsolicited videos will not be paid, but they can try to submit ideas to get financing from Crackle for future projects.

- DVDs are still the top cash-producer for the movie industry: a record $23 billion in sales and rentals in 2006, according to the Entertainment Merchants Association. (Box office was $9.5 billion.)

- Fox isn't doing advance screenings of 'The Simpsons' movie for critics, according to the LA Times. The studio says that it isn't because the movie is bad (the traditional reason for withholding movies from reviewers), but rather to thwart Internet scoops and spoilers.

- The Economist has a short overview piece on digital cinema, circa July 2007.

- The Age in Australia writes about the Portable Film Festival, taking place in August.

- Matt Dentler tells us what Harry Knowles DVD wedding invitation was like.

- If you're in the Boston area, this screening of 'Willie Wonka' (the 1971 original) in Smell-O-Vision (or at least an approximation of it) looks like fun.

- Anne Thompson has a brilliant piece in Variety about the evolving relationship between celebs and their fans. A snippet:

The dynamic between celebrities and their audience is shifting. The critics and the media no longer have the last word. Thanks to evolving technology, moviemakers and stars have new weapons to not only promote their projects directly to moviegoers, but to fight back against what they perceive as misinformation. They are taking advantage of their Internet fanbases to promote their projects, skipping the marketing middlemen and interacting directly with the people who buy tickets. Fan sites offer them valuable feedback about what their audiences like and dislike. But they also offer an opportunity to set the record straight. And sometimes, change the world.

- Here's what the new video ad format on YouTube (or at least one of them) looks like:

Lotsa Tuesday Links: Mark Cuban + Video...Unbox + TiVo...Technicolor + Satellites...Warner + Total HD...Spielberg + EA...And More

- Mark Cuban has some hypotheses about the value of video. Number 5 is especially interesting, and one thing I've been focusing on in my presentations and panel discussions lately:

5. The greater the number of content alternatives at any given point in time, the more expensive it is for any given piece of content to acquire an incremental viewer. The cost may come in the form of investment into the production of the content, advertising, promotion or placement. It may come in the form of sweat equity from hustling to promote the content.

- TiVo users can now order Amazon Unbox movies directly from their television set, rather than from a Web-connected computer.

- Technicolor Digital Cinema says 'Transformers' is the first movie sent by satellite to theaters in the US and Europe.

- Warner's Total HD discs, which offer a movie in Blu-ray format on one side and HD DVD on the other, have been delayed until 2008. Is that the same thing as dead in the water?

- The Wall Street Journal reports on what Spielberg has been working on in his partnership with videogame developer Electronic Arts.

- A fun story about copyright squabbles on YouTube; in the case of Uri Geller, the site may actually have been too quick in removing a video from its library.

- The schedule for Comic-Con 2007.

Two iPhone pieces from Variety

I was hoping to avoid contributing to the orgy of iPhone hype this week, and in fact have summarily been deleting PR pitches that begin, "If you're planning to write about the iPhone..." I got at least a half-dozen of those.

But I failed.

I spent this afternoon working on a piece for Variety about what the iPhone means for media companies and content creators, which is here. I hope it's sufficiently skeptical...since I try to hold Apple's feet to the fire for operating a closed-loop system with the iTunes Store and the iPhone/iPod.

From the piece:

If the phone is a hot seller, that could nudge more media companies to do deals with Steve Jobs' company -- or find a way to circumvent the tight link Apple has forged between its devices and iTunes, its online media marketplace.

Apple's newest product will play a selection of 10,000 free videos from YouTube, as well as video podcasts offered for free on iTunes from outlets like CNN and HBO, plus movies and TV shows sold on iTunes by suppliers such as Disney, Lionsgate, NBC and ABC.

But like the video iPod before it, the device won't play content sold by sites including Amazon Unbox, Movielink or CinemaNow, which offer movies in a Windows Media format that Apple doesn't support. Apple also doesn't allow content marketplaces other than the iTunes Store to sell content "wrapped" in Apple's FairPlay digital rights management (DRM) technology. That restrictive policy guarantees Apple a high degree of loyalty among iPod and iPhone users but has recently brought scrutiny from European Union regulators.

There's another piece, by Michael Schneider, about how everyone in LA is coveting an iPhone as the new status symbol.

Why Isn't TiVo/Unbox Taking Off?

I had lunch in San Francisco yesterday with Macrovision CEO Fred Amoroso and the company's chief evangelist, Richard Bullwinkle.

As is often the case with these lunches, the best discussion happens after the dishes have been cleared, after my lunch companions have gotten their marketing messages out, and after the coffee has arrived. I asked Richard, who used to be TiVo's chief evangelist, why the combination of TiVo and Amazon's Unbox didn't seem to be taking off.

Essentially, months before Apple started selling AppleTV, Amazon and TiVo got together to make it possible for users of Amazon's Unbox download service to have movies sent directly to their TiVo boxes. All you need is a TiVo Series 2 or 3 device, connected to your high-speed home network. Unlike AppleTV, you don't need to buy a new dedicated device to bring Internet content to the TV.

Problem #1, according to Richard, is that 20 percent or fewer of TiVo's users have connected their box to a broadband connection. That's strange, he said, because running the phone banks that TiVo boxes dial into to get program information and advertising is one of the company's biggest operating costs. Why isn't there an incentive that TiVo offers -- maybe a free wireless adapter, or one month of free service? -- to get people to conect their TiVos to a broadband network?

Second, while both companies are promoting the offering on their Web site, there hasn't been any high-profile promotion beyond that. Contrast that with Apple's hype and advertising around AppleTV.

Third (and this was my contribution to the coffee talk), you'd think the studios would want to work with -- and possibly co-promote -- Unbox, just so that Apple/iTunes doesn't wind up as the only game in town for movie downloading. They need multiple marketplaces, each with the ability to connect with the TV set.

Your take?

What's So Scary About iTunes?

Why do Sony, Fox, Universal, and Warner Brothers opt not to sell their movies on iTunes?

Three big reasons:

1. They worry about Apple being the only game in town, as far as digital distribution; on the music side, Apple controls more than 70 percent of the download market. That kind of dominance gives Apple the power to dictate price, and all kinds of other deal terms, to their suppliers.

2. They worry about encouraging consumers to stop buying DVDs. DVDs are the studios’ cash cow – they brought in almost $25 billion in 2006. The studios are also hoping that high-def DVDs will keep consumers shelling out $25 for a physical product that they can own – as opposed to $14.99 for a digital download.

3. Apple’s Steve Jobs isn’t making studios happy with his anti-DRM crusade. Remember, studios have always been more aggressive with copy-protection on DVDs than the music industry has been with CDs (you need special, illegal software to rip a DVD onto your laptop).

The transition from DVDs to digitally-delivered content is going to be painful. Consumers aren’t willing to put up with punitive DRM constraints, and they’re not going to pay the same price for a digital file as they did for the DVD.

But do I believe that there are going to be lots of new opportunities in the digital world that didn’t exist in the world of DVDs and videotape? Absolutely. Studios have just been slow in chasing them. There are classic movies people are dying to see – if studios would only clear the rights and make them available online. People would be willing to pay 99 cents to buy scenes from their favorite movies to store on cell phones and video iPods – if studios would sell them. If studios offered some of their best behind-the-scenes footage and making-of featurettes (the stuff that appears on DVDs as bonus material), film fans and wanna-be directors would buy those.

Studios simply haven’t put enough digital product out there, with innovative pricing models, for fear of cannibalizing DVD sales and antagonizing big DVD sellers like Wal-Mart and Target. That’s fostering piracy, and it’s allowing Apple to emerge as the dominant player in digital distribution.

If the studios really want to help create a strong rival to iTunes, why aren’t they giving exclusive content (like celeb interviews) to Amazon.com’s Unbox, or packaging a free download of the soundtrack with a purchase of a digital movie file? Why aren’t they promoting Movielink, a service they created in 2001 but have since let wither, or CinemaNow, which is majority-owned by Lions Gate?

Here’s the LA Times article that got me thinking about this…

…and also in the news today are some hints that Apple will start renting movies on iTunes this fall. (Stories in Forbes and the Financial Times). Would rental make it easier for more studios to play with iTunes? Yes, particularly if Apple is willing to let them offer movies for rental only. Retailers wouldn’t feel threatened, since they’re not in the rental business. But it’d be time for Netflix to start sweating…

As for Apple and iTunes...why not open the gates to indie content while the studios dither, rather than letting other sites (like Jaman.com) become the go-to destinations for lesser-known but high-quality films?

For your analysis: Most popular indie fare on Amazon's Unbox

I think I've posted this list before -- a run-down of the 100 most-popular CustomFlix downloads of independent content on Amazon's Unbox service. But I wound up talking about this with a friend at dinner last night -- what sort of "long tail" content people will pay for online -- so I went and took another look today.

The top-seller is 'The Gentleman's Guide to Seduction,' a 30-minute instructional video for guys who'd like to do better with the ladies. (On Amazon's primary list of video downloads, it is actually doing better than studio movies like 'Fast Food Nation' and 'For Your Consideration.')

Also in the top 10: the feature film 'Intentions;' the doc 'Bookwars,' about Manhattan's homeless booksellers; doc 'The History of BSD Software'; feature 'The Guardian' (not the one with Whitney and Costner); and 'Introduction to Qi Yoga.'

One problem I've noticed -- with a lot of CustomFlix content, the sample video is basically the opening credits rather than a trailer, which doesn't give you a great sense of what the movie is about. Same isn't true for studio releases.