Worth Reading This Monday: Turning Distribution Upside-Down... Make More Movies?...Redbox + Studios

- Filmmaker and futurist John Ott has this very thought-provoking post on what would happen if theatrical screenings became the equivalent of concert tours, and if movies were released in other formats first to build up demand for those screenings. Ott writes:

...Why not reverse the cycle and make the other distribution formats the advertising (much cheaper) and build to theatrical events. You could theoretically have so few screenings (such scarcity) that the filmmakers or actors could make personal appearances. You wouldn't have to shell out for the theatrical tour until you knew, from statistics on download and home video sales, that the movie had a sizable audience (and you would also have geographical stats, so you could tell where the highest concentrations of those fans were).

The infrastructure for theatrical screenings currently exists. Most money is already made in shorter and shorter windows, theatrically. Why not confine it? That's a scarcity that the digital revolution has left untouched.

- The media analyst firm SNL Kagan apparently concluded that studios should make more movies, not fewer. (Something CinemaTech has been advocating for a few years now...) In a scenario based on 611 major studio releases between 2004 and 2008, a 15-movie slate would have done much better than slates with just five or ten titles.

- Interesting Wall Street Journal piece today on the relationship between Redbox and the studios. The central question is, will Redbox cannibalize DVD sales? From Sarah McBride's piece:

One studio-commissioned study showed that 9% of people who visited Redbox kiosks ended up renting a title they had previously planned to buy, and 25% said they would buy fewer DVDs this year because they could rent them at kiosks.

Redbox says its research shows many customers take a "trying before buying" approach and end up buying the DVDs after renting, and that its customers purchase DVDs at the same rate as Blockbuster Inc. and Netflix Inc. customers.

Every time a customer rents from Redbox rather than Blockbuster, the studio is missing out. While other companies cut the studios in on revenue each time they rent a movie, Redbox doesn't. With Redbox, the only income studios see is when the retailer buys the movies for its kiosks.

Worth Reading: Crowdsourced Animation...AMPAS Rules & The Internet...'United Breaks Guitars'...The Etsy Economy, And More

A bunch of great stuff to point you to... some of which I've tweeted about earlier in the week...

- Sony Pictures is going to handle theatrical distribution of a crowd-sourced animated short called "Live Music" this November, from the start-up company Mass Animation. The budget was about $1 million (spent on what, exactly?), and 51 people around the world contributed shots; each was paid $500 (that adds up to about $25,000 of the budget) and will get a credit on the film. Here's the press release, the Mass Animation Facebook page is here (they don't seem to have a corporate site), and the teaser is below:



-Filmmaker Noah Harlan has this thoughtful rant about the Academy's Rule 12, which limits experiments with day-and-date releasing (at least if you want to be Oscar-eligible.) The rule says: "No type of television or Internet transmission of a contending documentary feature may occur anywhere in the world until 60 days after the completion of the New York and Los Angeles seven-day qualifying runs.” Here's an earlier Deadline Hollywood post on the issue.

- Some analysis of the impact of the music video "United Breaks Guitars" (worth watching if you haven't seen it) -- a customer complaint about United Airlines that turned into a viral hit.



- Fortune Small Business looks at the online crafts marketplace Etsy, where a few artists earn six figures annually -- but most are still working day jobs.

- Adam Chapnick points us to this important explanation of how to create "overlays" on your YouTube videos -- for instance, to suggest to viewers that they buy your DVD/CD/book.

- I'm a big Steely Dan fan, and I love the approach they're taking on their summer tour: playing some "Internet Request" concerts, where the entire set-list will be determined by fans.

Does Length Matter? ... Distribution Strategy for 'Lovely by Surprise' ... A First Film for Cinetic Film Buff

- This piece from yesterday's NY Times suggests that attention spans on the Web are getting longer (though the average video is still just 3.4 minutes in duration). Microsoft blogger Don Dodge offers more on length, based on a recent chat with MTV executive David Gale. Dodge writes:

Building the story from the ground up with a couple scenes in an 8 minute sequence works well for the web, and easily transitions to the 30 minute TV format. However, trying to work backwards from a 30 minute show and break it into web length clips doesn’t work so well, for obvious reasons.

- I wonder what the turn-out was like today at the 88 movie theaters that offered a live simulcast of the Michael Jackson memorial service.

- Jake Abraham has a nifty piece on Filmmaker Magazine's Web site. (Abraham was part of the founding team at InDigEnt Entertainment.) He writes:

We decided on a “day-and-date” release for two reasons. One, we’re a tiny group and can only sustain this level of attention for so long. Two, as momentum has grown over the past few months of promotion, we think its time to get the film out there while awareness is still high and let people consume the film in any way they want. Unfortunately, this meant that we’ve had to pass on some deals that required exclusivity.

For example, the IFC FestivalDirect VOD deal requires that the DVD release be held back ninety days from the VOD release date due to deals with the cable operators (they don’t want to compete with Netflix). With the lengthy backlog to get on the service, we were looking at a DVD release as late June 2010. While I love IFC and was excited that they liked the film, there was no way we wanted to suspend our entire operation just so the film could be carried on a consignment basis through cable monopolies starting sometime next year.

- Anne Thompson reports that 'New Orleans Mon Amour' will be the first film distributed by Cinetic Film Buff, a new cable VOD service. No info about Film Buff on Cinetic Media's 1997-era Web site, but there is a Twitter feed.

With No Promotion, New Soderbergh Film Debuts on Amazon.com

Steven Soderbergh's 'The Girlfriend Experience' appeared as a $9.99 online rental on Amazon this week, three weeks before its theatrical debut. Variety blogger Ben Fritz asks why Magnolia, the pic's distributor, isn't making more of a fuss. Ben writes:

If you're going to break the rules, piss of a bunch of big theater chains, and try to reshape the way entertainment is distributed, why not make a stink about it? There's nothing worse than rebelling in a way that people don't notice, or even care.

The first news of the digital release showed up on Gizmodo.

IFC, SXSW Experimenting with Festival Releases

IFC continues to tinker with release windows, trying to expand the audience for indie films. The latest experiment involves releasing Joe Swanberg's 'Alexander the Last,' along with films from Javor Gardev and Matthew Newton, on cable video-on-demand the same time they play the South by Southwest Film Festival in March.

Here's the Variety coverage.

From that piece:

"It's our job to connect talent with audiences," said SXSW's [Janet] Pierson. "Conversations are getting louder about how festivals can and should aggressively help filmmakers."

"It's a smarter way to make the release an event," added Swanberg. "Better than just sitting in a theater, waiting on people to come."

..."At a time when the U.S. marketplace for truly American independent and foreign films is rapidly changing, and many films are having difficulty getting exposure, IFC Films has created opportunities for a wide range of films to find an audience," said [IFC president Jonathan] Sehring.