The Extra Mile
Penguin August 29th, 2008
People are starting to realize that, when it comes to distribution, the internet changes the game.
“If you’re a business whose content is easily distributed and stolen digitally, you have to figure out ways to engage your [audience] on a deeper level — figure out how to get them to your site, offer them extras on a DVD, or benefits that are only available through purchase,” says Aaron Dignan, founding partner of Undercurrent, a new media consultancy.
- Wired
I’ve talked about how the game changes when distribution is free.
If you’re going to distribute, I would say host torrents. Most of the major sites (aside from Google Video) have caps on length or file size which makes viewing kind of tough. Watching a few minutes is not a big deal, but 1.5-2 hours, I want to kind of sit back. This is not to say you shouldn’t split it up and put it out there though.
If you want to monetize the net, you need to look at something like Dr. Horrible by Joss Whedon. He didn’t take TV and cram it into the internet. He looked at internet and came up with something that fit the medium. If TV barely fits online, film will be even harder.
Whedon invested about $300k and after an initial free run on the internet, charged for it on iTunes. The free buzz that was generated piqued people’s interest. Even now, you can still find it oh Hulu.
The lesson to be learned here is that he fit the product to the medium. But what’s important, is that Whedon controls and owns all the intellectual property rights. And that’s worth a whole lot. He make soundtrack CDs, a DVD sequels, or just continue to expand the storyline. He can do whatever he wants with it.
I can already here you say, “But it’s Joss Whedon! He already has a legion of rabid fans!” Fair enough. Let’s talk about Head Trauma.
Lance Weiler took Head Trauma his film and built events around them. He had the film scored live during the showing. He had the actors engage the audience. And a whole bunch of other crazy game type stuff.
Does it take a lot of work? Was it a huge gamble? Heck yeah. But he took the existing technologies and leveraged them to make some money.
Then there’s the traditional film festival route. But even that’s drying up. At Toronto, there’s reports that Steven Soderbergh had trouble moving Che with Benicio Del Toro in the titular role. And he’s not the only one.
“Filmmakers have to take a lot more ownership of their projects,” said Cynthia Swartz, a partner in the publicity firm 42West, which represents more than a dozen films showing at Toronto. She spoke of a growing need for even the most established filmmakers to baby their works through a festival apparatus that can keep a film alive when commercial distribution is slow to materialize.
- NYTimes
The game is changing and the good news is everyone’s trying to figure out the new rules as we go along. The key is to keep pressing on and taking those risks.
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