Every so often, a window of opportunity opens up in the motion picture business, and independent filmmakers, never a unified lot (hence the independent moniker), have a chance to dive through or be pulled through to the other side when the gatekeeper studios gain control.
All of these opportunities are based on technology: sound, camera, lighting, projecting, and signal, copy and transaction methodologies.
We are now at a watershed where all four elements of: capture (digital cameras to pocket phones), signal (broadcast digital dispersion) copy (digital download and streaming) and transaction (digital micro-payments to digital subscriptions) are about to transform the business of filmed entertainment in a mighty way.
Harking back to the name of this newsletter, FilmDependent, we are all pursuing personal dreams and skill sets. Often a skill set and love of, say, just handling film stock and watching it flow through the moviola, are so strong that we reject or dismiss the changes in editing coming at us.
Windows of Fear
The studios, too, have a strong history of fighting down and rejecting new technology as an almost certain erosion or cannibalization of their stranglehold on the marketplace and the gateways there. This is historical. All large, established organizations focus more on defending the gates than on innovation.
Once they have been mollified, and they have held innovation off until it works the way they want it to, and the new technology is theirs to control, all of their fighting subsides, and the standards are theirs and everyone has to go through them to get to the marketplace.
Window of Opportunity For All
We now have a window that is narrowing as the studios will inevitably seek to control all digital delivery streams. I don’t care if it’s the Internet download, or the iPod, or the mobile phone, but all digital platforms are now moving into play, and these platforms provide and will provide the possibility of direct access to consumers of filmed entertainment.
It is anticipated that as much as 50% of content income will be delivered through IP (Internet Protocol) streams and downloads by 2012 or 2013. The Internet is the new TV, but it is also the new smorgasbord personal screening room. This expansion of access, somewhat like the addition of cassette tapes to the marketplace, allows people to pursue their own muse in entertainment, and broadens the potential for independent makers and distributors to build audiences, both niche and substantial.
It is in finding, communicating with, delivering to and transacting with these audiences that is at the crux of your success in this new world. Since I look at every film and its financial success as primarily a marketing problem, I believe it will be no different here. Understanding your movie, understanding its core audience, and how to reach and move them is key to the equation of success.
At the same time that IP and mobile technologies and the like provide a platform for delivering, they also provide the savvy and focused entrepreneur with the window of success. They also can change the game on costs of communicating and transacting, taking movie delivery into the realm of this entrepreneur while holding also the opportunity of scale to the film that can gain wide acceptance.
There is a little bit of revolution in my soul. Does this revolution disdain studios or large organizations? No. I embrace them as partners on the right projects, and I embrace them as clients. But for many indie films, they create a competitive battleground in which the competition is completely unbalanced, uneven. I want the entrepreneur to have a chance in this environment, and that is where the revolution lies, in taking tickets that could have gone to a studio, in expanding the audience of films to the disaffected and under-served or un-served. This is the mission of my revolution, to enable the dream of the film writer and maker to meet with the dream of the consumer. I call this shared dream the “through line” (thru-line). It is the arc of inspiration and meaning that brings us all to film, whether making, delivering, just consuming, or all three.
This installment is a preamble to what I hope to be able to deliver on a regular basis, a series focusing on a succession of topics that, at least at this juncture I intend to drive through all the markets.
But, who knows, in my practice I am constantly grappling with ideas and issues brought up by my clients and the films they are making, buying or marketing. These ideas and their currency may send me down one track or another. If they could be helpful, eye-opening or thought-provoking to you, I want to pursue them.
Onward and Upward!
Jeffrey Hardy
