Independent film has always had a funny relationship with the world of foreign sales. In the ’80s, it wasn’t uncommon for a certain breed of hip, black-clad downtown New York filmmaker to find most or all of his or her funding from a besotted West German TV-commissioning editor. By the late ’80s and early ’90s, following the model of Jim Jarmusch, independent film produced auteurs like Hal Hartley who developed real audiences — and financing — in territories like France, Germany and Japan. But for a myriad of reasons — and, indeed, like the rest of the film business — […]

As Filmmaker recently reported, on January 1 in the U.S. the federal tax incentive program known as Section 181 expired, with little prospect of resuscitation: although the program benefits high net worth individuals like Donald Trump and his advisors, current Republican animosity toward Hollywood (see: Meryl Streep) could translate to low congressional will to assist the film industry. This has the potential to reduce filmmakers’ options at the beginning of a project’s life cycle. But another issue is emerging that could affect it at the end: the continuing legal battle over the streaming company VidAngel and their incipient campaign to have Congress strengthen the […]

In addition to YouTube and Vimeo, filmmakers can now upload and sell their original video content on Amazon. On Tuesday, Amazon announced Amazon Video Direct (AVD), a new self-service program for creators and storytellers to make their video content available to Amazon customers. Through the new program, filmmakers and video providers can distribute their content directly to tens of millions of Prime members and earn royalties based on minutes stream. Amazon will pay partners 50% of the retail price for digital purchases, rentals and subscription fees. If they choose Prime Video distribution, creators will earn royalties of 15 cents per hour streamed in the […]

This year’s Art House Convergence (AHC), the organization’s 10th annual event, drew 500 delegates from art house cinemas, film festivals, and film distributors to Midway, UT to discuss the state of independent film exhibition in the United States. Over the course of the organization’s first decade, the AHC has grown from a small gathering of two dozen non-profit cinemas seeking new ways to support independent film while building sustainable business models for their theaters into something of a full-blown trade organization. Now it represents the interests of hundreds of theaters (and helps incubate the development of a similar organization for […]

Goodbye to All That‘s protagonist Otto Wall is a limited man — the type of man who just goes along with the flow, who doesn’t try to ruffle feathers. He’s not stupid, but neither is he gifted with remarkable intelligence. He has a good job, an attractive if possibly overbearing wife (Melanie Lynskey) and an adorable, auburn-haired daughter who is quickly turning into a North Carolina Methodist. He’s lucky, at least until he isn’t. Played with gentle moxie by Paul Schneider, in his most memorable motion picture role since Dick Liddil in The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert […]

Lately, it’s seemed like I’ve been inadvertently launching a weekly VOD column, but here is yet another contrarian and unexpected entry in the financially-shrouded market’s set of data points. Over the weekend, Radius-TWC released their digital grosses for The Unknown Known and 20 Feet From Stardom at $1 million and $1.3 million, respectively. In the exclusive report, co-president Tom Quinn offered his reasoning behind the films’ release strategies (“Errol Morris has a heavy following on Twitter”), while the author Brian Brooks points out that although VOD is assumed to be a major source of revenue, “some execs have noted that tabulating nontheatrical grosses is inherently not the […]

A study published last week in the journal Environmental Research Letters under the self-explanatory title “The energy and greenhouse-gas implications of internet video streaming in the United States” looks at numbers from 2011 to conclude that streaming services and servers have become much more energy efficient. As a result, streaming consumes significantly less energy and emits less carbon dioxide than the manufacture and distribution of DVDs. (This is all explained in plain language here and here). The easy-to-extrapolate conclusion is not only that streaming is the increasingly dominant distribution platform of choice but that that turns out to be a […]

In navigating the distribution market, many independent filmmakers channel their efforts toward domestic deals. While it is an understandable preoccupation, a new collection from The Film Collaborative entitled Selling Your Film Outside the U.S. offers some substantial insights on how to position your film in the lucrative territory of overseas VOD. In her section Carpe Diem for Indie Filmmakers in the Digital/VOD Sector, Wendy Bernfeld breaks down the differences in transactional vs. subscription vs. ad-supported VOD deals, and determines varying revenue shares for each. She looks at what does well with audiences and ventures how to connect your film to a platform […]

Screenings have just kicked off in Manhattan for the Tribeca Film Festival, but as always not all the films are showing in theaters–and there’s more available online this year than ever before. Here’s a quick guide to what you can see and how to see it. Streaming select titles: Four feature films and four shorts will be online after their initial theatrical screenings this week and next; they’ll also be eligible for an audience choice award with prize money totaling $15,000. All of Tribeca’s online material discussed below, including these eight films, is available at http://tribecafilm.com/online. The short films include: * Love in […]

Shortly before the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival, Vimeo issued an offer to attending filmmakers. Let us have exclusive digital rights to your film for 30 days via our distribution platform, Vimeo on Demand, and we’ll give you a $10,000 advance. After that window — or until we recoup the $10,000, whichever comes first — we’ll provide our standard 90/10 revenue split, and you’re free to take your film elsewhere. I remember thinking it was a bold move, ripe for the “best of both worlds” scenario so many modern independent filmmakers desire. But would anyone be game? Turns out, more than […]

In advance of Sundance, the unofficial birthplace of the annual independent film calendar, Manohla Dargis has something to ask of the attending distributors: “stop buying so many movies.” Or at least, stop offering so many theatrical deals. “It’s hard to see how American independent cinema can sustain itself if it continues to focus on consumption rather than curation,” she writes. “There are, bluntly, too many lackluster, forgettable and just plain bad movies pouring into theaters, distracting the entertainment media and, more important, overwhelming the audience.” Her claim comes from a kind-hearted place. She ventures that the wonderfully singular Computer Chess could […]

Filmmaker contributor John Yost recently joined forces with Alexander Berberich to launch Fifth Column Features (FCF), a boutique independent film studio and online distribution company. Though the concept may sound familiar, FCF boasts the industry’s first pay-as-you-wish content model, which Yost likens to a barometer for audience commitment. Filmmaker spoke with Yost about what FCF is doing differently, and how, as filmmakers themselves, they are able to prioritize their colleagues’ best interests. Filmmaker: Why do you feel the industry was lacking a pay-as-you-wish platform? Are you operating from a standpoint that audiences are the most valuable entity to an independent filmmaker? John Yost: Pay […]

At the Film Independent Forum a couple weeks back, Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos gave something of a provocative keynote in which he declared that theaters would “kill movies” if they continued to resist multi-platform, day-and-date distribution. Though Sarandos later backtracked, Indiewire picked up the ball and ran with it, soliciting responses from several independent distributors on the matter. Among the executives weighing in were Kino Lorber’s Richard Lorber, Emily Russo of Zeitgeist Films, and Matt Grady of Factory 25. Dylan Marchetti, President of Variance Films, raised an interesting point, noting that “[Sarandos] knows that any resistance here isn’t to […]

As the first in what is to become a weekly, unprecedented occurrence, Cinetic Media released the VOD and theatrical gross of Escape From Tomorrow over at its sister site, Film Buff. Utilizing the Producers Distribution Agency catalogue, John Sloss and company will post an aggregate number every Monday that represents revenues from the divergent platforms, before hopefully moving on to films outside their network. “We call upon those distributors who have been pioneers of the day-and-date evolution to supply Cinetic with their cable and broadband VOD gross numbers so we can post a comprehensive snapshot of the distribution industry each week,” Sloss said in a […]

A filmmaker called me the other day, asking if I could think of some comps for his movie. You know, other movies whose marketplace performance would indicate that there is a paying audience for his demographically-similar picture. He named a title he really liked and said he was shocked to see via Box Office Mojo that it had done so poorly. Indeed, its reported box office was in the five figures. The very low five figures. “But that box-office figure is misleading,” I replied. “The film was bought by a company whose strategy is to release on VOD and digital […]

The past week witnessed big announcements from two divergent digital video platforms. VHX, the direct distribution site, lauded by the likes of Shane Carruth and Ira Glass, publicized its recently acquired $3.2 million in Series A financing. Spearheaded by new board member Andy Weissman of Union Square Ventures, the funding will allow VHX to expand into public beta, bringing their services to a greater user network. They’ve already put out a call for “filmmakers, distributors, publishers, educators and moving-picture-creators” who are ready to sell their work, thereby joining the ranks of Sound City, We Are Legion, Upstream Color, and, most recently, […]

Intel, the giant computer chip manufacturer, is joining the growing roster of tech companies entering the web-delivered video jamboree. In addition to Google’s YouTube and Netflix, Apple and Microsoft are carving out space on the web to offer live and video-on-demand (VOD) TV programming. Web video distribution can be executed either as Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) or as Over-the-Top (OTT). With IPTV, the digital signal is streamed and/or offered as VOD programming over a closed or proprietary network through a cable or telephone company. OTT refers to streaming and/or VOD programming distributed over an open or unmanaged video data stream […]

Earlier this week I posted “15 Lessons for Producers from the Cannes Film Festival and Market.” With the festival and market now firmly in the rear-view mirror, the consensus is that it was a solid one for the international sales community, without, perhaps that one giant locomotive title but with an appropriately modest number of films hitting their ask prices. Tastes were noted to have shifted, with buyers wanting “more Jennifer Lawrence and less Sylvester Stallone.” And on the pure indie level, I noticed, as I wrote in my piece on producers, a new crop of American independents have figured […]

As indie makers know all too well, movie distribution is undergoing a major restructuring. The shift from analog media to digital production, post-production and distribution technologies not only changes how movies are made and distributed, but how people view them. Theatrical moviegoing is declining; since 2002, ticket sales have declined by nearly 20 percent. Making matters worse, DVD sales are shrinking. And video streaming revenues, while growing, are doing so at a rate insufficient to make up the difference. Readers of Filmmaker are urged to check out a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, “Now playing at a living […]