New Non-Profit aims to rep & support Indie Films

Nine films, including Sundance 2010 feature “One Too Many Mornings,” have allied with The Film Collaborative, a new non-profit group that aims to provide a range of services, including distribution and social networking services. Founded by former Wolfe Releasing exec Orly Ravid and Jeffrey Fabian Winter,  programmer/co-founder of the Sundance Film Festival’s “New Frontier” section, The Film Collaborative aims to provide a range of what it describes as “affordable” distribution, educational and marketing services to independent filmmakers, but it will not take film rights. Other notable insiders aligned with the organization include Rose Kuo, who recently left AFI Fest.

Additionally, the organization plans to present itself as an aggregator, allowing members of The Film Collaborative access to various digital and VOD distributors, including iTunes, Brainstorm Media, The Cinema Guild, Babelgum and others. According to the group’s website, deals are also pending with Netflix and Amazon Video On Demand.

Projects involved with The Film Collaborative in various capacities, so far, include: SXSW Film Festival winner “Made in China” by Judith Krant, Joshua Grannell’s “All About Evil,” Ari Gold’s “Adventures of Power,” Michael Mohan’s “One Too Many Mornings,” Haim Tabakman’s “Eyes Wide Open,” George O’Donnell’s “College Boys Live,” Meredith Scott Lynn and Bradford Tatum’s “Standing on Fishes,” Matt Dunnerstick’s “The Custom Mary” and Jonathan Leyser’s “William S. Burroughs: A Man Within.”

Membership in the organization ranges from $50 to $250 through its formal launch in March and prices will increase afterward. Fees and percentages are also attached to its various services.
In addition to digital distribution and social networking services, TFC plans to provide marketplace consultation, handle non-theatrical, festival and educational bookings and outreach, provide strategies for domestic and international sales, assist on DIY theatrical sales. Former AFI Fest artistic director Kuo is also coming on board to spearhead the group’s exhibition components, including what it calls national film showcases, including a traveling film festival and an online film event.

“I started out in distribution 10 or 12 years ago,” TFC co-founder Orly Ravid told indieWIRE by phone. “I never felt comfortable with layers of middle men. At some point I thought, ‘let’s make this a non-profit and I want it to be service based.’”

Ravid went on to say that they are not against distributors, but said that since not every filmmaker will find a deal, they want to become a destination for their projects. “It’s great to be able to tell filmmakers that if you don’t get a deal, you can get your film out there.” - Brian Brooks

Matthew Jeppsen tells us 7 Ways the Apple iPad will affect Filmmakers and Creatives

The Apple iPad offers a number of exciting new possibilities for filmmakers and story architects thanks to its screen size, connectivity, and interactivity. At first glance it may seem like just a big iPhone, but it’s priced to move and — whether you plan on buying one or not — in 60 days it will be in the hands of millions. For filmmakers and independent creatives, there’s a lot of brain candy contained in that thin body; here are seven ways I think the iPad will change filmmaking and interactive storytelling.

1. Interactive interfaces
 
The above image (apologies for the blurriness; taken from the iPad’s live announcement, courtesy Gizmodo) demonstrates a couple of simple possibilities for interface overlays on top of video. For live sports broadcasts, these interfaces may be merely informational, but for narrative content, touch-based widgets offer a whole new world of interactivity. From “choose your own adventure”-style video content to multi-angle controls, by giving audiences real-time interfaces on screen, filmmakers can turn viewers into a participants. TV and set-top manufacturers are increasingly integrating internet connectivity and on-screen widgets as well, but none of them have the immediate tactile control of a iPad. While widgets are an easy-to-visualize example, the touch screen itself offers all sorts of interactive affordances; you don’t need something displayed on top of the video to allow viewers to interact with your content.

2. It’s a book, it’s a movie, it’s… an app

Anthony Zuiker (CSI) released a “digi-novel” last year, wherein a printed book contained a URL every 20 pages; readers could enter the URL into a browser and watch a related online video. In a lot of ways transmedia storytelling to date has been mostly about promotion (The Dark Knight, for example, used an Alternate Reality Game to promote its theatrical release), but the iPad offers a different set of possibilities: instead of these experiences existing as separate, promotional entrypoints, they can all be brought together on one platform. This is not to say that a project can’t have a live component that exists separately, but the iPad will play a pivotal role in bringing together different forms of storytelling: words, still images, moving images, audio, and interactive experiences can all live together on one handheld, connected device. The iPad will profoundly blur the line between book, movie, and game, and it will do so by offering these new-media experiences for sale through iTunes as… an application. When you’re developing a cross-platform story, what happens if you can’t define your project along clear lines? Should I say it? “There’s an app for that.”

3. Serialization (of payment)

In the old world, you’d develop a feature — a two-hour piece of content — and spend years making and distributing it. Then, on your next project you’d start the whole process all over again — possibly with a different studio — who then spends a lot of money on P&A to (re)mobilize an audience for another round of one-time payments. In the new world, as a filmmaker it is your responsibility to own your audience and mobilize them, not only from project to project but also from episode to episode. There’s a reason almost every movie in the local multiplex is a sequel, and it’s not just because Hollywood is risk-adverse; it’s also because audiences come back to stories and characters they like. So where does the iPad fit in with all this? Well, not only can you sell a hybrid book/movie/game as an app, but you can also charge the viewer a la carte for entries within the series. Apple calls this in-app subscriptions, which means the iTunes season pass — where a customer must decide on the spot to buy an entire TV season — isn’t the only option. Instead, your interactive application allows you to bundle installments however you like. For example, you can bundle “acts” of a show, where each act consists of several episodes, or if your storyline branches, charge separately for different paths. While it may be hard to convince someone to part with $20 all at once (the iTunes price for a high-def new release), if you’ve got a good story you may be able to convince them to part with that same $20 through a series of micropayments.

4. Charging money for digital content
 
Every newspaper and magazine in the country was hoping for something more than the iBook functionality that Steve Jobs demonstrated on stage, and while subscription print models are probably in the works — it’s not clear yet — one thing’s for sure: people are used to buying content through iTunes. There are currently 75 million iPhone users who have collectively downloaded 12 billion apps, songs, and movies; those numbers will only grow once the iPad is released. In an era where everyone’s struggling to monetize content with free, ad-based models, the iPad (by virtue of its large, high-quality screen) offers an even better platform for filmmakers than the iPhone. The iPad’s tech specs show that it plays back h.264 video at 720p (identical specs to the Apple TV), and its IPS screen will be bright, accurate, and viewable from a wide angle (meaning more than one person will be able to watch). The challenge for independent creatives comes in figuring out how to get indie content into iTunes (previously it was nigh impossible, and these days there are conflicting reports; chime in with a comment if you know better). The revenue split between creators and Apple is generally 70-30 in your favor, and iTunes does a good job of convincing customers to pay for 1s and 0s (this is the whole reason the iBook application gives you a nice-looking bookshelf: you feel like you’re buying something tangible). The iPad means more potential customers for filmmakers because:

5. Everyone’s connected to the internet

FreshDV’s Matt Jeppsen tweeted the following during the iPad’s announcement: “Know who desperately needs the iPad? Grandma. That +3G access is all she needs. No interface in the way, no routers to worry about.” He’s absolutely right: don’t underestimate the value of the built-in 3G. If you’re reading this, obviously you have decent internet access. But there are a lot of people who don’t have broadband — 40% of the US last I checked — and for content creators, they’re all potential customers. Previously, these people were unreachable through the series of tubes, and while I doubt an old-fashioned household without broadband access was going to buy an iPhone or $1,000 Macbook, they just might spring for an iPad. This is why Apple wanted to get the entry price point so low: to bring iTunes to a huge, previously untapped market, who will now use the iPad as their portal to a world of paid content (which Apple takes a cut of). With the addition of the iPad, iTunes TV and movie sales should jump significantly; now more than ever, your digital distribution strategy is key (see: Peter Broderick, Jon Reiss).

6. Flash is suddenly valuable again

If you’ve released a video online, you’ve likely been reliant on Adobe’s rich-media platform Flash (it powers the players at YouTube, Vimeo, and basically every other online video portal; we distributed The West Side using a custom Flash player). But Apple has famously kept Flash off the iPhone, and it looks like the iPad will be no different. With the iPhone bypassing Flash and serving up separate h.264 videos and with HTML5 looking to push Flash further towards irrelevancy, how is the iPad a good thing for Flash? Because of Adobe’s announcement that Flash CS5 will support iPhone app development — and now iPad development as well. Suddenly there are millions of Flash developers who can develop rich-media applications for Apple’s mobile platforms. While Flash won’t be an ideal development platform for applications that rely on hardware interactions (camera apps, for example), for filmmakers interested in extending their experience beyond “traditional” movies, this is a big deal. Why? Because with Flash, you can develop your rich-media experience once, and then output to web, iPhone, iPad, set-top boxes, and Blu-Ray platforms all at once. It remains to be seen how effective Flash will be implemented on some of these devices, but for productions with smaller budgets, being able to output to several different platforms without incurring huge costs will be… well, huge. And the iPad, I suspect, will be the crown jewel in Flash’s cross-platform strategy.

7. Communal watching

A world where everyone walks around staring at little screens doesn’t sound like very much fun. Many of us (still) enjoy watching movies at the theater, where every laugh, groan, and gasp in the audience becomes part of the experience. However, movies are increasingly viewed less and less in the theater and more and more at home (or on the go). Here’s where the iPad offers filmmakers an opportunity: a connected viewing device like the iPad can afford the viewer a new community-based watching experience. With an always-on internet connection, it’s possible to implement real-time comments, twitters, audio chats, and on-screen pointers… the possibilities are endless. No one’s saying it’s a good idea to overlay your cinematic masterpiece with a chat window, but watching a live TV broadcast while Skype-ing someone almost feels like you’re there in person; with the iPad, this type of “virtually there” experience could be even more integrated. It’s not a replacement for the “real” thing, but we have to embrace the fact that our content is going to be viewed in all sorts of conditions, and giving viewers the ability to watch something together is only a good thing. It’s our duty as filmmakers to offer our audience the best viewing experience we can, and the iPad places more of that power in our hands than ever before.

Fans invest in films: Rotterdam invites "producers" to shell out coin

Wednesday's opening night of the Rotterdam Film Festival was a giant pitching session, with fest topper Rutger Wolfson facing an audience of 1,200 potential "co-producers" keen to invest as little as $7 in one of three films.

The fest is trying to persuade visitors to invest in the films, grouped together as Cinema Reloaded. "We have you, a very loyal and dedicated audience," he told a packed house, "and Cinema Reloaded starts from the idea that, just like the festival, our audience is eager to support the development of special films."

People can buy "coins" worth e5 ($7) online, and track their chosen project as it develops. Each project needs $42,000 to get the green light. On day one of the fest, Alexis Dos Santos' "Another World: Rocky and Lulu," about lovers who meet online, had accumulated the most coin, with $3,223.

Dos Santos has name recognition among festgoers thanks to last year's out-of-competition darling, "Unmade Beds." Swiss visual artist Pipilotti Rist had accumulated $2,032 for "Liebling," while Malaysian helmer Ho Yuhang had $1,815 for his untitled project.

Donations have come from around 400 people, with single-coin investments most common. Larger investments are typically for 10 or 15 coins, with the top mark going to a 50-coin investor in "Rocky and Lulu." Initiative is being watched closely by other fest folk at Rotterdam, who like the way it extends the fest's role.

Regular visitors like the idea of connecting with a production and helmers like the link with the audience, although some raise questions about artistic independence. Whether it is the future of film finance is another matter. "I don't believe in that really, not yet," said Wallie Polle of Cineart, which handles Dos Santos' films locally. "For me it's more about awareness, for audiences to get more into cinema." - Ian Mundell

Ted Hope's Sundance Observation

To me, the filmmaking community (the artists, the business folk, the curators & promoters, the appreciators & fans) have to embrace that we are in a seismic shift to an artist-centric collaboration with the audience and away from the corporate controlled supply & attention. This requires a redefinition of cinema by its creators to embrace the discovery, engagement, presentation, promotion, & appreciation processes as much as we do development & production. We have to erase the lines between between art & commerce and content & marketing. We have to stop thinking of films as singular objects and refocus on how they are bridges for the ongoing conversation we have with audiences. Specifics like VOD numbers are important, but we miss the point if we don't look first at the big picture. - Ted Hope

Analyst calls Sundance's YouTube streaming inititative a FLOP

Last week Devindra told us about a new initiative to democratise the Sundance experience just a little.  In a pioneering move to undercut the elite access of Utah-bound schmoozers and carousers, 2009 and 2010 selections The Cove, One Too Many Mornings, Homewrecker, Children of Invention, and Bass Ackwards were each made available on YouTube for rental.

Of course, getting a YouTube stream to play on your TV is pretty hard, even impossible for many consumers, so it would be foolish to expect similar rental numbers to those generated by iTunes or X-Box 360 rentals when viewing would be mainly monitor-bound. All the same, were the scores even in the same ballpark? Sadly not.

Some hard (and I mean hard) numbers and the despairing words of one analyst coming up after the break. Here’s the damage. The best performing film was The Cove with a shocking count of just 303 rentals. Check out the full chart for a catalogue of hurt:

• The Cove - 303 rentals
• Children of Invention - 301 rentals
• Bass Ackwards - 299 rentals
• Homewrecker - 279 rentals
• One Too Many Mornings - 241 rentals

That means more people read reviews of these films online this weekend - positive reviews too, in most cases - than actually clicked over to YouTube and watched the films themselves.

Here is The Motley Fool’s Rick Munarriz:

Ouch! We’re talking about 1,422 total views, or $5,673.78 for all of the rentals at $3.99 apiece. If Google is giving the filmmakers roughly two-thirds of the take - and I’m going by other digital-media standards, since the site isn’t publicly spelling out the royalty payouts - each of the five productions will walk away with just hundreds of dollars for their role as video-sharing pioneers over the weekend.

Part of the problem may have been how difficult it was to carry out the purchase, which was, to be honest, not too difficult at all; or more likely it was down to incredibly bad promotion of the scheme.
I’m confident that had these films been made available via iTunes the figures would have been unrecognizably different.

Perhaps Google will see the lesson in this and address their YouTube rental system to make it more streamlined, not to mention more well publicised and easy to find and navigate. They’ll need to try something fairly drastic to even stay on the chart of legal movie streaming options, I think, because tomorrow, Apple will unveil their “latest creation” and, I expect, give the iTunes movie rental store yet another nitro boost.

I hope that the Sundance folk aren’t put off by these stats and continue helping to facilitate easier access or smaller, more alternative or less accessible films by the countless viewers worldwide who would enjoy them. - Brendon Connelly

Launching the Crowdsourcing Colleges Initiative

Crowdsourcing (verb); a neologistic compound of Crowd and a short for Outsourcing, for the act of taking tasks traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing them to a group of people or community, through an "open call" to a large group of people (a crowd) asking for contributions.

Small Giant Media is proud to launch the Crowdsourcing College Initiative; a projected designed to bring emerging artists together through internships and collaborations on Professional Feature Films, Short Films and Internet Content.

Students will be encouraged to explore the full extent of their creativity and call upon their technical skills to begin building a portfolio by contributing to Professional Film Projects and collaborating with experienced film professionals while learning the practical applications of their skills and talents.

At the end of each term, Students will be paired into Production Teams of crews to complete their own short film project for submission into Film Festivals

Sydney brings us news of Sundance Acquisitions

The Match Factory picked up worldwide rights to Howl Sundance's opning film in the narrative section.

Shoreline acquired worldwide rights to its second Latino film Contracorriente (Undertow). It had acquired Zona Sur (Southern District) which is also showing in Sundance at Ventana Sur in November and last year acquired La Nana (The Maid) at Sundance.

Paramount Vantage acquired Davis Guggenheim's new documentary about the crisis in public education in the U.S. Waiting for Superman which was developed, financed and executive produced by Participant Media who backed Guggenheim's previous doc An Inconvenient Truth.

Visit acquired worlwide rights to The Taqwarcores before its Sundance premiere.

Wild Bunch licensed U.S. rights to Gaspar Noe’s Sundance 2010 feature Enter the Void to IFC in the firs pre-Sundance deal.

from: http://sydneysbuzz.blogspot.com/