Can filmmakers “do it themselves”?
John Anderson has an interesting article about DIY distribution in the New York Times today (30 July 2008). Following the story of “Bottle Shock” — left standing at the Awards Platform at Sundance with no distributors in pursuit — the filmmaker decides to go it alone, DIY, Do-It-Yourself. Anderson writes: “Options for the indie filmmaker are evaporating. … [And those that are left] don’t usually spend the kind of money necessary to assure public awareness and ticket sales. This, in turn, virtually precludes entree to the racks at Wal-Mart or Blockbuster, outlets without which a film’s post-theatrical existence will be one of obscurity.”
He goes on to write that the filmmakers of “Bottle Shock” have hired a distribution consultant, hired a booking and distribution agent, and are managing the publicity effort themselves. He notes that DVD deals with Fox and NetFlix are intended to help not only with DVD but with front end marketing as well. And to top it off, Anderson reports that the filmmaker “raised most of the money for filmmaking and prints and advertising through private investors.”
Anderson gives a very good summary of the old model in this case study, and he highlights the anxiety, frustration and risk that filmmakers feel about having to engage in such activity.
But all these efforts are not going to work for this film — or any other similar film either, and here’s why.
Let’s suppose Paramount has “Shrek 3″ and it does $300 million at the box office. And then the day comes and their home video divisions sells 30 million DVDs. And then later, PictureHouse releases “La Vie En Rose” with the Oscar winning actress Marion Cotillard. It does $11 million at the box office, about 3.5 percent of Shrek. Will they do 3.5 percent times 30 million units in DVD sales? On my calculator, that’s 1.1mm discs.
Not a chance. At best, including shipments to Canada (lumped in as North America to make the numbers better) they did 100 thousand.
In shorthand, the relationship between theatrical box office and DVD sales is not linear. And if you have a perfectly fine independent film, and it does $5mm, you’ll do way less than 50 thousand pieces in DVD, perhaps 25 percent or less what the $11mm film did. This game is heavily stacked in favor of the big guys, the box office winners.
There are lots of reasons for this, throughout the distribution system that characterizes the old model. Advertising and publicity are more cost efficient for the big film. And when the big film gets on the retailer sales shelf, it will stay there because it’s selling. The little film, if it’s unlucky, will get on the shelf and then get quickly returned to its dealer (which is penalized by fees) because it didn’t sell fast enough.
There’s a lot of resistance to the realities of the market, and companies close and investors lose money because they didn’t pay attention. The business needs a new model, but if all DIY is is a smaller version of the blockbuster studio program, then that’s not going to do it. We have to break the mold, change the way we think about theaters, and focus on independent film audiences.
November 24th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Yes! Filmmakers can do it themselves.
Musician must be more fearless are less controlled, because they stepped up to the indie model years ago. Not to say there aren’t a few filmmakers doing it, “but come on” all it’s going to take is a few well known filmmakers to set up a website, go get a paypal streaming video player from Filmmakershelp.com “same technology that the big networks are using” and start self distributing via PPV, down loads, and DVD next the world will follow the idea that great content can be found on the web, and they can get a high quality viewing experience, with out the wait or the drive to the video store.
The way I see it, some big guys are going to lose, and the profits and control could be given to the filmmakers, then Hollywood and Netflix are out in the cold.
November 27th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Michael … thanks for your note. We’re actually going to work on this issue as a statement. The issue is not the business issue because whatever else happens, we believe your general conclusion is right. The issue as I see it is that filmmakers need business partners who can — in partnership with them — introduce their work to a broad audience. There will be folks who “go it alone”, and among them, there will be those who get “discovered” and who subsequently find themselves the focus of a larger audience. This is a long and unpredictable process, however, and I think we can do better.