New Alphabet For Indie Fans: IFC-HD-VOD

COMMENTS (11)

• Good thing residuals are built into the SAG low budget contracts. Does anyone know if the last contract rolled these back?

  Comment by SimplyBilly — Wednesday June 17, 2009 @ 3:48pm PDT  Reply to this post

• They’ve been doing this for awhile. Is the news that it is now in HD? Anyway, IFC stopped producing. They only buy finished films. It’s too bad, because it’s one of the best business models going.

  Also, too bad Cablevision is one of the worst companies on the planet.

  Comment by GS — Wednesday June 17, 2009 @ 5:25pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Maybe good for exposure, but I keep hearing that the filmmakers/producers aren’t seeing any real money from the IFC VOD thing…

  Comment by Dixon Steele — Wednesday June 17, 2009 @ 6:18pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Yep, I’ve heard that IFC offers to “buy” the finished films for basically nothing. This gets those truly desperate-for-distribution films to trade a chance at breaking even for some exposure. It also deflates the prices that other distributors have to offer in order to “buy” a film. Basically, anyone who makes a film independently these days can’t hope to break even, which means that even fewer will get financed.

  Comment by its a jungle out there — Wednesday June 17, 2009 @ 7:59pm PDT  Reply to this post

• This is a bold idea and anyone who is an indie minded filmmaker or producer should embrace this wholeheartedly. it takes your 2 or 3 city release and expands it to include an 88 million home televisin platform while also being displayed in pristine quality. it’s the future, embrace and make something of it.

  Comment by AC — Wednesday June 17, 2009 @ 8:01pm PDT  Reply to this post

• As a producer with a title that went out last year on this program:

  1) It is a good way for a film that prospers on the fest circuit, but isn’t going to be picked up otherwise, to get an extended life and a chance to connect with an audience and perhaps help the filmmaker get positioned for a next film.

  2) It is a money-losing proposition for producers because: (a) these kinds of films rarely show up at fests with deliverables in hand, and the purchase prices (as low as $5K as high as $30K) don’t cover making the deliverables; (b) the industrious producer will do do his/her own PR at his/her own cost because the IFC press push is minimal; and, (c) trust me, no matter the raw numbers the film will never earn out.

  It’s great that IFC is piloting something that expands or alters distribution patterns so that smaller films can get seen, but ultimately the financiers and producers are underwriting the experiment.

  Comment by Anonymous — Thursday June 18, 2009 @ 7:51am PDT  Reply to this post

• Anonymous, if you make an indie that is provocotive and therefore allows you to cast an actor who either has indie cred, feature cred or permium television cred, you have a shot to make some dough in home video. in a business wherein recouping your investment is always long term, regardless of a films success, the IFC platform will prove to not only impact, but once impirical evidence exists as to the positive monetary impact of the channel’s distribution exposure, it will increase the value of foreign and give you a library title that will forever kick off revenues. Make enough, and as you know, you’ve got a library to sell some time, let alone a career as a director or producer who makes financially viable indies. Just keep the budgets low and allow people to be as creative as they can inside those budgets and you just might be able to recreate a business that’s been dying by the old rules.

  Comment by Deming Beyer — Thursday June 18, 2009 @ 8:31am PDT  Reply to this post

• From all the snotty nosed readers, to the old money bag, nepotism, power hungry, control freaks! Get used to this movement away from old school Hollywood! The empire is falling.
  The digital age is in the process of rebuilding a new empire!

  All of those Reservoir Dogs screenplays you through in the trash because their was a ten minute dialogue scene for an intro, or maybe by page ten, thirty, sixty, and ninety, the story didn’t fit your formula to become the so called marketable, profitable movie.
  What ever your self absorbed snotty formated concept of a good screenplay has been?
  Soon we ( the thousands of talented dreamers) will be taking over your big budget trash you have forced (We the people) movie lovers to watch.
  Have you ever stopped, stepped back, and looked in the mirror? Asked yourself a question, self, maybe we are the problem? Not the economy, or the bible belt, or what ever your sorry excuses have been.
  The problem is you and your formulas. That system is putting out trash, trash and more trash.
  Movie goers are sick of going to a formulaic movie, because we sub-consciously know the ending and the formulas, because you have puked it out all over us for the last 30 years.
  I hope this makes it’s rounds to all the money bags of Hollywood. The empire is falling!!!

  Comment by Timothy Van Ausdal — Thursday June 18, 2009 @ 10:22am PDT  Reply to this post

• @ Timothy:

  Uh, dude? If filmmakers and producers can’t make a living doing this, no amount of dreaming will make Zee Revolution a success. Dreams are great, but they don’t pay the bills.

  (And if you’re a wannabe writer, some free advice: you won’t sell if you can’t spell.)

  Comment by Luzid — Thursday June 18, 2009 @ 1:40pm PDT  Reply to this post

• To Luzid regarding Timothy,
  Filmmakers will make more money then ever by the falling “Empire”. Because now the dreamers will be able to cultivate an audience in which they will recieve a higher profit margin on return of their dollars. With the cost of technology going down along with the cost of distribution, now content producers have control.
  Example
  Instead of selling worldwide rights for 20 years for $50K and hope of recieving residuals now an artist can grow hiw own audience and recoup his investment and possibly make 10X that over a 20 year time frame.
  example.
  Set up your own VOD network with an Amazon S3 bucket account to hold the content and get someone like E-Junkie and Paypal to allow audience to download your product and at $1.49 you can see a 0.72 cent profit (plus you don’t have to pay anything upfront to set this up) Now after that you get on the grind, use all your promotional material to send your audience to your site to download your film (for the cheap price) and the first year you get 500 purchases which next year leads to 1500 which the next year leads to 2000 and so on because the more people introduced to your film the more people they introduce. It’s the magic of compounding efforts. Basicaly the indie film business is going the way of the insurance buisness where the wealth will be in residual income to count as operating and development cash for future projects.
  But they hope you (indie-filmmakers) don’t have that kind of patience and persistence to see the business model through so they can keep raping you.
  But, also with all this said you still will need great product for any of this to mean a hill of beans.
  Myron Ward
  Follow me on Facebook as I go through the journey of brining my film “Dirty Little Girl” (a story about a teenage girl who falls in love with her father) to reality. Release date set June 2010
  “Dirty Little Girl” facebook fan site.

  Comment by Myron Ward — Thursday June 18, 2009 @ 8:46pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Deming, this all sounds good, and in the theoretical world, it would be true. But unfortunately, that’s just not the way it works. Anonymous is correct. First, you are assuming these companies are honest. Talk to every indie filmmaker who has had their film distributed by an indie distributor and you will hear the same stories–no statements sent, incorrect numbers on the statements, no checks sent, etc. This is how they finance their very low margins. In the case of IFC, their formula works out so that you receive a very small percentage of their take, and yes, that’s after ponying up for deliverables. And the really big problem–they have total control over the domestic distribution of your film for 15 years. You’re not getting that dough from home video, it’s going through a filter, middlemen. IFC is taking ALL the domestic rights for the $5k-$30k for the term, and cross-collateralizing the revenues from the different ancillaries.

  Yes, there is a new world coming (it’s here, actually). It’s where you control the rights to your film and hire companies to do the things you can’t do well yourself. You don’t make an overall deal with a single distributor where you give up all your rights and control over your film. You hire a company in a service deal to do your theatrical; you pick a video company to do your home video; you sell video directly to your audience off your website, keeping the names and email addresses of those who purchased your film so you can cultivate them for the next film. IFC stealing the rights to your film so they can profit off their VOD network is not the new world of distribution.

  Comment by MS — Friday June 19, 2009 @ 2:32am PDT  Reply to this post