“A new paradigm for indie films?”
IndieWire.com has been working through the issue of digital distribution / marketing / finance per indie films pretty much since the collapse of the studios’ specialty divisions. In this article, they focus on an indie film that is opening today: Breaking Upwards:
New York, NY, March 29, 2009 — A few hundred film folks spent much of a sunny New York City Saturday indoors at Columbia University this weekend. Dubbed, “The Conversation,” the all-day symposium at Columbia’s Uris Hall was the latest event aimed at exploring the future of the entertainment industry, particularly for emerging and indie movie makers.
Throughout the day filmmakers seemed at odds over a number of issues. Case in point, some resist the idea that they need to spend more time marketing and distributing their own movies. Others reject advice that they should to consider their ultimate audience for a movie, and sometimes distribution plans, even before they start shooting their films. Still others in attendance groused that journalists are spending more time focusing on the business and process of making and releasing movies, rather than the films themselves.
Well, in my column this week, here we go again…
Like it or not, generally speaking, fewer companies are paying sizable advances to buy rights for films. Distributors are often spending less money to market their films. So, what’s an indie filmmaker to do? How do you sustain yourself?
How do you sustain yourself? Digital technologies have created enormous opportunities to produce and even distribute movies for even the most threadbare filmmaker. But is there any sort of business model which can provide a clear line to profitability?
Witness Daryl Wein’s “Breaking Upwards.”
Opening in New York City and on VOD this week (with more theatrical cities to follow), the 2009 SXSW title was showcased with a whopping full newsprint page profile in the New York Times on Sunday morning. But, the exposure came at a cost. Will the article, as well as other media attention and guerrilla outreach from the filmmakers themselves, be enough to put the film over the top with audiences?
According to the Times feature, Wein and his co-writer/producer/star Zoe Lister-Jones flipped their $40,000 advance from IFC Films and invested it into building a release plan (and awareness) for their feature film.
“They plowed that money into promotion and marketing, and ‘Breaking Upwards’ is scheduled to open in theaters in Los Angeles and San Francisco later next month, even though it will already be available through video on demand. But some colleagues in the micro-budget world disagree and no longer bother to seek a traditional theatrical release.”
Theatrical release or no theatrical release? That’s one question. Marketing is a related one because presumably a theatrical release may help to build consumer awareness — but not necessarily.
IFC Films’ costs for the movie — on top of the minimum guarantee for the filmmakers — could be as much $50,000 or more. That’s just a guess: $25,000 to encode it for VOD? A distribution fee at $25,000 to cover their own overhead, publicity, promotion, etc? That’s certainly customary. These seem to be standard costs for such a release these days. Maybe more? The filmmakers and the distributor could certainly be spending even higher amounts on this release.
So, the film is now available on VOD at a price point of $5.99 standard definition and $6.99 high definition. I don’t know the typical standard versus high def split for VOD customers, so I’ll just calculate a $6 digital price point for the movie rental. And, based on data gathered from other panel discussions in recent months, it’s safe to estimate that about half of that amount goes to the cable operator. That’s $3 per customer to be delivered to IFC Films.
That means, 30,000 people need to buy “Breaking Upwards” on VOD for IFC Films to make back my own estimated costs of its initial release of the film ($40K advance + $50K additional costs). That’s a bit higher than Ryan Werner’s aforementioned 25,000 number for a modest VOD success. Once it makes back the distributor costs and the revenues exceed the minimum guarantee, the buyer and the filmmaker would split additional revenues per their sale agreement.
Now, these potential revenues are from the VOD window alone. Not included in my calculation are theatrical revenues for the movie. And, unknown is whether it will also be released on DVD and in a subsequent cable TV window, not to mention foreign sales. Thus my assessment that “Breaking Upwards” has a shot at breaking even.
30,000 people to buy the movie on VOD to break even. It the era of The Long Tail, seems like that should be easy, right? Yet that still requires a successful marketing scheme to break through all the ‘noise’ that confronts consumers every second of every day.
Whatever other projects Daryl Wein and Zoe Lister-Jones have on their plate, though, they’ve invested time and money in the hope that when all is said and done the costs will pay off somehow, either as a calling card, a business investment, or both.
“In this market I think the battle continues,” Zoe Lister-Jones told the New York Times. “It feels like a huge success that we’ve made this movie and sold it and that it will have a theatrical release and will be on V.O.D. and all these things. But I think we’ve encountered how hard it is still, even with a calling card like this, to get any money, to see any money. We’re still a risk, sadly.”
The trailer for Breaking Upward
The movie’s website here.
The NY Times review here.
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