Eugene Hernandez

Today, even as sales reps continue to compete this week to sign a new crop of Sundance movies, filmmakers are pondering alternate solutions. Directors and producers are wondering how to immediately make the most of success at a large festival, what to do if they go there and their film doesn’t become an immediate “hit” and how to strategize a film that didn’t get into the festival in the first place. With 113 feature films invited to screen at the upcoming Sundance Film Festival, from more than 3,700 that were submitted, the cycle begins again but with new approaches being considered.

“There will be sales at Sundance,” a high-profile film seller assured me over breakfast last week, hours before the Sundance Film Festival lineup was announced. But, the insider predicted, big deals will mainly follow a select group of higher profile movies. Smaller films from emerging filmmakers, the movies that are often the most interesting ones to come from festivals like Sundance, SXSW, Tribeca and others, will instead have to puruse a so-called “self-publishing” approach to find an audience and monetize their movie, this person said. Filmmakers will have to drive their own distribution, the respected insider reiterated.

So, with the Sundance 2010 lineup out in the open, established and emerging filmmakers alike are left to explore what happens next. This year it will be interesting to watch how festivals structure themselves as potential outlets for filmmakers who are hoping to immediately make the most of their movies in the marketplace. And how, if at all, the traditional distribution community responds.

An emerging move that has industry folks buzzing is a push by Tribeca Enterprises to position itself in the role of some sort of distributor of movies. Tribeca is looking to secure a crop of new films—as many as ten, according to some insiders—to release them in conjunction with their Spring festival in New York City and beyond. Tribeca insiders are committed to changing the current model, but are not yet ready to talk about plans that are understood to be evolving as they talk with filmmakers and the industry. Observers will certainly be tracking how the formative plans develop.

“Conversations are getting louder about how festivals can and should aggressively help filmmakers use new technologies to reach a broader audience,” new SXSW festival producer Janet Pierson said at the time. Nearly a year later, those conversations have intensified.

Longtime Sundance chief Geoff Gilmore anticipated this activity last year in a first person article for indieWIRE as the festival got underway in January, asking, “Can festivals keep their integrity and even expand their meaningfulness to a range of constituencies? As they move into the future, will cyberspace and other forms of outreach (broadcast, cable etc.) become more a part of festival events in the same way of most sporting events? Will new forms of media become a part of so-called film festivals?”

And just a month later, talking with indieWIRE in the wake of his announcement that he would be leaving the Sundance Institute for Tribeca Enterprises, Gilmore said, “We have to look at what festivals are going to be and we have to look at how that is going to evolve.”

“What Tribeca Enterprises is going to do is be involved in setting up a new paradigm,” Gilmore explained at the time, “The ways that festivals become platforms for new enterprises.”

Geoff,
You make two important points:
1. the major film festival have become industry distribution marts, which gives them diminished relevance or appeal to the film-going public. Which, as you imply, means that the focus is on commerce, not art.
2. Alternative distribution channels created by new technologies have changed the game.

I think there are at least some conclusions that can be made. The virtual extinction of art film houses, couple with the rising competition and cost of acquiring indie films (think of what the early film of the Coens, Soderbergh and Jarmusch sold for) means that no matter how much artistic merit a film has, unless it’s commercial enough to make money for the distributor, it doesn’t have a prayer.

Facing that kind of blocked gateway, young indie filmmakers have found alternative channels, namely the internet. Technology has given them the access to a global market. It’s enabled filmmakers to sell and market their films online, find and build audiences, and even book films in theaters.

It’s not the films that college students are less interested in. It’s the theaters. As far as they’re concerned information, media, and entertainment should be able to be accessed anytime and anywhere. That’s your “long tail”, Geoff. Films distributed digitally online aren’t dependent on a limited run in limited locations. They’re available indefinitely, 24/7. It means that if I make a film about something that’s commercially unmarketable, say about the life cycle of a beehive, there’s still an audience for it somewhere. Bee nerds around the world. So I don’t need to aggregate my bee-loving audience in a single theater on a single day. They can download the film one at a time, all over the world, at their convenience. Longtail.

Look, the music industry spent way too much time and too much energy litigating against teenagers and propping up a dead body, when they could have recognized early on that the “album” model is finis, CDs are ancient history, and the vast majority of the music consuming public wants their music a la carte, not as part of a 12 course prix fixe.

I think it’s the job of film production companies, distribution companies, and film festivals to first admit that the old model isn’t working any more and it’s never going to be the same, and then put some time, money, and effort into figuring out how to dance with the new girl.

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