Last summer indieWIRE hosted a panel discussion in New York on how film distribution has changed since the site launched in 1996.
Hosted by Editor-in-Chief Dana Harris, the following people were involved:
- Richard Abramowitz – Founder & CEO of indie distributor Abramorama (Anvil!, Exit Through the Gift Shop)
- Amy Heller – President at Milestone Films
- Bingham Ray – Formerly of October Films who sadly passed away in January
- Bob Berney – Formerly of FilmDistrict and Picturehouse (involved in releasing Memento and The Passion of the Christ)
- Ira Deutchman – Managing Partner of Emerging Pictures and formerly of Fine Line
- Mark Urman – Formerly of thinkFILM and now of Paladin
- Arianna Bocco – Acquisitions and Production at IFC Films
- Jeanne Berney – Formerly of FilmDistrict
Amongst the topics they talk about, include:
- How the speed of release has changed
- The death of regional film critics
- How critical influence is now in the hands of a small group of critics (e.g. NY Times, Ebert, David Germain of the AP)
- The inflation of theatrical ticket prices
- How Secrets and Lies and Breaking the Waves would never make today the money they did back in 1996
- How genuine indie movies like Exit Through The Gift Shop have to be more aggressive with advance screenings
- A bad review in the Village Voice follows you to 17 other cities as they syndicate their reviews
- Insidious cost $800,000 to make but by directly engaging the horror audience (e.g. filmmaker Q&As and horror websites) it lasted 14 weeks in its theatrical run.
- How TV sales for foreign films are non-existent now
- The role of Netflix
- Tablets as TVs
- DVD is disappearing quicker than streaming is filling the void
- How the interface of systems like VOD systems like iTunes and Netflix is a huge issue
- The problem of VOD tracking numbers, compared to VHS and theatrical (a paradox which show how dominant players like to keep data to themselves)
- How Bingham Ray was asked to ‘bump up’ the sales figures of an early Jim Carrey film (!)
- How does an older audience more comfortable with print media cope with the death
- Younger audiences not wanting to pay for films like The Human Centipede or Black Dynamite
- How getting out of the house for a communal experience is what is going to keep cinema alive
- ‘Eventising’ (e.g. live Q&As beamed by satellite across the country)
- How younger musicians are wanting to compose music for silent films
- The rise and fall of the indie bubble coinciding with indieWIRE’s existence
- How now is a time when “anything is possible and nothing works” (a quote from Richard Lorber)
- The ever changing distribution landscape
> What indieWIRE looked like in 1996
> More on film distribution at Wikipedia