My best wishes to everyone this holiday.
Over the next couple of weeks we'll be using this down time to perform some site maintenance, open a few gifts, and drink way too much egg nog. I look forward to talking to everyone in 2007.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

It’s been 18 months since the Digital Cinema Initiative (think “studios”) put forth the digital-cinema standards. A lot has been accomplished in the past year and a half. About ten-percent (10%) of all US screens have been equipped with the necessary hardware (hard drive storage, computer server, and projectors). Many more – perhaps a third of all screens – will go digital in the next couple of years.

The promise for indie filmmakers is great. Hope is high. Digital cinema should give indie filmmakers a meaningful shot at self-distribution. The initial transfer from digital to film can easily reach $50,000. I can cost an additional $2,500 for a single 35mm film print. That price goes down the more prints you produce.

Digital cinema, the thinking goes, should substantially cut costs.

Encoding a digital project into the DCI standard is relatively inexpensive. I’ve received quotes from post houses as low as $2,500. You should budget $7,500 for most non-CGI intensive projects. This is in addition to your normal post costs.

The cost of delivering the digital cinema package (DCP) to each theater gets a little more complex with options including satellite communications, telephonic-ISDN downloads, and physical delivery of hard drives. Budget $600 per theatre for delivery. Although one company – I can’t mention their name or price for contractual reasons – is substantially cheaper. They also seem to be very together technically.

Clearly there are some substantial cost savings by going digital. Not to mention the savings in production costs. (Based upon my personal experience as an indie filmmaker, shooting a digital format instead of film can save 30% on a low budget shoot.)

The problem, however, has never really been a technical one. The final DCI specs offered only a surprise or two (such as the use of Jpeg2000 as the compression format). The real problem was: who’s going to pay for all the new gee-whiz hardware. It costs approximately $100,000 to equip a single screen.

And this is the problem for indie filmmakers.

For a time it looked like the studios might finance the digital rollout. For legal and financial reasons the corporate chieftains that rule the Hollywood studios said, “No.” The theaters were never really interested in footing the bill for converting existing theaters. So the industry looked to vendor financing. The companies installing the new equipment would provide financing.

How? These companies would install the new equipment at no cost to the theater, then charge the studios a fee for each digital screen they used. Essentially the vendors would rent their equipment to the studios on a per-screen basis. That makes sense since it is the studios that reap the lion share of the benefit from digital distribution.
Unfortunately, this means that indie filmmakers who are seeking independent distribution will also be faced with this per screen charge. This charge will vary from circuit to circuit and vendor to vendor. The charge itself is not unreasonable. Someone has to foot the bill and the vendors are taking the financial risk. Again for legal reasons I can’t be more specific about these charges.

The great hope that digital distribution would bring some measure of parity to theatrical distribution has pretty much gone from the digital promise to the big lie. Hopefully, with initiatives like AMC’s Select program, theater owners and technology vendors will provide a little relief for independent filmmakers. Don’t hold your breath.

A picture is worth a thousand words. And a good movie poster is worth, well, a lot. The poster is on the frontline in the battle for your movie dollar. So how come the posters often suck? In part, because it ain’t easy to design a poster that captures the essence of the movie. It’s story, theme, and genre. As indie filmmakers we often overlook the need for the “creatives” as they are call in the ad business.

There are basically two kinds of posters. The first is the star poster. Big faces of big stars capture most of the real estate on these posters. A good example is the poster for the upcoming Jim Carrey film, “The Number 23.” His mug is presented in an unusual way. It captures your attention. It doesn’t really speak to the movie’s story or theme and only hints at the genre.

The second type of poster is the high-concept poster. A key image or art tells the story and genre. Little text is needed to further explain the concept. This kind of poster is worth a thousand words, literally. “Happy Feet” with its dancing penguin was a pretty good effort. The poster says a lot with almost no text.

Will Smith’s new pic, “The Pursuit of Happyness” does a great job of blending both star and story. The poster says the Will Smith stars in a feel-good movie about a man and his son.

Then there’s the poster for the upcoming “Fred Claus.” Personally, I think this is a confusing poster. I don’t like the graphic. On first glance I thought it was a mirror with Santa looking at himself. And there’s a lot of text. Tough to digest the text in 15 seconds or less. By way of shameless promotion, here’s our (prototype) movie poster for our upcoming feature, “I’ve Got Santa.” (Let me know what you think.)

Before you shoot you next independent movie, do yourself a favor and design the poster. You will be surprised how it helps you to focus on what movie you are actually making. There is a great site for posters. It’s impawards.com – they track most movie posters and hand out year-end awards for the best and worst posters. It’s a great source.

One post(er) script: It’s interesting to watch Hollywood promote their wares. Next Friday “The Good Shepherd” opens in theaters, probably in a big way. Big Stars. Adult oriented themes. Intriguing story: the beginning of the CIA. The commercials picture the burly talents of the film’s cast. But what about the director? In what has to be one of the best keep secrets – not even mentioned in the ads or on the poster – is the fact that the director is none other than Robert De Niro. So, why keep it a secret? Bob must be a shy guy.

Reuters is reporting that producer-director Gary Winick and his power-attorney partner, John Sloss are pulling the plug on their six-year old experiment, InDigEnt. By most accounts the production company was a success. The effort produced numerous standout indie films, such as Pieces of April and Tadpole. The company also launched a number of careers, including Winick.

InDigEnt is largely a victim of Winick’s own success. According to Reuters, Winick spent most of the last 2 ½ years directing the studio pic, "Charlotte's Web." This diverted his attention away from his company, which was an innovator in the early days of video-as-film production.

For a read of the full news article click here.

Walt Disney Feature Animation is the latest studio entity to trim staff in an effort to cut costs and boost profitability. The animators – 160 or 20% of the WDFA staff – will hit the bricks. According to Variety, no cuts are expected at Disney’s Pixar unit. These cuts come on top of the nearly three thousand employees axed from studio lots in recent months. For a look at what it means to indie filmmakers get out this prior post.