The Indie Is Alive and Well, Thank You!
There’s been a lot of buzz around a recent LA Times article in the filmmaker world, especially sad news if you believe the line, “if you decide to make a movie budgeted under $10 million on your own tomorrow, you have a 99.9% chance of failure.”
But hurray for screenwriter John August, who’s blog post cleverly lists out a rebuttle and questions, “a failure for whom?”. You have to read the blog post “Sundance, The Nines, and the death of independent film” (come on, it takes two minutes if you are speedy) to appreciate his points back. The abridged version, 1. Sundance buzz is annoying and meaningless 2. Theatrical release is kinda bullshit. 3. The DVD should have come out much sooner, maybe simultaneously. 4. I should have paid a lot more attention to foreign 5. Without an alternative, everyone will just pirate it.
We couldn’t agree with you more John August. Here at Jaman, we know how important the international market is, as our members from around the world attest to.
July 8th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
IndieWire’s Brian Newman offers his own terrific insight on the matter:
“Everyone in the film business seems to be completely aware that the entire marketplace is changing as a result of digital and its attendant changes, and that we better do something or end up just like the music business, but no one seems to be offering any good answers yet. Gill essentially offers two bits of advice – “Make fewer better” (from Goldwyn) and make sure there’s an audience for the films. Well, we all know this, but newsflash – that’s not going to stop the wave of digital crap that Gill thinks has come from the digital revolution. Go ahead and hold your finger in that hole Mark, but the deluge is going to break through. There’s a good chance you’ll make fewer films, but not much that the world will.”
Much more in the link.