What’s that I see? Glimmers of hope in the distance? Mixed in with some lingering bad news? Readers know I think we have a long ways to go ‘til we completely recover, but a couple news items did give me some optimism this past week, although that optimism is tempered slightly by one big reality check.
First, the silver linings that hint at good things ahead for the business. As Sundance ended, the news announcements of acquisitions kept hitting the press, and not just for Sundance films. Now, I am biased here, because I am very pleased to announce that Samuel Goldwyn Films acquired a film I produced – The Outside Story – which hit the press this week. So we’re a little giddy around the virtual office, even if this one was in the works since September, and it was just the announcement that hit this week. But in waiting for the press to drop, I was checking Deadline more than usual, and the sheer number of acquisitions announcements, from the majors to the smaller distributors, was pretty impressive. Talk to any sales agent or producer off the record, and most will admit there was a big lull between March of 2020 and around September, when probably because of TIFF, buyers started waking up again. But between then and now, distributors and platforms are clearly gearing up for what they see as pent-up demand in the market, and many friends who have films premiering at SXSW soon report that their sales agents seem much more upbeat about sales prospects. There are some bad signs too – more on those in a moment – but one can’t ignore that the market seems to be moving again.
Second, news came in from China that audiences showed up at theaters in droves over the past Lunar New Year Holiday there. There’s a lot of caveats here, principally that they’ve controlled the virus so much better than us so people feel safe to go to theaters, but the notion that consumers somehow got used to streaming and will have forgotten theaters is being proven wrong (which I’ve been saying, along with many others). Of course, there was nothing else to do, as the Government was curtailing many other activities, being cautious of another outbreak, masks were required and concessions remained closed – things we can’t even consider here in the USA. But audiences proved that even boring movies were of interest to people tired of being stuck in front of their own screens. This is great news for cinemas in the US – if they can hold on a little bit longer.
Of course, not everything looks great, and over at Filmmaker Magazine, Anthony Kaufman had a sobering report about some big changes at Amazon Prime. It seems that Amazon Prime Video Direct - a service where any filmmaker and many distributors could upload their content to Amazon Prime pretty easily, has suddenly cut off that ability for anyone uploading shorts and documentaries. As the article explains, people are a little freaked out.
The reality is that many distributors will still be able to make some kind of deal to distribute documentaries (who knows for shorts?), but they'll have to work with some other aggregator, or be approved in some fashion, and the extra headache is not needed when times are tough already. The bigger impact will be on anyone doing "DIY" or direct distribution, and it will inevitably lead to less indie docs and shorts being on the service. And without that guarantee of being available on Amazon Prime, many distributors (especially small to mid-tier ones) won’t be able to make the same offers for films. As the article states: “According to distributors, Amazon’s Prime Video Direct service—with its access to both TVOD and SVOD streams—could account for as much 40% of a film’s overall revenue. Another distributor noted that individual non-fiction titles have generated well into the six figures from the service. “It can be very significant,” he said.” I've already read social media posts from filmmakers discussing deals that were suddenly called off in the wake of this announcement, which is a bad sign.
So all of those sales I mentioned as a silver lining above… the smaller ones could be threatened by this change. And while many distributors say they'll rely more on their own VOD offerings to make up for the absence, there's a lot of the world that only shops for film on Amazon Prime, and not being there is missing a huge audience. This is doubly true for DIY indies, who are now missing one of their biggest options to get into SVOD and not just into homes via services like Vimeo.
That's a pretty big deal, but it’s also an another sign of the times – that the major VOD services just don’t see much value in indie docs or shorts, and as the article implies, even less so if they may bring any kind of controversy that could cost Amazon (or the other services) more than they’re “worth.” We’ve already been seeing this in the marketplace more generally – docs on tough subjects, and especially those that touch on things like, say, politics in China, are just not easy to sell. Not that they ever were, but for the past few years, there was a window where tough docs could find a home in VOD and SVOD. Now it would seem that Netflix, Amazon et al. want true crime, romance, how-to and health and well-being, or as I have said before – things that feel more like Discovery than POV. And lest you think this is just some evil decision, I am pretty sure it's also based on data showing low performance, which means we need to think about the films being made too (like it or not).
While that’s not a good sign for the health of our field – or our democracy – I’ll try to end this on one last positive note, and a thought. This week, I participated in the Slamdance Zoom Hot Tub party for filmmakers and alumni. The Hot Tub party always sounds much more salacious than it has ever been in reality, and that was definitely true in Zoom land. The party is more about getting filmmakers together to talk about what’s next – with their films, and with their careers, and it’s really about building community. It mostly worked – and that’s a good thing about the better festivals during Covid – they can still help you find your tribe. Filmmakers premiering their first short at Slamdance met with alumni filmmakers zooming in from as far away as the Philippines (an Oscar nominee on a beach, no less), and with others who had been rejected from the festival, only to serve as jurors later, and with still others who had met their spouses at the festival (two couples on this zoom alone… wait, maybe it is salacious). Advice was traded, tips of the trade and of survival were given, and emails were shared. The new filmmakers joined a community, and hopefully it will lead to new films, some collaborations and maybe a marriage or two.
That’s what Slamdance has been doing since 1995 – offering an alternative home for those who didn’t get into the other Dance. Of course, the old animosities between those two fests are long gone, and plenty of filmmakers have gone back and forth, playing different films at either festival depending on the luck of the draw each year. But at its heart, Slamdance was about some filmmakers who had been rejected by the gatekeepers coming together to build an alternate reality, and it got me thinking that we need a new reality now, too.
Near the end of the Hot Tub Zoom, as we were getting all wrinkly, Slamdance co-founder/director Peter Baxter asked me to comment on what I see ahead for 2021, and what these filmmakers should be doing. Among other things, I told them that some small percentage of them will likely get an offer for their film that is worth considering – the lucky few. But most of them will find a lot of uninterested gate-keepers. The bigger dynamics in the field – that the SVODs are moving towards more original content and less buying of completed films, and the fact that Amazon is closing its doors to more docs and shorts per the article mentioned above – makes it a time to take a page from Slamdance and build their own alternative. Put together a group of like-minded filmmakers and curated films from the fest, and build their own “festival” tour that they brand, take on tour and use the power of their joint mailing lists and social fan base to build their own audience. Or build something else new, because the current reality kinda sucks. It’s a time for collaboration, for new business models, and new ways of connecting with fans. If the gatekeepers don’t want you – build your own thing.
This in itself is not new. It's the topic of nearly every filmmaker conversation I log onto lately, and it's been taking place since indies became a "thing." See below for a write-up on Doug Block’s The Heck With Hollywood, which is about a similar time-period and a not dissimilar situation, where filmmakers had to build their own alternative. The more things change… So I look forward to what new gets built in 2021 – the system is showing some signs of life and hope for the future, but it’s also in need of some mavericks, building something new.
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 I don't usually plug individual screenings, but I think this one is a must-watch event - not just the screening, but the conversation afterwards. In light of the current state of the market (see above, and this newsletter generally), and coming just after Dear Producer's Sustainability report, it's a good time to revisit the reality that was indie film before the SVODs, before the Net "ruined" film via piracy and all that other garbage. I'm also eager to see just how rosy a picture the panelists paint in light of all this - and how much they'll acknowledge the realities shown so clearly in this film, and that remain true today.
From the organizers: No Budget Film Club presents a special 30th Anniversary Screening plus live virtual Discussion/Q&A of Doug Block’s seminal documentary about Independent Filmmaking, The Heck With Hollywood! Shot over 4 years in the late 80’s and released to critical acclaim in 1991, Block’s landmark film follows three first-time, low-budget filmmakers as they navigate the treacherous waters of making and distributing a feature film circa 1987, just before the American Independent Filmmaking Movement took off in the early 90’s. The 10-day virtual screening window will be followed by a lively virtual discussion with Block and each of the filmmakers he followed, now nearly 35 years after making their first films. The event will also include a discussion of the indie film industry then and now with industry veterans Sam Kitt, who was formerly President of Production for Spike Lee’s 40 Acres and a Mule, and Peter Broderick, who is considered one of the leading distribution consultants in the world. The discussion will be moderated by longtime indie producer Mark Stolaroff, founder of No Budget Film School.
The virtual screening window runs February 19th - March 1st and the live Discussion is on Monday, March 1st at 4pm PST (7pm EST). Tickets for the Screening + Discussion are $10, but Sub-Genre subscribers are entitled to a special $3 discount. Just use the Promo Code SUBGENRE at checkout. For more information, click here.
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Branded Content
Indeed & Lena Waithe launch ‘Rising Voices’ Initiative To Showcase BIPOC Filmmakers: Deadline reports on this great new project to fund the creation of ten short films, and the budgets are good, and it includes covid-protection support, mentoring and line producing from Hillman Grad productions - and one winner gets a film residency to make ongoing content for the brand. The CEO of Indeed, Chris Hyams, used to have a film distribution/marketing company of sorts, so it's great to see him joining with the amazing Lena Waithe to support some rising filmmaking talent. More details are here.
Authenticity in Storytelling with Jesse Roesler - Emmy-winning filmmaker, Jesse Roesler joins Sarah Panus of the Marketing with Empathy Podcast to discuss: Authenticity in storytelling; Documentary film; How to find great stories; When to use video; Components of emotional filmmaking; Power of music/sound; Brands as publishers & filmmakers; Best practices for brands partnering w/filmmakers. I met Jesse through the brand film world, and then in person at the Brand Storytelling events, and just found this podcast because he let me know that he gave me a small plug towards the end, but I genuinely found the material interesting and helpful - it even helped me with a client project I was doing this week. Listen here.
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Miscellany:
Australia is all A-Twitter over A New Rule for How News Publishers Get Compensated - From the getting complicated department... Australia's government just passed a new "bargaining agreement" which essentially forces platforms like Google and Facebook to pay news publishers for content (I'm grossly simplifying things here). And Facebook and Google took dramatically different approaches.
Google Is Starting to Pay for News (links) in Australia - The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Google is entering agreements with some Australian publishers to pay for content that shows up in search and news results, reaching this agreement just before the law passed. In this particular case, they're paying the owner of several newspapers about $30M to show results from behind paywalls in search (the terms aren't exactly clear).
At the same time, Facebook decided to just drop all links to news and ban all publishers and users from sharing news content. Wow. Predictably, people flipped out. Especially given that the ban included State health and hospitals who were reporting on the Covid-vaccine roll-out and other important health news.
This is gonna be sorting itself out for awhile. It's not clear cut - Tim Berners-Lee even says the new law will break the internet (while The Conversation says there's an easy fix for that), and there will need to be some compromise here. But I'm betting Google's negotiating tactics will win out over Facebook's strong-arm, and this could be a sign of something that will become a norm across the world as more governments look into legislation around how Google and Facebook do/n't showcase and pay for content. (h/t to my friend James Mullighan for this one).
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