Hollywood’s new paradigm
Imagine if you were a filmmaker who painstakingly raised funds, shot footage, edited it, and basically gave up a year of your life in making your film. Imagine that you are now making a living selling your work on DVD format from your website.
Now picture this: You get an email one day from a potential customer wanting to buy a DVD of your film – mentioning that they just finished watching your movie, in low-res, for free on Google video.
That’s what happened to filmmaker Gary Hustwit.
Hustwit has a solid record in making quirky and entertaining films. He has produced documentaries, including I Am Trying To Break Your Heart, the award-winning film about the band Wilco; Moog, the documentary about electronic music pioneer Robert Moog; and Drive Well, Sleep Carefully, a tour film about the band Death Cab for Cutie.
His latest film, the award-winning Helvetica, is a fantastic look at the world’s favorite font. If anyone could make a font fascinating and make the subject matter interesting it’s Hustwit.
It’s interesting how Hustwit responded on his blog about having his movie being shown for free. The argument from many posters was that more people will see the film in low-res then would want to actually purchase the film later.
In a post titled, On Google Video and the New Paradigm, Gary’s response was this:
Tens of thousands of people watched the film free on Google in the past two days (it was the #1 most watched video today). Do you know how many people have emailed asking how they can support the film? Two people. There’s been no increase in traffic to this site, and no change in our normal daily mail order sales.
Gary makes a great point. He makes no money when someone illegally uploads his work and the chances aren’t very good that people who watched it for free will suddenly get the urge to buy it. Sure, he uses YouTube to show clips from the movie. It’s a great promotional tool. But hosting the whole film in low-res for free? No way.
If you’re at all interested in the trials that independent filmmakers must go through to get their films shown, read his post and the comments. Though Hustwit is sticking with the traditional means for distribution for now, he ponders on new ways to distribute films and is looking for a better solution.
There’s definitely something brewing in how smaller – and by smaller I mean non-blockbuster Hollywood fodder – filmmakers can actually make their work and profit from it.
It’s an exciting time to be in the middle of it.
