digital distribution

This week, YouTube launched The Screening Room, an area of the site that will showcase eight new short films every month, and the occasional full-length feature. In the first crop are films written by Miranda July, directed by cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel, and starring Kevin Pollak.From the press release:People will be able to communicate directly with filmmakers to share thoughts, exchange opinions with fans, and provide honest feedback using YouTube's features to comment, rate, and share films. The YouTube Screening Room will also include a "Buy Now" button, allowing filmmakers to link to websites selling DVDs and digital downloads of their films, as well as a High Quality player, which offers users the best viewing experience possible.YouTube is sharing ad revenue with filmmakers based on how many people watch their work, explains Sara Pollack, who manages the company's filmmaker relationships.

Sony Pictures Television is launching a new series on the Web, 'Angel of Death,' with the hope that it'll do well later as a DVD. Budget is $1 million, and it'll be shown in eight-minute chunks online, according to the Wall Street Journal.From Sarah McBride's piece:In addition to generating some ad revenue on the Web, Sony hopes that launching the show online will translate into strong sales for the DVD, much as a good start in theaters builds DVD sales for feature movies."We're not expecting to make all our money back in that initial [online] window," says Sean Carey, senior executive vice president, Sony Pictures Television.Key for these bigger-budget Web series will be getting them distributed on lots of sites, and sparking some geniune Internet buzz around them. (I feel like the only things I heard about 'quarterlife' and 'Prom Queen' was from mainstream media articles about them.)

When Amazon sold out of Kindle e-book readers after just a few days, I was skeptical: they'd never announced how many were available in that first production run. Was it 100? 1000? A million?Now, we've got the same situation with Roku's new $99 set-top box that delivers "Watch It Now" streaming movies from Netflix: they're sold out, according to the San Jose Mercury News, but no one will say just how many were available.So does it matter that Roku is "sold out" of its set-top box? Or is this just a PR gambit to make the device seem "hot"?(Or maybe it's a manufacturing snafu: Roku says it'll take six to eight weeks to clear up the backlog, according to the Silicon Valley Business Journal.)

re:frame launches today - an effort to digitize important and rare movies and make them available as DVDs or digital downloads. It's an initiative of the Tribeca Film Institute, and the partner for delivering the downloads and DVDs is Amazon.com.The NY Times writes:The approximately 500 works initially available range from the works of the filmmaker Sally Potter, beginning with her 1979 short “Thriller,” to collections of little-known documentaries from various archives. Some of those will be available to purchase only on DVD, because rights are controlled by commercial distributors.

Renting movies and watching them within 24 hours is great for people who:- Never fall asleep during a movie- Don't have children- Don't receive phone calls that interrupt a movie- Don't ever remember that there's a live broadcast (like a sporting event) that they'd rather be watching, mid-way through a movieBut a new partnership between TiVo and Disney dictates that, while you can now rent some Disney movies and have them delivered directly to your TiVo, you must watch them within 24 hours. If you start at 8 PM, they vanish by 8 PM the next night. Here's the Variety coverage.

The NY Times runs a feature today about John Sloss and Cinetic Rights Management.Brooks Barnes writes:John Sloss is one of the top sales agents for independent films. Mr. Sloss, 52, has handled the sale of such diamonds in the rough as “Little Miss Sunshine,” the perky 2006 film about a family traveling to a children’s beauty pageant. He sold the $8 million project to Fox Searchlight for $10.5 million, setting a festival price record that still holds.Now Mr. Sloss and his New York company, Cinetic Media, are rolling out a new business called Cinetic Rights Management. The executive and his team — he just hired Matt Dentler, the highly regarded director of the South by Southwest film festival — will act as sales agents for filmmakers who have been left on the sidelines.

Apple has been famously inflexible about pricing on iTunes: TV shows are $1.99, songs 99 cents. (NBC flew the coop last year over Apple's unwillingness to alter that policy.)So now Apple is changing the rules, to be able to add HBO shows to its library (only when they are released on DVD.)From the Wall Street Journal's coverage:...It's the first time HBO has agreed to sell downloads of individual episodes of its shows. And Apple, in a departure, has agreed to charge more than its uniform price of $1.99 per television episode.

I spent some time on the phone today with three of the folks involved in building Cinetic Media’s new digital rights group, called Cinetic Rights Management. They wanted to supply a bit more background on the group, which seeks to help indie filmmakers wring the most possible value from their work by selling it to satellite companies, Internet portals, mobile phone operators, etc.

'Cult of Sincerity' is the first full-length film to debut on YouTube. ('Four Eyed Monsters,' you'll recall, played the festival circuit and in independent theaters before it showed up on the 'Tube.)When you watch the full-length version on YouTube, there's a lengthy, infomercial-like intro that explains that, if you sign up for an account on the music site AmieStreet.com, the filmmakers get $2. (You'll also get two free songs from AmieStreet.) If you actually buy a $3 credit on AmieStreet to get more music, you get a free downloadable version of the film.Here's how co-director Adam Browne describes the movie in an e-mail he sent to me (and presumably, other bloggers):“The Cult of Sincerity” is an off-beat look at life after college.

SXSW Film Festival head Matt Dentler is heading to New York to help run the rights management division of Cinetic Media. Here's the Variety coverage and here's IndieWIRE's report. Dentler posted just a short note about the new gig on his blog.Cinetic Media, founded by attorney John Sloss, is one of the best-known rep firms in the independent film world. They've handled the sales of titles like 'Supersize me,' 'Bowling for Columbine,' 'Little Miss Sunshine,' and 'Napoleon Dynamite.'Dentler and Cinetic have an interesting challenge ahead of them.

Great piece in Variety from Anne Thompson on new ways of marketing and distributing niche documentaries. She focuses mainly on two sports docs, 'In the Crease' and 'Kicking It.' From the piece:In March 2005, Matt Gannon and Michael Sarner, former acquisition and marketing execs at Fox Searchlight and United Artists, respectively, put their passion for ice hockey into financing and shooting their first film, "In the Crease." The digital video doc is an underdog story of the California Wave Bantam AAA travel hockey team's two-year quest to win a national championship."We set out to do 'Spellbound' for sports fans," says Gannon.

- Sony Pictures Television is developing PIX, the first movie network for mobile phones. It'll be available on the recently-announced AT&T Mobile TV service in May. From the Hollywood Reporter piece:Sony eventually might convert PIX to an on-demand model and might take the brand online as well. The full-length linear strategy is just one of many different content plays with which the studio is experimenting. "We're not doubling down and saying it's only about longform," [Sony VP Eric] Berger said.

Just finished having a late lunch in San Jose with bicycle-riding auteur/sage/animator M dot Strange.

One of the topics we touched on was artists (whether they're musicians, filmmakers, writers, photographers, whatever) who've been pioneers, in terms of cultivating an audience online. (If you have thoughts, post them in the comments here -- this is for my current writing project.)

He pointed me to the video of this talk he gave in Berlin recently, "Adventures in Self-Distribution." (In his usual humble way, of course.)

Then Jarod Neece of SXSW e-mailed to let me know they've just posted a mess of podcasts from this year's panels, including "Video Production for the Web and Mobile Devices," "Quit Your Day Job and Vlog," and two I moderated, "Digital Cinema for Indies" and "Animation and Digital Effects on a Budget."

- The NY Times offers some interesting data about how people consume video online: the 20 percent of viewers who watch the most video view more than 140 times as much of it as the 50 percent who watch the least. With data from comScore and Media Contacts, the Times found that the top 20 percent of viewers see 841 minutes (or 14 hours) of video every month, on average. The bottom 50 percent watch just six minutes a month.

- The Times also has a very smart examination of how studios are trying to sustain their DVD sales -- both high-def and standard-def. Brooks Barnes and Matt Richtel write:

Anne Thompson of Variety has a blog posting and a column that together offer a very thorough update on alternative distribution.

Madonna recently said that she's planning to explore Internet distribution options for her directorial debut, 'Filth & Wisdom,' and lesser-known directors like Matt Gannon and Michael Sarner have been figuring out how to use Amazon's CreateSpace to generate serious revenues. (They've grossed more than $500K on their hockey doc 'In the Crease,' they say.)

A tentative deal between writers and producers was reached on Saturday; work in Hollywood could resume as soon as Wednesday. The big win for the Writer's Guild of America was securing a percentage of revenues when shows and movies are delivered online (rather than receiving a fixed fee.)

Cynthia Littleton of Variety has some thoughtful analysis of what the WGA strike meant to TV and screenwriters, in economic terms. She writes:

For the WGA, it was all about setting precedent and cementing the idea that scribes deserve to be paid for Internet exploitation of their work. More specifically, they wanted a deal that paid them a percentage of distributor's gross, on the principle that "when you get paid, we get paid."

Jack Truman is a Missouri filmmaker whose short, "Phone Sex Grandma," played at Slamdance in 2006. (It stars his mom, disturbingly enough.) Truman also had a documentary short shown at Slamdance this year.

Here's his distribution strategy for "Phone Sex Grandma": put it up for free on YouTube (an ad plays briefly on the bottom of the screen), and offer viewers the opportunity to buy the short at iPod definition or DVD definition -- in digital form, without DRM -- from B-Side Entertainment. (It may also be available somewhere on B-Side's site as a physical DVD you can order ... but I couldn't find that.)

Portable Film Festival is a no-nonsense, straight-talking, and sleekly put together Australian initiative. It does exactly what it suggests: showcasing mobile films.

Voting finishes tomorrow on the festival selection.