Independent producers
As the rules governing the film landscape continue to shift, professionals from all corners of the industry wonder how to define 'independent.'

By Anne Thompson

As last year's screener-ban controversy proved, the world can change with amazing speed. In an instant, the rift between the major studios, which manufacture big-budget global event movies, and their specialty subdivisions, which make modest-scale movies for adults, became painfully apparent. What's more, a series of events nearly unprecedented in Hollywood only served to underscore the fact that the indie scene is no longer in stasis:
" In February, starlet Charlize Theron wins the best actress Oscar for playing a serial killer in "Monster," a $5 million title from rookie filmmaker Patty Jenkins funded by Media 8 Entertainment and Blockbuster Inc.'s DEJ Prods. and released by independent upstart Newmarket Films. The movie grosses $34.5 million domestically.
" A $30 million foreign-language religious film -- "The Passion of the Christ," directed and financed by Mel Gibson -- becomes the highest-grossing indie movie in Hollywood history. Gibson's Icon Entertainment uses conservative media to flog the movie, and Newmarket releases it Stateside on more than 3,000 screens. "Passion" grosses more than $370 million, and Icon is forced to sue the Regal theater chain for uncollected revenue. Now there's talk of an Oscar campaign.
" Documentaries are the hottest ticket in the 2004 indie marketplace, from Morgan Spurlock's "Super Size Me" and Kevin Macdonald's "Touching the Void" to rabble-rouser Michael Moore's Palme d'Or-winning "Fahrenheit 9/11." Harvey and Bob Weinstein ride the media furor kicked up when the Walt Disney Co. CEO Michael Eisner refuses to let Miramax release the film, buying it back and jamming it onto screens in June via Lions Gate and IFC Films. The controversial docu swiftly outstrips "Bowling for Columbine's" $21.2 million domestic gross, setting a benchmark for commercial success for nonfiction movies.
From Miramax's co-production of Martin Scorsese's $100 million epic "The Aviator" at one extreme to Jonathan Caouette's $218 "Tarnation" at the other, the definitions of Hollywood and Indiewood have never been more unclear. With few exceptions, the major studios are hellbent on spending their production bounty on well-branded tentpoles and franchises aimed squarely at a wide, largely male, demographic. They also will greenlight lower-budget genre films -- thrillers, romances or comedies; left by the wayside are pictures with controversial content that might upset parent corporations or their shareholders.

"This is where studios fear to tread," former United Artists chief Bingham Ray says. "The studio divisions have a corrupted creative aesthetic. The nonaffiliated indies have a leg up with a 'Super Size Me' or 'Fahrenheit 9/11'; the true indie world doesn't have to play by these rules."

Also largely neglected by the studios are niche movies and smart films for adults; considered far too risky is any film that depends on flawless execution, unless it has the right A-list star or director attached.

Finally, the studios have evolved a two-tiered structure: The majors handle the big movies, while the mini-majors (Universal's Focus Features, Fox Searchlight, Disney's Miramax and Warner Independent) pursue films the studios do not want to make -- at more affordable prices.

"A good number of companies are doing more of these films with an individual voice and an indie feeling," Warner Independent president Mark Gill says. "That's good news."

Canadian indie veteran Robert Lantos, a producer and majority investor in distributor ThinkFilm, believes that the studio subdivisions are "former indies who haven't been indies for a long time. They're studios owned by conglomerates; there's an instant move toward the mainstream when a company becomes part of a conglomerate.

The other world is the ever-shrinking and ever-marginal world of small films which depend on being discovered at film festivals; until small companies have more muscle, it's an uphill battle."

Some mini-majors will not take on budgets higher than $15 million; others won't go above $20 million or $30 million -- and often, they will not touch a movie without world rights available. The four biggest studio subdivisions use their deep pockets and talent relationships to compete aggressively on early prebuys, canny acquisitions and astute marketing. Most mini-majors demand that movies come in with partial, if not complete, funding, though all will take an occasional flier on something risky, usually an acquisition discovery such as Miramax's "The Station Agent," Searchlight's "thirteen" or Focus' "Lost in Translation."

"We're always looking for stuff that's new and different," Fox Searchlight president Peter Rice says. "Film festivals are filtering agents."

Increasingly, though, even the studio subdivisions have stars in their eyes. As more actors see the benefits of escaping from silly cartoon fare, it is tempting for indie producers and distributors to add an element that will protect downside risk and boost value in ancillary markets -- especially sell-through DVD, which can make the difference between a profit and a loss.

"More stars want to be in movies with more originality," Rice says. "What would be our motivation to make a movie with no marketing elements? A lot of companies are chasing the same product and the same moviegoer; it's very, very competitive."

So is the media marketplace, where cutting through the clutter is key to winning attention for one's movie. "With no stars, there's no critical groundswell, no good reviews, and few people will buy TV unless they know a movie's going to open in 100 cities," Warner Independent marketing head Laura Kim says. "It's too easy to find celebrities to take parts that used to go to discoveries like Lili Taylor and Parker Posey."

This is That Prods.' Anthony Bregman believes that casting made all the difference for Focus' recent hit "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." "Jim Carrey got the film made," Bregman said during a Seattle International Film Festival panel, adding that the star power of Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst and Elijah Wood didn't exactly hurt the film's boxoffice chances, either. "Jim wanted to change his image and make it work; if we did a bad job with 'Eternal Sunshine,' it would still be worth millions with those names. Other movies are execution-dependent: If you can't get that top-flight star, you'll make the movie for $5 million instead of $20 million."

In order to land Alexander Payne's upcoming dramedy "Sideways," Rice had to exceed his ironclad $15 million budget ceiling by $3 million to beat out Miramax, as well as Paramount's Sherry Lansing. Payne had the clout to demand that Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church head the film's cast.

"It caused a ruckus," says producer Michael London ("thirteen"), who recently signed a three-year deal at Paramount, which is attempting to shed its stodgy image. "It's hard to convince people that there are movies made without movie stars. No one wants to embrace what's unique about most indie films: In the middle zone of budgets under $15 million-$20 million, there's so much opportunity to make movies with a personal voice and yet reach a sizable audience."

But indie divisions prize directors nearly as much as they do stars. Searchlight's upcoming helmer bets include Payne, David O. Russell and Danny Boyle. "If you don't have a signature director like Bernardo Bertolucci, you're fighting an uphill battle," says producer Dan Lupovitz (1999's "Simpatico"). "If you don't go with the big guys, there's a big drop down to the InDigEnts making digital movies for $250,000. There used to be more options in between."

More and more, producers are using all of their wiles -- and the aide of packagers including William Morris Independent's Cassian Elwes and Rena Ronson and Cinetic Media's John Sloss -- to assemble financing from a combination of foreign presales, which require attractive star elements. They also are growing keener on soft money and equity investors like the ubiquitous Bob Yari, who backs 10-15 movies a year through his indie operations including Stratus and BullsEye Entertainment.

Elwes and Ronson work with Yari's money to stitch together El Camino Pictures titles like the upcoming "Haven," starring Orlando Bloom. "Bob Yari is keeping the indie film community going," Ronson says. "It's a healthy market for the indies; having soft money available in our country -- in tax-incentive deals in Louisiana, Florida and other states -- has made a difference."

After she left Michael Ovitz's Artists Management Group, producer Cathy Schulman saw a gap in the market and convinced Yari to fund BullsEye. She and Yari have greenlighted five movies to be sold at film festivals, starring the likes of Keanu Reeves, Don Cheadle and Vince Vaughn.

"We'd need well-articulated material that stars would be interested in and, to keep production budgets controlled, (would cost) under $20 million," Schulman says. "These are movies that are maverick in spirit that can align with the main distributors."

This is That chief Ted Hope has produced movies for 15 years, including the 2003 critical favorite "American Splendor." "It's never been harder to get movies made, but good ones do get made with the right package," he says. "I've seen the presale co-production market collapse, the growth of the international film and the German (Neuer Markt) collapse, the sale/leasebacks collapse and the new ascendancy of equity players that is still going strong."

In order to get this summer's "The Door in the Floor" made, Hope packaged and financed the $7.5 million movie (through equity investor Revere Prods.' Michael Corrente and Roger Marino) with stars Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger before his old partner, Focus' James Schamus, stepped up.

"It was a great script, so everybody said, 'Get A-list actors,'" Hope says. "It was a performance-driven drama, so they tried to get rid of (second-time) director Tod Williams, (asking,) 'Can't you get Lasse Hallstrom?' With equity investors, you can take leaps in the storytelling that aren't permitted elsewhere."

Warner Independent is beginning to release its first slate, a mix of in-house projects from Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney's Section 8 ("Criminal") and John Wells and Christine Vachon's Killer Films ("A Home at the End of the World"), acquisitions and other productions. Jean-Pierre Jeunet's "A Very Long Engagement" came to Gill through "big Warners," which funded the film through Warners France.

The question of what Disney will or will not allow the Weinsteins to do at Miramax has not yet been answered, but Harvey Weinstein -- when not throwing public darts at Eisner -- has staked his reputation on taking chances on small stories with no marquee stars.

While Bob Weinstein's Dimension label remains highly profitable, Miramax does not play by the usual rules of risk-aversion, much to the consternation of its studio parent. (Eisner has stated publicly that Miramax did not make money during two of the past five years.) It's hard to imagine the Weinsteins and Eisner patching up their relationship, but it is equally difficult to imagine the brothers abandoning their hard-earned library and ongoing projects.

The next tier of the studio subdivisions is led by Sony's autonomous Sony Pictures Classics unit, which has enjoyed a strong run of late thanks to its early $1.5 million investment in the Oscar-winning Errol Morris docu "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara" and foreign-language titles like Wolfgang Becker's German film "Good bye, Lenin!"

"Flexibility is the key," SPC co-president Michael Barker says. "We're guided by the filmmaker and the marketability of the subject matter -- stars rarely enter into it. We have the freedom to do what we want to do."

Operating below a $10 million budget cap are United Artists, which has yet to find its post-Ray identity -- though there figures to be more horror titles on its slate -- and Fine Line, which always has been more of a prestige label for New Line than a serious moneymaker.

It remains to be seen what changes will come at Paramount Classics now that MTV chief Tom Freston is looking over Lansing's shoulder instead of the tight-fisted Jonathan Dolgen. Many industry observers find it bizarre that MTV Films partnered with Searchlight on the recent comedy release "Napoleon Dynamite," or that Paramount's A-list producer Scott Rudin should prefer to take his artier films to Searchlight instead of his own studio's specialty unit, which is too starved for acquisition and marketing funds to handle Rudin-level projects and does not produce films at all.

Where studios and their subdivisions will not go, opportunity awaits. Companies such as IFC Films, Regent Entertainment and 2929 are producing movies not only for the theatrical market but also to build libraries and feed cable channels; Regent and Strand Releasing are targeting niche markets like the gay audience, and more home video companies like DEJ and Fox are getting into movie production, according to FilmFinders co-founder Sydney Levine.

Despite the hazards of collecting rentals on a wide scale, Newmarket was able to get involved with "Passion" because the distributor was not encumbered by a major studio.

"The opportunity comes from the gap between what the audience wants to see and the restrictions, formulas and boundaries of what studios want to make or release," Newmarket president Bob Berney says. "We have exploited that difference."

Merged with Artisan, a more robust Lions Gate is moving into production with even greater flexibility than are the studio-based indies, with budgets as high as $35 million. The Weinsteins turned to Lions Gate president Tom Ortenberg and Jonathan Sehring of IFC Films (2002's "My Big Fat Greek Wedding") to release "Fahrenheit," and thanks to Halle Berry's best actress Oscar win for 2001's "Monster's Ball," more stars are willing to work for less to be in a Lions Gate film, from Robert De Niro (the April release "Godsend") to Robin Williams (the upcoming "The Final Cut").

Dylan McDermott was so eager to play a seedy character that he bought himself out of several episodes of ABC's "The Practice" to star in Lions Gate's 2003 thriller "Wonderland," which made only $1.1 million at the domestic boxoffice but is doing well on DVD. Ortenberg also will scoop up a festival hit like Chris Kentis' "Open Water," he says, "but we can't do as many projects on a small scale. The value of the slots is too great."

But the indies have more room to move than do the mini-majors when jumping into the white-hot docu market. Roadside Attractions' Howard Cohen patched together a complicated distribution deal for "Super Size," an anti-McDonald's shock-doc that the subdivisions wouldn't touch -- even though it was one of the hottest tickets at this year's Sundance Film Festival -- and the movie has earned more than $10 million at the domestic boxoffice.

Sehring also moved swiftly to prebuy "Touching the Void," a death-defying adventure featuring two mountain climbers in Peru, on the strength of IFC's relationship with Macdonald. In addition, ThinkFilm's Mark Urman and Magnolia's Eamonn Bowles have made a nice business out of such 2003 documentary releases as "Spellbound" and "Capturing the Friedmans," respectively.

Nonetheless, after "Fahrenheit," all bets are off, Urman believes.

"It's not fiction vs. nonfiction -- it's (whether or not) a movie has value and a marketing hook," he says. "We've become Docs 'R' Us; we're nimble and adjust more quickly without having to decide things at board meetings. We can run between the raindrops."

Published Aug. 03, 2004

Campaign strategy
Innovative indie distributors are stretching their marketing dollars in an effort to get the word out about their films.

By Sheri Linden

It's increasingly clear that, with only a fraction of the marketing funds, independent distributors are giving the studios a run for their money. Two of the year's most-talked about films, Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" and Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," have bypassed the studio system to the tune of record-breaking boxoffice, and the market for indie fare continues to widen.

But rather than try to meet the majors head-on, independent distributors are using innovative ways to stretch their marketing dollars and get the word out about their films.

"You're trying to compete by not competing," Newmarket president Bob Berney says. "You're trying to find something -- an audience or a project -- that's not being served by the mainstream studios. So in a way, you're not competing; you're expanding the audience."

Tom Ortenberg, president of Lions Gate Films Releasing, agrees that the indie approach must go beyond budgets. "While money is important, being creative and building a better marketing mousetrap is the most important thing," he says. "Any good independent can go toe-to-toe with the majors in terms of a talented marketing and distribution staff, but if we ever try going toe-to-toe with them in a dollar-and-cents battle, we lose."

In the case of "Fahrenheit" -- certainly no losing proposition -- a sense of urgency helped to fuel the campaign. Lions Gate and its distribution partners on the film, IFC Films and Bob and Harvey Weinstein's Fellowship Adventure Group, had a remarkably brief window in which to devise their marketing strategy.

"We essentially had to compress about six months of work into one month," Ortenberg says. "I would equate the marketing of this film to white-water rafting, where we're just flying down the river at breakneck speed, and no matter what happens, we just keep moving forward."

While there was no such time squeeze for Newmarket with "Passion," like Moore's documentary, it benefited from controversy and grass-roots support. As Berney notes, both titles galvanized groups seeking to ban or censor them. "Whenever that happens, you double and triple the potential of a film," he says. Although he can't quantify the savings, Berney says the publicity surrounding "Passion" helped Newmarket spend "considerably less" on advance advertising than it normally would to generate initial awareness. Still, the company's marketing budget for the film reached upward of $25 million (compared with $40 million, the average studio P&A budget for a commercial film in 2003). "We tried to balance the grass-roots campaign with a really aggressive mainstream media buy and trailer push and so forth," Berney says.

With a marketing budget totaling approximately $10 million for "Fahrenheit," Ortenberg says that he and his partners are "spending about the same as we always projected that we would. But I do think that the controversy has helped us build awareness and interest in the film, which has allowed us to take it out broader than we might otherwise have been able to do on this size of a marketing budget."

Independent distributors agree that there's no rule of thumb as to how much of an investment it takes to move a film into the mainstream. "I think when you get into doing it by rote, you get into trouble," Magnolia Pictures topper Eamonn Bowles says. And Focus Features head of distribution Jack Foley likens the process of distributing and marketing a film to "a chemical equation."

Magnolia's current documentary release "Control Room," which set boxoffice records at New York's Film Forum in May before opening in other markets, is among the smaller-scale independent films capitalizing on publicity. "'Control Room' is not going to be an advertising-driven thing," Bowles says. "It really is a publicity-oriented campaign. So, our expenditures are very modest."

Bowles was determined to market the film, a docu on Middle East news agency Al Jazeera, across the political spectrum. Director Jehane Noujaim has appeared on TV venues ranging from Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" to Fox. The topical film also has generated lots of ink, including think-piece-type reviews and a handful of New York Times articles. Bowles attributes the film's commercial strength to "tremendous word-of-mouth."

Berney emphasizes how important that element is. "You do your best on the marketing. You try to get the timing right, spend the money carefully. Ultimately, it's word-of-mouth that is going to make a film go the distance," he says.

With the DVD revolution helping to open audiences' eyes to the work of independent filmmakers, the marketers of indie titles are finding new receptivity to such fare. They're finding, too, that the old rules don't apply.

"Traditions are changing," Foley says. Focus broke the mold earlier this year, releasing "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" on more than 1,350 screens in March.

The film reaped strong reviews and became the highest-grossing title to date penned by Charlie Kaufman.

"A lot of people said we went too wide. We didn't," Foley says. "We were successful because we got more money out of the film doing what we did at the beginning," rather than taking the platform approach. In its campaign, Focus tapped into star Jim Carrey's mainstream appeal and Kaufman's draw as "a brand in a sort of subcultural or countercultural way."

Focus, which has successfully marketed such challenging fare as 2002's "The Pianist" and 2003's "Lost in Translation," has unconventional approaches in store for its upcoming releases, as well. It will open the Reese Witherspoon starrer "Vanity Fair" on Sept. 1 in 800 theaters, hoping to loosen the slasher-film grip on the Labor Day weekend. Earlier in the summer, Focus platformed the Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger drama "The Door in the Floor." "We're being gentle with that but not sheepish," Foley says, pointing out the fact that it opened in 18 markets, a relatively aggressive strategy.

As a "delicate film" aimed primarily at art house audiences, "Door," Foley says, "(needed) to stand out and be recognized in a more sedate moment" than the end-of-year crush. "At this stage of the game, the whole year has to be considered seriously."

Newmarket is opting for the unusual as well with its upcoming John Sayles film "Silver City," in which Chris Cooper plays a character highly reminiscent of President George W. Bush. "We've had the trailer on many of the 'Fahrenheit' screenings because we feel we are going to tap into that same audience," Berney says. "We're working with different groups like MoveOn, and we're doing a kind of old-fashioned, political, Ken Kesey-like bus tour."

For "The Woodsman," Newmarket's approach will be similar, in certain ways, to its campaign for last year's "Monster," which reaped a best actress Oscar for Charlize Theron. Rather than market its potentially controversial content (the film stars Kevin Bacon as a man struggling to overcome pedophilia), ads for the film will highlight the direction and lead performance.

While it might seem the independent sector is becoming crowded, Foley perceives an upside to the competition, with movies benefiting from a shared marketplace. Nonstudio films, he says, "can all exist among each other and create and maintain a momentum."

In addition, Foley notes that in seeking a broader marketplace for high-end films, "the thing that protects you is that it's not an all-or-nothing beginning."

In other words, the make-or-break opener does not hold sway as it does with studio fare. "You're positioned to play in a different way," he says. "You work your money."

To do so involves, according to Berney, the fine science of combining "that bolder art statement with the fact that these things are really doing business." Berney credits expansion in the exhibition sector as a key part of the equation. "It's been as much a partnership with exhibitors trying to expand the audience as the marketing technique," he says. "There's been a convergence of these things."

Ortenberg also sees increasing exhibition possibilities. "When you have the goods," he says, "the theaters will be available. The market will expand to accommodate that product." Indeed -- a couple of years ago, no one would have imagined a documentary claiming more than 1,700 screens over the Fourth of July weekend.

However diverse the work of independent filmmakers and the tactics of their marketers, driving every successful campaign is the distributor's belief in the movie.

"We've had the good fortune to acquire a great film," says Ortenberg of "Fahrenheit," adding that "the success of the film is really a testament to Michael Moore."

Says Foley of Focus' successful two-year track record: "We knew that we were blessed to begin with, whether it was (2003's) '21 Grams' or 'Lost in Translation' or 'The Pianist' or 'Eternal Sunshine.'" Laughing, Foley adds that the blessing also is a kind of burden. "We had to live with the curse of (trying to realize commercial) success," he says, "as well as these artists realized their art, which is a really hard way to live because it's like, 'They delivered, what about you?'"

Published Aug. 03, 2004

Small wonders
Tiny distribution houses are finding success through prudent spending, diversified revenue streams and a healthy sense of proportion.

By Scott Tobias

With the launch of Warner Independent Pictures this summer, virtually every major studio now has its own boutique label, concluding a trend that began with the Sundance Film Festival boom roughly a decade ago. Over that time, the word "independent" has evolved into more of a state of mind than a fiscal reality, since the boutiques operate under the exceedingly generous allowance of their studio sponsors.

Yet, even as the stakes have gotten higher and the competition for screens and ancillaries more intense, scores of smaller, mostly New York-based distributors continue to play -- and, in many cases, thrive -- on a hopelessly uneven field. In a business strewn with casualties, the survivors must weather a competitive marketplace with prudent spending, diversified revenue streams and a healthy sense of proportion.

The battle between studio-backed independents and micro-indies isn't so much David vs. Goliath as elephants vs. termites. As bigger companies such as Miramax and Fox Searchlight assert a forceful presence at festivals and in advertising spaces, upstarts such as ThinkFilm and Magnolia Pictures, as well as stalwarts such as Kino International and Zeitgeist Films, sneak in under the radar, selling to those small yet loyal pockets of art house mavens in urban centers across the country. Left with mere crumbs of the overall boxoffice pie, their triumphs usually go uncelebrated in the press, but with eyes on the frugal bottom line, they can win sustaining victories on a relative scale.

"One thing profit isn't is loss," jokes Mark Urman, head of distribution at ThinkFilm, a 2-year-old company that scored huge success with its 2002 documentary "Spellbound." "Very often, you'll see films achieve a distinguished level of boxoffice, but so much money has been put into advertising to achieve that gross that the film is really awash in red ink; it is a false impression of success. They routinely have to cope with the fact that a $20 million opening weekend is paltry, where for me, a $20 million ultimate gross after months of release is a smash, one of the most successful independent films of the year."

The same principles apply to Zeitgeist, which has seen the independent world undergo a dramatic facelift since the distributor was launched in November 1988. Although it was Todd Haynes' 1991 Sundance winner "Poison" that put Zeitgeist on the map, co-founders and current co-presidents Nancy Gerstman and Emily Russo have largely ceded American independents to the mini-major, shifting their focus almost exclusively to foreign titles. Having recently capped their 15th anniversary with Germany's "Nowhere in Africa," the 2003 Oscar winner for best foreign-language film that has grossed $6 million Stateside, Gerstman and Russo have lived up to the company's name without abandoning their original business ethic.

"When Emily and I first came together," Gerstman says, "we tried to establish our company as one that would not spend excessively. We were determined to distribute films in a way they needed to be handled -- very carefully and with a lot of tender-loving care."

With more than 500 first-run movies released in Manhattan alone each year, the battle for screens -- to say nothing of the hearts and minds of potential moviegoers -- represents a major challenge for micro-indies, which don't have the resources or the guaranteed runs of their studio counterparts. Many small distributors express optimism over increasing theater space in New York and elsewhere, but getting screens and keeping screens are two entirely different matters.

"There are more screens than ever," says Ryan Werner, theatrical distribution chief at Wellspring. "But there (are) more films opening than ever before. There's hardly any time per film to build an audience, which means it's basically that first weekend or nothing. So, you pray for good reviews and bad weather."

"I've always said that (lack of) access to theaters is the most-overrated disadvantage that independents think they have," adds Eamonn Bowles, president of Magnolia, which now has in release the documentary "Bukowski: Born Into This," about cult author Charles Bukowski.

"You can be a very small distributor, and the theaters will open up for you. Getting the attention for your films and getting the awareness out there in a world of finite media space -- that's much harder."

To that end, micro-indies count on positive reviews as a key form of unpaid advertisement because the expense of print ads quickly whittles away at their meager P&A budgets. For these companies, anticipating strong reviews is an essential part of the acquisitions process because no amount of campaigning can compensate for a tepid reception.

Kino general manager Gary Palmucci likens it to "the old sword of Damocles phenomenon," where good reviews are "vitally important," and "bad or OK reviews can be deadly in a given city." It used to be that any foreign film panned in the New York Times would never make it west of the Hudson, but the number of other, alternative media outlets is seen as encouraging.

"Having strong reviews in the (New York) Times and a pre-Sunday feature is great," says John Vanco, co-founder of the now-defunct Cowboy Pictures, which released Catherine Breillat's "Fat Girl" (2001) and Lynne Ramsay's "Morvern Callar" (2002), among others. "But you couldn't count on it for the small stuff that we were doing. We were always trying to go after the secondary outlets. The smaller the outlet, the more sway you could have over the coverage."

Although Werner also admits to relying on the critics and the press, he confesses that the size of a movie often dictates its coverage, regardless of quality. "One of the most irritating things is the lack of editorial space for anything beyond reviews for most foreign films," Werner says. "It's completely frustrating. You open the papers every week, and there's the same article about the same movie in every newspaper."

With the high costs that come with a theatrical release, many companies rely on ways to either limit their expenses upfront or ensure some form of relief on the back end. During their six-year run at Cowboy, before the rough economics of the sector put them out of business, Vanco and co-founder Noah Cowan used the label to support international festival bookings and set up service deals on its two most successful films: the documentaries "The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition" (2000) and "The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg" (1998), for which the filmmakers put up the P&A, held onto the ancillaries and paid Cowboy a distribution fee. The duo also represented other libraries, such as Janus Films and the D.A. Pennebaker/Chris Hegedus library, in order to earn steady income from colleges, repertory houses and additional film society rentals.

However, the backbone of many micro-indies -- if not the driving force -- is video and DVD. Opinions vary over whether or not video/DVD sales can compensate for lackluster boxoffice performance, but for companies that appeal to the impassioned few, a vigorous life after theatrical release can be a critical safety net.

"DVDs are the profit center for us," says David Koh, head of acquisitions and production at Palm Pictures, which has enjoyed cult success with its Director's Label DVDs featuring music videos and commercials by Chris Cunningham, Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze. "For us, it's more like the record industry, in that our DVDs are aimed more at the consumer market than the rental market. We think they're the biggest growth market in terms of revenue streams, and we think it's going to get even larger."

"I wish a video label was something that Cowboy had done," admits Vanco, though he hastens to add that the company's ill-timed expansion just before the events of Sept. 11 ultimately led to its demise. "You look at the companies that have stuck around, like New Yorker and Kino and Zeitgeist and Strand, and they've gotten through the lean years because they have that home video money coming in. In retrospect, we would have been more stable if we had done it."

For all the apparent benefits of video and DVD, however, some warn that indies should not rely so heavily on the ancillaries. "As a film goes theatrically is often how it goes in the ancillary media," says Urman, whose ThinkFilm runs a label for low-budget genre pictures but farms out the rights to its theatrical releases to major studios such as Miramax and Sony. "If it ain't worth much in theaters, it ain't gonna be worth much anywhere else, unless the films have name stars in them. We try not to embark on something with the understanding that we can operate at a loss theatrically and make it up in the afterlife."

Although every independent company relies on its own particular instincts and business philosophies to stay afloat, the common lesson from the industry's failures is to minimize risk. Before co-founding Magnolia, Bowles was involved in the Shooting Gallery film series, which was victimized by its own wild success.

"As it went under," Bowles remembers, "the film side of it was doing better than it ever had. It was in its glory days, yet (the company) had jumped on the Internet train. The employee situation went from 35 when I got there to about 235 a year and a half later, which is just this cancerous mushrooming of scale; that really reinforces the fact that you should grow with your needs, rather than create a framework that puts you under an inordinate amount of pressure to perform at a very high level to sustain yourself."

"One thing that companies of our size have no business doing is to pick up films to establish relationships or take them off the table to keep our competitors from getting them," Urman says. "You can quickly decide that a movie you like at one price is a very dislikable movie at another. To us, it's all about the deal."

Published Aug. 03, 2004

Tool box
Cash-strapped filmmakers must navigate a maze of technology in search of vision-friendly bargains.

By Sheigh Crabtree

It used to be that the only constant in the independent film community was a shortage of funds. But the new truism is the ceaseless evolution of digital filmmaking tools and the resulting effect on indie production, postproduction and exhibition. From acquisition formats and the cameras that shoot them to myriad postproduction techniques and screening media through to video deliverables and film archives, it is the charge of today's cash-strapped filmmakers to navigate a maze of technology in search of bargains that do not impinge on personal vision.

The most scrupulous explorers and the vendors that service them have uncovered several interesting technical developments during the past 12 months; their analog and digital findings are surveyed below.

Shoot

When it comes to lensing, the indie filmmaker must choose among a wealth of acquisition formats. In the digital realm, indies most often opt for glossy HD or Mini-DV, its penny-pinching cousin -- but technophiles are watching closely the emergence of HDV, which, by converging those two popular video formats through a unique compression scheme, allows high-definition-quality imagery to be reproduced on digital video's thrifty terms.

On the film side, Super 16mm, 35mm and, to some extent, Super 35mm 3-perf are still going strong, despite the din of the democratizing powers of digital video.

"Right now, we're seeing 50% 35mm film, 30% HD video and 20% Super 16mm film," says Tim Krubsack, managing director at iO Film, a popular indie postproduction haunt in North Hollywood.

But Krubsack and other insiders note that Super 16 is the format gaining the most momentum of late.

"I'm seeing a real surge of interest in 16mm," eFilm's David Hayes says. "I've talked to a lot of people about HD over the years, but in the last six months, more people are considering 16mm as opposed to HD."

The recent return of 16 mm film from the celluloid grave is commonly attributed to the confluence of two technological advancements. The first is the introduction over a year ago of Kodak Vision 2 emulsions, which significantly reduce film grain while maintaining contrast. The second is the increased use of digital-intermediate mastering, which allows 16mm to be digitally blown-up to cinema specs for exhibition as well as 16:9 specs for broadcast. The buzzworthy postproduction treatment effectively avoids the traditionally painful lab process known as the optical blow-up, a prerequisite when posting 16mm.

Another significant enticement to shoot on 16 as opposed to 35 is the cost-saving benefits of the stock and processing, as well as the creative extension of the filmmaker's vision in post that DI allows.

Forensic Films producer Scott Macaulay, in preproduction on the untitled OutKast feature project, notes that every cinematographer with whom he has worked recently has lobbied for a DI because of "the unprecedented control you have over the image in terms of the color palette."

A few of the high-profile indies opting for 16mm with a DI are Spike Lee's "She Hate Me," Rebecca Miller's "The Ballad of Jack and Rose," John Sayles' "Silver City," Ron Garcia's "Nine Lives" and producer John Singleton's "Hustle + Flow."

"It's an economical and creatively useful way to use the technology that is available," says Matty Libatique, who used the hybrid film and digital technique on "Hate" and Ernest R. Dickerson's "Never Die Alone" (Fox Searchlight).

"Silver" cinematographer Haskell Wexler has an intimate history with this strain of celluloid. More than three decades ago he and Swedish cinematographer Rune Ericson worked together to create a new film format, lightweight cameras and lenses so independent producers could shoot low budget "wide-screen" movies; the result was Super 16mm. But Wexler, today a vp at the International Cinematographers Guild, is characteristically unsentimental about the format's renaissance.

"All technological trends in the present culture are driven by economics," Wexler says, who notes that on "Silver" he would have preferred to shoot 35 mm. "But I like the fact that we were able to work in a friendly, fast way without abusing anybody or anything. Using small cameras is a big plus for the morale of the crew and the actors, and the image does not suffer much."

The resurgence of 16mm is clearly a morale booster for Eastman Kodak. Just 18 months ago 16mm film sales were spiraling downward, but according to Kodak exec Brian Spruill, the company has seen a 7% increase in 16mm sales since the unveiling of Vision 2 in late 2002.

"We attribute the bump to the fact that the stock retains its good looks when transferred to video and HD; that video and HD filmmakers who are looking to shoot film are giving it a whirl and that some 35 filmmakers are opting to use 16 with a DI," he notes.
The uptick in use of cost-effective film stocks is directly tied to the birth of DI. And the process is ultimately format-agnostic, trending well beyond the confines of 16mm. DI is showing up in projects shooting everything from Mini-DV to HD and 35mm.

Post

"Over a year ago, (DI) was a new technology that people were just scratching the surface on, and the big studios were using it because they had big dollars to use it," says Hayes, who receives three or four inquires a day from indie producers seeking to use a DI in a range of formats. "I think now, people are seeing that it's a great tool for filmmakers of all kinds, and vendors are addressing the indie marketplace with the DI."

It might seem unlikely that the major studios and cash-strapped indies share a fascination, much less the means to pay for such an emerging postproduction process -- particularly when, in the stratosphere of Rolls-Royce filmmaking, the majors are footing DI bills north of $1 million on movies such as "Van Helsing" (Universal) and "Spider-Man 2" (Sony).

How and why are indie producers suddenly able to come up with $100,000-$300,000 to write DIs into cash-poor budgets?

"It depends where people want to apportion their money, but it is certainly true that something like the high-end digital intermediate is out of the range of the lower-budget films," Macaulay says. "But take something like (Gaspar Noe's 2003 thriller) 'Irreversible' -- that's a film that just did a high-definition finish."

An HD video finish on a studio feature is practically unheard of because the majors seek to archive their library titles on film and nothing less. For indie producers, though, the lower-resolution HD DI pathway can prove a sensible, cost-effective option.

"The HD DI is less expensive than the 2K or 4K DI," says Charles Herzfeld, senior vp business development at Technicolor Creative Services-New York. "It uses less storage, and it doesn't have the huge amount of data that you do when you're working in 2K or 4K. It's a solid lower-budget alternative."

Fotokem's Mike Brodersen adds that working at a lower resolution and using more commonly available equipment for less time, and during "off" hours, can help indies save money on a DI.

"The 2K DI is still a little bit above the independent budget at this point," he says. "The high-def telecine is more commonplace; we have a lot more machines, and the rates are a lot better. It's a little bit of a faster process, but it is more limited (in terms of color reproduction), which helps make it faster."

Another major incentive for indie producers to finish digitally is to have a master file that can be screened at festivals, thereby sparing the cost of a film out.

"Independents, whether they like it or not, do not always make a theatrical sale," Herzfeld says. "So why do a film out? I think an HD DI finish is the safest route because what you're getting is the ultimate nonlinear flexible product."

Nonetheless, the screening of a digital master on the festival and market circuit remains dependent on whether the respective host organizations support digital projection.
Grading by the numbers
This service and cost breakdown for a digital intermediate master is highly variable depending upon the film and the vendor. It is intended to provide a jumping-off point when negotiating a basic DI package.
Service HD 2K
Scan $12,000 $15,000
Film negative (Super 16mm, 35mm) is scanned through a telecine and retransferred to HD or data files.
Conform $9,000 $20,000
High-resolution footage is re-linked to the offline edit via the edit decision list. Effects and opticals are included.
Dustbust $9,000 $18,000
Semiautomated frame-by-frame cleanup of any negative scratches, dirt and dust.
Color Grading $22,000
($550 per hour, 40 hours) $39,000
($650 per hour, 60 hours)
Time spent in a DI session can vary widely depending on the array of footage and the extent to which it needs to be manipulated. A standard rule of thumb is one hour of color grading per each minute of film. But indies can save money by using older equipment and working efficiently during off-hours. Room rates with the color-timer session range from 500-600. 70-80 hours for 2K.
Digital Master --- $30,000
Graded material is transferred to tape, so film festivals and informal screenings can unspool straight off an HD deck tied to a digital projector, thus saving filmmakers film-out and print costs prior to sale. Ouputting from 2K to HD is less simple since when converting from 2K to HD some color -timing and fixing is required to make the material them HD legal.
Film Element $45,000 $45,000
The digital master is recorded back-to-film and prints are developed in-laboratory.

Screen

The Sundance Film Festival's Geoff Gilmore decided to bite the bullet on digital projection four years ago, and every screening venue in Park City is outfitted with film and high-definition video projectors. But Gilmore notes that the decision was made with apprehension.

"I didn't particularly like the way earlier generations of video looked onscreen, and I wasn't going to say, 'OK, we're going to be the Sundance Film and Video Festival," he says. "But what I did decide was that at a certain point, if you bumped whatever format you shot into HD for presentation, the look of that high-definition presentation was high-quality."

Sundance screened 11 films digitally in 2001, 27 in '02, 41 in '03 and 58 this year, according to Gilmore.

"For us, the idea was to give filmmakers the flexibility to shoot anything they want in video or film," he says. "Then, the one thing they have to do to make a digital presentation is to bump it to HD."

In addition, a filmmaker who has saved money on raw stock or tape and applies those savings to the first leg of a DI can, with digital projection options, spare themselves the cost of a 45,000-plus film print. Screening a digital master, as opposed to a locked film print, can be a wise move, according to veterans of the festival circuit.

"I don't necessarily believe what we're presenting is the final product," Gilmore says. "It's not only not the final product because it's not technically finished, but in many cases, we're showing what filmmakers call 'final cuts' -- but a lot of the buyers aren't. That's why you find so many different films where distributors are buying a film out of Sundance with the sense that (the filmmakers) are still going to work on it."

Screening and hopefully selling a project based on a digital master can spare filmmakers the pain of re-creating film elements should a distributor decide to make changes once the movie is sold. Plainly put, both film prints and digital masters are subject to distributor demands, independent of whether the buyer is a scissor-hands or a strong collaborator seeking to enhance artistic vision.

"You're almost totally likely to have a distributor come to you and say, 'I love your movie, but I'd like to make some changes -- and then I'd like to distribute it theatrically,'" Herzfeld says. "If you've done an optical blowup, then you want to put a gun to your head, (but) when you're working from scanned negative, making changes is a piece a cake."

That said, there is a danger in not making a film print if one's movie has been invited to a festival at which only films are projected, including Cannes. Jonathan Caouette, who made his much-touted "Tarnation" for $218.32, was able to screen a film print of his movie at Cannes only when Wellspring acquired worldwide rights, thereby providing funds for a 35mm blowup.

Researching festival projection options well in advance, even before budgeting a DI, also falls under the purview of filmmakers who wish to get their movies seen and sold. No matter how much research and planning one does, though, saving money by choosing the best moviemaking technology is an open-ended pursuit. As Wexler says, there is no "secret instrument" amid a sea of technical fads -- but a few key tools and techniques used in lower-budget production can answer some questions.

"It's funny because prices always come down, like the cost of storage," Macaulay says. "But it seems there's always some new technical innovation that boots the price right back up."

Published Aug. 03, 2004

Rep squad
Finding the right agent can make or break a young filmmaker's career.

By Angela Phipps Towle

After Joshua Marston's first feature "Maria Full of Grace" screened at the Sundance Film Festival this year, every agency wanted a piece of him. "HBO had financed the film, and nobody had seen it yet," WMA Independent head Rena Ronson says. "Everyone felt like they were discovering this film at the same time. People were extraordinarily moved by the voice of the filmmaker, the direction and the incredible performance by Catalina Sandino Moreno."

The film, about a 17-year-old Colombian girl who smuggles heroin into the United States, secured distribution through Fine Line within the fest's first few days and went on to win the Sundance Audience Award. It also kick-started a three-month wooing of Marston, which ended when the director signed with WMA's David Lonner.

As any indie filmmaker knows, finding a good agent can put a new career on the fast track. Stars, material and studio executives -- which months before were beyond reach -- suddenly become much more accessible with the aid of a trusted insider.

But when it comes to the signing process, agents are not the only ones with the power to make or break a deal. A strong showing at a festival like Sundance can put a director in the catbird seat, fielding frenzied pitches from all the big agencies.

The variables that create such a circumstance, however, are difficult to replicate and hard to predict. Agents will swarm around one person partly because the top firms -- CAA, ICM, Endeavor, UTA and WMA -- all have similar criteria when scouting festivals. But there also is an intangible quality that the film must have: an ability to connect emotionally to the viewer, which most say they just know when they see it.

"You are exhausted from the dozens of movies you've seen, and you're looking for the one that bolts you awake the moment it starts and has you on the edge of your seat," describes Endeavor's Adriana Alberghetti, who says client Kevin Macdonald's film "Touching the Void" had that effect on her last year at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Agents arrive at a film fest ready with their list of titles flagged and handicapped. A film's pedigree is determined on paper first by looking at who is attached to the production and who provided the financing. Then, producers' reps, attorneys and executives will make calls to tip agents off to their hot properties. Sometimes, agents are able to wheedle early screeners of films, doing their best to sign the talent before the festival even begins.

"We flag the films we want to see, and then we try to get to the first screening," CAA's Jim Toth says. "We also try to get to some things that are off the beaten track. Occasionally, you can find a gem by doing that."

When attending festivals, agents all say that, first and foremost, they are searching for unique voices, but they admit they also have to balance that with whether the director's work will have appeal beyond the art house and film-festival circuit. "You have to know that you can take this person and turn around and sell them to the people in Hollywood who make movies," Ronson says.

Adds Endeavor's John Lesher: "You want to be able to come home and call the heads of all the major studios and know that they are going to watch the film and love it, too."

One way to gauge this broader appeal is whether a film gets a distribution deal at the festival. "Napoleon Dynamite," which Fox Searchlight picked up at Sundance for between $3 million-$5 million, spurred a tug-of-war for the film's 24-year-old director, Jared Hess, who took multiple meetings before signing with UTA.

"What I love about the movie is it's completely warm-hearted," says Shana Eddy, who was among the team of agents who signed Hess on the strength of "Dynamite." "The performances are spectacular, and I had a great time watching it. I remember thinking, This guy reminds me of the Coen brothers and Wes Anderson."

It is not uncommon for agents to compare new talent with other clients in their rosters. This helps them see how a director might translate in the marketplace and becomes a selling point at pitch time, as some directors will choose an agency based on the other careers it has built.

In addition to storytelling ability and production values, agents place a premium on a film's performances. As actors are key to setting up any movie deal, good performances mean that top onscreen talent will be drawn to working with a particular director. Some industry observers even argue that there are more agents scouring film festivals these days simply because more actors are demanding to work with new voices.

"Even the biggest actors will work with a director who has one credit to their name," veteran producers' rep Jeff Dowd says. "The key thing is great parts."

After a film has captivated an agent, the next step is to meet the director and see if the two make a good match. At a film festival, it often starts with the post-screening Q&A. "The Q&As are great because you can watch how the director handles questions and responds to the room," CAA's Jay Baker says. "It gives you a sense of who they are before you meet with them."

Increasingly, directors are showing up to festivals with other kinds of representation in place. "Very often, directors have attorneys or producers' reps before they have agents," Dowd says. "We help make introductions and help them evaluate different agents. It's our job to lay out a buffet of choices for the directors, then they can decide."

Thanks to these industry liaisons, directors are often coming to meetings far savvier than they have been in the past, sometimes preferring to prolong the courtship until well after the festival. Dowd advises his clients to weigh the signing decision carefully, as it can be one of the most important of their careers. "It really is a marriage; it's not a date," he says. "And it almost always comes down to an individual -- an individual that you are going to be talking to an awful lot, sometimes more than members of your own family."

Marston arrived at Sundance with no representation whatsoever, and he found the barrage of offers somewhat overwhelming. Now with everything settled, he is glad he did not sign on the spot. "Sundance is not the environment where you can really get enough perspective to make an important decision about what you hope will be a long-term relationship," he says.

One area where agents can distinguish themselves from one another is in the types of careers they are interested in building. Most agree that there are two kinds of indie directors: those who want to make films outside of the mainstream and those who are eager to work within the Hollywood system. Within the second group, there is also the subcategory of those -- such as Alfonso Cuarón, Wayne Wang and Gary Winick -- who are happy to cross freely between the two worlds.

"We are happy to work with directors in both worlds," ICM's Nicole Clemens says. "But you find a lot more directors who are willing to cross over these days than you did even five years ago."

"It's important for us to sit down with them and find out what their goals are," CAA's John Ptak says.

If a director is willing to read other people's material and also be considered for director-for-hire jobs, a Hollywood agent can perhaps do more for them. However, agents also can prove tremendously helpful in attaching talent and financing for an indie feature.

Whichever category directors inhabit, the most important thing, say agents, is that they have a vision for their own careers. Clemens points to client/director Angela Robinson, who said early on that she wanted to be the next Sam Raimi. After her first feature "D.E.B.S." debuted at Sundance this year, Robinson signed to direct "Herbie: Fully Loaded," Disney's $60 million-budgeted remake of 1968's "The Love Bug."

"Studios want to bring original voices to their work, too," Clemens says.

For Lonner, he made signing Marston a priority for the entire company. The director met with Ronson in the indie division, as well as agents from the book department, the London office and the Miami office. "I wanted him to know what he had access to with this company," he says.

Although it took time to secure the deal, Lonner understands why Marston had agents around town jumping through hoops before he made his decision. "He was taking the relationship very seriously," Lonner says. "He put us all through the wringer, but a talent like that only comes around once every few years."

Published Aug. 03, 2004

DVD drive
In today's competitive home entertainment climate, surviving as an indie has become a tricky balancing act.

By Thomas K. Arnold

Bill Bromiley has spent most of his professional life in the independent film business, driving sales in the home video arena, where indie product long has flourished. He's currently senior vp at First Look Home Entertainment, part of the First Look Media family, which has released such acclaimed titles as 1995's "The Secret of Roan Inish" and 1996's "Antonia's Line," which won the Oscar for best foreign-language film.

For years, rental stores have depended on indies like First Look to supplement their shelves with titles other than studio fare, but with DVD triggering a sea change in consumer habits -- from renting movies to buying and collecting them -- independent suppliers are in desperate need of strategy adjustment.

On the one hand, they need to continue furnishing rental stores with niche product and genre films; on the other, they must cater to the growing movie-buying crowd by releasing "keepers" -- higher-quality productions packaged with bonus materials of the same caliber as the big theatricals.

The upshot: Surviving as an indie has become a balancing act, in which tipping the scales too far in either direction can be deadly.

"In the last six months, I've seen the rental market decline much more rapidly than I thought it would," says Bromiley, noting that First Look's video business is still 60% rental, much of it through revenue-sharing arrangements. "Our DVD sales are increasing, but the challenge we face is on the acquisition side: How can we buy product that is both rentable and saleable?"

Dan Gurlitz also is walking the line between sell-through and rental. As vp video at Koch Entertainment, Gurlitz is overseeing an ambitious release slate of more than 200 titles this year -- from independent and foreign films to performing arts and documentaries.

"The sell-through vs. rental model is very property-specific," Gurlitz says. "Some titles require us to focus on independent rental stores.

Conversely, releases like (April's) 'Murda Muzik' will likely crossover into the sell-through arena. We also have a diverse collection of products that are truly sell-through, including the 'Yoga Zone' series."

Still, at a time when DVD sales are soaring, rentals are declining (rental spending took a 16% hit in the first quarter of this year, according to research conducted by Video Store Magazine), and rental pricing is, for all practical purposes, extinct. "It's become very hard to ascertain what units are moving into what arenas," Gurlitz says. "It's blending."

This "blending" is taking place across the board. Some independent suppliers, such as Ground Zero Entertainment, Maverick Entertainment and UrbanWorks Entertainment, are finding that their largely urban and Latino titles sell as well as they rent, chiefly because the target audience has grown up with DVD and sell-through pricing.

"We cater to a much younger audience -- our general demo is 14-28 -- and this MTV generation tends to pop stuff in and watch it again and again because of the action," says Ground Zero president and CEO Anthony Perez, whose 5-year-old company specializes in low-budget urban and Latino films, mostly actioners.

"We believe a steady flow of business from rental will always be our bread and butter. But now, sell-through is taking on a power of its own," adds Doug Schwab, president of Maverick and a partner in the South Florida-based production company Breakaway Films, which specializes in urban and Latino films. Breakaway recently scored a fair amount of notoriety with "Carlita's Secret."

Like the big studios, Schwab says, "We need Wal-Mart, but as an independent, we also need Blockbuster, Best Buy, Circuit City and all the other major chains to survive. Our product serves a niche -- the urban and Latino phenomenon is not going away, and we want to be the company that consistently offers this type of product to a market that is still seeking it out on store shelves."

UrbanWorks president Jeff Clanagan maintains his business is now 85% sell-through, and Wal-Mart is one of the company's leading accounts. "We anticipated the industry moving to a sell-through model, and we built our company on sell-through product," says Clanagan, whose outfit is known for urban films that are a bit more high-end than many of its low-budget competitors. "The success of DVD sell-through has placed our company in a great strategic position."

Not all independents are keen on sell-through, however. Larry Brahms, president and CEO of Miami-based indie supplier MTI Home Video, says his business is still 75% rental, with his primary customers being independent video stores, as well as the big rental chains. This year, he's cutting back his release schedule by 20%, to 40 rental titles and 20 catalog titles that are new to DVD.

"We don't feel the market can accept any more titles than we're now giving them," says Brahms, noting that most of his business is done under revenue-sharing. "We anticipate that our sales are going to rise, but I feel we should concentrate more on the titles we have and go for deeper penetration."

That way, he adds, MTI -- which looks for sales of 40,000 units or more on its low-budget genre films, which are released under marquees including Delta Entertainment and Artist View Entertainment -- can focus on "stronger independent product," a quest that puts MTI right in line with most other indies.

Cognizant of the fact that the major studios this year are expected to release a record number of high-profile DVDs -- new theatricals as well as catalog special editions -- indies are determined to do everything in their power to make sure their product doesn't get lost in the shuffle. "The answer, for us, is to release fewer films but with bigger casts and bigger budgets," Bromiley says.

And that's precisely what First Look is doing. Of the 30 titles the company plans to release this year, films such as "Stateside," starring Rachael Leigh Cook, Jonathan Tucker and Val Kilmer, slated for DVD release Oct. 12, and the docu "Mayor of the Sunset Strip," set for DVD release Aug. 17, typify the slate.

In the case of "Mayor," First Look snagged the film at last year's Los Angeles Film Festival and launched a limited theatrical release in March. "'Mayor of the Sunset Strip' is not only a great piece of filmmaking but also high-quality entertainment," First Look senior vp marketing Steven DeMille says.

Indies also are upping the marketing ante, mirroring what's happening on the major-studio side, where first-week DVD sales have become just as critical as opening-weekend boxoffice. Bromiley says First Look is planning to spend $4 million on promotion and advertising for "Stateside's" release.

Ground Zero has spent as much as $350,000 to buy a movie and typically spends $20,000-$35,000 on marketing, "although in some cases, we've spent as much as $135,000," Perez says.

Likewise, UrbanWorks' acquisition budgets have risen steadily since the company's inception and are now "north of $3 million," according to Clanagan.

Although reluctant to discuss numbers, Schwab says Maverick has "stepped up its efforts in sales and marketing. In addition, we are increasing our marketing budgets to include more consumer-driven advertising, as well as increasing our exposure on the Web."

The merger late last year of Artisan Entertainment and Lions Gate Entertainment, probably the two biggest suppliers of independent film product on home video these past few years, has created a mega-indie many now consider a mini-major, with an estimated 4.5% share of the home entertainment marketplace, according to Lions Gate president Steve Beeks.

With less competition at the top, the remaining indies have a unique opportunity to be heard.

"With the consolidation of independent distributors, (First Look is) in a position to step up and become a much larger independent film company," Bromiley says.

Maverick's Schwab also sees changes on the horizon due to the Artisan-Lions Gate merger: "Where once we relied on companies such as Artisan and Lions Gate to distribute our higher-end product, we now have to be more selective in titles we acquire and normally co-distribute because there are fewer choices. On the other hand, we also see it as a gain for us, due in part to the fact that there are just a few companies now that can provide (retailers) with our type of product."

Schwab speaks for many indies when he concludes, "Overall, what has worked for us in the past continues to work for us today. The key is to remain flexible and keep in touch with the ebbs and flows of the marketplace."

Published Aug. 03, 2004

It's not easy being 'Green'
With a new home on Bravo and a keen business strategy that includes promotional tie-ins, will the third time be the charm for 'Project Greenlight'?

By Ray Richmond

Just when it looked like the neophyte filmmaker series "Project Greenlight" was about to hit a permanent red light, a series of factors have conspired to breathe new life into the concept and make it more urgent -- and decidedly more commercially accessible in documenting the movie-production process.

That's right: "Project Greenlight" has gone Hollywood.

Indeed, when audiences see the third season of "Greenlight" sometime in late February, it won't be on HBO but the NBC-owned Bravo, immediately upping the show's potential audience from fewer than 30 million to some 76 million homes. And rather than 13 half-hour installments, the new altered version will feature nine hour-long episodes.

But that's not even the biggest news. The most radical change to "Greenlight's" focus is in its mind-set. The folks behind it at Miramax and LivePlanet -- including famously combative executive producer Chris Moore and fellow LivePlanet principals Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Larry Tanz -- have decided that making movies with first-time writers and directors is one thing, but now, it's time to make something else, too.

Money.

The first two films resulting from the earlier editions of "Greenlight" -- 2002's "Stolen Summer" and 2003's "The Battle of Shaker Heights," both released by Miramax -- seemed to revel in their underdog, "we're-sacrificing-for-our-craft" status. They were nice, little art house coming-of-age films accessible to nearly no one and seen by just as few. "Summer," from writer-director Pete Jones, was budgeted at about $1.6 million and earned a mere $150,000 at the domestic boxoffice in extremely limited distribution; "Shaker Heights," from writer Erica Beeney and the directing tandem of Kyle Rankin and Efram Potelle, upped the budget to about $1.9 million and earned roughly $300,000 domestically in theaters.

In other words, by almost any business measure, the first pair of flicks whose making was documented by "Greenlight" were flops.

But because they were so sparsely released into but a few cities, their tanking was practically preordained and seemed almost to be built into the program's educational dynamic. This is how it is in show business, folks. You work your butt off, get screamed at a lot -- and then your film dies. Get used to it.

But for the new season, bleeding cash is officially out, as the show's backers have decided that there is no crime in earning back one's investment. They've partnered with Dimension Films, hired horror maven Wes Craven to produce new titles and launched production on a genre film: the horror flick "Feast" from fledgling screenwriters Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunston. If all goes according to plan, "Feast" will be released into theaters in April.

With the film's production budget expected to creep north of $2 million, the goal now is to see if "Greenlight" can illustrate the making of a movie that finds its way onto more than 1,000 screens and opens with a real number, as opposed to being dead on arrival. It's a radical concept, but one that those involved claim to be infinitely doable.

The newest season of "Greenlight" began production just after the July 13 announcement of this year's contest winner. Those who have been a part of the show since its inception in 2000 are expressing particular excitement at this idea that dressing a film for success should maybe be part of the equation.

Not that they weren't all proud of "Summer" and "Shaker Heights." It's just that maybe they could be, you know, a little prouder this time with "Feast" -- the horrific tale of bar patrons trying to survive a snowy evening while dodging the attack of a hungry family of flying beasts.

"The first two films didn't do as well as we would have liked," admits Eli Holzman, vp television at Miramax and co-developer of "Greenlight" in tandem with Moore, Affleck, Damon and Alex Keledjian. "But from the beginning, this has always been an experiment. We've learned a lot of lessons along the way."

One of those lessons was that it made more sense to have the screenwriter and director be separate entities. So for Season 2, the contest was split, which meant working with two new, inexperienced, untested commodities (or, in this case, three).
"We had issues with Kyle and Efram in Year 2," admits Moore, who is taking something of a reduced role in the making of the film this year, turning over production duties to Craven while continuing to work as a producer on "Greenlight." "'The Battle of Shaker Heights' could have been very different. We were hoping they'd make a comedy, but it ended up being much more of a drama than we expected."

To guard against any more surprises, Moore and company have instituted a longer prep period for the film in "Greenlight 3," as well as allowed for more tweaking of the script.

"We're going to make smarter use of our time and money," he says. "One of the things we found doing 'Greenlight' the past couple of years is that watching a TV show about a movie you can't really understand wasn't very helpful in marketing the movie itself. Consequently, we averaged having 7 (million)-10 million people watching the show and had a movie seen by fewer than 100,000 people.

"That's why we decided to do a genre picture," Moore continues. "The hope is that the audience will understand in a much clearer way what it is we're doing and, hopefully, get psyched to come see it.

By definition, with a genre picture, you get less confusion, but that also means there are certain things we've got to deliver on. If you have vampires, you better make damn sure they look like vampires."

This time, the marketing of the movie will be a central part of the "Greenlight" process. It was more of a problem when the show ran on HBO, which has no commercial advertising and strict rules about what can and cannot be included in the framework of the shows aired, as far as sponsorship goes. But on the ad-supported Bravo, the show now will be rife with sponsorship packages, product placement and integrated marketing.

Even so, the total budget for the show is under $5 million, according to Holzman. Adds Tanz: "One of our goals is simply to make 'Greenlight' as a whole commercially successful. Now, we've taken steps to make that happen. We've upped the number of homes we're in with Bravo and may even get a shot on NBC like Bravo did with 'Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.' We're also working with advertisers to promote the show."

But Tanz denies any charge that "Greenlight" has sold out.

"No, it's about the show evolving to being one that shows how to succeed in filmmaking, as opposed to just making the movie," Tanz says. "Giving unknowns a chance to make their movie is a great thing. But if the movie isn't successful commercially, then maybe we're not giving them as much of a chance as we thought we were."

And if by chance this latest film still doesn't justify a major release, then Moore says it might not be released at all. "Unlike with the past 'Greenlights,' we have no guaranteed theatrical release this time," he says. "The film has to test a certain score, or it goes straight to video. The Miramax and Dimension guys don't want to be forced to spend marketing money if the film doesn't warrant it. And if we get a bad test, that may kill the release."

Test marketing on "Greenlight"? "Oh, yeah, we're planning test screenings," Moore says. "It should be a fun process to have our winners go through. I mean, now they can be even more stressed out. I'm really looking forward to that."

The fact that "Greenlight" has a hot new home in Bravo is what makes all of the tweaking possible. HBO declined comment, but there is word that the pay cable network might have gone forward with another season after the show had built buzz and ratings in its second season (and built antagonist Moore into a cult star). Still, some say the show fell victim to cutbacks in the wake of the increased expense to produce such bread-and-butter series as "The Sopranos" and "Six Feet Under."

Observes Moore: "HBO probably would have done it again. But I think they might have changed the budget a little bit. And given the struggling filmmaker spirit of 'Project Greenlight,' the target audience probably doesn't have the money to subscribe to HBO, anyway."

Enter WMA vp Adam Sher, the agent representing the production company Magical Elves and its principals, Dan Cutforth and Jane Lipsitz, who served as co-showrunners on Season 2; this time, Elves is back, with Cutforth set to run the newest edition. Sher shepherded the show to Bravo, whose executives "really got it," he says. "We'd seen how they marketed 'Queer Eye' and were impressed. We're very excited to be with them."

Says Bravo senior vp programming and production Frances Berwick: "The thing that sold 'Greenlight' to us was the fact that they wanted to make a movie this time that was commercially successful and made money. That, in our mind, made it a significantly different spin from the first two and a good fit for us."

The commitment to produce nine hours -- up from six and a half for the first two "Greenlights" -- doesn't faze Lipsitz. "We shot almost 3,000 hours of footage to get 13 half-hours last time, so I'm not too worried about being able to fill the time," she says. "There were story lines I'd have loved to include last time that we didn't have time for. Now, we will."

The focus this year changes in Lipsitz's mind to "being really about the process of making a movie, as opposed to last year, when it was about the writer and director coming together and their whole relationship."

While its mission and goal might have changed, however, "Greenlight" remains at its core a dream factory -- at least in the grandest sense of the term. Believes Sher: "In a town where everyone has the dream of being a star or a writer or director, it's the perfect wish-fulfillment program."

Published Aug. 03, 2004

The wild bunch
A handful of enterprising producers continue to make a go of it in the challenging TV movie arena.

By Christy Grosz

The notion of corporate consolidation doesn't usually go hand in hand with increased creative expression, but for the few remaining independent TV movie producers working in the business, that's been precisely the uncommon result.

Sure, considering the deep cuts the broadcast networks made in their budgets about three years ago, there's a lot less work to go around. Although niche-oriented cable networks provide a few more outlets for longform fare, they aren't ordering enough to replicate previous decades' abundant event programming. Most outlets want to retain ownership of the content they air, which makes building a library next to impossible. And, yes, the formerly lucrative overseas market is shrinking.

But it's not all bad news, particularly in regard to the quality of movies and miniseries making their way to the small screen these days.

"Before, we had the networks doing an enormous amount of movies, yet the movies had a certain patina to them," says Orly Adelson, who has produced a number of projects for ESPN, including the upcoming "Hustle," about gamblin' man Pete Rose. "Now, if you're (looking at) ESPN to Court TV to the WB to VH1, the variety (of outlets) is much greater than what we had."

More networks means more freedom for producers to explore uncharted TV territory in a way that the feature business rarely enjoys.

"The subject matter that gets covered in the feature film business is so narrow," says Stan Brooks, whose Once Upon a Time Prods. has 40 TV productions under its belt, including the recent USA Network telefilm "Call Me: The Rise and Fall of Heidi Fleiss." "I made a movie about Suzanne Somers and John Ritter fighting behind the scenes on 'Three's Company.' Who's making that (feature film)? Each (of my movies are) really good, really fun, completely original. But they'd never get made as features because they're not based on a comic book, and they don't appeal to 15-year-old boys."

Contributing to the wide spectrum of topics being dramatized for the small screen is each network's desire to attract a very specific demographic. "Each network is constantly revising what they're looking for, so it's very valuable to keep an open mind and find an outlet for a piece of material that you believe in," says Avenue Pictures' Cary Brokaw, whose HBO miniseries "Angels in America" swept this year's Golden Globes and earned 21 Primetime Emmy nominations.

Producers say that the difficult business climate is made tolerable by finding the right project and feeling compelled to bring it to the screen. "Every network has a different need, so I can do whatever I want as a filmmaker in the TV movie business," Brooks explains. "I've lived out my personal creative dreams because I'm in longform. I worked for Jon Peters and Peter Guber, who were as prolific as anyone, but they sure couldn't make any movie they wanted."

"The license fee has shrunk; the distribution numbers have gone down, too. So from both ends, we are feeling the pressure," Adelson adds. "But I don't think what drove us was the money; what drove us was the quality. So if we make (fewer movies), but we make things we love, then we feel we got what we needed."

To feed that love of making movies, however, indie TV producers have to be able to survive economically, often striking financial deals as creative as their scripts. "You have to use both sides of your brain all of the time," says Jaffe/Braunstein's Howard Braunstein, whose recent miniseries "10.5" delivered an earth-shattering 20 million viewers for NBC, making it the No. 1-ranked longform program of the year. "You have to make sure it works financially, while you're still trying to produce the best movie you can."

The way that the indies have been able to weather the changing TV business and keep their doors open is a combination of wheeling and dealing. A producer will receive a license fee from the network, which is generally two-thirds of the movie's budget. In order to make up the difference between the fee and the cost of the film, the producer usually gets an advance on the foreign rights from an international distributor. Tax incentives from wherever the film is shot also help offset expenses.

"That income combined better be higher than the actual cost of production, or I'm in trouble. It's that simple," Braunstein explains.

Complicating the financing process is a discernible downturn in the international appetite for American TV movies, as well as an overall decrease in the value of the dollar overseas and consolidation in foreign distribution. Producers who used to rely on the advance from foreign rights have to get a little more innovative when crafting deals.

"Every situation is different," Braunstein says. "As an independent, you've got to be flexible from a business point of view, from a production point of view, from a practical point of view. Those that are flexible and willing to change and willing to look at each deal in its own way and each production on its own merit (are) more likely to keep working."

Brooks sees the financial creativity as a major part of the job. "It's a specific skill set to make a movie for under $3 million," he says. "You have to solve problems in a very different way -- your checkbook is not the way to solve them. I love that."

The bottom line is, no one working independently in the TV movie business these days has any romantic notions of making a killing. "The profit margin on a TV movie is extremely nominal, if at all," says Craig Anderson, whose FX movie "Meltdown" aired in June. "I've made sometimes four, five, six movies a year, and I lose money on two, I make money on two and I break even on two. My wife says to me at the end of the year -- because I'm never home -- 'You've just made six movies, and you broke even?'"

However, as Anderson points out, there's a certain personality type that binds indie TV movie producers and keeps them in the business. "We're a fairly entrepreneurial, renegade group of people who like to work for ourselves," he says. "I've worked for studios, (but) I much prefer scraping by on my own because I don't have anybody telling me what to develop."

Even considering the formidable challenges facing producers, there remain more opportunities for those who work independently. "There's potential to make more on these things as an independent than as a producer-for-hire," says Larry Sanitsky, whose "Riding the Bus With My Sister," starring Rosie O'Donnell, will air on CBS this fall. "While they're harder and harder to finance, the combination of worldwide revenue against your deficit will be higher than doing it on a fee basis. It's not like there's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but in the short term, if things go well, it's potentially more profitable."

In the interest of profits, many indie producers have been struggling to maintain ownership of their films in an effort to build income-generating libraries. "Who knows whether or not, after a movie's run for 15 or 20 years all over Europe and Asia, it has any value?" Brooks questions. "You hope that even if each individual title doesn't have value as a collective unit, they will; that's my bet, and that's how I'm planning on paying for my kids' college and my retirement."

But Sanitsky isn't so sure. "There is a timeliness to TV movies," he says, "and I suspect that by the time the first, second and third cycles of distribution are up, there's probably not much of a market for it."

For now, producers are dealing with the future one step at a time. "I've lived out every childhood dream I ever had," Brooks says. "For me, as Orson Welles said, 'Making movies is the finest set of electric trains a kid could ever have.' And even though there's no money left in it, I still get a thrill."

That thrill could be what keeps all of the indies going. "Are TV movies a viable form? Yes, I think they are," Sanitsky concludes. "Will they ultimately be a viable business for independents? I don't know. If I were 20 years younger, would I go into it today? Probably not."

Published Aug. 03, 2004

Buzz fare
Any number of high-profile independent films are poised to compete in the awards-season fray.

By Gina McIntyre

If controversy were the sole factor deciding whether or not a film earned attention during awards season, the passion projects of Mel Gibson and Michael Moore would be shoo-ins. Although their two films probably couldn't be more different, Newmarket's "The Passion of the Christ" and Lions Gate's "Fahrenheit 9/11" kept independent film front and center throughout the first half of 2004, minting money at the boxoffice and providing plenty of fodder for the talk show circuit.

But as the second half of the year rapidly begins its approach, a giant crop of potential awards-worthy films from across the independent spectrum just might stand to steal the spotlight from their more controversial siblings -- and could ride a wave of critical acclaim all the way through to the Oscar derby. In other words, a repeat of last year's indie love fest -- when small, offbeat films such as Sofia Coppola's "Lost in Translation" (Focus Features) and Patty Jenkins' "Monster" (Newmarket) held their own against powerhouses like New Line's epic "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" -- is anything but out of the question.

"2004 is truly shaping up as the Year of the Indie like no other," Lions Gate Films Releasing president Tom Ortenberg says. "Between the boxoffice sensations of 'The Passion of the Christ' and 'Fahrenheit 9/11' and certainly with what appears to be an ambitious awards season, I think this will truly go down as a year that shows beyond any question that the boxoffice is not the sole domain of the major studios."

Indeed. From Focus to Fox Searchlight and Lions Gate to Newmarket, nearly every indie, heartened by the events of last year, is ready to campaign for their best and brightest titles. Miramax, in particular, looks to make a comeback after taking some hard knocks during last year's season.

Mr. Ultimate Oscar Campaigner himself, Harvey Weinstein, is breaking out the big guns with "The Aviator," Martin Scorsese's latest opus, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, and the tear-jerker period costume drama "Finding Neverland," featuring Johnny Depp as "Peter Pan" author J.M. Barrie and Kate Winslet as his ailing muse. (Now that he's traded his pirate rouge for a Scottish brogue, perhaps this is the year Depp will win his best actor Oscar.) Both films are likely to garner attention if they make it to release this year.

But DiCaprio, Depp and Winslet are hardly alone when it comes to big-name actors who are proud to plant their flag in indie territory. Reese Witherspoon, who vaulted to prominence with a diabolically perky performance in Alexander Payne's biting 1999 release "Election," sheds her cheeky mainstream persona for dramatic period garb in Mira Nair's "Vanity Fair" (Focus); Liam Neeson brings to life sex researcher Alfred Kinsey in "Kinsey" (Searchlight) for director Bill Condon; and Jude Law and Naomi Watts team up for David O'Russell's "I § Huckabee's" (Searchlight).

Not to be outdone, Lions Gate has a couple of its own A-listers in starring turns. After what seems like years away from the awards-season competition, Oscar winner Kevin Spacey returns with his Bobby Darin biopic "Beyond the Sea," in which he stars and directs, and Griffin Dunne's gritty family drama "Fierce People" features what is said to be a stunning turn from Diane Lane.

"I think all the great actors are always looking to be challenged," Ortenberg says. "The motion picture with the biggest payday is not necessarily the opportunity for the most creative challenge. I think it's a tribute to people like Kevin Spacey and Diane Lane and others to seek out these projects -- in Kevin's case, to develop them himself -- so that they can practice the craft that they love and prove that it's not just about paydays."

One can also expect to see a full-out Oscar campaign for Moore's incendiary docu -- which observers agree will be pushed in categories beyond the obvious documentary race in which Moore prevailed in 2003with "Bowling for Columbine." (Read: best picture).

Meanwhile, the studio subsidiaries are going for gold with an interesting, eclectic mix of films from around the globe. Foreign films such as Pedro Almodovar's "Bad Education" (Sony Pictures Classics) and Walter Salles' "The Motorcycle Diaries" (Focus) are riding high on critical acclaim from the festival-circuit crowd -- and critics are expected to greet Jean-Pierre Jeunet's "Amelie" follow-up "A Very Long Engagement" (Warner Independent Pictures) just as warmly when it opens stateside in November.

Closer to home, indie darlings such as Payne and Charlie Kaufman look like strong contenders in the industry's writing contests with screenplays for their respective "Sideways" (Searchlight) and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (Focus).

But is it fair to say that 2004 will finally truly earn the all-too-bandied about title of the Year of the Indie? Well, maybe not.

"We're coming up on the Decade of the Indie," WIP president Mark Gill offers with a laugh. "I know it's not fashionable to say that it will be the same this year as every other year, but I'm going to say it anyway: It's going to be the same this year as it's been since about 1996, which was the original Year of the Indie -- four of the five nominees for best picture were indies.

"But what's consistently happening and has been happening for the past 10 years and is very encouraging -- every year, indie films are a factor, as are studio films," Gill concludes. "Academy voters, critics and all the rest will look for a good film irrespective of whether it comes from the major studios or the indie world."

Published Aug. 03, 2004

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