Cinema Today: A Conversation with Thirty-nine Filmmakers from around the World

6. The Business Financing, Distribution, and Exhibition

148 Making a film may be a creative process, but getting the film to viewers involves many non-art functions as well as issues of control. In most ways, the business of filmmaking is just like any other. Mismatched as they may be, art and business are longtime bedfellows; but profit, or at least breaking even, is particularly crucial for film, because making one requires so much money. Of course, one can borrow a camera and a computer editing setup and ask friends to volunteer their knowledge and help on the shoot. More and more independent films are being made today for a million dollars and far less, with cast and crew forfeiting salaries for “back-end deals,” that is, participation in a film’s profits, usually after distribution and/or production costs have been recouped. But if a film is to be seen by enough people to recover its costs and fund the next project, money must be spent. How else will viewers discover and see the film? The costs of marketing a film can outstrip its entire production budget, and distribution is increasingly challenging. As Geoffrey Gilmore, chief creative officer of Tribeca Enterprises and former director of the Sundance Film Festival, observed during a 2009 Tribeca Film Festival panel, “I’ve been hearing this joke for the last several years now, and it’s not very funny. The good news is that more films have been distributed in the theatrical marketplace than at any time since the 1950s. And what’s the bad news? That more films have been distributed than at any time since the 1950s. The marketplace is cutthroat and The Business Financing, Distribution, and Exhibition 6 THE BUSINESS 149 crowded, and all the truths that used to make independent film work are going away.”1 Smaller theaters that showcase independent, personal cinema are struggling to compete with nationwide multiplexes (often owned by the same companies that control the movie studios), and major Hollywood studios have turned away from producing and distributing low- and midbudget films. Internet movie downloading, easily accomplished for free by any computer-savvy viewer, is cutting into DVD sales profits, so pre-sales to DVD companies, along with pre-sales to foreign markets—traditionally important revenue sources, as well as a means of financing independent cinema—have shrunk dramatically. Equity financing is also scarce, owing to the current global economic crisis, although that source will never dry up completely because people who love films will always want to invest in them. One growing, albeit limited source of financing in the United States is tax rebates from various state governments, but this support does not compare with the state funding filmmakers receive abroad. Independent distributors, cable television stations, and even Internet companies such as iTunes are brainstorming for new ways to promote films and provide viewing platforms for smaller movies that do not necessarily draw massive audiences. IFC Entertainment, a theatrical film distributor, also owns two cable television stations and has been releasing films via national video-on-demand simultaneously with limited theatrical releases. The company’s “Festival Direct” program sends other films straight to video-on-demand without a theatrical release, and both programs have proved successful. However, a theatrical release that attracts reviews and public interest invariably drives the success of a film’s DVD sales or payper -view showings, so filmmakers and distributors often try to book their films in select art house cinemas in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, if only for a week or two. In the past, a film would spend a few weeks in limited release before rolling out, that is, moving on to a greater number of theaters nationwide. A year or so later, the DVD would release, followed some time later by payper -view showings on cable television. That process has telescoped as more 1 Geoffrey Gilmore, “Tools of the Trade: Alternative Distribution: Marketing 2.0 and Beyond,” School of Visual Arts, Tribeca Film Festival, New York, April 28, 2009. CINEMA TODAY 150 and more films become available on multiple, simultaneous, and often unconventional platforms. Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience (2009), shot in high-definition digital, released simultaneously in theaters, on DVD, and on pay-per-view cable television. Of course, multiple-platform releasing can confuse consumers, and marketing becomes an issue because viewers need to learn of a film’s presence in order...