Sunday, March 26, 2017

Re-Engineering Movie Making

From the Noahpinion blog:

"Meanwhile, it has never been cheaper to make a movie. I just bought a used camera for $1000. That camera, which can also shoot digital video, was one of the cameras used to film the IMAX movie Jerusalem, which won awards for its cinematography. One thousand dollars. And I bet if I had tried, I could have found the same model for cheaper. One of the top films at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival was shot on an iPhone.

Editing software is also cheap, and the price of high-quality computer graphics is falling relentlessly. This doesn't mean making a movie is cheap or easy, but it's a lot cheaper and easier than before. In 2014, the average independent film cost $750,000 to make. That's not peanuts, but for the price of one house in San Francisco you could make three indie films.

Moonlight, this year's Best Picture winner at the Oscars, was made for $1.5M and grossed $55M.

Get Out, by Jordan Peele, was made for $4.5M and has grossed over $140M so far.
As for distribution, this isn't nearly as big of a problem as you might think. With the rise of streaming, it's possible to create new video distribution channels (streaming services, or even entirely new business models people haven't thought of yet) much more easily than in decades past. Only a few can succeed, but those will succeed big.

Netflix and Amazon and Hulu are desperate for new content. TV is often a stepping stone to the movies, and is where all the quality is nowadays anyway.

And traditional channels for independent movies still exist - plenty of Hollywood directors and producers got their start from indie hits, and that will probably continue to be true."

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