HOLLYWOOD: Designed to Prevent all but a Few from Achieving Their Dreams!
By Jason Tyrrell, VP of Content, SingularDTV
“If the goal of an artist is to make a living doing what he or she loves, the system is designed to prevent all but a very few from achieving that dream. And if you can’t project revenues in a manageable way, you can’t make a living as a creator. It remains a hobby, and growth into a career is a long shot at best.”
Film distribution is neither an art nor a science, though it borrows elements of both. It’s a wholly human enterprise that all too often gets caught up in numbers and projections. A business that sometimes feels more like a hobby, driven by intense passion and commitment, but resolved to uncertain and futile results. Sure things may become shocking misses, and hidden gems emerge as blockbusters practically in the blink of an eye. It’s a conundrum that’s as volatile as any other aspect of the process, and requires just as much drive, creativity and commitment. At SingularDTV, our team is laying the groundwork for an evolution in entertainment distribution, through the creation of a platform that truly supports creatives and inspires consumers. As with any time you set out to do something different, lots of questions are raised.
How can such a balance be struck? Is an evolution even possible, amidst monstrous competition with nearly bottomless pockets?
I’ve spent over a decade working in various capacities within film and television distribution. I’ve battled at film festivals to acquire a hotly contested title for boutique indie distributors, and I’ve juggled the release calendars of the major studios for a global aggregator. I’ve worked both alongside and across the table from producers, directors, international and domestic sales agents, managers and teams of lawyers. And I’ve been a creator myself, crossing my fingers that I chose the right partners to represent work I cared deeply about. No matter the position or the project, I’ve inevitably run into a very similar set of problems.
The answers to all of these questions, as is often the case, can be found by honestly assessing the problems. It’s not pretty, and it’s rarely fair, but it has to be done. So, what are the problems we need to solve, as artists, creators, consumers, and curators?
Problem #1: The Best Laid Plans…
When you work for an indie label, you’re surrounded by passionate dreamers with the best of intentions. No one gets into independent film distribution to retire early with a limitless bankroll. The halls of these distribution companies are filled with cinephiles, die-hards, pop culture nerds, creatives and entrepreneurs, who spend their days developing strategies for getting movies discovered. The passion is fueled by discovery, that first burst of adrenaline you feel when watching that screener or catching that premiere and being blown away by something new, something moving, unique, and compelling. You’re driven to share that experience with others, hell, with the entire world. And that drive fuels every strategic path taken. However, those best laid plans often come up against a painful reality: limited resources.
There are three tools in your chest as a distributor or exhibitor: time, money, and people. Ideally, you’d have all three to employ in support of a new release. Since reality is rarely ideal, you do whatever is necessary to make it work, even if you’ve only got two out of the three elements to play with. But if you find yourself with only one tool at your disposal, you’re in trouble. And that unenviable position is all too common.
Businesses of all sizes have competing priorities, regardless of the industry. In film distribution, those competing priorities may be the culprit behind limiting a distribution professional’s tools. Perhaps you earmarked a release date six months down the line, to make up for a limited budget, but the company’s investors decide to push up the release date to meet a quarterly revenue goal. Maybe you were promised additional hands, but then the budget is pulled from your department and put towards other needs. Worst yet, poor senior management, narrow-minded strategic thinking, or near-sighted planning may make success impossible right from the start. It’s not that your distribution partners didn’t try, or didn’t want the best for their content partners. But their hands were tied, and the outcome was essentially rigged.
Problem #2: Can You Hear Me Now…?
Let’s say you’ve got a great piece of content. People who have seen it love it, fans and critics alike. You’ve cut a great trailer, designed key art that jumps off the page. You’ve built out a strategy that will get that content into millions of households. The big day comes, and you launch your special baby into the world… Alongside dozens of other new releases. You see, no matter what day of what month you pick, you’re going to face steep competition. Thousands of new films come out each and every year, while millions of hours of content for of all ages, sizes and shapes are available to consumers at any given time. So maybe that special baby isn’t so special after all?
Competition in the arts is nothing new, but never before have there been more options vying for a customer’s attention. Film, television, music, video games, podcasts, comics, virtual reality and immersive entertainment experiences and countless more, accessible with the launch of an app or the tap of a button. So how do you compete in the golden age of content? The studios do it with money, more of it than has ever before been spent to launch a product. But what if you can’t spend nine figures on the release of your content? How do you break through the noise? Even unique and exciting marketing efforts are often silenced in the face of this monsoon of entertainment.
Problem Number 3: Show Me the Money!
This here’s the rub, the one that stalls more careers and kills more friendships than any other problem in entertainment distribution. Consumers transact, they actually (finally!) rent or buy your content. Congratulations! Now, how and when do you get paid? This question has more varied answers than in any other industry on the planet, and many of them are unsatisfactory. Depending on the format and the platform, an accurate accounting of transactions can take months to find your inbox. A precious few platforms have managed to become flexible enough to report in days or weeks. But in all of these cases, the numbers you see can be as creative as the content you distributed. Distributors large and small are in the business of making money, and regrettably, that often means uncovering new and unique ways to withhold money from content creators.
It’s often difficult to peg who is at fault here. Your agent or main contact at the distributor may well be half in the dark, subject to even more insidious levels of creative accounting by the licensees, aggregators, and intermediaries they’re forced to employ to get that content widely seen in the first place. This isn’t a case of evil or malicious people, but a system that began with handshakes and cocktails, and hasn’t meaningfully evolved. So even if a piece of content manages to find its audience and thrive, the bottom line returned to the creatives and investors is often underwhelming.
If the goal of an artist is to make a living doing what he or she loves, the system is designed to prevent all but a very few from achieving that dream. And if you can’t project revenues in a manageable way, you can’t make a living as a creator. It remains a hobby, and growth into a career is a long shot at best.
These are three huge problems, and they obviously won’t be solved overnight. But in tackling these problems head on, in acknowledging that they are in fact PROBLEMS, and not just ‘the way it is’, a true evolution in entertainment is possible. But it’s going to take something huge, a seismic shift. It’s going to take an evolution in the commitment, resources, data, and creativity employed across the industry. It’s going to take turning problem solving into an art form.
That’s the scope of effort being tackled today at SingularDTV. It’s amazing how aligned solving these distribution problems are with the rest of the company’s core mission. In fact, each of the problems above emerged out of a centralized paradigm, and the bottlenecks that occur within those systems. Decentralizing the entertainment industry, with an eye towards problem solving as an art form, will enable SingularDTV to emerge as a powerful partner for content owners, and a must-see destination for consumers across the globe. That makes these ongoing efforts, and the announcements coming over the next several months, truly ground zero for the future of content.
By Jason Tyrrell, VP of Content, SingularDTV
