I just read this WIRED.com article titled “Netflix and Amazon Offer Indie Filmmakers Hope (And Lots of Money)”. I’ll sum it up for you. Amazon and Netflix are buying up quality films at Sundance and spending a lot of money to do so. My, how things have changed in streaming entertainment.
People continue to debate what this means for the film industry, what the good is, what the bad is and how it will all shape the way we experience the most beloved art form on Earth in the future. It got me thinking about my own experience as an eager writer who left New York for Los Angeles looking for a big break in the “industry.” It was at a time when online video was still a niche for the tech culture and early adopters.
Crude videos were popping up on websites that have long since been forgotten save for one of course who’s name ryhmes with Moo Boob. I was watching all of this short form video and intrigued, but I never had interest in producing it. It was, as I still like to say, disposable entertainment. You got a quick jolt of joy or emotion and then maybe shared with a friend and forgot it the next day. I was writing scripts, 90, 100, 120 pages a pop. What I loved and what I wanted to build as a career was so far from anything that technology was capable of streaming online at the time. Even more so, the stigma of online video was all negative in the eyes of the people I most wanted to be accepted by; The Hollywood dream makers.There was no money being put into video online and the majority of the people making it were not people with film or TV backgrounds. They were tech people who were more amazed by the fact they could go out and do this on their own than what it means to write and produce a compelling story. It took almost a decade for the latter to rear it’s head online.
My personal ambitions were wrapped up in the romance of big movie premieres, huge theaters with huge screens projecting my imagination back at me while people laughed and cried and praised what I had created. All I ever wanted was one chance to sit in a theater of friends, family and other filmmakers I respected and watch something I made. The traditional way movies were experienced and distributed. As I struggled along in Los Angeles trying to reach that goal, online video was really ramping up and more and more interesting and entertaining videos and shows were being upload and streamed to a computer near you. On my own and with friends, I decided to jump in and created a slue videos over the past decade that spanned sketch comedy, episodic shows, short form documentary and music videos. It was fun and the ability to just “go do it” was certainly empowering. But, I never felt the same accomplishment or personal fulfillment I did after finishing a TV or feature film script. The online video world never replaced my “darlings”. I still had that burning desire to make bigger things and see them on bigger screens. Doing it the “old” way was still perceived as the better way. The more respected way. The way that would make me whole as a human and fix all the horrible things about my life. If I could just sell a movie and get it made and in movie theaters everything would be fine, right?
The past few years in TV, film and online video have been both fascinating and frustrating. We’ve seen Hollywood turn its back on smaller films from original independent voices and at the same time those voices began finding their own way through online video. While Hollywood institutions stayed arrogant risking a downfall like the music industry, streaming service providers saw opportunity. People still wanted to see a variety of entertainment, but in numbers that weren’t suited well enough for what the networks and studios deemed worthy of investment. I’ve had a nauseating number of conversations with artist friends about the state of the industry, the value of online video and where it is all headed. We were trying to figure out our place in all the change and if we even had a place in it. For a time I feared my time had passed. My voice and aspirations were not fitting into the changing tide of entertainment. I argued that the only hope for indie cinema was no longer going to be in a cinema. It would have to find a place online where the overhead to produce and distribute was far less than those darling theaters and projectors require. And then something happened. People I respected started making things to be distributed online. They started getting their funding from tech companies.
I remember working at a digital agency who had won Netflix as a client on a big streaming video project. It was a Netflix funded, Roger Corman produced, Joe Dante directed horror series starring Corey Feldman called Splatter. This was 2009 and I remember thinking how cool it was that this company only really known for DVDs in the mail was putting money into an original project to be streamed online. And how perfect that this was a collaboration with Roger Corman, the king of outside the system movies. Steven Soderbergh got in on the action with Bubble. Then Bryan Singer and a whole bunch of other well known people. But, they weren’t putting their best work online. It took a little time for the quality to get on par with what HBO and AMC and the studios were projecting in theaters, but it happened. House of Cards happened and the rest is recent history.
This year’s Sundance film festival is the start of something huge and the true signal that what I had believed the future of indie film would be years ago is in fact coming to fruition (I’m patting myself on the shoulder right this very moment). Netflix and Amazon are saving an art-form and giving future generations of filmmakers a viable outlet for their stories that are being shunned by the traditional Hollywood institutions. More so, the perceptions of online video have officially shifted by both the public and filmmakers. Artists, like me, are not seeing this distribution model as less-than theatrical release, they’re seeing it as a blessing. No longer will small films need to compete in the unfair battlefield of superheroes and fast cars and inevitably not get made. Great stories, risky stories and stories of different scope will have a shot at being funded and seen at a global scale on the day of release. This is amazing. We’ve gone from VOD being something to say sorry for, to it being a greater opportunity for certain types of films than a theatrical distribution is.
It took me a long time, but I can finally say that I have killed my darlings. My perception of the online distribution model has changed and those dreams of mine to see my stories on big screens are no longer a driving force for me to continue writing and creating and trying to build a career in entertainment. Hollywood is now global and thanks to changing mindsets and the support of some unexpected players in the game filmmakers have a renewed support to be different and daring knowing their work once again has a chance of being seen.
