HOLLYN-wood (Norman, that is)

A recent article on THE WRAP discusses the very obvious downturn in box office for 3D films. This (they say) doesn’t prove that 3D is a fad but that “not every movie should be in 3D.”

While it’s easy to make broad generalizations based on very little evidence (hell, that’s what I do here, right?), it’s actually much more nuanced than that.

We’ll see what happens to STEP UP 3D this weekend, but we are clearly in the early stages of 3D adoption. I’m inherently skeptical that 3D is ever going to take over the film, tv and web content world, but I’m also waiting to see what will happen to movie 3D if television 3D becomes more popular. Once we become used to 3D on TV, will that make it a requirement in theaters, or will it simply cheapen the concept?

But it was a different sentence entirely that woke me up from this ongoing, every-present, 3D/2D discussion.

Speaking of Dreamworks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, the article says:

He also thinks exhibitors will have to move away from its age-old, one-size-fits-all pricing model.

“For the first time in a long time, I think you’re going to see some adjustment on that,” he added.

One of the things that may be damaging 3D admissions right now is the three to five dollar admission price premium that theaters are tacking onto their normal ticket prices. While that’s fine for a cool event film, it’s probably going to mean the difference between a Yea or a Nay for a family of five deciding whether to see a film on a weekend. Think about it — with three kids, you’re already laying out over 50 bucks for tickets and another 30 or 40 for food. That’s about $100 before you even think about 3D. Add another 15 to 20 bucks for that incredible stereoscopic experience in CATS AND DOGS and you’ll probably get as many people saying “Nah, I heard that the film wasn’t so good” as say “It’s worth it just to shut the kids up for two hours.”

But Katzenberg’s point is well-taken. We expect that first class air flight is going to cost more than economy. We know that putting premium gas in our tanks will cost us more than regular. Don’t we? Why should we expect that every seat, in every theater in a multiplex, for every movie, will cost the same amount. It’s long been accepted that people going to see the less popular matinee performances of a film will pay less.  Isn’t that just another way of saying that people going to evening films will pay more? If that’s the case, why shouldn’t people who decide not to put on the 3D glasses pay less than those who do?

The key here would be to create a sliding scale for films that better reflects the demand for that experience. Would you pay 15 bucks to see the next HARRY POTTER film?  Perhaps, if you can guarantee me that I won’t have to pay anything more than 9 or 10 bucks to see the latest Nicole Holofcener film. I’m not saying this because PLEASE GIVE isn’t as good a film as the 58th film about Hogwarts School of Magic, but because fewer people want to see it. Think about it — this could be great for small indie films. Incentivise people to see indie films in a theater. Make it cheap to see them on a Wednesday night in a smaller theater without 3D. Make it a great alternative on Saturday night to the 3D/super Dolby-ized, VFX-heavy/big theater Potter and Snape. Then give me the opportunity to upgrade my indie ticket with comfier seats, reserved seats and better placement in the theater.  I’m there for you baby!

I’m not talking about ghetto-izing these films. The success of the Laemmle or Arclight style experience (with comfortable seats, good food and advanced seat reservations) proves that people will pay for value. But your definition of value is almost certainly different than mine. And the next person’s. If lower ticket prices are more important to you than comfy seats, then you should be given the opportunity to act on that. But once you leave behind the idea of one ticket price for every seat in a theater, then you’ve really freed yourself up for some great opportunities to bring people into the theaters, as opposed to driving them away.

The tricky thing here will be to avoid having theater owners gouge their patrons, and to avoid having film distributors gouging theater owners. One valuable service that the defunct, though not lamented, Hollywood Stock Exchange gave was a number which roughly correlated with people’s desire to see a film. AOL’s Moviefone provides similar data. This doesn’t mean that those numbers are always right, but they do lead the way to a pricing model that studios would have to take into account in order for theaters to price their tickets on a sliding scale.

In a world where theaters are competing with the Net for viewers, taking a cue from the web and letting viewers pay for content that they want might not be such a bad idea.

Daisy Whitney, host of New Media Minute

Seems like just yesterday that I finished writing about collaboration (it wasn’t, it was actually two days ago) and I’ve just watched Daisy Whitney’s latest episode of New Media Minute which is all about collaboration.  (Daisy is one of the most informed, entertaining, correspondents on the media area, hosting This Week In Media as well as writing for a slew of magazines and web sites.). She talks about new technology which is enabling people to collaborate across great distances including Wiredrive, web conference software Adobe ConnectNow and sites like video hiring hall Spidvid and online collaborative amateur site Pixorial.

Along the way, Daisy also mentions a project that I was involved in earlier this year — Mass Animation’s “Live Music”.  This was a Facebook application in which animators from across the globe were able to download a trial copy of Maya, and use it to create individual shots in an animated short that is going to be released at the top of Sony’s fall film PLANET 51. There were weekly contests, polls and judged competitions. I was one of a panel of judges that looked at individual sections of the films, gave feedback to the worldwide animators, and awarded badges to the shots we judged the best. It was a fantastic experience and created a much better film than it would have been without that diverse input.

Daisy also announced a contest for web videomakers that I want you all to know about. To dovetail with the publication of a friend’s book (Alison Winscott’s “The Time of My Life”) she has asked animators to create and post a short 10-15 second video based on the idea of “The Time of My Life”. Send her the link and, after judging, the winner will run on her popular show along with a featured interview. Sounds worth it to me. Also, a good chance to learn more about yourself.

The contest (read more details about it on Daisy’s blog for New Media Minute) has no announced final date but, as usual in life, earlier is better. So get those videos shot, edited and in.

Last week I ran a panel at the NATPE LATV Festival. NATPE, which is the National Association of Television Program Executives, describes itself as representing companies and people who are “involved in or wanting to become involved with the creation, development and distribution of television programming.” Along the way they promote discussion about television programming. And that’s what I was doing at the conference. Promoting Discussion. Hey, I’m all about talking (as anyone who knows me will sadly attest).

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Hey, unless I’m doing reality television, what the hell is there to talk about? Is there any television industry for me to create programming? And why should I care?”

Well, here’s why those of you who are in any part of the entertainment industry (or who would like to be) should care. The really interesting thing about the conference was just how aware the entire industry has finally becoming aware of the sea change. Of course, you’d have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to see the changes. There are editors who I know who haven’t worked in eight or nine months; some are looking to sell their houses to make ends meet, and nearly every single person I know now says that they are working “below their rate” (which means, working for less money than they used to and waaaay less than they’d like to). And those changes are going to irrevocably affect how we all make and distribute our media.

The overall takeaway I got from the panels I visited and the one that I ran (“Animation: The Web Levels the Playing Field” with Chuck Williams, Producer, Walt Disney Animation Studios;  Allen DeBevoise, CEO, Machinima.com;  Uri Shinar, CEO & Founder, Aniboom;  Lifeng Wang, President, Xing Xing Digital Corp.) was that the television industry is changing mightily and those of us who can’t accept that change are totally hosed. That’s what I twittered after the conference.

I know, I know. But it’s interesting that this was coming from the real players in the industry.

There was much discussion about the collapse of the syndication market and the precipitous drop in ad revenue. The combination of these two things — the foundations of how this content gets paid for — means that content can’t be produced at the same level as before because it can’t be sold for as much money as before. There was plenty of discussion about the change in the broadcast model — 22 episode orders for (essentially) two network runs of a show, running primarily on broadcast with some nod to web streaming models like Hulu.

There was some discussion about how the web is beginning to suck away some of the ad revenue as well as some of the distribution, but the general consensus is that there’s no real money on the web yet — at least not at the levels that the Big Boys are used to. Uri Shinar, who runs Aniboom, said on my panel that he has to look at moving into traditional media to supplement his online, crowd sourcing method of distribution. Chuck Williams, who is directing at Disney Animation, said that they are approaching the dual distribution mode from the other direction — spreading into online to keep their franchises alive during the years in between theatrical releases.

The web is an established tool and it is growing in importance, the players agree. But there are still many people who don’t get it. For those of you who believe that you’ll be able to work below-the-line as you always have been (one show at a time, for a very good wage, guaranteed for 22 episodes a season), well you might as well line up at the state unemployment office now. Shows that once shot for eight days will move to six or fewer, episode orders will shrink to ten or so episodes with the possibility of renewals. That means that our contracts as editors won’t guarantee us more than two or three months of work.

We’re going to working on more things (sometimes simultaneously), for less money, than before. And that’s actually going to be exciting and dynamic. We need to embrace that reality.

Paradoxically, this means that those of you who are now graduating from college, with a decent skill set and some work behind you, are really going to be in a much better place than Old Farts (Disclaimer: I Am An Old Fart of a type), who have kids and mortgages and big car payments. We won’t be agile enough to catch the wave. More likely, we’re going to be buried under it.

Someone responded to my tweet about the conference with another one that “They’re five years behind.” That’s true. There are some people who began establishing a base in online programming years ago. They were greeted with jeers: “There’s no money in that.” Even today, people who are all about following the money will challenge us with the accurate claim that very few people have figured out how to make money on the Web with content or programming.

But those days are fast going away. The cable/phone company’s Four Play strategies (in which they will sell you a phone, your television programming, your wireless and your internet/data all through the same pipe) are moving your computer screen into your living room. The recent court decision to allow Cablevision to keep remotely storing viewers shows on their servers rather than our DVR boxes, will only accelerate that move. Within a few years, it won’t matter where we decide to watch our shows — on a large television screen, on our computer monitors, on our cel phones, or on a screen built into our refrigerators. The future of the Apple TV is finally here.

This means that there will be a million channels out there to fill with programming. No, make that an “unlimited number of channels.” There is always the danger proclaimed by Bruce Springsteen (“57 Channels and Nothin’ On“) but that depends more on who’s watching than who’s programming. As companies like Revision 3 show (check out their very cool Film Riot, a how-to-make cheap VFX show with Ryan Connolly), the real future is going to be creating much much cheaper content for a much smaller niche market.

If you guys want to have a future in the film world of the future — you should figure out how to do that. Then you’ll be way ahead of the professional Television Programming Executives and maybe be able to set your own agenda.

I just had a conversation with someone last night about going to awards shows. Though I AM a member of AMPAS — the Academy of Motion  Picture Arts and Sciences that hands out the Oscars, I can think of nothing that would be so boring as to actually attend the Oscar awards. Frankly, if I can’t be shouting at the screen at how stupid the result is, or how ugly a dress is, or how moronic a dance produciton number is — well, then, what’s the point of watching the show as opposed to simply reading about it on the web?

Not all shows are like that, of course. When I look at the Golden Globes, where people are drinking wine before, during and after the ceremony, that looks like a damned fine awards show. The A.C.E. Eddie Awards isn’t as free-flowing with the vino, but comes equipped with food and desserts.

But the Oscars are you father’s awards show. And they wear that tedium proudly (and I say that as a proud and happy member of AMPAS, who has attended many events there and serves on a committee or two when asked).

Now, with a set of cojones that staggers me, the Academy has announced that the Oscars will expand the best picture race to 10 films. Citing history (apparently that category “usually spanned 10 films” back between 1932 and 1943, according to Daily Variety), President Sid Ganis was quoted:

“After more than six decades, the Academy is returning to some of its earlier roots, when a wider field competed for the top award of the year,” said academy President Sid Ganis. “The final outcome, of course, will be the same – one Best Picture winner – but the race to the finish line will feature 10, not just five, great movies from 2009.”

Wow. Now we get to have our own Top Ten List. And fewer surprises, of course. And a larger pool of people spending money on “For Your Consideration” ads.  And more screenings and screeners.

And, I’m sure, a few more pictures by major studios in the list.  Which is, I’m sure, what is largely driving this change. After all, it is the major studios who most actively support the Academy during the year, and it must sorta kinda suck that they get so few movies nominated for Best Picture. It always seems to be those pesky indies who are stealing the nominations. Wouldn’t it be great, they must have thought, if we could make sure that we get some more of our movies into the nomination list.

But then they took at look at the films that they want to release and realized that the films that they do best are those that are guaranteed NOT to be liked by us (take a look at today’s major opening — TRANSFORMERS — if you’re looking for validation of that claim). “Hmmmm,” they must have said to their collective imaginary selves. “How can we beat that reality?

“I KNOW!!! Let’s have more films in the nomination list!!  And then, even if a few more indies sneak in there — at least we can get our usually horrible Oscar fodder in there as well.”

Voila, today’s announcement was born.

The biggest question that I have, of course, is whether that, with the clips and speeches, means that the Oscar show is going to be six hours long.

Or just feel that way.

In a brief article/obituary today, the New York Times related the announcement by Kodak that they have stopped production on their iconic film stock Kodachrome.

Made famous by its sheer ubiquity long before Paul Simon sung about how it gave ‘nice bright colors’ Kodachrome was, for some in my family, a synonym for ‘camera.’. As in “Hey, could you hand me my Kodachrome from the table there.”

In this age of super-cheap digital cameras and Flip Minos I’m not going to mourn this chemical technology. But it’s always interesting when an icon, like Fidel Castro, steps down.

The recent news that Sony and Regal Theaters reached an agreement to install 4K projectors at Regal Theaters, combined with Friday’s item that the German Federal Film Board (FFA) agreed to provide 40 million Euros (that’s over 55 million US type dollars) to help the digitization of German theaters, shows that the feature film world is finally beginning to get its digital film houses in order.

Of course, there is plenty of desperation in these measures, as well as a large dollop of politics (the FFA co-produces films, and Sony is one of the majors and mini-majors that is still standing). But as the panicked move into 3-D and IMAX shows, the distributors and exhibitors — who are often on opposite ends of the interest continuum when it comes to showing films — are both smelling the snapping dog of internet distribution behind them.

It’s not that 4K makes the films look much better than a typical HD projector. Of course, there are those who see the differences, but most filmgoers couldn’t tell the difference if the words “This Is Better” were flashed on screen during the 4K projection. But it’s that 4K fits into the present filmmaking workflow so much better when you start to look at the very gimmicks that could keep recalcitrant filmgoers in theater seats. The high-powered digital effects of Big Tentpole monstrosities like TRANSFORMERS are created in that high res.  Digital Intermediates are increasingly being done in 4K. 3-D begs for higher resolution in order to create lower cost distribution.

In short, 4K finally makes sense as a differentiator between the theater experience and your living room (even if you’ve got a nerdlike sound system and huge-screen television there). If you don’t have the story to bring them in, at least get the high-priced splash and, for now, that looks way better on a big screen with great sound and incredible effects of things blowing up. All things that the smaller-budgeted indie films and web-based projects can’t really deliver.

I’m not sure where this leaves a film like Woody Allen’s latest WHATEVER WORKS, which had a visual effects component that could barely fill up one screen’s worth in the end credits. But, after years of pooh-poohing 4K as a real possibility in theaters, I must say that I’m thinking that it could really happen. In this case, it’s not the audience that is clamoring for it. And it’s not solely the distributors, finally. It’s the entire chain — all the way to the exhibitors.

I’m not sure how I feel about this. Will it make the filmgoing experience more awesome? I doubt it. Will it make the filmmaking experience easier? I doubt it. Will it make the transition of films to all sorts of ancillary markets easier? Probably, by a hair’s breadth. I’m waiting to see if it does what the industry clearly wants it to — to bring more butts into the seats, and to make the entire process a little cheaper.

I’ve been down this road before, but a recent announcement by Bruce Nazarian on Larry Jordan’s Digital Production Buzz perked my interest again.

Here’s the set-up:

1. More than a year ago, Blu-Ray finally (after much payment of money to the various film distributors) triumphed over HD-DVD in the HD Format Wars. However the rush to adopt the format has been conspicuously slow.  We were told at first that this was because people had been holding up on buying players because of the war.
2. Then the war was over and very few people ran to buy.
3. Then we were told that it was because of the high price of the players and when they came down, in time for the 2008 Holiday Season, then all would be well.
4. Then the player prices went down and sales went up — but not ferociously. (As of May 31, Blu-Ray accounts for only 12% of all DVD sales according to the most optimistic figures).  Accoring to the web site Blu-raystats, sales of Blu-Ray disks are up 81% from last year, which seems impressive on the face of it.  But when you consider that the number of Blu-Ray release is up 210%, that figure doesn’t look quite as good.
5. At the same time, we were told that a huge impediment to adoption of Blu-Ray in the independent market was the high licensing fees for replicatable disks. Once those were licked, that group of content creators would leap onto the bandwagon.

Now the good news is that through Bruce’s (and the International Digital Media Alliance‘s) incredibly hard and diligent work, it appears that the most expensive of the two licensing organization for Blu-Ray — AACS — may finally be relenting. And that is great news for independent producers.  But I’m still not convinced that anyone cares enough to make this the straw that breaks the Standard Def DVD’s back. Even with the growth of large screen TVs.

Ask yourself this question. I’m going to assume that most of you reading this blog are interested in Content Creation in some way — either as filmmakers or film watchers. That puts you in a group of people who are Interested In Content. Now, out of this group, how many of you own a Blu-Ray player and regularaly purchase Blu-Ray disks.

Hell, let’s make the question even broader.  Out of all of you people, how many of you even know of someone who regularly purchases Blu-Ray content?

If that percentage doesn’t approach 50%, then Blu-Ray is dead.  If we can’t even get those of us interested i films to watch them on Blu-Ray, how are we going to convince the rest of the world.

This goes beyond the Current State of the Economy. As I’ve said before, the leap from VHS to DVD made a huge difference in terms of the visual and audio quality.  In fact, it made a big enough difference so that it passed the Mom Test — that is, even My Mom would notice. That, and market factors, eventually drove VHS out the window.

But, even with great big wall televisions, the difference between SD-DVDs and Hi Def Blu-Ray DVDs is just not that huge that my Mom would ever care or notice. Hell, my Mom hasn’t even bothered to use the component video outputs from her DVD player.  (“Nothin’ wrong with those cute red and white plugs, right?”) And it’s a pretty steep curve to get her to upgrade — both the hardware box and all of the movies that she’s accumulated over the years.

In short, the drive to move to Blu-Ray, with my strongest apologies to Bruce, is completely led by the studios — who are looking to give consumers a reason to re-purchase all of their already purchased content. This isn’t coming from the consumers (except for HD sports on television most of us couldn’t give a damn) at all.  It’s not even coming from the producers, directors, and cinematographers of the world. Nope, this is almost completely market driven.

Which means that, for now, those of us who love HD content would rather download it over the Internet then go through the upgrade path. The Future of Blu-Ray may be Broadband.

I’m part of a group of people who get together about every week or so to talk about events in the Media, Entertainment and Technology spaces (don’t you just love when someone uses the term “space”?). The group, which is called METal — for the Media Entertainment Technology Alliance — is run by Ken Rutkowski, who you have heard me talk about in the past.

This Thursday, June 11th, for those of you who will be in the Los Angeles, Ken and Michael Kaliski, will be hosting a very low-cost Media Festival, which will a cross between a film festival and the TED conferences. Excerpts from a large number of films will be shown, and each one will be followed by a short talk by someone representing the film. Here is how the Taste of METal site describes it.

The Media Entertainment Technology Alliance (METal) presents its inaugural media festival on Thursday, June 11th displaying an eclectic selection of meaningful shorts accompanied by speakers who will give brief, insightful presentations following each film. Moderator Ken Rutkowski will be wielding “the hook” to keep things zipping along. It’s speed dating for the mind!

The event will take place at the state-of-the-art 400 seat screening room at Los Angeles Center Studios. 450 S. Bixel Street LA, CA 90017.

Arrivals and refreshments will begin at 7:00PM with the program kicking off at 8PM.

Details can be found at the TASTE OF METal site and you can RSVP at http://metal.pingg.com/Mayfilm

I am totally going to be there. It looks like it’s going to be a very interesting and provocative evening.

I love an article in today’s Los Angeles Times.   Called “Can ‘The Reader’ win best picture without an editing nomination?”  It basically lays out the statistics about how few films have ever won for Best Picture without a Best Editing award.

The article doesn’t examine any of the whys behind this, but I’ve long said that most Oscar voters don’t really have a good enough idea what editing is (“It’s cool cutting, right?”) to separate best film and best editing.  If they like a film they’re generally going to vote for it for best editing. That’s why Best Editing winners are often good predictors of what’s going to win for Best Picture later in the awards show.  For me, this means that something that the editors have not judged worthy of a nomination (to reiterate, only editors members can nominate for best editing — everyone can, however, vote in the category once the nominees have been chosen) is rarely going to inspire a filmmaking awe in the Academy as a whole.

Any thoughts on this?

MONSTERS VS ALIENS, and WE LIVE IN PUBLIC

Do you know what the acronyms DCIP and VPF mean? Hey, in a world where we’ve needed to learn what DSL means (or at least what it does) what’s a few more letters between friends, right? And it could be very important for your future, if you’re an independent filmmaker.

Well, J. Sperling Reich has a great blog that I found called Celluloid Junkie which basically talks about the business of exhibition. That means, what happens when your film gets into the theaters. In the latest posting, “Paramount Goes Direct-To-Exhibitors With D-Cinema Deal” Sperling talks about how digital projection is going to end up in our local movie theaters.

Many of you may have seen ads for Hollywood movies that announce that they will be screening “digitally” in some theaters. In essence, what this means is that the movie theaters have installed large video projectors, capable of screening films at 2K resolution — slightly higher than High Def video. Now, these systems (along with their hookups to higher quality audio) are not cheap to install. An article in Gizmodo puts the costs at roughly $70,000 per installation. The article goes on to say:

The five major studios involved will help out by paying a “digital print fee” of about $800 to $1,000 per film, which is about how much it cost to send out physical prints. By doing so they’ll help offset the billion dollar bill the theaters will be stuck with when upgrading all of their projectors. This means we’ll be seeing more films shown digitally, as well as more films shown in digital 3D, a gimmick that you’ll learn to loathe soon enough. But hey, more digital projectors is definitely something I can get behind.

That fee that the distributors finally agreed to pay is also the aforementioned VPF (“virtual print fee”). And it took years for the studios to realize that it was the only way they could encourage theater owners to buy those expensive projectors, an argument that still lacks weight among many theater owners. That is why the two organizations that are pushing the Digital Cinema Initiative (the DCIP, and Cinedigm) have been been looking for ways to entice the owners into jumping into the pool.  For awhile it looked like the distributors were going to pay some of the installation costs in some way — partnerships, loans, etc. That approach didn’t attract much enthusiasm from either side. And that’s when the VPf came along.

And hasn’t really taken off.

Sperling’s blog entry talks about Paramount seems to be returning to the idea of offering exhibitors direct financial assistance in some form. And, for that, who needs the DCIP? Sperling notes:

What’s significant about Paramount’s announcement is that previously studios have refused to cut deals to reimburse exhibitors for digital cinema installations directly with exhibitors for fear of future anti-trust litigation.  Instead, they relied on digital cinema systems integrators to provide a buffer between themselves and theatre owners.  But, with the digital cinema rollout at a near stand still, Paramount seems to be throwing caution to the winds.

Sperling’s reasoning behind this is that Paramount would like to see more digital theaters because they’d like to use the technology to see more theaters that could easily show 3-D films like their upcoming MONSTERS VS. ALIENS. I spoke a few posts ago about the distributors’ illusion that 3-D will save their worlds, so I buy into Sperling’s argument that this is why Paramount is breaking ranks, even while I disagree with Paramount’s reasoning. And I certainly like the idea that studios are thinking beyond the simple “let’s lay off the workers” model to saving their financial future.

But the most exciting thing, for me, about Paramount’s decision  to throw their money behind Digital Cinema has little to do with 3-D. I’m much more interested in how the projection technology can help the indie filmmaker.

My favorite film at Sundance this week was, bar none, Ondi Timoner’s documentary WE LIVE IN PUBLIC, which is about Josh Harris, a 1990s New York internet entrepeneur who used streaming video technology, and a very art-event orientation, to convert a Soho basement into a month-long living experience for a large group of people and which would be on camera every minute of every day. Every room — living rooms, bathrooms, bedrooms — had video cameras in it, recording the action. The film, which is uses this even as a mere starting point for a discussion of privacy and innovation, was a powerful experience (someone who sat next to me at the screening, looked at me at the end and said “That film freaked me out.”).

Ondi sat on a panel that I ran and mentioned that she had been editing the film up until just a day before the festival and it is truly a testament to the development of digital non-linear editing technology (she worked on an Avid) that she could be editing and finishing so late in the game, it is equally amazing to me that she was able to output a digital tape or two, bring it up to Sundance and simply show it. There was no need for complicated lab runs — color correction had already been done, sound was already added, multiple copies could be created rather quickly.

Observant readers will note that this is hardly new — filmmakers have been able to finish video for television on this very timeframe for years. But that’s only because each and every one of us agreed to buy the projectors that made this possible. We called them “televisions” but that didn’t matter. The public, acting as the exhibitors, agreed to shoulder the cost for the distribution of the studios’ content.  Paramount has finally admitted that that very model won’t work in theatrical distribtution but that it is still important to get that technology into theaters.

So they’re going to pay for some of it themselves.

What this means for us, as filmmakers, is that we’ll be able to create all sorts of films, using all sorts of capture formats, and finish them at our own pace and in our own manner and there will be thousands of theaters able to help show them. With high-end HD camers out there (JVC just announced a sub-$4000 camera at Macworld, RED has a more expensive series that are still within reach of the serious filmmaker) it might just throw some of the balance towards us. We can leave 3-D behind us, and take advantage of the digital theater that the studios hunger for 3-D brought us, and bring really great images to an audience that just might get interested.

Who knows, the studios might just be helping out the indie filmmaker.  You can say “thank you” in a few years.

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A side note here — I met Sperling by stumbling across him on Twitter. The mass, social-networking, text-message service proved to be a real boon for me at both Macworld and Sundance as I was able to keep up with people, parties, announcements, etc. from people who I thought would be interesting. The service, which was initially mocked because its users were posting mere status reports on their life (“Going to bed now, see ya!”) has now transformed into a great referral service for information. Guy Kawasaki, for instance, uses Twitter to post links to news and analysis articles. Services like Twitpic allow users to post images of events as they are happening. A number of people like John C Dvorak and Dave Hamilton have used it to get personalized information (Dave asked his followers today for dinner recipes that “involed sundried tomatoes” and within five minutes received great responses.).  It’s turned into a great resource and information finder. For those of you who are looking to develop networks in this difficult job climate, you’d be smart to start using Twitter, to figure out whether it works for me.

I know that I would have never found Sperling’s great web site without finding him on Twitter.