Comments on: Indie Film is Dead Version 772

By: Andrew Delaney

Andrew Delaney — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 06:12:08 +0000

A blog at Film Industry Bloggers goes into detail about making a movie for under $500,000 and how it can make money. The guy who wrote it, British feature director Richard Janes, says that Indie’s are not dead… But the way in which studios got involved with them are…

Have a read… He even gives a budget and samples of how much indie movies have made….

http://www.FilmIndustryBloggers.com/thebritishfilmdirector

By: Jenna Green

Jenna Green — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:49:41 +0000

Indie film is definately not dead. Maybe those financed by movie studios but those have never been really been independent. I found through the internet many new independent film like Four-eyed monsters and this new blog I found at theatticdoormovie.com. The internet is the best tool to find new independent films.

By: Noralil Ryan Fores

Noralil Ryan Fores — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 03:05:52 +0000

Not to mention that the same phenomenon hits with triple strength in a smaller metropolitan area, meaning that if the indies don’t make it that one week in NYC, they sure as heck aren’t even getting the traction to make it elsewhere.

By: Karina Longworth

Karina Longworth — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 22:37:01 +0000

For me the issue of mindshare is more important than the multiplex issue, although I maintain that if something like Juno had been marketed as the feminine Superbad that it was, that might have opened a door for one legitimate indie to breakthrough to mainstream success (you could also argue that Waitress would have been that indie success story of the year, had Juno not been released by the same studio and overtaken it for that made-up but commercially useful distinction).

Anyway. That “smaller audience” Hope talks about is basically flocking to see anything they hear about via word of mouth (this is why a not particularly remarkable film like The Visitor becomes a hit, but it appeals to the median of that audience), but there are lot of legitimately independently made films that would appeal to those same people, if those films could break through the noise to hit the radar of that audience. But, they often don’t get acquired because studio distributors, after buying too many films for years to handle each one with the care it deserved, have decided that spending more than a couple hundred thousand on a festival film and breaking even (if they’re lucky) isn’t worth the hassle. If they do get acquired, there are so many indies-in-name-only booked at the Angelikas of the world (ie: the What Just Happeneds) that real indies often only have a week to prove themselves before losing screen space in a city like New York, and that’s not long enough for word to spread within communities that such-and-such is a must see.

By: Ryan Stewart

Ryan Stewart — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 01:02:28 +0000

Indie producer Ted Hope recently appeared on NHPR and he engaged on this ‘fake indie’ argument specifically. He begins by appropriately dividing the indie marketplace into two camps — one that includes Juno/No Country/Will Be Blood/Savages which he calls “Hollywood farm league” and another that includes foreign films and true indies like “early Jim Jarmusch and Spike Lee.” Here’s what he has to say about the second group –

“That kind of film the current mainstream distribution apparatus has much more trouble handling, and within that is a group of filmmakers who are now looking to talk to a much smaller audience.”

In other words, not coming soon to a multiplex near you. A less crowded, Juno-free marketplace will just mean more screens for economically stressed theaters to play The Dark Knight on. The death of the mini-majors seems like an obviously bad thing to me — the notion that they are stifling some true indie movement that’s bubbling beneath the surface … I don’t see it.