This year the movie industry made $30 billion (1/3 in the U.S.) from box-office revenue.But the total movie industry revenue was $87 billion.

Where did the other $57 billion come from?

From sources that the studios at one time claimed would put them out of business: Pay-per view TV, cable and satellite channels, video rentals, DVD sales, online subscriptions and digital downloads.

Blank’s timeline provides further perspective:

• 1920’s – the record business complained about radio. The argument was because radio is free, you can’t compete with free. No one was ever going to buy music again.
• 1940’s – movie studios had to divest their distribution channel – they owned over 50% of the movie theaters in the U.S. “It’s all over,” complained the studios. In fact, the number of screens went from 17,000 in 1948 to 38,000 today.
• 1950’s – broadcast television was free; the threat was cable television. Studios argued that their free TV content couldn’t compete with paid.
• 1970’s – Video Cassette Recorders (VCR’s) were going to be the end of the movie business. The movie businesses and its lobbying arm MPAA fought it with “end of the world” hyperbole. The reality? After the VCR was introduced, studio revenues took off like a rocket.  With a new channel of distribution, home movie rentals surpassed movie theater tickets.
• 1998 – the MPAA got congress to pass the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), making it illegal for you to make a digital copy of a DVD that you actually purchased.
• 2000 – Digital Video Recorders (DVR) like TiVo allowing consumer to skip commercials was going to be the end of the TV business. DVR’s reignite interest in TV.
• 2006 - broadcasters sued Cablevision (and lost) to prevent the launch of a cloud-based DVR to its customers.
• Today it’s the Internet that’s going to put the studios out of business. Sound familiar?

Read the rest here.

In this post on The Film Collaborative site, transparency (the reasons for it and its consequences) is clearly explored.

Taking the long view of the 21st Century film biz, Tribeca is setting its sights on digital distribution. And with a string of cable VOD successes — led by horror title “Grave Encounters,” Ed Burns’ “Newlyweds” and the Keira Knightley romantic drama “Last Night” — the two-year-old division’s brass claims they’ve had a strong start.

Kaufman points to one of the most pressing questions still surrounding VOD:

But given the financial smokescreen that still surrounds VOD, it’s hard to tell how well that film, or any of Tribeca’s titles for that matter, have performed. As Hyde notes, “Was it successful financially? We don’t know yet.”

Read the whole article here.

While always somewhat inefficient, historically this approach has been successful enough for studios and other content creators to continue.  This success however, was predicated on the fact that somewhere down the line, after a film had enjoyed a major theatrical release, a whole lot of people we’re spending $4-$5 to rent or $10-$15 to buy that film.  No longer.  With Netlix and other services, the cost of renting varies from $.48 – $1.20 and let’s face it, how many movies do you see and just HAVE to own?

The result, according to this Deadline.com story on a report by Morgan Stanley analyst Benjamin Swinburne, is a 40% decline in cash flow for studios between 2007 and 2011.  If the studios are hurting this bad, it’s only reasonable to assume the indie world isn’t exactly feasting.

So what can be done? According to Swinburne “only through significant realignment of (movie) cost levels, particularly in the area of marketing and distribution but also overall production costs, can values be maximized.”  Spend less, make more.

Carpet bombing is great if you have enough ammo to cover the country.  What happens if you can’t afford all of that?  You use a scalpel instead of a hatchet.  Identify the people that are most likely to see a particular film, engage those people using low cost methods such as social media, and bring the film only to those areas of the country where it makes sense based on this research.

Obviously it’s not as simple as it sounds and a lot of work that goes into the above equation.  Also, I’m definitely not the first one to come to that conclusion and a few traditional theatrical companies like Sony Classics have been successful with a precision approach for years.  Overall however, the industry seems slow on the take.

According to Frankel, the “challenge right now is ubiquity—to be on as many devices and platforms as, say, Netflix, so it can be the channel of choice when it comes to viewing indie film.”

To that end, SnagFilms programming is also available through Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks, Comcast, Verizon FiOS and Sony’s Crackle (which also has broad-reaching syndication deals on YouTube, Hulu, etc.), Xbox Live, and will soon debut on the Samsung Media Hub.

Yes, it takes time to create more original content, but the fact of the matter is it takes more than Facebook posts and tweets to cut through the noise and get your film out there to people who may want to see it. Here is a great article posted on The Film Collaborative (TFC) website about the best ways to use YouTube to promote both your film and yourself as a filmmaker.

Some important things to keep in mind:

– Start Early! Before you begin production, before you even know for sure if you’re script is going to get made. Everyone likes a good story, even the one about how your film finally got to the screen.

– Connect, don’t sell. The magic of YouTube is that it eliminates the distance between the producer and the user. If you’re always trying to sell your audience something, it puts you on the other side of the fence. Jump in with them, give them insight into your thoughts, fears, aspirations, etc. so they feel a part of the process.

The Lone Star Film Society, The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and the Texas Independent Film Network present BBQ: A TEXAS LOVE STORY and SOMETHING’S BREWIN’ IN SHINER on Thursday, March 22 at 7:00 pm at The Modern.

After the screening, please join us at the Rahr Brewery (701 Galveston Ave. Fort Worth, TX 76104) for a taste of local beer.  The $10 cover charge at the door will include Rahr beer until 10:30 pm, a free Rahr pint glass that you can take home with you at the end of the night and a free tour of the brewery.  Riscky’s BBQ will also be at the after party serving up some delicious BBQ for $8.95 per plate!

To purchase tickets, click here.

About BBQ: A TEXAS LOVE STORY:
No other state has a culture as distinct as Texas, and there’s no better way to understand the states passionate nature than through their absolute love for Texas barbecue. Narrated by Governor Ann Richards and featuring notable Texans such as Dan Rather, “Barbecue: A Texas Love Story” is an entertaining and humorous journey through the common fabric that weaves Texans together and makes them a never-ending object of fascination around the world.

Take a tour across the Lone Star State and meet some of the most amusing folks you’ve ever seen at everything from the Great Texas Mosquito Festival to a tiny East Texas church that raises money through their truly world-famous “Holy BBQ.” You’ll even meet a group of University of Texas students so passionate about barbecue they lead “barbecue missions” (and now they’re in trouble with the school).

About SOMETHING’S BREWIN’ IN SHINER:
It’s hard to keep a secret in Shiner, TX. And in the summer of 2003 there was no bigger secret than what the new beer was going to be from their own Spoetzl Brewery. The mayor, the fire chief, the Old Geezers – everyone in this town of 2070 had an opinion. SOMETHING’S BREWIN’ IN SHINER is a humorous 30-minute documentary that captures this moment in Spoetzl Brewery’s long history and is the true story of how Shiner’s newest beer was submitted for the approval of an entire town

There were way too many good things about SXSW to provide a complete list of highlights here, but if you’re interested in hearing more I would strongly recommend visiting indieWIRE and looking at all of their coverage including this list of highlights.

I will say that of all the things we saw, one of the most impressive was the case study panel, moderated by LSIFF 2011 Distribution Forum participant Orly Ravid, about the reality of distributing a film via VOD platforms.

By providing hard numbers courtesy of Gravitas Ventures and a very well organized presentation by the director of ‘AMERICAN: The Bill Hicks Story’, we were treated to a clear, inclusive portrait of what a filmmaker can expect if they are releasing a film using a VOD strategy.

You can read a summary of the case study here on indieWIRE.  The study along with tons of other very useful information is available on Orly’s Film Collaborative website.

“With at least 35,000 feature films on the film festival circuit every year, by some estimates, very few films are going to premiere at one of the top 5 film festivals. When that happens, filmmakers need to decide what is the best launch for their film.”

Sunday, March 18, 2012
2:00 PM
The Kimbell Art Museum Auditorium
Admission is FREE

The Lone Star Film Society is partnering with The Kimbell Art Museum to bring the screening of, THE LIFE OF EMILE ZOLA on Sunday, March 18th, at 2:00 pm at the Kimbell Art Museum.

This screening is part of a free film series: Impressions of Paris.  Cinematic favorites highlight various aspects of the Paris experience, from historic figures and spectacular entertainments of the Impressionist era to daily life and farcical adventures on the city’s famed boulevards.

Synopsis of THE LIFE OF EMILE ZOLA:
A 1937 American biographical film about French author Émile Zola. Set in the mid through late 19th century, it depicts his friendship with noted painter Paul Cézanne, and his rise to fame through his prolific writing, with particular focus on his involvement in the Dreyfus affair.