Last week, the organization behind the Tribeca Film Festival announced it was launching a for-profit distribution company, Tribeca Film. Seven of the ten films they’ve acquired will be viewable on Video On Demand (VOD) during the April festival and for at least 60 days, available to a potential audience of over 40 million TV households. They also announced that they’d be offering online access to many of the movies screening in their festival through their website.
“I think festivals need to reinvent themselves,” Tribeca’s Chief Creative Officer Geoff Gilmore told IndieWire. “The old model of a customary promotion needs to be amplified.” Will the other major film festivals quickly follow Gilmore’s model? Sundance Pictures Classics? Cannes Searchlight? TorontoFlix? If initiatives like this catch on, could they become the trusted brands that the serious moviegoing public turn to when they look for good films, in Eugene Hernandez’s words, “The New “Miramax”? Or, as David Poland has suggested, is this just another way to screw filmmakers?
Day-and-date online video or VOD screenings at festivals aren’t unusual, but they’ve been put on by outside companies like IFC and Cinetic’s Filmbuff. But the most celebrated example is this year’s presentation of a few Sundance movies on YouTube.
Unfortunately, the reason the YouTube experiment is so well known is that the media pronounced it a failure. The general perception was that very few people watched the Sundance movies on YouTube.
So how is it going to be different this time? Apparently, this time American Express is going to be spending tons of money promoting this. I’m sure that they have a lot of stuff up their sleeve that will do the trick. But I have my concerns, and I know I’m not the only one. As producer Ted Hope pointed out, “a media launch does not translate into immediate audience want-to-see. Without want-to-see failure is a forgone conclusion.”
So what to do? Here are my thoughts:
Film festivals are not just movies—they’re full-out experiences: the chaos of the red carpet; the scramble to get tickets to the hot movie; the Q&A’s; the contentious discussions in the lobby…
I don’t think that giving people access to just movies is enough. If you expect somebody in Des Moines to tune in, you’ve got to give them a little something extra--a taste of what it’s really like to be there. In as near to real time as you can get it.
How about streaming the Q&A’s live online and on VOD? Raw footage from the red carpet? Why not hand out Flip Cameras to the actors and directors in the green room?
I’ve been with dozens of directors as their film was unspooling for the very first time. This is very dramatic stuff—they are rarely calm. They’re thinking, “Will people like my movie? I’ve spent three years of my life and I’m totally in debt. I guess I’ll find out soon…” And after that, there is applause.
Give people watching from home the feeling of what it really is like to be there, right as the festival unfolds. Not in some polished promo video, but rough-and-tumble, the way a festival is. Give them an emotional investment in the human beings behind the movies.
What is a festival? Seeing “Precious”? Anybody can see “Precious.” But few can be on the scene the first time a “Precious” is shown. That chance only comes once.
Give people an online and VOD inside experience that they will tell all their friends about. They’ll tell their friends about the movies and they’ll tell them that virtual film festivals are amazing.
Isn’t that what it’s all about?
