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The Digital Writing is on the Wall
I’ve been mulling on the the potential of the web for film distribution for a while & I’m sure many others are too.
Watching M.I.A.’s Born Free online crystalized ideas that have been floating since I watched Spike Jonze’s I’m Here on its launch day. And having to watch at 6:30 am to keep my preferred ticket wasn’t ideal - but I did it - which says something about the success of the campaign or about my geeky obsessions.
Both Jonze & Philips’ Cinema created an online presence for their films through teaser campaigns, trailers, & pings to fans. Philips’ use of Facebook has been highly active with numerous teasers, challenges & postings about location specific events. And both projects now stand as highly successful models of how to bypass distributers. The Absolut sponsored site for ‘I’m Here’ has increased its bandwidth to handle the volume of views and the film is now running on two hour cycles.
http://www.facebook.com/philipscinema?v=app_295019128299
M.I.A.’s video was released on the web without a specific host site & I’m sure everyone involved knew it would be quickly pulled from Youtube. Having the video removed for graphic content is an obvious value in the publicity generated. The violence however really is no more excessive than many a war film I’ve watched in the last decade and the premise of targeting a specific group because of a physical feature is very close to the one used by Jane Elliot in her ‘brown eyes/blue eyes’ anti-racism exercise and captured in the 1996 documentary ‘Blue-Eyed.’ Now that the video exists on multiple sites the only drawback I see is the challenge of tracking views.
Whether you think ‘Born Free’ is a commercial grab or a genuine artistic statement or both, M.I.A’s video is another step towards direct distribution on the web. Video views may or may not drive up sales (it hasn’t cracked the top 200 on iTunes yet) but the number of sites hosting it & views will likely keep climbing. Very few artists exist completely outside of the commercial sphere and now, 2010, we are starting to see artists using the web & commercial partnerships to get their work out in ways that still maintain the integrity of the artistic work. In the last few months, we’ve seen a number of directors using the web to launch careers & projects.
Ricardo de Montreuil’s just-launched short film, The Raven, has been generating buzz as much for its low budget of $5000 as for its high quality.
And Fedez Alvarez’ release of his 5 minute trailer for ‘Panic Attack’ got him a $30 million deal for a feature with Sam Raimi’s Ghost House Pictures in fall 2009.
If the digital writing is on the wall, and that wall is the existing system of distribution for filmmakers, the wall is also starting to crumble and artists have a real opportunity to not only affect but to decide how the future structures that mediate between artists and audiences take shape. So fellow artists, I can’t believe I’m going to quote Reagan, but, Tear Down That Wall! and start making something new
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