Netflix
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“You’re Really Just Talking to Yourself:” Beau Willimon, David Simon, Nate Silver and Anne Thompson on Audiences and Data
“There are two asteroids corrupting media,” bellowed radio host John Hockenberry at the start of the Tribeca Film Festival’s “Stories By Numbers” panel last week. The first, viewing patterns; the second, data streams. “Narratives,” he opined, pacing before Beau Willimon, David Simon, Nate Silver and Anne Thompson, “are becoming indistinguishable from vices.” It’s no secret that Netflix’s limitless entree into consumer preferences has informed much of its success in the realm of original content. Hockenberry noted that big brother Sarandos can scrutinize viewing behavior down to its utter minutiae: “what people skip over, what sex scenes they replay, is all fed back into […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Apr 28, 2014 -
Thoughts Towards the Killer App of Indie Film
I’m a writer-director/producer with a couple of features under my belt. Since the last one was released (Burning Annie), the world’s economy collapsed, half of the studios’ arthouse labels folded, and the audiences for music, books, and film splintered into a million fragments. At the same time, smartphones and app-culture rose to dominance. My new film Laundry Day is in post. As I warily eye the world that I will be releasing my baby into, I’m somewhat alarmed by the large and growing divide between modern audiences and modern distributors, and how inadequate the trends of the moment are for […]
by Randy Mack on Mar 28, 2014 -
Watch the Series Premiere of HBO’s Looking on YouTube
It’s a strange time in the post-Netflix Original landscape. While more and more brand-name talent seems to be drifting from film towards premium cable, a new study reports that HBO and Showtime subscribers are dwindling — and potentially jumping ship to Netflix. Indeed, the streaming service has enjoyed a 4% rise in viewership over the last two years, whereas premium cable channels have lost 6% of their subscription base. So what does HBO, with its barrage of new and returning shows, do? Court viewers through the most public of streaming forums: YouTube. As such, Looking, which premiered on Sunday night, is […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jan 21, 2014 -
The Year in Gear: Goodbye 2013, Here Comes 2014K
It is perhaps indicative of how low-key this year was that when I first scribbled out a list of things that were “big” in 2013 I discovered that half of them were on last year’s list! In many respects 2013 proved to be a year of tentative advances and waiting, rather than one of incredible new tools to play with. Which is not to say that some interesting products weren’t announced and delivered. Sony shipped the F5 & F55, as well as the 4K upgrade for the NEX-FS700, and at the other end of the spectrum Blackmagic shipped its $1,000 […]
by Michael Murie on Dec 31, 2013 -
Indie Distributors Respond to Netflix on Issue of Day-and-Date
At the Film Independent Forum a couple weeks back, Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos gave something of a provocative keynote in which he declared that theaters would “kill movies” if they continued to resist multi-platform, day-and-date distribution. Though Sarandos later backtracked, Indiewire picked up the ball and ran with it, soliciting responses from several independent distributors on the matter. Among the executives weighing in were Kino Lorber’s Richard Lorber, Emily Russo of Zeitgeist Films, and Matt Grady of Factory 25. Dylan Marchetti, President of Variance Films, raised an interesting point, noting that “[Sarandos] knows that any resistance here isn’t to […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Nov 6, 2013 -
Netflix Originals “Exclusively” Acquires The Square
When Netflix announced this past July that they wanted to expand their original programming beyond wildly successful TV serials to documentaries, I figured an Alex Gibney commission wasn’t far off. Instead, the Internet was met with the puzzling news earlier today that the streaming giant acquired the very much completed, newly edited, festival-circuit debutant The Square. “Original,” it seems, lends itself to a different definition when Netflix is doing the talking. Though The Square is currently making a self-financed, Oscar-qualifying theatrical run in New York and Los Angeles, Netflix said in a statement that they will exclusively “premiere” the documentary […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Nov 4, 2013 -
Liesl Copland on the “Analytic Black Holes” of Netflix, iTunes and Amazon
A filmmaker called me the other day, asking if I could think of some comps for his movie. You know, other movies whose marketplace performance would indicate that there is a paying audience for his demographically-similar picture. He named a title he really liked and said he was shocked to see via Box Office Mojo that it had done so poorly. Indeed, its reported box office was in the five figures. The very low five figures. “But that box-office figure is misleading,” I replied. “The film was bought by a company whose strategy is to release on VOD and digital […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 11, 2013 -
13 Takeaways from the 2013 Cannes Film Market
Earlier this week I posted “15 Lessons for Producers from the Cannes Film Festival and Market.” With the festival and market now firmly in the rear-view mirror, the consensus is that it was a solid one for the international sales community, without, perhaps that one giant locomotive title but with an appropriately modest number of films hitting their ask prices. Tastes were noted to have shifted, with buyers wanting “more Jennifer Lawrence and less Sylvester Stallone.” And on the pure indie level, I noticed, as I wrote in my piece on producers, a new crop of American independents have figured […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 31, 2013 -
What Does Xbox One Mean for Independent Filmmakers?
Right now the answer is not entirely clear. The Xbox One, which was unveiled in a presentation last week, represents Microsoft’s latest bid for domination of the living room through a single multipurpose device. It’s not a complete reinvention of the Xbox brand, but it integrates and advances several technologies Microsoft has been working on over the years. Microsoft’s accompanying efforts to expand away from hardcore gaming into other areas of entertainment such as streaming video make it a viable contender to the PS4, Apple TV, and other devices/platforms. Here’s the video of the device’s entire reveal. The discussion of […]
by Randy Astle on May 30, 2013 -
Opportunities for Indies?
Traditional broadcast and cable television is in free fall. More and more viewers are turning to alternative viewing options offered through “broadband” services facilitated by the Internet. Traditional TV programming, like editorial content in newspapers and magazines, is really an eyeball hook for the show’s advertising. And traditional TV viewing is suffering its biggest loses among its most coveted demographic groups – Generation Y (ages 13 to 32) and Gen X (ages 33 to 46). A recent report by GfK, a German research firm, paints a dismal picture of TV audience erosion. It found that among Gen Y folks, only […]
by David Rosen on Feb 22, 2013
