Sunday, June 21, 2009

BBC - Digital technology could enable the 2012 Olympics to be shown in 3D in cinemas - June 21, 2009

Call for 3D Olympics screenings

By Neil Smith
Entertainment reporter, BBC News, in Edinburgh

Digital technology could enable the 2012 Olympics to be shown in 3D in
cinemas across the UK, former film producer Lord Puttnam has said.

It should be possible to show the London Olympics "every single day in
3D on every screen in the country", he said at the Edinburgh Film
Festival.

3D sport, he said, could be a "real game changer" that could put
cinemas "at the heart of digital Britain".

He was speaking in the wake of Lord Carter's Digital Britain report.


" Digital technologies, including broadband, have the potential to
transform the role of cinemas " Lord Puttnam

That report, published on Tuesday, laid out the government's strategy
for broadband and digital content.

Best known for producing such films as Chariots of Fire, Local Hero
and The Killing Fields, David Puttnam was made a Labour peer in 1997.

Sir Sean Connery, patron of the Edinburgh Film Festival, was among the
audience as he offered his thoughts on cinema in the digital age.

"Digital technologies, including broadband, have the potential to
transform the role of cinemas," he said.

"The film industry, and film culture in general, have a fantastic
opportunity to play a pioneering role."

'Far too timid'

Currently, he continued, just 10% of cinema screens in the UK were
equipped for digital presentation.

Its flexibility, however, enabled cinemas to become "incredibly
valuable focal points, especially in smaller and more rural
communities".

Lord Puttnam - who described himself as a "quasi-politician" and
"something of an outsider" - said the film sector must prepare for "a
new round of change".

Cinema, he went on, had a "significant political role in moments of
crisis" and could speak to people of all ages and backgrounds.

However, he continued, contemporary cinema "remains far too timid
about using its ability to positively influence young minds".

Climate change was one issue filmmakers should tackle more often, he said.

They should also shake off the notion that films could be either
worthy or successful, but rarely both.

'Dangerous propaganda'

Since leaving the world of commercial film, Lord Puttnam has become
chancellor of the Open University and president of Unicef UK, a post
he will shortly relinquish.


Earlier this year, he launched the Curriculum Foundation, a new
organisation aimed at improving school life.

His other positions include president of the Film Distributors'
Association and deputy chairman of Channel 4.

This, however, did not stop him taking the channel to task for airing
The Great Global Warming Swindle in March 2007 - a programme, he said,
that constituted "dangerous propaganda for a minority view".

Lord Puttnam's keynote address was held on the fifth day of the 63rd
Edinburgh Film Festival, which runs until 28 June.

Actress Brenda Blethyn, US director Darren Aronofsky and Scottish
film-maker Bill Forsyth are among this year's other celebrity guests.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/entertainment/8111726.stm

Published: 2009/06/21 14:34:11 GMT

© BBC MMIX

VARIETY - 3-D reaches a tipping point in Europe - Once-skeptical exhibs and distribs flock to format June 12, 2009

VARIETY

Posted: Fri., Jun. 12, 2009, 2:17pm PT

3-D reaches a tipping point in Europe
Once-skeptical exhibs and distribs flock to format

By JOHN HOPEWELL MADRID

— Suddenly, but decisively, Europe is embracing 3-D. Opening with
Pixar's "Up," Cannes underscored Europe's newfound 3-D faith.
"Cannes was the defining 3-D moment. It was all about 3-D," says Erik
Jensen at Belgium's CDC United Network.

A dozen or more 3-D films, five of which hail from Europe, hit Cannes'
market. At least 20 3-D indie pics, including pioneering Euro 3-D
tooners "Holy Night!" from Spain's Dygra, and Pascal Herold's
"Cinderella," are now in production.

And Cannes 3-D deals got done.

France's StudioCanal licensed "Around the World in 50 Years"
worldwide. Nu Image sold "Dark Country" to France, Italy and Spain.

Italy's Eagle Pics bought "Sanctum" and "Around the World," having
picked up "Ocean World" at Berlin. Even low-budget family picture
"Call of the Wild" sold to several territories.

With the economics of 3-D now in place and the B.O. upside clearly
demonstrated, and with Hollywood icons and Euro exhibitors trumpeting
3-D commitments, the format has gained critical mass.

For European exhibition, "The tipping point's December 2008 through
February 2009," says David Hancock, head of cinema at research company
Screen Digest. In December, Odeon/UCI, Europe's biggest theater loop
with 1,600 screens, announced it would outfit another 70 venues,
bringing its DCI-compliant total to 111 cinemas across Europe that
have digital or full-fledged 3-D systems. (It has also committed to
upgrade another 89 eventually).

"After Odeon's declaration, other exhibitors had to decide whether
they were out or in with 3-D," Hancock comments.

They were in: From late January through February, big chains --
Britain's Cineworld and Vue Entertainment, Holland's Amsterdam Booking
Co. -- made large 3-D announcements. France's Cineville followed in
March, rival CGR in April.

Combined, the exhibitors' promised around 1,000 additional 3-D screens.

For distribs, the main game changer's been 3-D B.O. Odeon/UCI's Drew
Kaza glows about 3-D grosses from "Chicken Little" to "Beowulf" and
"Journey to the Center of the Earth." European distributors also cite
a bevy of 3-D faith-forging B.O. milestones, most between October and
Cannes. Released in October in Gaul, Ben Stassen's "Fly Me to the
Moon" punched a $40,839 print average, doubling normal print figures,
one Gallic distrib enthuses.

The 3-D explosion comes, crucially, amid the broader-picture downturn.

"The straight-to-DVD market is dead. Sales agents need to sell movies
with clear theatrical potential. 3-D films are theatrical films by
definition," argues Vicente Canales, head of international at Filmax,
which received offers at Cannes from "nearly every major territory"
for "Magic Journey to Africa."

European 3-D rollout is still patchy: Germany -- a forecast year-end
149 screens -- and Scandinavia are off the pace, though Svensk
acquisitions head Robert Enmark hopes "Avatar" will boost Scandi
exhibitor investment.

Already, though, the indie 3-D boom threatens a bust.

"I saw a lot of promos in 3-D. The successes will have to be good
quality. It's going to be very hard to get the screens they need,"
Vairo says.

Read the full article at:
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118004886.html

VARIETY - Buzz builds for home 3-D - Digital Cinema Summit looks beyond glasses - June 9. 2009

posted: Sun., Apr. 19, 2009, 8:00pm PT

VARIETY MAGAZINE


Buzz builds for home 3-D
Digital Cinema Summit looks beyond glasses

By DAVID S. COHEN

LAS VEGAS -- Audiences are becoming interested in 3-D television, and
the industry must satisfy that demand for 3-D movies to thrive.
That was the message from a series of panels Sunday morning at the
Digital Cinema Summit held at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Phil Lelyveld, a strategy adviser for the Entertainment Technology
Center at USC, hailed the momentum behind 3-D movies but warned, "If
we don't show visible progress now (on 3-D in the home), this momentum
could die and move into a niche environment."

Lelyveld led a panel offering the studio perspective on home 3-D.
Others on the panel were Darcy Antonellis, Warner Bros. president of
technical operations; Real D co-founder Josh Greer; and Nandhu
Nandhakumar, senior VP of advanced technology at LG Electronics.

Antonellis said Warner has identified 40 titles in its library that
are candidates for conversion to 3-D. "We're working on both new
titles and on trying to revitalize our library," she said.

But that effort depends on being able to tap into homevideo revenues
that aren't available because 3-D TV is in its infancy, with multiple
incompatible formats and almost no penetration of the home market.

"We want to move it into more of a 'long tail' experience," Antonellis
said. "It changes the whole economic model."

At the corporate level, Warner has been somewhat reticent on 3-D as it
is still negotiating deals for virtual print fees, but the studio had
a surprise 3-D hit in "Journey to the Center of the Earth."

Antonellis and other panelists agreed it is essential that the
industry make buying a 3-D TV simple so that consumers know what they
need, understand what they'll get and enjoy the experience once they
have it.

"I need to be sure," Antonellis said, "and our marketing folks will
ask this: Will the experience be the same across all devices? Will the
features be the same across all devices? Those are reasonable
questions to ask."

She added that Warner expects to see "a fair amount of movement in
(the 3-D TV) space" in 2010.

For now, homevideo 3-D releases such as Warner's "Journey" are going
out in anaglyph format, similar to the old red/green glasses method
that almost everyone wants to put behind them.

"I would call anaglyph a necessary evil right now," said Greer. "For
people who've never seen 3-D, it's kind of like the gateway drug. It
lets you know there's a possibility." However, he added, many viewers
don't like it.

In an earlier presentation, Entertainment Technology Center executive
director David Wertheimer presented research showing that audience
interest in 3-D is growing and is strongest among people who've seen
3-D movies.

"I guarantee if you did this survey in the '50s or '70s and '80s,"
said Wertheimer, "you would have gotten the opposite response: 'I have
no interest in seeing another 3-D movie; I have no interest in having
it in my home,' because those earlier versions of 3-D were so
uncomfortable to watch."

For example, the ETC's statistics show that half of consumers overall
would pay extra for a 3-D television, but among people who've seen a
3-D movie in the last year, that number climbs to more than 60%, with
30% willing to pay $100 extra.

Moreover, ETC research shows consumers who've seen recent 3-D movies
are undeterred by the prospect of wearing glasses at home to watch
3-D.

The strongest interest in 3-D, said Wertheimer, is among the 18-29
demo, especially those with children in the home. It's unclear, he
said, whether that's because younger auds like 3-D or because so many
3-D releases have been aimed at children and families.

Wertheimer also said that consumer interest in 3-D is similar to the
response to high-def TV. Consumers were skeptical at first, but
"they'd see content in high-def and say, 'Wow, I've got to have that.'
The same thing is happening with 3-D."

There will be a separate 3-D Techzone at the 2010 Consumer Electronics
Show to display 3-D home electronics.

James Stern's LA FILM FEST Speech - Making Smarter Movies -- or -- “I Need the Eggs!” -- Now What?

Making Smarter Movies -- or -- "I Need the Eggs!" -- Now What?

Remarks by James D. Stern

Chairman & CEO, Endgame Entertainment

As Prepared for Delivery to the Los Angeles Film Festival

June 20, 2009

I know some of you were expecting Mark Gill to be back today and
deliver a follow-up to last year's speech, but unfortunately, on the
way over, Mark was struck by a piece of falling sky. He was rushed to
a Cineplex, where doctors have strapped him in a chair and ordered him
to watch "UP" in 3D for the duration of the festival.

So I was asked to fill in and address the question, what does it take
to be a filmmaker or financier in these difficult times?

Well, that's easy. You need to be as sly as a fox, as slippery as an
eel, as thick-skinned as a hippo… and as rich as Sidney Kimmel.

But if you don't meet those qualifications, don't worry – it works
just as well to be crazy as a loon.

Remember the end of "Annie Hall?" Alvie Singer turns to the camera and
tells the joke about a guy who goes to a psychiatrist. He says, Doc,
my brother's crazy. He thinks he's a chicken. Doctor says, why don't
you turn him in? The guy says, I would, but I need the eggs.

That sums up why I'm in this business. Same for most of my friends.
The way we feel about making movies is irrational, crazy, absurd… but
we get by because we need the eggs.

The Lumiere brothers were the first to suggest that cinema is an
invention without any future. They should know. They invented it – and
then wisely moved on to more sensible things, like inventing medical
forceps.

Some of us aren't so smart. When I left school, I knew exactly what I
wanted to do. I immediately started working in theater in New York
City. I lived on a steady diet of MSG-laced Chinese food in a studio
apartment on the Upper West Side about the size of this lectern. Then
I kicked around in the real world, eventually went to a fancy business
school, and after graduating promptly refused to take any job that
would have me – because all I could think about was producing and
directing.

In other words, I needed the eggs.

Last year up here, Mark Gill delivered a pretty sobering argument that
the sky is falling. And a year later he looks pretty smart.

That wave of more than $15 billion dollars of slate capital from Wall
Street from 2005 to 2008 left us with a torrent of movies. Thousands
of films got made last year in a world that had room for just
hundreds.

A friend describes this problem as a simple equation: Access to
capital plus low barriers to entry equal glut of subprime movies.

Subprime? Excess inventory? Sounds like we're upside-down on the
mortgage and it's time to mail in the keys.

An astonishing 9,293 films were submitted to Sundance last year. Of
those nearly 10,000, only 218 were screened. Of the lucky handful to
get bought, so far only three have been released theatrically.

It's pretty obvious: Indies are in a world of hurt. When the financial
crisis hit, any awards that independent films were winning suddenly
were not enough to appease corporate paymasters, who in turn severely
damaged labels like New Line, Warner Independent, Paramount Vantage,
PictureHouse and so on.

With fewer U.S. distributors, financiers were badly burned when the
financial crisis turned global, and foreign markets no longer could be
relied on to mitigate the risk of not having U.S. distribution. Those
markets used to be the backstop of smaller films. But they started
choosing to run their own affordable domestic movies instead of
independent American films. And since those markets need big studio
titles to drive ratings and ad revenues, what suffers is… the indie.

On top of that, a stronger dollar cuts foreign buying power,
restricting the group of banks still willing to lend to independent
producers. This makes pre-sale financing, and gap financing, almost
impossible to get.

So, in technical terms, the market for independent films really, really sucks!

This is all such depressing stuff. But wait a minute! Boxoffice is up! Isn't it?

Not really. Those statistics are obscured by the fact that there are
two movie industries in this town that we tend to lump together. The
first one -- studios -- is by and large a vertically integrated
business mostly concerned with film as part of a merchandising
industry. And the second -- the focus of this conference -- generally
makes single-purpose films that we call independents.

Let's compare apples to apples between the two sectors over the past two years.

From January through May 2008, four studio films grossed more than
$100 million dollars. This year, that number is 11. Almost triple.

Meanwhile, in the same period, the number of indies that grossed over
$1 million dollars went from 16 to six. Less than half.

OK, great. Now I've basically one-upped Mark on pessimism. But I still
need the eggs… and now my head hurts. Really hurts. Like
sitting-through-Land-of-the-Lost hurts!

But guess what? Despite it all, I absolutely believe there's not just
hope, but huge opportunity out there.

That's not to say I have the best track record as an Oracle. Several
years ago, I tried to hire a wonderful person I'd worked with before.
She was appreciative but said she had an offer to help start a company
that would rent DVDs through the mail. I said, "Are you insane? That
will never work!" I couldn't imagine people waiting two or three days
to see a movie.

Uh… the next dinner's on her. The insane idea she described, called
Netflix, has shipped not one but two billion disks, and raked in an
$83 million dollar profit on $1.4 billion dollars in revenue last
year. They've got a gigantic database of what people like, and almost
scary tools to predict what they're going to want.

My original problem with the idea was that no one would wait for a
movie in the mail. Now they won't have to: The next big revenue
source, I believe, will be streaming video. It'll give ADD types like
me what we're looking for: Impulse purchases!

With streaming, we'll all have the biggest video store imaginable,
crammed into our little TV remotes, enticing us every time we turn on
the set to make an impulse buy.

As these services create real revenue -- and according to a pretty
thick 2009 Morgan Stanley report, it's not far off -- innovative,
forward-looking companies like Netflix will be in the thick of it. Not
just with the content -- but with the knowledge to connect it to the
appropriate audience. They won't be alone. VUDU, Hulu, Amazon, Apple,
Time Warner, Comcast and others will join in.

Provided they actually pay us for our content in appropriate ways,
these are the once and future friends of independent film.

All well and good. But while we wait for this new revenue stream to
lift our boats, it's our job -- in the words of William Faulkner --
not just to survive, but prevail.

To survive, we need to pay careful attention to the fundamentals of business.

To prevail, we need to experiment to see what's new that works.

A couple of weeks ago Variety ran an article about one of those
experiments. "Summer Hours" from IFC and "The Girlfriend Experience"
from Magnolia were released simultaneously in theaters and on VOD. The
numbers were solid for both -- no evidence that either release
cannibalized the other.

That doesn't surprise me. The truth is, people will always want to go
to the movies, because normal folks, not just teenagers, need to get
out of the house. Nothing at home can match the communal experience of
bon-bons and popcorn and the fat guy next to you hissing at the
terrorists when they take Miley Cyrus hostage. Hey, the other night I
went to the ArcLight, and when the usher came out to start his spiel,
the audience started chanting his name: "Dave, Dave, Dave!" No way
you're getting that at home. Unless of course you invite Dave over.

And then there's IMAX and 3D to give local theaters two more distinct
advantages.

Meanwhile, the home theater experience is getting better and cheaper.
This is good news. Maybe once in a while, instead of loading the
minivan, driving and parking, buying popcorn and tickets, a family
might rather stay home one weekend, invite the kids' friends over and
pay, say, fifty bucks for a new release on opening night -- in high
def and 7.1.

Let's say they make this decision for premium video on demand maybe
six times a year. At fifty bucks a pop -- those are big numbers.

The point is, people will go to the theater. People will watch at
home. And both are good for our business.

So yes, there's hope. Morgan Stanley says a new world of streaming
content-on-demand will reach some level of critical mass -- in two or
three years. My good friend Michael Barker at Sony Classics almost
agrees. Here's what he says about a conversation shift he noticed in
acquisition meetings at Cannes this year:

"In the past, the meetings have been completely about the films. This
year, most of the conversations were about new technologies, and
where's the new revenue that's going to replace DVD? It's really about
where we are three to four years from now."

Morgan Stanley says two to three. Barker says three to four. Either
way, by then Mitt Romney will be running against Sarah Palin for the
Republican nomination!

What do we do now? Here's a suggestion.

Remember Herschel Walker? He wasn't just any football player. He won
the Heisman Trophy. One time, a team traded eleven players to get him.
He did 1,000 pushups and 3,000 situps every day. And boy, you could
tell just by looking at him. No one messed with Herschel.

One year with the Dallas Cowboys he got this crazy idea for off-season
training. He asked the Ft. Worth Ballet Company if he could dance with
them.

The mental image of this massive guy decked out in ballet gear made
some people snicker. (Out of earshot, of course.) After all, this was
20 years before Dwayne Johnson did "The Gameplan." But Herschel stuck
with it, worked hard and got pretty good. Even The New York Times was
impressed.

But that's not why he did it. He did it for football. This chiseled
Greek statue of a man told his coach he did it because, "I have to use
a completely different set of muscles when I dance."
We've got to be willing to build a different set of muscles in this
business. The way we operate is being dissected and reassembled in
front of our eyes. The other day, my friend Glen Basner told me that
everything we've learned about financing films over the last 15 years
we have to forget. Which of course is uncomfortable, but it's a window
of opportunity to develop the muscles we're going to need to dance
this new dance in the coming years.
To accomplish that, I believe there are three hard rules that we, as
independent filmmakers, need to obey.

Rule One: Make Smarter Movies!

That's not the same as making better movies. Everyone says make better
movies, and everyone wants to. But that's like a director telling an
actor to act better. Sounds good, but what does it mean?

I do know what it means to make smarter movies, though. And that's
what we should be doing.

I don't mean run out and make "The Seventh Seal Part Two: Revenge of
the Reaper!" (Although I might actually pay to see that.)

What I mean is crafting a disciplined process that results in a
smarter product. Smarter process means designing movie projects with
really clear target audiences in mind from the very beginning. Doing
that takes coordination among all parties involved, from finance to
creative to production to marketing to distribution. Having a clear
target in mind determines the process and the range of budget that
needs to be financed.

(By the way, it's no accident we named our company Endgame -- because
it's something every smart movie needs. We don't always get it right,
but the intention is always there in our films.)

So that's a smarter process.

Smarter product means films with a distinctive appeal that's built
right into the movie. This doesn't mean you need to pander to your
audience.

Why did Shakespeare write Macbeth? Well, let's see. What was going on
in 1603? Queen Elizabeth dies. A Scottish King succeeds her and unites
the crowns. The Black Death breaks out -- again.

So Scots and death were hot topics. Shakespeare wasn't just a pretty
face. The Bard wrote the greatest plays ever, and he made them smart.

Patrick Goldstein of The LA Times describes the difference between
"making better movies" and "making smarter movies" this way:

"The real problem with the indie business isn't quality, but
discipline. We have a generation of filmmakers who feel entitled to
make personal films… and a generation of executives who've been
willing to essentially use specialty films as a loss-leader to launch
their division or win awards. If people in the indie world want to
start making money again, they have to start treating their investment
like a truly precious natural resource, not like Monopoly money.
Discipline is not antithetical to art."

Patrick is absolutely right. We need discipline, starting with costs.
Without it, our resources will dry up. We need to trim away anything
that doesn't strengthen the content. From the days of Homer, that's
what people have paid for.

That's why I've never been a big believer in spending heavily on the
technical aspect of movies. I know that's counterpoint to what a lot
of people say, but I think movies can look terrible and get an
audience, and movies can look terrific and not.

On Broadway we had a saying, if you're talking about the sets after
the show, you're dead. Well, if people walk out of a movie saying, "I
didn't really buy that relationship between Julia Roberts and Clive
Owen -- but wasn't that tracking shot fantastic?"… you're gonna be
dead anywhere in America except maybe at Hollywood ArcLight.

When I started Endgame I told everyone I wanted to make movies I would
pay to see twice. Give me "Slumdog" over "Transformers" any day. Give
me movies with stories and ideas that people care about.

You say, yeah, but kids today expect SFX. Well, my kids are 9 and 13.
My daughter has watched "Twilight" seven times. It has the worst
special effects in the world. The ridiculous way that guy runs looks
like the track star with blurry legs in that Verizon commercial. But
does she really care that the special effects in the next "Twilight"
movie will be any better?

As if.

What she cares about is how Robert Pattinson fights off the werewolf
guy for Kristin Stewart.
For studio films, I'll concede that 3-D could well be a happy
exception, and that's a different discussion. But I can't see anyone
making a 3-D version of "Rachel Getting Married."

The rule is, don't compete where you can't. Don't worry about SFX in
small movies. You're not going to blow holes in "Avatar." Don't try.
The Coen Brothers used shopping carts as dollies in "Blood Simple."
Guess what? That's a movie I remember.

Rule Two: Respect the money!

Not just the talent.

There's some good to be said for the auteur culture in filmmaking. But
like it or not, making a film is not just a collaborative art. It's
also a business -- a matter of finance, logistics, planning and
execution. What Orson Welles said is truer than ever -- a painter
needs a brush, a writer a pen, but a filmmaker an army.

For a long time in Hollywood it's been hip to disrespect the money.

A director told a friend of mine, "You know, when they decided they
had to make money, they screwed the whole thing up." This attitude
plays out every day.

Here's a recent scenario I observed.

The director describes one type of film to the financier and goes off
to make another film altogether. The cut comes in and the financier
says, "This isn't what I signed on for!" Whereupon the director
informs him it's the movie he wants. Heavy hitters on the management
side of course stand by their client.

A movie becomes a war. Disaster ensues.

The point is, talent and money have to be on the same page. If you as
a producer buy a giraffe and the director brings you a giraffe, it's
your fault if you decide you now want a zebra because market
conditions have changed and zebras are in.

But if you're a director, don't sell a giraffe, deliver a zebra -- and
think that's okay.

Another example. A really good movie went way, I mean way, over budget
not too long ago. And when the financier said he could no longer fund
it, the director -- quite famous -- said, no worries, I quit. Now try
finishing and promoting it without me. The financier caved, the film
was finished; it was great -- and guess who lost a boatload of money.

And that -- a good movie losing money -- is the one unpardonable sin
in our business.

Everyone's going to make mistakes and occasionally make bad films. But
if a movie really works -- but then people don't get their money back
-- financiers don't understand. We have to make sure that, especially
when we get it right, everybody gets paid.

Here's an absolute truth -- any financier who tells you he cares only
about your vision, your story, your movie; that he doesn't care about
the money…

Is lying.

Here's the dirty little secret. Money doesn't need the eggs. Money has
options. Lose someone's money on a movie deal and they'll take the
option of never coming back. To them, it will never be, "That was a
bad deal." To them, it will forever and always be, "That's a bad
business."

On the other hand, in Vegas, no one leaves a table when they're
winning. If a project is structured and financed so everyone wins,
they'll all come back again.

Mistrust has been built up over the money for decades in this town,
with legitimate concerns on both sides. We could use a little of that
Obama-in-Cairo spirit around here. And we'd all better get on the same
page right now, because for the next couple of years, all of us --
talent side, money side -- are going to need success where we find it.
Things are gonna be tight. Which leads us to…

Rule Three: Before Rolling Cameras… think "Market."

Most businesses have a complete plan from the start of a project,
which includes the whole chain from manufacturing through
distribution.

Ours typically does not. It should. And it should include marketing.

Years ago, Francis Ford Coppola predicted a day when anyone could make
films because technology would lower the barrier of entry to
practically nothing. He was right. And he could say the same thing
today about marketing. Technically, there's nothing standing in the
way of my nine-year-old son making and marketing a movie today.

I was blown away when I found out that the 32 film on the all-time
documentary boxoffice list is a little 2005 film I'd never heard of,
called "The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill." (It's about wild parrots
living on Telegraph Hill, by the way.) Can you imagine how tiny the
market sliver is of people willing to take a night out to go see this
peculiar-sounding film?

Well, the filmmaker did imagine them. Rather thoughtfully, in fact.
And then proceeded to use viral marketing to rally those people into
the theater, by making the film an event for every bird-lover on God's
green Earth.

Audubon Society members. Bird-watching clubs. Breeders. Veterinarians.
Humane Societies. Feather-fancier magazine subscribers. There are a
lot of people out there who really love birds. And I think every last
one of them went to this movie.

And, I'm happy to say, number 72 is a movie called "Every Little
Step," which I directed and produced, still in release so we hope
it'll climb higher. Maybe even past the parrots.

In that film, we juxtapose the original construction of "A Chorus
Line," the musical, with the 3,000 dancers who auditioned for the
revival on Broadway. Now, 16 million people have paid to see that play
on Broadway. No telling how many more have seen -- or been in --
productions at community theaters and schools. Not just here. Japan
has a community obsessed with that musical. UK, Germany, same thing.
So we had a desirable, targeted brand for that movie before we started
shooting.

Our job was to first make a movie, and then drive people to see it –
social-networking sites, building word-of-mouth with targeted email
blasts.

You can go on Facebook and see how many people love "A Chorus Line."
And we did that. But why stop there? We also saw who listed "Chicago"
in their top 50 films and targeted them, too. And so on.

I remember not too long ago on Broadway, we used to send out volleys
of expensive fliers that mostly ended up in the trash. On the flip
side, sending an email is practically free.

And it works. Facebook and e-mail just got a dark-skinned guy with the
middle name of Hussein elected U.S. President. I don't know about you,
but I was getting about four emails a day from the gentleman. Also his
wife, his daughters, his friends and, if I recall correctly, a
Portuguese water dog looking to be adopted.

You can target market segments as long as you've created something
appealing to them. Bob Berney has been brilliant at this, honing in on
audiences of all kinds, from "The Passion of the Christ" to "My Big
Fat Greek Wedding," which he made a destination for Greeks everywhere.
Both were targeted destination movies.

At the other end of the scale, Laika Studios made "Coraline," and with
the intricate details of her button eyes, and stitched nose, it was
first marketed to sewing and knitting clubs! It's going to be Focus
Features' second all-time top performer behind "Brokeback Mountain."

You can also consolidate these slivered segments, by the way. Ira
Deutchman at Emerging Pictures says his network of theaters does well
with Jewish, gay-themed and French films, plus those that are
spiritual and have "Wedding" in the title. That's why I have great
hope for our upcoming film, "The Holy Unsanctified Parisian Wedding of
Yitzhak & Muttle."

Point is, when industry produces a firehose of content, we have to be
smart in other ways to get the word out so our little droplet gets
noticed. For those of us who can't afford to blast TV ads like a
blunderbuss, it takes a bit more thought, but with new media comes new
ways for a small film to connect.

One thing my 13-year-old actually might care about is a short form of
the next "Twilight" movie. She might care to watch that scene each
time a particular ringtone hits her iPhone, for instance. Or use some
bitstream subscription to watch her favorite scene over and over and
over and over and over and over and over.

Already today, our kids spend a third of their time interacting with
electronic devices, mostly online. Filmmakers need to recognize and in
the future be able to take advantage of it, looking for what David
Pogue of The New York Times calls the "AppStore effect."

When programmers write iPhone applications, Apple encourages them to
set a low price -- like one dollar. So the huge majority of programs
in the online AppStore are impulse buys. As Pogue says, nobody blinks
at a buck.

In the past nine months, iPhone and iPod fans have downloaded more
than one billion apps. These huge numbers revealed the App Store
Effect, which says: If you cut the price of a software program by
half, you sell a lot more than twice as much. If you cut it to
one-tenth, you sell a lot more than ten times as many.

And so on. It's counter-intuitive, but this principle has paid off
beyond anyone's wildest dreams. Some iPhone programmers have become
millionaires within months, one buck at a time, because of this
powerful math.

In the case of films, the AppStore Effect will have you buying a title
at home, or even on your iPhone, for, say, four bucks a pop. Four
dollars. Four dollars. Four dollars. It adds up.

No one knows where this will lead, but it doesn't sound bad to me. In
fact, it reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell's observation that the
greatest concentration of wealth in history occurred in the 1860s and
'70s -- when the American economy went through its greatest
transformation yet.

The railroad was built -- the Internet of its day. Wall Street emerged
-- better access to capital. Industrial manufacturing started in
earnest -- plenty of jobs all around. In those twenty narrow years the
rules that governed how the economy functioned were broken and
completely rewritten.

Here's something amazing. Of the 75 richest people in world history,
14 were born within nine years of each other during this span.

Rockefeller. Carnegie. Morgan. Eleven others. They built fortunes and
empires almost beyond comprehension, in some cases in fields that
didn't exist when they were born.
Gladwell says that if they'd been born in 1840, they would've lost out
by being too young; they couldn't make anything happen. If they were
born in 1820, they would've been too old; they wouldn't be open to big
new ideas. So those 14 folks were lucky to be born at just the right
time.

I think we're that lucky. Are we going to be the next robber barons?
Probably not. But the economy is going through a huge upheaval because
of technologies that didn't exist when we were born -- or even when my
9-year-old son was born.

The opportunities are -- to use a word that's almost never used right
-- awesome. I don't see anyone in this room too young to take
advantage of them. And because in this business we tend to be unafraid
of new technology -- in fact, we like it -- we're not too old, either.

In the meantime, we need to cut costs. Mitigate risks. Target our
audience. Watch where the deals are taking the industry. Experiment
intelligently. Basically, learn to use new muscles. And we've got to
do this together, not at cross-purposes.

We also need to keep our perspective. Things are rarely as bad or as
good as they seem. When he was head coach of the Chicago Bulls, Phil
Jackson told me he's made it a principle not to get too high in
victory or too low in defeat. He says that's the way to get through a
season.

In the 1990s, The New York Times declared Broadway dead. It's doing
pretty well for a corpse -- the past nine years have been some of the
best in its history.

Making films is no different. We're cycling through a tough period.

But it's a point of creative destruction, which almost always ends up
improving things, sometimes dramatically, as Malcolm Gladwell pointed
out.

So:

-- If we stick to the basics -- good business, smart movies…

-- If we learn from the past and welcome the future…

-- If we gather the eggs we need where we find them…

We'll be better than fine.

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LA FILM FESTIVAL Keynote Summary - Jim Stern touts careful budgeting, more

Producer calls indie world to task

Jim Stern touts careful budgeting, more

By Steven Zeitchik - The Hollywood Reporter

June 20, 2009, 10:22 PM ET

Producer Jim Stern issued a warning call to the indie business
Saturday, saying that if it wanted to endure, it needed to stop
working at cross-purposes both with itself and its financiers.

Speaking in the high-profile -- and high-pressure -- slot at the L.A.
Film Festival where Mark Gill gave his now-famous "The Sky Is Falling"
speech last year, Stern told the audience that the indie world needed
to more deeply consider and respect both marketing and financing
aspects.

"It's been hip to disrespect the money," he said, just as it has been
fashionable to neglect marketing concerns in the development process.

But to succeed, he said that "we need to cut costs, mitigate risks,
target our audience."
Stern, the producer (and sometimes-director) behind pics like "A
Chorus Line" doc "Every Little Step" and Mark Ruffalo con-man movie
"The Brothers Bloom," was speaking at the Finance Conference at the
L.A. Film Festival. The address has become a kind of thermometer for
the state of the indie business. Last year, Gill gave a keynote at the
conference in which he warned that financing models, distributors and
other part of the indie world were on the brink of collapse.

Less than a week later, Paramount Vantage had been consolidated, and a
year later the indie world find itself in a far bleaker place.

Given the market travails, Stern faced a tough task with his address:
he could not simply underscore the misery, but he couldn't risk
sounding overly optimistic about the indie world's future either.

So he walked a line in his speech, acknowledging the brutal realities
but offering several ways out.

"We're upside-down on the mortgage and it's time to mail in the keys,"
he said, citing the stat that nearly 10,000 films were submitted to
Sundance last year -- and only three to-date have been released
theatrically.

Stern, sounding for part of the talk like the second coming of Gill,
described a climate where studio tentpoles are flourishing, but the
number of indies that have made even $1 million this year dwindled
from 16 at this point last year to six currently.

But he also prescribed several methods of salvation. He highlighted
what he called "smarter movies," alluding to those that were careful
about budgets and conscious about audience.

Stern's theme was that filmmakers who followed their own heart at the
expense of the market were often due for a rude awakening.

"I love Sundance," he said. "But it gave rise to a sense of
entitlement to personal films," adding that indie filmmakers was at a
point in the business cycle that "if you make a personal film, don't
be surprised if it doesn't get an audience, or, even much worse, if it
doesn't get sold."

Greater attention to marketing from even the earliest stages of
development has been a major theme in the indie world of late, though
naysayers have noted that some of the best indie and specialty pics in
the last year -- movies such as "Slumdog Millionaire" and "The
Wrestler" -- were driven by an intensely personal vision that didn't
explicitly consider marketing until after they were made.

As part of his solution, he also singled out entities, such as Hulu
and iTunes, that were exploring and peddling on-demand and streaming
video. "These are the once and future friends of independent film," he
said.

Stern suggested that producers stop worrying about casting pricey
A-level talent, a drain on the budget he said had in most cases ceased
being a factor both for international sales and domestic boxoffice. "I
don't think stars drive people to the theaters in small movies," he
said.

And he cited international guru Glen Basner as saying that "everything
we've learned about financing films over the last fifteen years we
have to forget" -- a recongition primarily of the shrinking
foreign-sales market -- though like many in the indie world opining on
the subject, didn't fully elaborate on new alternatives.

Stern was definitive about drawing a line between the studio business
and the indie one. He said the indie world sometimes concerned itself
with areas, like special effects and photography, that should be the
province of tentpoles.

"Movies can look terrible and get an audience, and movies can look
terrific and not," he said.

But making succesful indies also required a complex series of traits, he said.

"You need to be as sly as a fox, as slippery as an eel, as
thick-skinned as a hippo -- and as rich as Sidney Kimmel."

Then he added, "But if you don't meet those qualifications, don't
worry -- it works just as well to be crazy as a loon."

To read speech, go to page 2.

CineExpo: The Third Degree - 3-D, cinema exhibition's killer application, goes global - The Hollywood Reporter - 19 June, 2009

CineExpo: The Third Degree

3-D, cinema exhibition's killer application, goes global

By Alex Ben Block

June 19, 2009, 12:50 PM ET


The Princess Quay cinemas, which sit atop a scenic tri-level shopping
complex in the Northern England town of Kingston Upon Hull, regularly
play the hottest Hollywood movies -- but their projectionists have
never run a single foot of film through the sprockets of a projector.

The 11-screen complex was constructed from the ground up by Vue
Cinemas, the third-largest exhibitor in the U.K., as a model for the
future of exhibition in the post-film age. "It was 100% digital, no
35mm projectors running; we had a library server and everything," says
Mark de Quervain, sales and marketing director at Vue Entertainment,
which also operates 66 theaters in the U.K. and one each in Portugal
and Taiwan. "So it was pretty much the first digital multiplex in
Europe."

There were naysayers, he recalls, who warned it was too soon to go
all-digital. They argued theatrical trailers and some movies weren't
available in digital, which could cost them if a hot ticket came along
that was available only on celluloid.

"It really was a good test to understand the staffing, training, the
technical, how many films are available in digital, how many trailers
can you get in digital and so on," de Quervain says. "We had reported
at last year's (Cinema Expo International) that trailers were
difficult to get a hold of in digital but it's getting easier all the
time."

In rapid succession during the past year, major movie distributors
including Disney, Fox, Sony and Warner Bros. have begun making most
trailers and movies available in digital as well as film. As
exhibitors gather in Amsterdam for Cinema Expo -- which runs June
22-25 -- there's no more pressing question than when to convert to
digital and how to pay for it.

So far, conversion of analog screens to digital in developed countries
worldwide hasn't happened as quickly as expected. Anthony

Marcoly, president of sales and distribution at Walt Disney Studios
Motion Pictures International, says most of the close to 2,500 digital
screens outside the U.S. are one-offs in multiplexes specifically
added to show 3-D movies.

As in the U.S., conversion to all digital presentation won't occur
until financing sources open, and that depends on the global credit
crisis. That isn't stopping aggregators from doing deals in Europe,
Asia, Russia and elsewhere based on the U.S. model of "virtual print
fees" paid by studios to pay back the cost over time. The money needed
now has to be borrowed, and that has not been possible since last
fall. So while multiplexes worldwide rush to offer 3-D on at least one
or two screens per location, the existing theaters are still firmly in
the analog world.

The U.K., where booming boxoffice is up more than 16% for the first
quarter, is a good example. By global standards, it has been a leader
in digital and

3-D but since the economic crisis hit, conversion there to 2-D digital
"essentially, more or less, ground to a halt as I think it probably
did in most territories at the tail end of the autumn of last year,"
says Phil Clapp, CEO of the U.K.'s Cinema Exhibitors Assn.

That didn't mean the end of all digital, though. "The focus in the
recent past has been on installation of digital 3-D screens," says
Clapp, who projects that by year's end there will be about 600 digital
3-D sites from a total of 3,600 screens in the U.K.

Disney alone, which will be showing "Up" in Amsterdam in 3-D, will
offer 17 new 3-D movies during the next couple years, according to
Daniel Frigo, executive vp and GM at Disney International, who says
the booming U.K. boxoffice so far this year has been fueled by 3-D
movies. "We had 'Bolt' recently released across Europe and what was
fascinating was the boxoffice for 3-D was anywhere between 30% and 50%
of the total take on far fewer prints. That was just tremendous."

Exhibitors have taken notice. "Every multiplex in the U.K. will have a
3-D screen by Christmas," predicts Martin Dowley, managing director of
Digital Cinema Media, which provides preshow advertising to cinemas.

Dowley notes digital eliminates the cost to ship the cans of
celluloid, makes it easier to offer advertisers last-minute content
changes that can be beamed to theaters. He says their research shows
U.K. audiences "are loving the 3-D experience," and his company plans
ads in 3-D as well.

It's not just happening in the U.K. or Western Europe. Across
developing Eastern Europe, Russia, India and China there's a theater
building boom and they all are including one or two 3-D ready screens.
The opening of new theaters is inevitably followed by a rise in
boxoffice in that territory.

"We see 3-D worldwide grossing two and a half times the 2-D screens,"
Disney's Marcoly says. "That's been the incremental factor (in digital
conversion). Is that going to continue? We'll see. But obviously right
now from the consumer there's a big appetite for 3-D."

Imax CEO Richard Gelfond calls Europe "a key territory for us," but
says they have developments all over the world. They have two new Imax
theaters opening in Austria and a joint venture in Japan to open their
first Imax theaters outside of a museum. He says by the end of 2011,
Imax will have 41 sites in China.

An Imax theater opened two years ago in Hong Kong is producing
"excellent results," according to Bob Vallone, director and GM of Lark
International Multimedia, which operates as Studio City Cinemas and
United Artists Cinemas and controls the city's largest advance ticket
vendor.

"When we open a new movie, Imax is huge," says Vallone, who worked for
UA for many years in the U.S. before relocating to Hong Kong. "It does
10%-15% of the total boxoffice for that particular movie at a premium
price."

Vallone says 3-D is also very popular, with 80% of patrons choosing
3-D over 2-D for DreamWorks' "Monsters vs. Aliens" when given a
choice.

The boxoffice has remained strong in Hong Kong despite the credit
crunch, Vallone says, but they've felt a difference at the candy
counter. "A lot has to do with the economy," he adds. "People say they
really still want to go to the movies but once there, they're doing
more sharing. They're buying one popcorn instead of two and sharing.
Most of our customers are young and a lot have been directly impacted
by losing jobs or reduction of their jobs. There's a definite impact
on discretionary spending."

Surprisingly, Vallone says the rampant piracy in Hong Kong seems to
have cooled. "It's part of the business but honestly it's not as
visible as it used to be. Two years ago you could go on most major
streets in Hong Kong and see people selling current movies out of a
suitcase."

It's not enforcement which has turned it around, Vallone says. People
got tired of being cheated by street vendors. "The pirates are
criminals who really cheat people," Vallone says. "They say the movie
is 'Star Trek' and it's actually the original one from years ago; or
you will get two discs and one will be blank."

Globally the big concern has shifted to Internet piracy of movies,
MPAA chairman and CEO Dan Glickman says. "The big challenge comes as
we get more and more new ways to distribute, and it becomes easier and
easier to copy," he says. "We need a whole new set of strategies."

The MPAA released the 2009 Priority Watch List of countries where
piracy is a particular problem -- including the usual suspects such as
China, Mexico, Russia and Spain -- along with Canada, which was
elevated to the U.S. Trade Representatives Special 301 Report's
Priority Watch list as well. Glickman says Canada continues to lag
behind other major developed countries in responding to the tremendous
technological changes that have cost the movie industry millions.

Glickman notes that one additional benefit of 3-D is that it's hard to pirate.

Glickman praises a bill supported by France's President Nicolas
Sarkozy, which is working its way toward becoming a law in France as a
model for the future. Officially known as "Creation et Internet,"
which requires Internet ISPs to notify customers when illegal file
sharing is detected by a registered letter. The third time, the
customer is kicked off the Internet for three months. A similar bill
has been dismissed by the European parliament twice.

Around the world movie ticket sales have held up surprisingly well in
the face of the global economic downturn, with exhibitors benefiting
from the building of new theaters, better marketing and most of all
movies with international appeal.

"I think we've proven we're recession resistant," de Quervain says,
"but I don't think we're recession proof. We've got to be diligent
about giving value to people. And that's what we're doing."

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Local Warming
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3i5bc95dcbd3315867454360ef9ecc2ed3
CineExpo honorees
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CineExpo events
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