Digital Technology and the Movie Industry
New Revenue Models
Donations and Grants to Convert: Smaller theaters faced a crisis as movie distributors and studios announced that they would no longer make films on film. Instead, movies would become strictly digital. It was a “convert or die” (Hurley, 2012) message, and the price attached to digital conversion left many independent theaters in the United States looking at death. Even with the Virtual Print Fund, small theaters were hard pressed to find the funds required for conversion, which could run to $65,000 per screen.
The Salt Lake City Film Society leveraged its fan base to help fund the coercion of its two theaters, The Tower and Broadway Centre. With fundraisers, crowdsourcing and public education campaigns, both theaters were able to be saved. However, these theaters are a large city. Smaller towns and theaters with a smaller movie going audience could not leverage their populations as well.
Kickstarter and crowdfunding: Because movies require a large amount of investment before they are made and during production and there is no guarantee that the movie will be successful, financing used to be difficult. If a studio would not consent to purchase a script, a producer would have to figure out how to raise funds on his or her own. With Kickstarter, movies found a new way to get funded. The most successful film project was Veronica Mars, a film based on a television show starring Kristen Bell. It garnered more than $5.7 million, with the largest lumber of individual donors, as of 2013, of any Kickstarter project (Tweedie, 2013). It encouraged Actor Zach Braff to fund his own film through Kickstarter and stirred up a controversy about whether or not stars should use crowdfunding to finance their movies. Mythica, a smaller film starring Kevin Sorbo, was successful enough to create a sequel also funded through Kickstarter.
Downloads and piracy: The movie industry faces the same issue that the music industry faced with friend-sharing networks like Napster in the early days of the Internet. Websites like Pirate Bay remain in operation because of the vagaries of laws pertaining to the digital use of information. By merely being a portal that host links and no actual information, these websites can provide the public at large the opportunity to download or stream any film from new releases to those in the public domain.
Many of these films are still in theaters, and some have been filmed by a person in a theater with a small digital camera. This means that the movie industry has needed to engage in education campaigns that include threats of incarceration and fines. It also has resulted in movie credits that include statistics on the number of jobs created and the number of hours spent working on the film. The idea behind giving out this information is that people will realize that films cannot be made for free, and that downloading a film without paying for it could result in the loss of future jobs. If people stop paying to see films, films will no longer be made.
Legal downloads and streaming services like Amazon and Netflix provide the movie industry with a way to adapt to the changing delivery systems of videos. Amazon functions most like an old school video rental store. With Amazon Prime, users can get unlimited streaming services for Amazon’s video library. However, users can also download movies and TV shows for an additional fee. These options are available in addition to the ability to purchase a DVD and have it delivered through the mail.
While Netflix has the option to have DVDs delivered to a consumer’s doorstep, it functions more like a pay movie channel. It offers a large number of movies and TV series for download, and these options change on a monthly basis depending on customer views and contracts that Netflix has negotiated with movie studios. Netflix has also invested in original series including the critically acclaimed Orange is the New Black and House of Cards. Netflix has also partnered with Disney/Marvel to create new series based on the Marvel Universe. Daredevil is just one example of a series that will help Marvel with its future movie releases while also providing the studio with another source of income.
Film Making
Delivery and consumption of films
Digital Technology: Disruptive or Dynamic
The Salt Lake City Film Society leveraged its fan base to help fund the coercion of its two theaters, The Tower and Broadway Centre. With fundraisers, crowdsourcing and public education campaigns, both theaters were able to be saved. However, these theaters are a large city. Smaller towns and theaters with a smaller movie going audience could not leverage their populations as well.
Kickstarter and crowdfunding: Because movies require a large amount of investment before they are made and during production and there is no guarantee that the movie will be successful, financing used to be difficult. If a studio would not consent to purchase a script, a producer would have to figure out how to raise funds on his or her own. With Kickstarter, movies found a new way to get funded. The most successful film project was Veronica Mars, a film based on a television show starring Kristen Bell. It garnered more than $5.7 million, with the largest lumber of individual donors, as of 2013, of any Kickstarter project (Tweedie, 2013). It encouraged Actor Zach Braff to fund his own film through Kickstarter and stirred up a controversy about whether or not stars should use crowdfunding to finance their movies. Mythica, a smaller film starring Kevin Sorbo, was successful enough to create a sequel also funded through Kickstarter.
Downloads and piracy: The movie industry faces the same issue that the music industry faced with friend-sharing networks like Napster in the early days of the Internet. Websites like Pirate Bay remain in operation because of the vagaries of laws pertaining to the digital use of information. By merely being a portal that host links and no actual information, these websites can provide the public at large the opportunity to download or stream any film from new releases to those in the public domain.
Many of these films are still in theaters, and some have been filmed by a person in a theater with a small digital camera. This means that the movie industry has needed to engage in education campaigns that include threats of incarceration and fines. It also has resulted in movie credits that include statistics on the number of jobs created and the number of hours spent working on the film. The idea behind giving out this information is that people will realize that films cannot be made for free, and that downloading a film without paying for it could result in the loss of future jobs. If people stop paying to see films, films will no longer be made.
Legal downloads and streaming services like Amazon and Netflix provide the movie industry with a way to adapt to the changing delivery systems of videos. Amazon functions most like an old school video rental store. With Amazon Prime, users can get unlimited streaming services for Amazon’s video library. However, users can also download movies and TV shows for an additional fee. These options are available in addition to the ability to purchase a DVD and have it delivered through the mail.
While Netflix has the option to have DVDs delivered to a consumer’s doorstep, it functions more like a pay movie channel. It offers a large number of movies and TV series for download, and these options change on a monthly basis depending on customer views and contracts that Netflix has negotiated with movie studios. Netflix has also invested in original series including the critically acclaimed Orange is the New Black and House of Cards. Netflix has also partnered with Disney/Marvel to create new series based on the Marvel Universe. Daredevil is just one example of a series that will help Marvel with its future movie releases while also providing the studio with another source of income.
Film Making
Delivery and consumption of films
Digital Technology: Disruptive or Dynamic