Withoutabox, the one and only online submission center for film festivals, gets my vote for the buggiest website ever. Amazon should be ashamed to own it.
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
There's an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal today that's worth checking out: Indie Films Suffer Drop-off in Rights Sales.
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
LA Times reports that a dozen summer movies will top $100 million just for their marketing costs. It makes you wonder how much it cost to make the movie itself. Earlier this year, the MPAA, which normally gives the average studio movie budget for the year, declined to give out the budget statistics for 2008, saying:
"Year-to-year average costs comparisons are really useless and misleading,'' he said. "I'm not sure what these numbers mean anymore." (Quote from LA Times).
The biggest marketing cost for the studios is TV ads. It can cost as much as $3 million for a 30-second spot. But they say that TV ads are the only way to get a mass audience.
According to the numbers crunched by Thomas Trenker, the founder of Institute for International Film Financing, the theatre-released movies that made a profit are the ones that spent at least the same amount on marketing as they did on making the movie itself. It's an interesting stat except for the fact that filmmakers and studios regularly lie about their film budget. For an interesting perspective on the studios lying about movie budgets, check out the LA Times article, Why Everyone Lies About Their Movie Budgets. The article's author says that studios tend to say the budget was lower than it really was. In my personal experience, indie filmmakers tend to inflate their budget numbers so it doesn't smell like the backyard production it really is (for the record, I am very pro-backyard production. I think it's absolutely ridiculous that movies cost as much as they do.). Many of these indie budget lies can be significant, say, by an order of magnitude...
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
YouTube is launching a new section, "YouTube Shows," that has TV shows and movies in an effort to generate revenues. So far, they are older shows and movies. They're also working on a new program called, "TV Ads Online" for ads inserted in the middle of programs streaming on the web.
According to LA Times, YouTube had 5.3 billion views in Feb., and Hulu grew by 38% in Jan and Feb. YouTube is owned by Google, and Hulu is owned by News Corp and NBC Universal. YouTube Shows is working with CBS, Lionsgate, MGM, Starz and Sony Pictures.
Online video is looking pretty corporate these days...
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
According to the LA Times, research into what kinds of movies people want to see during a recession pretty much tells us nothing. Some say light-hearted movies are best, others say sad ones are best. "'There's not one type of genre that's doing better right now,' Goetz (president of a research firm that consults for Hollywood studios) says. 'They want to laugh, they want to cry.'"
Susan Ee
YouTube is on track to lose $470 million in 2009. Estimated operating costs = $711 million. $360 million of that is on bandwidth costs. In short, YouTube is bleeding a LOT of money.
Still, that probably doesn't make you feel any better about the cost of your own webisode...
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
Variety reports that Wolverine leaked online a month before its release. The studio is, of course, totally scared (and pissed). Their greatest fear is that they will spend a hundred million dollars to make a product and everyone will watch it for free. They've announced that it's an early rough cut of the movie and that some effects and scenes are not in it.
I for one won't be spoiling the experience by watching an early version. If I love the movie, I may go back and see the early version to compare, but I want my first impression to be the best one they can manage. I don't think the studios need to worry so much about this one. I mean, come on, they have Wolverine, the greatest X Men bad boy ever; Hugh Jackman, a man who was born to play Wolverine; a long-simmering mystery of the origin of Wolverine; and Hollywood visual effects with an unlimited budget. What more could you ask for?
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
