Sheri Candler presents her perspective on test screening and why she thinks it’s an important step of the Indie Filmmaking process. No amount of marketing will save a film that needs improvement. Many times I am sent films that need a few more editorial passes or maybe some reshoots to get it at the level Read MoreRead More
Emily Best discusses the new transparency that the digital age has brought to filmmakers and society and how that impacts our relationship with the audience. I hold this apparently really unpopular view that without an audience, it can’t be art. “Art” is a social label, a negotiation between the artist, the object (or performance) and Read MoreRead More
Alfred Hitchcock and Paramount present a guide to their revolutionary release of “Psycho” in this extended “press book on film” from the Academy Film Archive.Read More
Chris Jones offers 10 tips for designing movie posters aimed at grabbing the eye of a sales agents, distributors or audience members. 1. The poster is NOT a piece of art… well of course it is art, and I love movie posters, they adorn my walls. But I suspect they never began life as artwork that Read MoreRead More
Most theaters in the U.S. only keep on average 8% of ticket sales. The vast majority of their income is made at the concession stand. According to one Morningstar equity analyst, of every dollar spent on candy and soda in movie theaters, 85% is pure profit. In Yahoo Finance’s article “6 Outrageously Overpriced Products” they calculated the average markup Read MoreRead More
Because of MPAA rules U.S. movie trailers cannot show blood, so blood is often colored black to gain approval. Trailers that do not obey this and other rules, such as; foul language and violent, sexual, or otherwise objectionable imagery may be issued a red band, which indicates approval for only “restricted” or “mature” audiences. These Read MoreRead More
A couple years ago, Kywan Fisher paid for membership to the adult movie house Flava Works and downloaded 10 porn flicks to his computer. He then uploaded them to BitTorrent, where they were downloaded 3,449 times. What Fisher didn’t realize is the movies had watermarks that traced back to the subscriber who downloaded them. In Read MoreRead More
Video On Demand is changing the way filmmakers reach their audiences. Jason Brubaker lays out the field of Video On Demand (VOD) and what you need to know to distribute your film electronically. While it is possible that your movie will be a break out hit, it is more likely that your movie will end up as Read MoreRead More
Ingenious wasn’t going anywhere in the festival circuit. Then the co-star Jeremy Renner breaks through and becomes a hot item. How do the filmmakers rebrand the film to take advantage of Renner’s new found fame? There’s a scene in Ingenious where Sam, the seat-of-his-pants flying salesman, convinces Matt, the quirk-filled inventor, to gamble away the money Read MoreRead More
We’ve started adjusting the ranking of videos in YouTube search to reward engaging videos that keep viewers watching. This is a continuation of ongoing efforts to focus our video discovery features on watch time, and follows changes we made to Suggested Videos in March, and recent improvements to YouTube Analytics. The experimental results of this Read MoreRead More
A new start up firm Movie Pass is trying to apply a Netflix model to the Cineplex. Could this be a what the theaters need to for a new era of attendance? Or is there reluctance on the part of the chain owners? MoviePass, which offers all-you-can-watch movie-going for less than $40 a month, starts Read MoreRead More
Social media networks are maturing and the days of creating genuine buzz and following may be starting to get crushed by large media company interests. For example, Facebook throttles fan page messages to just 15 percent of fans – unless you pay them to spread the message further to your “fan base”. Many of us Read MoreRead More
