Digital Video - April 2008 - (Page 16) DV UPDATE SHORTS Q& A understand how to talk to consumers and how to use interactive marketing techniques. I would call this a new wave platform release. We’re being smart about the marketing — we’re heavy interactive and viral. A little bit of print, but if the theaters weren’t such sticklers about it, I would drop print advertising entirely because it’s a waste of money. So theatrical release was always part of the plan? We’re opening theatrically because we have the opportunity. We’re a big believer in theatrical and don’t think theatrical is going to go away, but theaters should be digital. We rolled Look out in L.A. and New York, followed by Chicago. Demand was perking up for other cities, and we’ll see how it grosses. We do have an alternative locationbased platform that we’re going to use: club-style theaters — a high-end club that’s converted into a theater for certain days of the week and shows the picture with food and drink in a clublike atmosphere. Think about Look from both the production side and the distribution side as bleeding edge of what we think is going to be a lot of change, just like we’ve seen in music. We also see people offering their episodic TV on the Internet and for downloading to computers. We expect to learn a lot from this. Quality holds sway even for the Internet? YouTube, despite its popularity, isn’t exactly known for it high production value. That’s a different form of entertainment. Watching YouTube and other user-created content, that’s not going to replace the theatrical experience or even watching movies on demand or TV. But it is a form of entertainment. It is important to understand that in the end you have a solitary human being who has a certain number of hours a day he will spend toward leisure time activity, and you have a lot of things competing for it these days. — Douglas Bankston www.dv.com PLUGGED IN INTERNET VET BARRY SCHULER APPLIES HIS EXPERIENCE TO DIGITAL PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION. B arry Schuler knows a thing or two about media and the Internet. After all, he spent eight years at AOL, leading it through the Time Warner merger as chairman and CEO. He has since turned his attention to the film industry, launching Liberated Artists — which focuses on alternative ways to make, market and distribute movies and entertainment. Schuler discussed with DV the distribution methodology behind the unique indie feature Look (profiled in February), the first film he executive produced under his Liberated Artists banner. some offers to acquire the picture, and we turned them down because the culture of Hollywood is if you’re doing an indie picture you hope to find a buyer and get your up-front check. If you’re smart, you’ll slice the rights and sell them off rather than giving them all up to a big studio. My point of view was the macro trend — and all you have to do is look at iTunes and what’s gone on in music. The macro trend in entertainment stimulated by the Internet is the desegregation of the old gatekeepers. You’ve seen it in the porno industry. People laugh at porn, but it has been a great trendsetter. Female stars in particular develop their own audiences and Web sites. Now you see the record labels dissolving and the artists creating their own audiences. I think you will see that happening in movies and TV. I convinced Brad that we could distribute this picture. I had the idea of starting a new distribution company called Liberated Artists. Call this proof of concept. I’ve spent my whole life in consumer marketing. I ran AOL and DV: Why did you choose Look as your first film to produce? Barry Schuler: Producer Brad Wyman and I were having a vibrant dialogue about the changes in the industry — all the things I thought were going to happen with distribution and how pictures were made. Then we decided to do a couple projects to prove out some thoughts that you could make great pictures on microbudgets. If you embrace the technology, they don’t have to be shabby or low quality. I saw the first draft of Look, and aside from the fact that it was brilliant, it hit me at another level with its privacy/security [angle]. It was perfect, with a director willing to embrace new ideas and a new approach. What were the challenges of marketing a film with no major studio backing? There is a heck of a lot going on in direct digital distribution, video on demand, new windows popping up. We got 16 dv april 2008 http://www.dv.com
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