World of KJ :: View topic - Will Indies ironically fall victim to Hollywood's bad habit?

dolcevita wrote:

I don't think its about distributors "catching on," if that's what you think? They're still getting made on small budgets and getting picked up at film festivals, etc. Sometimes studios will front money for a good idea too I think.

That doesn't mean the "indie" genre is going to die. As a genre, its a bit different than the franchise. If studios see a way to make money off of them, there's nothing wrong with that. You're seeing "increasing" amount of indies more due to bigger cineplaxes. With 20 screens, they're starting to reserve one of two for smaller movies. That's called cood counter-programming, and wasn't as easy when cinemas only had 8 or ten screens per location.

There are "cross-over" movies now, and those tend to be hit or miss. But not any more so than pure "indies" were. If anything, I think they're a great tool for drawing attention to new content and styles that would otherwise go un-noticed by most film-goers.

1000 theatres for a movie about gay cowboys is not like the over 4000 theatres some movies open in. Furthermore they will open on one, or half a screen, not 6 within the theatre.

Indies can't see the same "overload" as superhero movies, because indies are not one genre but many. Comedy, drama, love stories, revenge flicks, everything. Indie is more a defining characteristic or how much producers dabbled in pre-production, etc. And even that's not really a good definition. Its loose.

You can't overload on indies because they're pretty much everything from animation to explosions, and don't aim for mass appeal (though often they do for broad appeal...which is different).

Its like the Dogme 95 guys. They set up some ok guidelines, but after awhile, their own self-prescribed limitations become just that...limiting. Why not have bigger bidgets and allow for more flexible material? It can only add to the entire genre, not detract from it. Its a blurry distinction at best, and I think in order to keep the independant film scene economically viable and dynamic, some "bigger" movies aren't a problem at all.

Author:	bABA [ Tue Jul 26, 2005 3:47 pm ]
Post subject:	Will Indies ironically fall victim to Hollywood's bad habit?
I was speaking with Loyal about it this morning and thought it'd make an interesting discussion. We're all familiar with Hollywood's trend of destroying good ideas. Lets take a look at this trend. In the 90s, Disney was known for some of the most amazing 2D animation. With their success, more and more projects of the same genre took light, some turning out to be extremely mediocre. Towards the late 90s, very few traditional 2D animations did well and none of them saw the success of the early 90s movies. Fastforward to more recent times. The ideas of sequels to movies seemed great. Sure .. there had always been sequels but those sequels were limited to major franchises, horror films or kiddie films. All of a sudden, a few movies started seeing sequels and the box office responded very favorably. I believe 2002 and 2003 saw an unprecedented number of sequels. Some were good but as usual, mediocrity sneaked in as well. Some of the audience got burnt out and some of the audience was left feeling angry at the sub par quality movies, released only for the sake of money making. We had war movies after 9/11, comic book overload right now, an over increase in historical and/or fantasy epics. Remakes ... aah .. remakes sounded like such a great idea. Now every little success of the 60s and 70s is being brought back and I think I can safely say that atleast us people here look at this rather suspiciously. So this brings us to Indies. Indies by default are not major money makers. But indies, more often than not, return a profit at the end of the day. Indies, over the past few years, have seen a tremendous increase in exposure. The Internet allows more awareness to a certain demographic and over the last few years, i'm noticing an increase in the number of indies being released. More indies are coming to the limelight due to the various awards that exist and the quick access crowds have to them. Major studios have created sub divisions just to handle them and nowadays, we're even seeing increases in their box offices. The AMC that i usually frequent is one of the biggest cinemas in montreal and survives 90% of the time just on different indie movies coming out, being replaced every 2 or 3 weeks by another one. The question here is ... are studios catching on? just like studios with their habit of overloading a good idea over a very brief period of time, are they now taking more interest in the indie genre (if you could call it that) and putting out more and more of them? I remember when i first started browsing movie sites. An indie movie was automatically relegated to a 'league of its own' status. over time, i'm noticing even the members here, passing less than A grades, once in a while expressing compelte disappointment ina movie here or there. Are the studios catching up? Will indies see the same overload anytime soon? Will the indie market be flooded soon and with that, show an increase of mediocre projects that will at the end, piss off those who enjoy these movies to begin with? What of the average audience? A funny thing i noticed was movie35's thread here where a little debate was sparked if that movie starring the gay cowboy lovers actually belonged in the Indie section or not. The studio releasing it is considered Indie yet it was seeing a release in over 1000 theatres. I thought that was interesting.

Author:	FILMO [ Tue Jul 26, 2005 3:59 pm ]
Post subject:
1.Rule:Mankind needs money to survive(Actually not money but you need the money to buy;creat your things). If something generates money mankind will use it until it does not make longer money. 2. Nearly everything in mankind does repeat after some time in a different appearance (cause of technic development). So point is. We are in a market economy and Indies seems to make money. So we will have a lot of Indies until we get tired of it (Same thing seems to happen now at the historic movie front). They will dissapear but come back after 10/20??years. Some oustanding Indie stuff will be able to survie in the mean time. For all those classic Disney stuff. People already seem to get tired of CGI Trick. And very likely we will have some classic 2D in some time and something new we dont already think about. Sounds boring??? Yes. But who said Earth and Mankind is something always funny. Sincerly your philosopher FILMO THE MYSTERY MAN.

Author:	dolcevita [ Tue Jul 26, 2005 5:21 pm ]
Post subject:
I don't think its about distributors "catching on," if that's what you think? They're still getting made on small budgets and getting picked up at film festivals, etc. Sometimes studios will front money for a good idea too I think. That doesn't mean the "indie" genre is going to die. As a genre, its a bit different than the franchise. If studios see a way to make money off of them, there's nothing wrong with that. You're seeing "increasing" amount of indies more due to bigger cineplaxes. With 20 screens, they're starting to reserve one of two for smaller movies. That's called cood counter-programming, and wasn't as easy when cinemas only had 8 or ten screens per location. There are "cross-over" movies now, and those tend to be hit or miss. But not any more so than pure "indies" were. If anything, I think they're a great tool for drawing attention to new content and styles that would otherwise go un-noticed by most film-goers. 1000 theatres for a movie about gay cowboys is not like the over 4000 theatres some movies open in. Furthermore they will open on one, or half a screen, not 6 within the theatre. Indies can't see the same "overload" as superhero movies, because indies are not one genre but many. Comedy, drama, love stories, revenge flicks, everything. Indie is more a defining characteristic or how much producers dabbled in pre-production, etc. And even that's not really a good definition. Its loose. You can't overload on indies because they're pretty much everything from animation to explosions, and don't aim for mass appeal (though often they do for broad appeal...which is different). Its like the Dogme 95 guys. They set up some ok guidelines, but after awhile, their own self-prescribed limitations become just that...limiting. Why not have bigger bidgets and allow for more flexible material? It can only add to the entire genre, not detract from it. Its a blurry distinction at best, and I think in order to keep the independant film scene economically viable and dynamic, some "bigger" movies aren't a problem at all.

Author:	bABA [ Tue Jul 26, 2005 5:30 pm ]
Post subject:
dolcevita wrote: I don't think its about distributors "catching on," if that's what you think? They're still getting made on small budgets and getting picked up at film festivals, etc. Sometimes studios will front money for a good idea too I think. That doesn't mean the "indie" genre is going to die. As a genre, its a bit different than the franchise. If studios see a way to make money off of them, there's nothing wrong with that. You're seeing "increasing" amount of indies more due to bigger cineplaxes. With 20 screens, they're starting to reserve one of two for smaller movies. That's called cood counter-programming, and wasn't as easy when cinemas only had 8 or ten screens per location. There are "cross-over" movies now, and those tend to be hit or miss. But not any more so than pure "indies" were. If anything, I think they're a great tool for drawing attention to new content and styles that would otherwise go un-noticed by most film-goers. 1000 theatres for a movie about gay cowboys is not like the over 4000 theatres some movies open in. Furthermore they will open on one, or half a screen, not 6 within the theatre. Indies can't see the same "overload" as superhero movies, because indies are not one genre but many. Comedy, drama, love stories, revenge flicks, everything. Indie is more a defining characteristic or how much producers dabbled in pre-production, etc. And even that's not really a good definition. Its loose. You can't overload on indies because they're pretty much everything from animation to explosions, and don't aim for mass appeal (though often they do for broad appeal...which is different). Its like the Dogme 95 guys. They set up some ok guidelines, but after awhile, their own self-prescribed limitations become just that...limiting. Why not have bigger bidgets and allow for more flexible material? It can only add to the entire genre, not detract from it. Its a blurry distinction at best, and I think in order to keep the independant film scene economically viable and dynamic, some "bigger" movies aren't a problem at all. well i definetely don't mean to imply its gonna happen next year or so but i am starting to see the same trend developing but on a slightly slower scale.

Author:	dolcevita [ Tue Jul 26, 2005 5:36 pm ]
Post subject:
bABA wrote: well i definetely don't mean to imply its gonna happen next year or so but i am starting to see the same trend developing but on a slightly slower scale. Oh I know. And you bring up good points. Here are my two thoughts. One is positive, the other is less so. 1. People start liking movies made on ten bucks. So studios start dishing out 50 bucks to those type of movies. People get used to 50 bucks movies...and the ten dollar ones are dead. The 50 dollar movies start going stale (like franchises and sequals) and people start desiring ten dollar ones again. The market re-opens...its cyclic. 2. I have always felt uncomfty with all the distributor take-overs. They're becming bigger and bigger conglomerates under umbrella names. When Disney nixed Miramax's support of F9/11 I was disheartened. Not because of F9/11, but the limited access to small distributors that can front money and send copies. The less companies, and the less flexibility companies under mother names have...the less really progressive (both in style and content) movies we'll see. I'm more worried about the direction in which studios are becoming monopolized than I am what is currently considered a bankable indie. I don't know if I'm making any sense?

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Author:	Eagle [ Tue Jul 26, 2005 5:59 pm ]
Post subject:
No I don't think so. The profit margin is slim. Where a bit blockbuster can make you hundreds of millions, indies produce much much smaller sums, and even the best, the Garden State's and Eternal Sunshine's, return only slight profits when compared to larger movies. The thing studio's look at is risk. The risk of inides is equal or more (and I would lean towards more) than a big budget film. You may disagree, but think about it. The people or audience is much more fickle, much harder to advertise to, and much harder to get into the seats. Where as teenagers (the main movie audience anymore) are generally easy to market to, and easy to get into seats. They don't really care about the plot, don't really care about alot of things other than who's driving and whos going. Indies will continue to be made, sure, and we may see an increase. But I find it very hard to believe that we are going to be seeing a boom of indies in the coming decade. They just don't offer the right type of return, and require much more shrewd marketing. In short, for every sucessful indie, there are tons that fail, but unlike a major blockbuster bomb, we simply don't hear about it. It's like a tree falling in the woods with noone around to hear it.

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