As you know if you've been following this blog for a while, independent film is dead. All hail independent film! Yes, as is always the case when someone walks the streets in a doomsaying sandwich board, there is someone immediately following in his footsteps with brightly colored pamplets about how you, yes, YOU can cash in big on doomsday-related futures! Oh, sure, a few people might say that this sort of the-king-is-dead-long-live-the-king stuff might just be an indicator of how the king's prognosis probably wasn't as dire as it was made out to be, but they're just the sort of Johnny Level-Heads who won't be making any money as the Jason Voorhees-like corpse of independent film is resurrected for the fifteenth time.
As part of their ongoing coverage of New York's Independent Film Week, IndieWire has brought in producer, distributor, and all-around insider Peter Broderick to assure us that independent film isn't dead after all – it's just a Brave New World. Part One of the series focuses on Broderick's dissent at Mark Gill's notably grim keynote address, where Gill described independent film financing as standing on the verge of a massive collapse which he compared to a medieval plague. Broderick argues that this is an old-world perspective, ignoring such new distribution angles as the internet, direct DVD sales, split rights, video on demand, and target-marketed fundraising. He provides useful charts and graphs, and even gives us ten basic principles of modern film distribution that makes it superior to the 'Old World' system, which he agrees is collapsing like a dying star.
In Part Two, Broderick discusses the changes in how film festivals help snag distribution deals, how theatrical distribution can be had without the aid of a major financier (and why he thinks, if you can't get theatrical release, that might not be such a bad thing), and other aspects of 'New World' distribution, including direct-to-video release, digital distribution, and educational and institutional funding. It's all very encouraging, and maybe even prophetic; but those of us old enough to remember the direct-market zealots who were going to 'revolutionize' how comics were bought and sold might want to have a large grain of salt handy while we read.
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