The agony and ecstasy of the online movie business.
by Randall Lane
The Sundance Film Festival is a poorly named event. Sundance is a ski area, but nobody who attends goes skiing. It's a film festival, yet few bother to see many movies. What Sundance attendees (actors and directors, producers and executives) really do all week is gossip and network, preferably in a chalet with freely flowing booze and a roaring fire. And since it takes place in January, if you keep your ears open and your mouth shut, you'll get a good idea of what's going to happen in Hollywood over the next year.
This winter, the word from the mouths of Hollywood's whales and minnows alike was a familiar one: Internet. Mirmax cafe launches a pay-per-view movie download system. Richard Link later premieres two films he edited on a home computer. The giant Sundance Digital Centre displays the latest in online movie technologies and applications to wide-eyed audiences. And the festival itself, along with other fests (including Y-Life's own, in March) has gotten into the business of showcasing a number of films over the Web. New this year, the Sundance Online Film Festival coincides with the offline festival. This may seem a bit strange, considering that 2000 was a disaster for anyone trying to push video over the Web. Dozens of companies failed, including such high-profile ventures as DEN, Pseudo, and Pop.com--the last of these featuring the biggest names in the business: Steven Spielberg, David Geffen, Ron Howard, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Brian Grazer.
But could this just possibly be the year that the big show on your little screen begins in earnest? While DEN and company were failing, the number of people with high-speed Net access more than doubled last year, reaching nearly 12 million home users in the US, according to Nielsen//NetRatings, and the average new computer now comes with considerably more memory. These two facts conspire to make producing, distributing, and watching video via computer a reality. Yes, we're a long way from the hundreds of millions of people who view television or attend movies, but we're nudging toward a critical mass.
The Internet film movement's march toward that milestone will catch a big break this year. If Hollywood's writers and actors go on strike in, respectively, May and July (and it looks as if they will, despite some recent headway in negotiations), figure that for at least six months no movies will be shot, no TV sitcoms or dramas produced, and no scripts purchased. With all sides heavily bunkered, traditional Hollywood will grind to a halt.
Digital Hollywood, however, may end up doing just fine. Web sites aren't covered under the current contracts, which means that some of Hollywood's best talent may think about giving the Net a try. Faced with nothing but reruns on TV and a slowdown of new movies in theaters, ordinary viewers will also begin to tune in, especially if A-list writers, directors, and actors begin popping up online. Says director Robert Rodriguez, who broke into Hollywood famously with the US$7,000 El Mariachi and currently has the special-effects-laden Spy Kids coming to theaters, "When everyone is asleep, it's the perfect time for revolution."
The R-word, of course, has been spoken before, but this time it may be for real, albeit less revolution and more evolution. Venturing out from Sundance to the epicentres of this sea change [Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York] we found five major trends, all taking off right now. Last year was all courtship and flirting, but 2001 may be the year motion pictures and the Net finally get hitched.
The visionaries of film, video, and animation have already set up shop online -- is Hollywood about to take the plunge? Our annual
Hollywired report takes a look at where the industry is now and where it's headed.
