2008 seems to be a watershed year for internet distribution. Watching the growing pains of VOD/streaming video is very exciting.
Gigantic has been around for a little while, both in the music and movie business. Gigantic Releasing just launched a digital arm called Gigantic Digital.
For $2.99, you can rent one of their streaming movies for a 3 day window. Price wise, that's not bad compared with iTunes (which usually has a 24 hour window). Plus, they refer to it as a "ticket," which is kinda cool because you feel like you're going to the cinema. Sort of. Still, its a nice idea.
David Kaplan's rotoscope animated fantasy Year of the Fish is one of the first offerings on the site. I saw the film last year at AFI Dallas, and wanted to check it out again. I was struck by the high quality of the streaming video; I didn't notice any compression artifacts that distracted from the viewing experience. Nor were there many "hiccups" due to slow buffering. You can even select a full-screen option that fills your whole monitor. The image quality was totally acceptable--not all that much different from a DVD. Overall, the best digital streaming experience I've had yet.
Peter Knegt at IndieWire reported the launch of the new site this morning (which is how I came across it). Check out his coverage.
"The Princess of Nebraska" by Wayne Wang recently made a big splash when it debuted exclusively on YouTube. I haven't had a chance to watch the whole thing, but in the first few minutes I was distracted by the poor video quality (especially now having checked out Gigantic's site). Even in full-screen, high quality mode, the image was so chunky and pixellated that I had a hard time getting into it. Still, Wayne Wang is the man and I've always liked his work.
Broadcasting indie films via the internet is still very much in its infancy. Companies like Cinetic Rights Management are making heroic efforts to solve the two puzzles facing us:
1- How do we make sustainable income from this distribution model?
It's not clear if "Princess of Nebraska" has some kind of ad revenue deal with You Tube. Other sites do pick up some money from pop up ads or commercials...but movies are expensive, and no one knows when this will turn into a viable source of income.
I think that the $ issue can be solved once we figure out the answer to...
2- When are we going to be able to stream from our computers directly to our TV sets?
(Okay, so maybe this isn't one of the issues filmmakers think about...but I think this is a big one!)
In all honesty, who really likes to sit at their desk and watch a movie on their desktop computer? I do it only when I have to; my flat screen TV offers a much better viewing experience, as well as the ability to recline on the couch. Game over.
Thus far, Netflix has developed some kind of cable box to access their streaming VOD library, and Apple has something called Apple TV (imaginative name). Neither seems to have really caught on, by which I mean that nobody I know has either. Until the accessories necessary to hook up your Mac/PC to a REAL television become either affordable or built-in, I don't think streaming video will really take off as a major earning source for filmmakers.
There are tons of other issues that I haven't even touched. The Web as it currently exists was never meant to support something as complex as video transmission. Perhaps the next generation of "The Internet" will hold the key to many of our problems.
In time, these issues will get sorted out. "The Princess of Nebraska" was definitely a landmark event, but from the outside its difficult to tell how it really benefited the filmmakers. Getting an audience is great (200,000 views over the weekend from what I hear), but filmmakers have to pay the bills too.
-Boyle
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment