Interestingly enough, in this Darwinian new future, there will absolutely be a premium for good films on tv, pay per view, on-demand, internet--or whatever that large pipe that goes to all of our houses will be called.
Why do I know this? Because one of the big research companies conducted a study recently which gave viewers on-demand everything. No more schedules. No more appointment television. Just tune in anything--any movie, any TV show--at any time. And guess what: the best stuff won out. Hands down.
In a nutshell, the audience is sick & tired of the atrocious but all too familiar version of television on a schedule: 500 channels to choose from, and nothing to watch.
Some of this is purely a function of demography. There actually is a growing audience for quality.
- Mark Gill, via indieWIRE (emphasis mine)
If you didn't catch the conference speech by Mark Gill (former President of Miramax Films) over on indieWIRE when it was put online back in June, you really really need to read this.
If you desire a future in filmmaking, in fairness I must warn you: his remarks will likely scare the crap out of you. But stick with it and see where he takes it... it is so worth the journey!
Comments
I find it paradoxically quite inspiring that if you make a $10m movie, you have a 99.9% chance of losing money. The appeal of making movies on budgets of $100 or less, and not caring about having to recoup that via box office, merchandising, or sell-through, increases significantly.
It is quite enough for some tired film maker to make not very cinematic suicide. I don't know how all this applies to short anymation, but it is not easy to believe that hard, hard work will save the day.
Well, I am still believer: "...If you want to survive in this brutal climate, you're going to have to work a lot harder, be a lot smarter, know a lot more, move a lot faster, sell a lot better, pay attention to the data, be a little nicer (ok, a lot nicer), trust your gut, read everything and never, ever give up."
Yeah, like Matt says.
The key strategy in this market, I'd say, seems to be "make cool stuff as fast as possible". Machinima is a pretty good bet for that approach...