Kevin Smith and the Red Statements

[Gindil]

Some people hate him, some love him. If you haven't heard about his most recent stunt, it was buying his own movie for $20 bucks. (I wonder if he took cash or check...

Some people are going to think he's full of it. But I'm intrigued with him...

No, I'm not a follower of his army of Twitterers(is that a word now?) but it's amazing to see him make sense out of his situation.

Link [http://theredstatements.com/]

I?d only ever sold a film one time previously, but that one time was all it took. Clerks was made for $27,575 and sold for $227,000, seventeen years ago. What could a $4 million dollar flick go for? Happy, Texas sold for $10 mil at Sundance twelve years ago, but those days are long gone. Buried sold for $6 million last year, so I started figuring that the best Red State could get in this economy would be the same: about $6 million.

What would happen then? Like, let?s say Lion?s Gate picked up Red State. Lion?s Gate spends an almost standard $20 mil to open any flick (which is lower than the industry norm; LG is actually one of the more frugal studios, spending less on marketing than the majors). So now, my flick doesn?t cost $4 million anymore, it costs $24 million. It?s gotta make $24 million to break even and start seeing profit. But the studio/distributor doesn?t get all that box office, so assume the studio only gets back half of that announced box office figure. Suddenly my little $4 million dollar movie has to make $50 million JUST TO BREAK EVEN. Like? what happened? Instead of spending all that money trying to make the movie, it?s spent on trying to convince people to come see your shit.

So does it really make sense to sell your movie to the label and pay for massive overhead? Or does it pay to do your own thing and see how it goes?

Whatever the risk, the rewards seem to be great to him. This is pretty interesting to watch. Maybe, just maybe, we are seeing the break down of the movie industry as other movie makers forgo the traditional Hollywood path.

 

[clipse15]

Some people hate him, some love him. If you haven't heard about his most recent stunt, it was buying his own movie for $20 bucks. (I wonder if he took cash or check...

Some people are going to think he's full of it. But I'm intrigued with him...

No, I'm not a follower of his army of Twitterers(is that a word now?) but it's amazing to see him make sense out of his situation.

Link [http://theredstatements.com/]

I?d only ever sold a film one time previously, but that one time was all it took. Clerks was made for $27,575 and sold for $227,000, seventeen years ago. What could a $4 million dollar flick go for? Happy, Texas sold for $10 mil at Sundance twelve years ago, but those days are long gone. Buried sold for $6 million last year, so I started figuring that the best Red State could get in this economy would be the same: about $6 million.

What would happen then? Like, let?s say Lion?s Gate picked up Red State. Lion?s Gate spends an almost standard $20 mil to open any flick (which is lower than the industry norm; LG is actually one of the more frugal studios, spending less on marketing than the majors). So now, my flick doesn?t cost $4 million anymore, it costs $24 million. It?s gotta make $24 million to break even and start seeing profit. But the studio/distributor doesn?t get all that box office, so assume the studio only gets back half of that announced box office figure. Suddenly my little $4 million dollar movie has to make $50 million JUST TO BREAK EVEN. Like? what happened? Instead of spending all that money trying to make the movie, it?s spent on trying to convince people to come see your shit.

So does it really make sense to sell your movie to the label and pay for massive overhead? Or does it pay to do your own thing and see how it goes?

Whatever the risk, the rewards seem to be great to him. This is pretty interesting to watch. Maybe, just maybe, we are seeing the break down of the movie industry as other movie makers forgo the traditional Hollywood path.

I doubt we'll see this as a shift in the hollywood system. Not to say that this won't work for Kevin Smith because it may just work out with him since he has a locked in audience. However other directors won't be as lucky. I mean this system could work for low budget small films because then at the end of the day you don't need as many people to go see your film.

However where this really breaks down is with the Big Budget Blockbuster. No director would be able to finance his own Special Effects driven film and just the amount of people who would need to be paid to work on such a film would be astronomical.

Another Strike against this kind of distribution is that you can't release the film as widely as you could through the studio system. So now people who may actually want to see your film might not be able to and without a distrubitor I wonder how Kevin Smith plans to release this film on DVD.

 

[Gindil]

I doubt we'll see this as a shift in the hollywood system. Not to say that this won't work for Kevin Smith because it may just work out with him since he has a locked in audience. However other directors won't be as lucky. I mean this system could work for low budget small films because then at the end of the day you don't need as many people to go see your film.

However where this really breaks down is with the Big Budget Blockbuster. No director would be able to finance his own Special Effects driven film and just the amount of people who would need to be paid to work on such a film would be astronomical.

Another Strike against this kind of distribution is that you can't release the film as widely as you could through the studio system. So now people who may actually want to see your film might not be able to and without a distrubitor I wonder how Kevin Smith plans to release this film on DVD.

Not all at once. But should this become a successful movie, it's honestly going to change the way things are done. It's sending a signal that you don't NEED a huge Hollywood budget to make great films.

I've found a few music artists [http://www.lissie.com/weather/], that are using [http://www.vevo.com/video-evolved/andy-grammer/keep-your-head] technology in new ways. We also have movies being shot with iPhones [http://mashable.com/2011/01/10/oldboy-director-iphone-4-film/]

Now check this out... Park Chan Wook? Oldboy fame? His movie cost ~$130,000. With just iPhones

Surely, Kevin has a chance to make some money.

And last I checked, he has his own website for distribution.