Tribeca Film Festival programmer urges film industry to forget piracy and embrace internet

Updated

Mainstream movie makers need to get over their fear of piracy and accept the internet as the way of the future.

That is the view of a content programmer at a major US film festival who has added her voice to the growing chorus of industry insiders concerned about the issue.

New York's annual Tribeca Film Festival begins this week with an expanded online format spanning feature films, documentaries and music videos.

For the first time this year, the festival also features a showcase of content producers who work exclusively online.

Tribeca programmer Cara Cusumano says it is the third year the festival has taken to the internet and that she and her team believe the online realm is very much where the film industry will live in future.

She says mainstream movie distributors need to embrace online technologies rather than trying to avoid them.

"Piracy is less about people not wanting to pay and more about just wanting the immediacy - people saying, 'I want to watch Spiderman right now' and downloading it," she said. "I think that if companies were willing to put that material out there, moving forward, consumers will follow."

Internet piracy made the news again this month when anti-piracy firm Irdeto revealed a four-week snapshot of illegal downloads from early 2014. It identified Game of Thrones as the most pirated TV show in the world.

But official viewing figures for the series have also risen steadily - ratings for the recent HBO premiere of episode one from season four went through the roof.

There is also evidence to suggest the more a TV show or movie is pirated the better it sells, prompting some within the film industry to suggest that illegal downloads could more accurately be viewed as a form of promotion.

US company Netflix has shown it is possible, indeed profitable, to embrace an online distribution model for the release of a TV series.

This begs the question - why is the same model not being adopted for feature films?

Ms Cusumano insists piracy is not merely people wanting something for nothing.

"It's just that they want to consume films online and they're ready to consume films that way and we're not necessarily offering them in that way," she said.

"So it's the distribution models that need to catch up.

"People will pay for the content - I mean we happen to be showing ours for free, which is great, but we really did see that hole and Tribeca as a whole is very interested in exploring that space with new technologies and online distribution and all the ways and different models for the industry side.

"On the filmmaking side, we're evolving in response to these technologies.

"The online space made a lot of sense for us to move into.

"VOD [video on demand] is the new forefront of distribution - seeing films through iTunes or cable on demand, but there's definitely a lot of space online to expand if people are willing to go there - there's certainly an appetite for it."

Movie distributors 'should focus on the internet'

Ms Cusumano believes the internet is where mainstream movie distributors need to be focused in future.

"I do, I think we will see that," she said.

"That's definitely a reason Tribeca has planted a flag in the online space and that we see it in that direction and we would love be right there exploring it along with the filmmakers and distributors."

The film industry has been slow to embrace the internet, arguably to its own detriment.

Teeth have been further set on edge by the appearance of Popcorn Time, an interface for accessing illegally downloaded films that is free and remarkably easy to use.

Popcorn Time itself is not illegal - it does not host the movies but provides a funnel through which they can be sourced.

It is also decentralised, with no money changing hands, making it virtually impossible to shut down.

Subversive innovations such as these mean the movie industry has no choice other than to adapt.

Audiences demanding more content on the net

Screen Producers Australia executive director Matt Deaner agrees the industry needs to be more responsive to audience demand for content via the internet.

"Because it's on a hiding to nothing if it doesn't," he said.

"It's where the content is increasingly going to be accessible and accessed from."

But he suggests changing the way the industry operates is not as easy as some might think.

"It's a complicated set of moving parts," he said.

"We also need to reward investment risk.

"The business models that work to reward that risk might not always allow for immediate or online supply.

"There are layers of decision-making that have been debased by certain platforms that wanted to have control.

"We sit in a production creation space and they are investing in content to get a return back - that's where the disconnect happens."

Mr Deaner says there are plenty of examples.

"Foxtel is offering HBO content based on exclusivity," he said.

"For HBO, it's better to have that guaranteed return [from Foxtel].

"Netflix is predominantly an aggregator of other people's intellectual property, licensing other people's content.

"It's also producing original content, but that's not its main business model - it's investing in one or two high-profile projects each year.

"Usually movies are hot because a distributor has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars promoting the product in print and TV and other forms of advertising.

"The major Hollywood studios spend millions on this process with marketing costs rivalling the costs of production.

"They are attempting then to monetise through returns that can justify the investment in both the costs of promotion and production.

"Distributors are usually wanting to encourage cinema-going as part of this process and restrict the immediate access to online so as to encourage the maximum number of people to go to the cinema.

"In Australia there are currently restrictions on quantities of tax support that a film can receive unless the film has a traditional cinema release so this needs to change in order to keep up with audience expectations and where the market for cinema content is sitting."

Tribeca streaming more films online

Ms Cusumano says many filmmakers whose works are on show at Tribeca are more than happy for their work to be streamed online.

This year, Tribeca is streaming two documentaries and two feature films to a limited US audience during the festival.

"The way we position it in the online festival is that it's sort of another screening at the festival," she said.

"The views are capped at a certain number and it's set up as an online screening room so we present it to the filmmakers as if we're adding a screening of their film and it happens to be online rather than in a theatre.

"A lot of filmmakers are happy for that and they love to get their work out there.

"There's also an audience award available to one of the four films - people who watch them vote and then one of the four will win a prize of $10,000."

This year for the first time Tribeca also ran a competition urging online content makers to produce an interactive music video for a track by one of three musical artists - Damon Albarn, Ellie Goulding or Aloe Blacc.

A jury will select a winner for each artist's song, earning those three video creators a prize of $10,000 each, a trip to the festival and the promise that their work will be used to promote the music.

Another section of the online festival, Tribeca NOW, will feature work by 12 creators who make web series, music videos, short films and documentaries specifically for an online audience.

"Whether they see themselves as online creators permanently or they're looking to jump-start into TV or film we just wanted to identify this talent and curate it," Ms Cusumano said.

"There's such a glut of people making work online and so much content available and very little curation happening.

"We felt like there's a space there for us to say, 'hey here's 12 filmmakers doing really interesting things that we'd love for the world to pay attention to' and put that under the Tribeca online umbrella.

"We've selected them and will feature editorial pieces on them on the website along with three examples of their work and invite them out to New York and take part in the festival and take meetings and maybe help meet collaborators or pursue their goals for their next project."

Non-commercial filmmakers broaden audiences on net

She says independent and non-commercial film and documentary makers are already very interested in using the internet to broaden their potential audiences.

Establishing an audience online also offers a greater possibility for projects that are labours of love to pay for themselves, making it easier for non-commercial filmmakers to move on to future projects.

But thus far the mainstream industry has kept its doors closed to the online space.

"We have studio films at the festival and they use the festival to launch their films into the market, opening to just the press and having a big premiere," Ms Cusumano said.

"I think that evolves into a more traditional distribution model, but it's not necessarily mutually exclusive."

We asked whether you agree with Ms Cusumano's comments about film makers embracing the internet. Here's what you had to say.

Topics: film-movies, arts-and-entertainment, digital-multimedia, piracy, united-states

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