You don’t know it yet, but pretty soon you’re going to be watching your next movie on YouTube. What does this mean for the independent filmmaker?
According to panelists of CUFF’s New Media Exploitation panel at the Filmmakers Summit, you can distribute your film digitally and you may make back some of your investment.
Matt Dentler, guru of SXSW, highly read IndieWire blogger, and now Cinetic Media’s head of Marketing and Programming Rights Management, released Wayne Wang’s new film, “The Princess of Nebraska” on YouTube, for free.
Wang is the A-list director of such big-budget theatrical hits as “Maid in Manhattan,” “The Last Holiday” and “The Joy Luck Club.”
Dentler laid out their strategy for building an audience of paying customers: use publicity, reviews and social networking on sites like Hulu and Youtube, license it for Video on Demand on Netflix, and lead the way for future broadband downloading for a television-like experience.
To build the audience on YouTube, they posted supposedly real clips of the main character, Princess Sasha’s experiences. It pissed off some when they found out that a la “LonelyGirl15,” she was a fake.
A big break came when “Princess” and its strategy were reviewed by the New York Times’ A.O. Scott, who asked, “Is this a gimmick or the harbinger of things to come?” Nevertheless, he opened the door for future straight-to- online film releases. Wait, that’s a whole new category!
Dentler admits that with 208,000 hits, “Princess” is not a smash success by YouTube standards, but most indie films are lucky to sell 30,000 tickets ? the operative words being – sell tickets.
Dentler declined to comment on the relationship with YouTube and how much money it has brought in.
