In our last post, we discussed the takeover of Hollywood by âtentpolesâ, films with huge budgets based on an existing franchise. The question now is, where does that leave mid-budget films? Movies like Fight Club and There Will Be Blood are disappearing from Hollywood horizons as the tentpoles of the industry take over the screens. But, not every movie can be a remake, sequel, or based on best-selling books... Can it? With such limited opportunities to get their movies into theatres outside of film festival screens, where do film-makers go to showcase their challenging, artistic works - especially now that tentpoles have taken over the box office? Oddly enough, instead of killing small and mid-budget film possibilities, Hollywoodâs focus on tentpoles is allowing for small studios and independent filmmakers to take up the slack on mid-budget filmmaking. Indie filmmakers have discovered that they can create genre films to be sold to Hollywood for distribution, without having to sacrifice their creative freedom (which is regarded as too risky within the big studio system). The potential success of these smaller budget creations can be seen in films like Juno, Slumdog Millionaire, Black Swan and the Kingâs Speech. On the downside, if they stay focused on making genre films for hollywood, the challenging, artistic movies that the indie world built its reputation on will fade into the background. Hopefully, this shift in the filmmaking world wonât mean the ultimate death of art-films. The sweeping wave of digital technology means that there are more options than just the theatre for filmmakers to showcase their work. More and more people are opting to watch movies at home via iTunes, Netflix, Video-On-Demand, or other similar services. It seems that there are new options for distribution almost on a daily basis. The newest of these distribution options might even be a complete game-changer for the film world: MoPix officially launched as a service to help indie filmmakers distribute their movies as iPhone and Android apps. Basically, this means that filmmakers are able to forgo the traditional route of theatrical and DVD distribution, and market the films themselves. So, even if art- and mid-budget films arenât making it into theatres, there are still many ways to get them to the audiences that want to watch them. The problem with so many distribution options is, how does the audience find these movies? The answer is easy: Itâs why we created Qdup!
