Veronica Williams, Author at Adam Leipzig

And the Academy Award Goes to… Independent Films

Independent films achieved the lion’s share of Academy Award nominations. The Oscars will be awarded on Sunday, February 22.

This year, the numbers are truly remarkable, and show the amazing strength of independent filmmaking. Seven of the eight Best Picture nominations, all of the Best Directing nominations, 18 of the 20 Best Acting nominations, 9 of the 10 Screenplay nominations and 4 of the 5 Editing and Cinematography nominations went to indies.

SEE OUR ANIMATED INFOGRAPHIC ON SUNDANCE 2015!

Why? One reason is that as the quantity of studio films has declines, the number of quality indies has increased. Of the 600 movies released each year, about 140 come from studios — a number that has decreased from 200 five years ago. New independent financiers have stepped to the plate, and are bankrolling films with budgets of $20 million and more, attracting top talent and allowing artists exceptional freedom.

Not all of the nominated indie movies had such lofty budgets, though. The Grand Budapest Hotel cost $31 million and Birdman cost $18 million, but Boyhood only cost $4 million — all the more impressive because its budget was spread over 12 years of filmmaking. The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything both cost approximately $15 million.

For your convenience, indie movie nominees are in boldface.

BEST MOTION PICTURE OF THE YEAR
American Sniper
Clint Eastwood, Robert Lorenz, Andrew Lazar, Bradley Cooper and Peter Morgan, Producers
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Alejandro G. Iñárritu, John Lesher and James W. Skotchdopole, Producers
Boyhood
Richard Linklater and Cathleen Sutherland, Producers
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Wes Anderson, Scott Rudin, Steven Rales and Jeremy Dawson, Producers
The Imitation Game
Nora Grossman, Ido Ostrowsky and Teddy Schwarzman, Producers
Selma
Christian Colson, Oprah Winfrey, Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner, Producers
The Theory of Everything
Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Lisa Bruce and Anthony McCarten, Producers
Whiplash
Jason Blum, Helen Estabrook and David Lancaster, Producers

PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Steve Carell in Foxcatcher
Bradley Cooper in American Sniper
Benedict Cumberbatch in The Imitation Game
Michael Keaton in Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything

PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Robert Duvall in The Judge
Ethan Hawke in Boyhood
Edward Norton in Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Mark Ruffalo in Foxcatcher
J.K. Simmons in Whiplash

PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE
Marion Cotillard in Two Days, One Night
Felicity Jones in The Theory of Everything
Julianne Moore in Still Alice
Rosamund Pike in Gone Girl
Reese Witherspoon in Wild

PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Patricia Arquette in Boyhood
Laura Dern in Wild
Keira Knightley in The Imitation Game
Emma Stone in Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Meryl Streep in Into the Woods

ACHIEVEMENT IN DIRECTING
Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Richard Linklater, Boyhood
Bennett Miller, Foxcatcher
Wes Anderson, The Grand Budapest Hotel
Morten Tyldum, The Imitation Game

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM OF THE YEAR
Big Hero 6
Don Hall, Chris Williams and Roy Conli
The Boxtrolls
Anthony Stacchi, Graham Annable and Travis Knight
How to Train Your Dragon 2
Dean DeBlois and Bonnie Arnold
Song of the Sea
Tomm Moore and Paul Young
The Tale Of The Princess Kaguya
Isao Takahata and Yoshiaki Nishimura

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM OF THE YEAR
Ida (Poland)
Leviathan (Russia)
Tangerines (Estonia)
Timbuktu (Mauritania)
Wild Tales (Argentina)

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
American Sniper
Written by Jason Hall
The Imitation Game
Written by Graham Moore
Inherent Vice
Written for the screen by Paul Thomas Anderson
The Theory of Everything
Screenplay by Anthony McCarten
Whiplash
Written by Damien Chazelle

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Written by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Jr. & Armando Bo
Boyhood
Written by Richard Linklater
Foxcatcher
Written by E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Screenplay by Wes Anderson; Story by Wes Anderson & Hugo Guinness
Nightcrawler
Written by Dan Gilroy

ACHIEVEMENT IN CINEMATOGRAPHY
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Emmanuel Lubezki
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Robert Yeoman
Ida
Lukasz Zal and Ryszard Lenczewski
Mr. Turner
Dick Pope
Unbroken
Roger Deakins

ACHIEVEMENT IN COSTUME DESIGN
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Milena Canonero
Inherent Vice
Mark Bridges
Into The Woods
Colleen Atwood
Maleficent
Anna B. Sheppard and Jane Clive
Mr. Turner
Jacqueline Durran

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
CitizenFour
Laura Poitras, Mathilde Bonnefoy and Dirk Wilutzky
Finding Vivian Maier
John Maloof and Charlie Siskel
Last Days in Vietnam
Rory Kennedy and Keven McAlester
The Salt of the Earth
Wim Wenders, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado and David Rosier
Virunga
Orlando von Einsiedel and Joanna Natasegara

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT
Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1
Ellen Goosenberg Kent and Dana Perry
Joanna
Aneta Kopacz
Our Curse
Tomasz Sliwinski and Maciej Slesicki
The Reaper (La Parka)
Gabriel Serra Arguello
White Earth
J. Christian Jensen

ACHIEVEMENT IN FILM EDITING
American Sniper
Joel Cox and Gary D. Roach
Boyhood
Sandra Adair
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Barney Pilling
The Imitation Game
William Goldenberg
Whiplash
Tom Cross

ACHIEVEMENT IN MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING
Foxcatcher
Bill Corso and Dennis Liddiard
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Frances Hannon and Mark Coulier
Guardians of the Galaxy
Elizabeth Yianni-Georgiou and David White

ACHIEVEMENT IN MUSIC WRITTEN FOR MOTION PICTURES (ORIGINAL SCORE)
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Alexandre Desplat
The Imitation Game
Alexandre Desplat
Interstellar
Hans Zimmer
Mr. Turner
Gary Yershon
The Theory of Everything
Jóhann Jóhannsson

ACHIEVEMENT IN MUSIC WRITTEN FOR MOTION PICTURES (ORIGINAL SONG)
“Everything Is Awesome” from The Lego Movie
Music and Lyric by Shawn Patterson
“Glory” from Selma
Music and Lyric by John Stephens and Lonnie Lynn
“Grateful” from Beyond the Lights
Music and Lyric by Diane Warren
“I’m Not Gonna Miss You” from Glen Campbell…I’ll Be Me
Music and Lyric by Glen Campbell and Julian Raymond
“Lost Stars” from Begin Again
Music and Lyric by Gregg Alexander and Danielle Brisebois

ACHIEVEMENT IN PRODUCTION DESIGN
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Production Design: Adam Stockhausen; Set Decoration: Anna Pinnock
The Imitation Game
Production Design: Maria Djurkovic; Set Decoration: Tatiana Macdonald
Interstellar
Production Design: Nathan Crowley; Set Decoration: Gary Fettis
Into the Woods
Production Design: Dennis Gassner; Set Decoration: Anna Pinnock
Mr. Turner
Production Design: Suzie Davies; Set Decoration: Charlotte Watts

BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM
The Bigger Picture
Daisy Jacobs and Christopher Hees
The Dam Keeper
Robert Kondo and Dice Tsutsumi
Feast
Patrick Osborne and Kristina Reed
Me and My Moulton
Torill Kove
A Single Life
Joris Oprins

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM
Aya
Oded Binnun and Mihal Brezis
Boogaloo and Graham
Michael Lennox and Ronan Blaney
Butter Lamp (La Lampe Au Beurre De Yak)
Hu Wei and Julien Féret
Parvaneh
Talkhon Hamzavi and Stefan Eichenberger
The Phone Call
Mat Kirkby and James Lucas

ACHIEVEMENT IN SOUND EDITING
American Sniper
Alan Robert Murray and Bub Asman
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Martín Hernández and Aaron Glascock
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
Brent Burge and Jason Canovas
Interstellar
Richard King
Unbroken
Becky Sullivan and Andrew DeCristofaro

ACHIEVEMENT IN SOUND MIXING
American Sniper
John Reitz, Gregg Rudloff and Walt Martin
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Jon Taylor, Frank A. Montaño and Thomas Varga
Interstellar
Gary A. Rizzo, Gregg Landaker and Mark Weingarten
Unbroken
Jon Taylor, Frank A. Montaño and David Lee
Whiplash
Craig Mann, Ben Wilkins and Thomas Curley

ACHIEVEMENT IN VISUAL EFFECTS
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Dan DeLeeuw, Russell Earl, Bryan Grill and Dan Sudick
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Joe Letteri, Dan Lemmon, Daniel Barrett and Erik Winquist
Guardians of the Galaxy
Stephane Ceretti, Nicolas Aithadi, Jonathan Fawkner and Paul Corbould
Interstellar
Paul Franklin, Andrew Lockley, Ian Hunter and Scott Fisher
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Richard Stammers, Lou Pecora, Tim Crosbie and Cameron Waldbauer

Top image: ‘Boyhood,’ directed by Richard Linklater and starring Ellar Coltrane, was made on a budget of $2.4 million. Photo courtesy IFC Films.

Sundance 2015 Infographic: Dollars and Distribution

$4.6 Billion Invested in Indies; Nearly All Festival Films Get Distribution

Congratulations Sundance filmmakers! You have a 4 in 5 chance of getting a distribution deal.

That’s one key finding from our data-crunching preparation for the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. As recently as 2010, getting distribution at Sundance was rare. In that year, as in years prior, only about 10 percent of the movies got deals. But then came the Great Digital Shift, with the explosion of Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, iTunes and other opportunities for video on demand. We may now predict that more than 100 of the 124 feature films at Sundance this year will get some form of distribution opportunity.

Our key economic finding is equally staggering. We estimate that the amount of financial investment in all the feature-length films submitted to Sundance is $4.65 billion. To put that in perspective, the motion picture studios and Netflix each spend about $3 billion annually producing and acquiring content. The total investment in independent filmmaking significantly tops that number; once again we may call Indies the Eighth Studio.

SEE ANIMATED AND INTERACTIVE SUNDANCE 2015 INFOGRAPHIC (please allow a moment for it to load)

‘Advantageous,’ directed by Jennifer Phang, screens in the US Dramatic Competition. Photo courtesy Sundance Institute.

However, unlike the movie studios, which have the MPAA as a trade association, there is no such thing for independent film. No official organization compiles data on independent filmmaking. To address this need, last year we published our first Sundance infographic, and we continue our work with better data this year. Because Sundance is the premiere independent film festival in the world, we use information from Sundance as a proxy for quantifying indie movies overall.

Follow the Money

With the help of the Sundance Institute, we are now able to break out the number of dramatic (or narrative) features submitted each year, and the number of documentary features submitted each year. For the 2015 festival, there were 2,309 dramatic features submitted, and 1,796 documentary features submitted.

Then we went a step further and canvassed our colleagues in an effort to estimate the average budgets of these indie dramatic and documentary features. I spoke with independent producers (both domestic and international), sales agents, distributors, and the heads of the independent divisions of some of the largest talent agencies. I asked each of them to estimate the average dramatic and documentary feature budget, and I averaged their responses. The collective results? Estimated average budget for indie dramatic features: $1.7 million. Estimated average budget for documentary features: $400,000.

This means that the total estimated financial investment in features submitted to Sundance tops $4.65 billion — $3.93 billion invested in dramatic features, and $718 million in documentaries. Of course, all of those movies didn’t get in. For those accepted to screen at the festival, we estimate that $134.3 million was invested in dramatic features, and $18 million was invested in documentaries.

SEE LAST YEAR’S SUNDANCE INFOGRAPHIC AND ANALYSIS.

Distribution Dynamics

‘How to Dance in Ohio,’ directed by Alexandra Shiva, screens in the US Documentary Competition. Photo courtesy Sundance Institute.

The vast majority of the films Sundance selected this year will get a distribution deal. Last year, 95 films got distribution, a number that has been rising steadily since 2011, which is why I can predict more than 100 will get distribution deals in 2015.

While Sundance Festival programmers make their selections based on their own artistic criteria and judgments, theoretically blind to the movie acquisition marketplace, inclusion in the festival is an initial stamp of approval for acquisitions executives. Financially, however, what does that really mean? In most cases, indie film financiers won’t get their money back. Only a handful of movies will get deals topping $1 million; last year’s highest sales price was a relatively modest $3.5 million. Getting distribution is easier today because of the digital explosion, but along with that has come a price implosion.

‘Mistress America,’ directed by Noah Baumbach, screens in the Premieres section. It was purchased preemptively by Fox Searchlight last week. Photo courtesy Sundance Institute.

Yes, there were 95 Sundance movies that got distribution last year, but that was spread out across more than 50 distribution companies. Some you have heard of — IFC, Magnolia, Drafthouse, A24, Netflix, Lionsgate, Music Box, Roadside Attractions, The Weinstein Company, Sony Pictures Classics, Fox Searchlight, Focus — and these companies will be active again this year. But many of the companies that distributed last year’s Sundance films barely appear on the radar, and most only distribute a few films a year in microscopically modest ways. As it was last year, most of the distribution deals in 2015 will be digital-only, and most will be for extremely low numbers: $25,000, $10,000, and in some cases zero — literally zero dollars, with the promise of financial participation based on sales.

Despite the robust number of films made, and dollars invested in them, being an indie filmmaker clearly is not a career choice. Very few people pay the rent this way, and even filmmakers whose movies are well-received often have to wait years before being able to get their next movie made. For the indie film investor, it is a precipitously risky business proposition, given the small chance of recouping an investment unless you can control marketing and distribution yourself, in effect behaving like a mini-studio.

It Takes a City

Using a figure of 100 film crew working on an average indie production — from writers, to actors, to costumers, to post-production — we calculated that more than 410,000 people worked on all of the films submitted to Sundance this year, a number that rivals the population of Atlanta. At least 45,000 people will attend the festival this year, six times the population of Park City, and, if last year is a guide, the festival will bring more than $86 million in economic impact to the state of Utah.

SEE ANIMATED AND INTERACTIVE SUNDANCE 2015 INFOGRAPHIC (please allow a moment for it to load)

Sundance 2015 Infographic Produced by Entertainment Media Partners for Cultural Weekly.
Sponsored by ‘Inside Track for Independent Filmmakers,’ available now.

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Infographic produced by Entertainment Media Partners for Cultural Weekly. Tod Hardin, special features editor; Ahmad Zaeem, designer.

InfoGraphic: Cannes Film Festival by the Numbers

By Adam Leipzig, Entertainment Media Partners, and Jeremy Kay, Screen International

The red carpet and rosé, movies and movie stars, buying and selling, prix and paparazzi. The world is watching. How does the Cannes Film Festival showcase the worldwide business of film?

To find out, Entertainment Media Partners, Cultural Weekly’s publisher, and Screen International have collaborated to crunch the data and produce the 2014 Cannes by the Numbers infographic.

Here are our findings:

Is Art its Own Reward?

Films in Festival competition don’t tend to make a lot of money. Only two in-competition films in the past five years have grossed more than $100 million worldwide. Nor do they win many Academy Awards; in the past five years, in-competition films have only taken home eight Oscars, out of 47 nominations.

Why? The Cannes Film Festival exemplifies the dual drivers of the international film industry. On the one hand, it is the most celebrated venue for premieres, especially those by notable directors. Cannes celebrates the art of filmmaking, and its 2014 jury is comprised of international art house luminaries: jury president Jane Campion (New Zealand) is joined by Willem Dafoe (US), Nicolas Winding Refn (Denmark), Jia Zhangke (China) Sofia Coppola (US) Gael García Bernal (Mexico), Leila Hatami (Iran, star of Oscar-winner A Separation), Jeon Do-yeon (South Korea), and Carole Bouquet (France).

On the other hand, the Marché du Film, its film market, which runs parallel to the festival, is the year’s most important movie buying-and-selling bazaar. While the number of buyers, producers, sales agents, and countries represented has been rising steadily over the past three years, the number of films screening remain roughly even. This year, 560 sales agents and 5,100 companies will hold court in suites, tents and bars. 110 countries will be represented, and there will be 1,450 movies screened in the market—a number that towers over the 19 films in Festival competition.

International Talent, But Not Always Distribution

Cannes faithfully represents the international composition of the movie industry, but the films don’t always travel to screens worldwide.

Talent. For the films in competition in the past five years, international lead actors, producers and directors have outpaced US citizens in the same categories by ratios as high as 19:1. However, US representation is trending upward. In 2013, US lead actors, producers and directors comprised one-quarter of the talent pool for in-competition films. And that may be good for their commercial success: The biggest earners at the global box office (including the international box office portion) tend to be those that contain a US element, be it a production company, director or star.

Distribution. What happens to those films after the festival is another story. Of the 101 films in competition between 2009-2013, 78% were distributed in the United States, 50% were distributed in Brazil, but only 4% of them gained distribution in China.

Phantom India. India is a movie powerhouse, with immense box office grosses, admissions and screen count. Yet Bollywood movies have not achieved particular commercial success internationally. Among all the major film territories, only India has not had a film represented in competition at Cannes over the past five years.
Power and powerlessness

No majors. US studios have not acquired a single Cannes competition film in the last five years. At times, a US studio will bring a film to Cannes, as Paramount did with Nebraska.
Art house. IFC Films is the most voracious buyer of Cannes films for the US market, as it feeds its VOD (video on demand) pipeline. The Weinstein Company and Sony Classics are also major US buyers.

Captain America. In-competition films that generate the biggest revenues tend to have a US component, such as a US distributor or US stars. French films also fare well. There are a few notable exceptions: Japan’s Like Father, Like Son, Spain’s The Skin I Live In, South Korea’sThe Housemaid, Italy’s We Have a Pope and The Great Beauty, and Scandinavia’s Melancholiaand The Hunt.

Trends and predictions

One of the benefits of assembling data is that it gives us the opportunity to spot trends and, throwing caution to the winds, predict the future. Here’s what we foresee:

A strong America. Even as North America’s box office becomes a smaller percentage of the global total, US stars, directors and studios will continue to produce the most commercially successful films worldwide, and, in fact, their significance will increase.

Mixed results for sales agents. Because the movie business has become more global and transactional, additional sales agents will come into the ranks. Short term, this may spur greater opportunities and competition. Long term, it will make existing sales agents fight harder for a smaller slice of the pie. We expect to see consolidation and a correction in the number of sales agents beginning in 2016.

China will become more international. In order to demonstrate its membership in the international filmmaking community, beginning this year we’ll see an uptick in the number of in-competition films available to Chinese audiences.

Time will tell if these predictions prove correct. Until then, the Croisette awaits. Enjoy yourrosé.

Cannes Film Festival by the Numbers: Infographic, 2014

View the animated infographic at CannesbytheNumbers.com

Please include attribution to http://www.culturalweekly.com/ with this graphic.

Creativity and Capital in the 21st Century

A funny thing happened on the way to traditional media’s complete dumbing-down of the American mind: Thomas Piketty’s gigantic, massively researched treatise Capital in the Twenty-First Century has climbed to the top ranks of Amazon’s best-seller list.

While few people will actually read every page of the French economist’s 700-page tome, the central premise of Piketty’s research has already become part of our national discourse, and it is easy to summarize.

Based on big data compiled over many years, Piketty demonstrates how the return on capital exceeds the general economy’s rate of growth. Therefore, inherited and accumulated wealth continue to increase, and become a larger and larger share of the entire economic pie. This explains the massive, and growing, rich-poor divide.

Piketty’s findings enrage the Right, who argue that “inequality of capital is simply a proxy for other kinds of inequality,” such as superior intelligence and motivation among the rich. They’re wrong, and a couple of examples from creative industries further prove Piketty’s points.

Consider the plight of the visual artist. If she sells her work through a gallery, the gallery takes fifty percent. That’s fair; the gallery’s curation and “seal of approval” add value to the work. But later, when the art collector sells the work, perhaps at a considerable profit, the original artist doesn’t get anything. Capital (the collector’s wealth) increases at a rate far greater than the general economy (that of the artist). (A bill was recently introduced in the US Congress to grant artists a meager 5% resale royalty; it won’t get out of committee.)

As further evidence, we can look at the gulf in value between filmed intellectual properties and the distribution systems that bring them to market. Subscription video services, like Hulu and Netflix, are able to pay pennies on the production-dollar for the right to distribute independent movies. This may be the only income those films can make, and therefore, it is true, many of those films don’t have much market value. But even as the general economic health of the artists that make these movies stays flat, or is in decline, the corporate value of the video distribution companies continues to grow.

A few years ago, I suggested that economists should recognize the Creativity Theory of Value. I wrote:

When you buy a pair of Nikes that have cost $5 to produce in a factory in Vietnam, why do you pay $100? For their creativity, design, and innovation, and the marketing involved in selling you all of these attributes.

The Creativity Theory of Value holds that the value of anything is the product of the Creativity involved in creating it multiplied by the Labor required to produce it. In mathematical terms, we could express it as:

C * L = V

where C is Creativity, L is Labor and V is Value. This will allow us to find the Creativity Index for anything.

When the Creativity Index is the number 1 or more, Creativity has had a significant positive effect on something’s value. But if the Creativity Index is less than 1, then we could say that the Creativity was a negative influence on the Labor; in other words, it wasn’t worth it.

In the two examples I cited above, the visual artist who sells to a collector, and the independent filmmaker who sells to a video service, even if the Creativity Index of the work proves to be significant, the creator won’t see any benefit. Piketty’s conclusion resounds: the value of collectors’ or distributors’ capital increases faster than the value of artists’ labor.

What’s the solution? Piketty proposes a global tax on wealth, and he couples its urgency with core democratic principles. “If democracy is to regain control over the globalized financial capitalism of this century, it must also invent new tools, adapted to today’s challenges,” Piketty writes. “The ideal tool would be a progressive global tax on capital, coupled with a very high level of financial transparency.” (p. 515)

This is very much in line with what Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist David Cay Johnston has been saying for years: taxation is the foundation of democracy:

There’s one more thing I truly love about Capital in the Twenty-First Century: Piketty is a lover of literature, and draws some of his inspiration from it. In one of my favorite passages, he quotes from Balzac’s 1835 novel Le Père Goriot to show us how the accumulation of capital and inherited wealth is a longstanding tradition. Vautrin, a master criminal, tries to give a life lesson to law student Eugène de Rastignac, and explains, point by point, how simply working and doing a good job will never provide wealth and security. “There is only one way,” says Vautrin. “Marry a woman who has money.”

Why Does Some Creative Culture Spread?

Why does some creative culture spread, while other creative culture arrives dead?

Why, for example, are people prowling the streets of Bristol, England, right now hoping to discover Banksy’s next work, while few notice when new street art appears in nearby Chippenham? Why is the worldwide movie-going audience buying advance tickets for Andrew Garfield in Spider-Man 2, and running away from Johnny Depp in Transcendence?

What makes culture move beyond the small embrace of its creator to become part of the bigger social fabric? Recently, I’ve been exploring these questions, seeking Laws of Culture that obtain independent of money. Because with a gigantic marketing budget, you can always buy awareness. But no matter how much advertising you buy, you cannot purchase desire.

When we look into the Laws of Culture, we’re really investigating desire: what causes us to experience it and want to share it.

Imagine:

Morning air brushes your face. As your legs cycle in rhythm, you wonder why no one else is on the street. Do you have the wrong day? The wrong time? Then, rounding a corner, you see another bicyclist and another. Soon there are five of you, now twenty, and you fold into the energy of the cycling pack, the group awareness, the power of your wheels on the pavement that starts to make cars move aside.

You anticipate, sensing excitement two blocks away, but nothing can prepare you for the emotional flush as you make the next turn to discover 10,000 more cyclists, of all ages and descriptions, at the starting point of today’s CicLAvia.

This is the experience many LA residents feel on occasional Sunday mornings in the city.

CicLAvia is a day when cars are banned from city streets, and bicycles and pedestrians take over. It’s an opportunity of urban idealism. Begun in Bogotá, Columbia, in 1976, where it is called Ciclovía and the central city closes to automobile traffic every Sunday, it has inspired similar events in more than ten countries and dozens of US cities.

No American city has adopted it more than LA. You would never have expected CicLAvia to grasp a firm hold here, but it has the city in its thrall. LA’s CicLAvia is so successful that one recent day saw 150,000 people bicycling from LA’s downtown to Venice Beach, and CicLAvia’s organizers have just launched a crowdfunding campaign to make it a monthly event. (Support them! I have!)

What would make Angelenos ditch their cars for a day? Let’s call it one of the Laws of Culture: The Law of Discovery. When we discover a way to do something we secretly hope to do, we’ll do it. LA’s car-love is mythologized in the sense that it is overstated. Most Angelenos feel ambivalent about their cars. We view then as utilitarian requirements in a spread-out city without sufficient public transportation.

When a work of creative culture, like CicLAvia, gives people the feeling that they are discovering something new—instead of making them feel force-fed—it creates desire. It is more likely to be shared and to gain momentum. CicLAvia creates the feeling of discovery because its organizers constantly change its route, and because participants approach it alone on bicycles, then suddenly, in turning one corner, discover they are part of a vast collective enterprise.

This is one way that creative culture moves and spreads—through the emotions of anticipation and discovery. It’s the Law of Discovery, and CicLAvia illustrates it on city streets for all to see.

Your Life Purpose, One Million Strong

My Review of Anne Thompson’s New BookThe $11 Billion Year

For us in the movie business, a day can seem like a year. We rise early and work late, ricocheting from crisis to calm to crisis as we scan information and keep creating back-up plans. What will we do if the star rejects the rewrite? If the numbers are bad in Japan? If next week’s opening tracks poorly? If our company’s share price is down in early trading? If we get fired tomorrow? If the shoot is three weeks over-schedule? If we just got out-bid on the spec script?

All the while we’re responding to 500 emails, texts and phone calls a day, clicking social media to stay on what’s trending, keeping one eye on disruptive technologies and the other eye on the clock because we have to be at Soho House by eight. We hit refresh onHollywood Reporter, Deadline.com, The Wrap and Variety, to make sure we don’t get blindsided, and to ensure we never lose perspective, we reload Anne Thompson’s Indiewire blog, Thompson on Hollywood.

Thompson has been reporting on Hollywood for more than two decades, initially at theHollywood Reporter and now online. Her tenure in the movie business is about the same as mine and, full disclosure, we’ve known each other many of those years because Hollywood is a specific village.

Thompson has just written her first book, The $11 Billion Year, which takes us out of the moment-to-moment, and looks at the business through the time-slice of one year, 2012. And what a year it was, with brobdingnagian tentpole failures (John Carter, Battleship) and billion-dollar giants (The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises), full of executive churn and industry-wide recalibration, of changing consumer behavior and game-changing moments, as when Netflix committed to House of Cards.

The $11 Billion Year begins with the paradox of death within life. Its title comes from the fact that 2012 brought $11 billion in box office, so the industry must be healthy, right? Not so, as Thompson, the ablest of tour guides, explains. The business is shifting mightily, and no one knows for certain who will survive into the next decade: who will adapt and who will die? Death haunts the story, too, with the sad, too-soon passing of Bingham Ray, fierce and generous fighter for independent film, who died of a stroke at the Sundance Film Festival in January.

It is at Sundance, in January, that Anne Thompson begins her year-long chronicle. Moving through the year, she shares the movie business’s steady calendar, against which disquiet plays. Sundance, South by Southwest, Cannes, Comic-Con, fall festivals, holiday movies and Oscar races–here is the cycle by which we insiders measure our lives. Among the many virtues of this book is Thompson’s ability open a window on our industry for people who buy tickets and love film, and simultaneously share insightful analysis for those of us who toil in its fields.

In reading The $11 Billion Year I found myself reliving 2012 through its movies and events, and you may do the same. Where were you when you saw Silver Linings Playbook? Zero Dark Thirty? Lincoln? Skyfall? The Hunger Games? You’ll come away with admiration for the courageous people who make exceptional films on the shifting business landscape, and an insider’s grasp of what we go through, day by day.

Get ‘The $11 Billion Year’ in hardcover or Kindle.

7 CES Takeaways for Indie Filmmakers

Vegas is less than 500 miles away from Park City, and as I got in my car, back in January, after a week at the Consumer Electronics Show, I knew I had a few things to share with indie filmmakers.

There is, after all, a connection, and it’s longer than Interstate-15. CES 2014 was all about gadgets and gizmos — the things with which we make and watch movies, TV and webisodes. It is an overwhelmingly gigantic trade show, where 155,000 people push and shove their way through 2 million square feet of floor space.

I have panic attacks just thinking about it. Yet even bigger than the crowds and the new, curved-screen TVs were the ideas I encountered, ideas that have immediate relevance for all filmmakers – be they mainstream studio creators, or those in the world of indie film.

1. Content is still king. What did the big tech companies talk about? The content they offer and enable. Jeffrey Katzenberg of DreamWorks Animation did a cameo appearance for Brian Krzanich, the CEO of Intel. Sony hosted Vince Gilligan of Breaking Bad. Cisco CEO John Chambers gave us Sarah Silverman. Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer brought onstage the Saturday Night Live Weekend Update team, John Legend and Katie Couric. Filmmakers—you make content, even though (thankfully) you call it “movies.” Without your movies, there would be no reason to buy a wall-size TV.

2. But it must WOW! Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai, the best corporate presenter of the bunch, spoke repeatedly about the Wow-factor—that if something doesn’t make you say “Wow!” it’s just not good enough. That’s true about movies too. Filmmakers, a lot of your movies simply are not good enough: They don’t make us say “Wow! That was great! I have to tell my friends right away!” As we at Entertainment Media Partners explored in our Sundance 2014 Infographic, the indie film world still has too much quantity and not enough quality.

Kazuo Hirari at CES 2014.

3. Get closer to your customers. The big brands talked about developing unique, one-on-one relationships with their customers. Big data is allowing them to do it, and because they can have one-on-one relationships in the public forum of social media, it’s cost-effective—social media amplifies their individual messages.

Filmmakers, you can do that too. Zach Braff and his producing team modeled exceptional customer-relations in his hugely successful Kickstarter campaign for Wish I Was Here, premiering at Sundance on January 18. Crowdfunding is 40% about getting money, and 60% about developing a relationship with your audience.

4. Technology will offer unprecedented tools. The newest generation of cameras will allow you to make creative changes after principal photography—you’ll be able to adjust focus, change the depth of field, and reframe with ease. 3D image-capture is becoming a consumer item. By the time Avatar 3 comes out, many of the visual effects of Avatar 1 will be at your disposal, and will be affordable on an indie budget.

5. Audiences are in for better experiences. Better visuals. Better effects. A whole generation has missed hearing uncompressed music, and the newest sound delivery systems will give full dynamic range: you will be able to share sounds as you want them heard, even on iTunes and mobile devices. Of course, just because the technology is here, it doesn’t mean you’re James Cameron or Rachel Portman. See # 2: You’ve gotta WOW!

6. Brands and creators are new best friends. Advertising agencies are not going away, nor are they lessening their role. But big brands want to have direct collaborations with creative talent, and agencies get it. That’s good news for filmmakers, and opens the door to sponsorships, promotions and more paid gigs.

7. You are the First Screen. There was a lot of talk about the “Second Screen” experience. Twitter CEO Dick Costello calls Twitter the “Second Screen for everyone watching TV.” But there’s no Second Screen without a First Screen—and filmmakers, that is what you do.

From the invention of the first motion picture camera, technology has made filmmaking possible, and each advance allows more creativity to flourish. Yet storytelling is far more important than technology—a fact tech companies embrace. The key to success in technology and filmmaking really is quality. In a field of over-supply, where audiences have too many choices, and where new tools allow much easier and cheaper production, you have to separate yourself from the herd. Excellence is the great differentiator.

Could CES and Sundance be two sides of the same coin? I think so. We saw these CES 2014 takeaways in action in Park City back in January, and will continue to in the coming months – throughout the entire filmmaking community.

Sundance InfoGraphic: Are Indies the 8th Studio?

With an annual production budget that exceeds $3 billion, independent movies rival the major studios’ spend on filmmaking, even as indies vastly outstrip the studios in sheer volume.

That’s a key finding of our exploration of Sundance by the numbers, which we’ve rendered in our 2014 Sundance Infographic below. There are seven major movie studios: Warner Bros., Disney, Universal, Sony/Columbia, Lionsgate, 20th Century Fox, and Paramount. Can we now reasonably call independent filmmakers the Eighth Studio, because their aggregate production expenses clearly put them in the major studio league?

I don’t believe anyone has ever attempted to quantify the amount of money spent on independent films before. To do this, we decided to use Sundance as a bellwether of the entire independent film sector; with more than 4,000 feature-length films submitted each year, Sundance certainly represents a healthy sample of the industry. While absolutely every indie movie isn’t submitted to Sundance, the highest-profile ones generally are. So the Sundance submission numbers represent a good statistical estimate of the most viable indie movies produced each year.

Then we needed to make an estimate of how much money had been spent on each film. After speaking to a dozen producers, sales agents and indie financiers, we settled on $750,000 per movie, as a blended average number. A few people urged us to estimate a higher number. Even though some movies are made for less, many are made for far, far more, which would put the average cost over $1 million. We decided to keep our estimate at $750,000 to stay on the conservative side.

We also estimate that more than 400,000 people work on indie movies each year, assuming that an average of 100 people work on each film, through all phases of production and post-production.

Opening Night Curse?

In other findings, we took a look at what many distributors call the “Sundance opening night curse”–their belief that if a movie is chosen for Sundance’s opening night, it won’t do well at the box office. Here we found mixed results, which means the “curse” is often true, but not always. Since 2010, 10 films have screened on opening night. Two of them, Twenty Feet From Stardom and Searching for Sugar Man were indie box office success stories; the rest were not.

We Also Discovered:

Distribution: 2011 was the pivot year; since that year, more than half the films screened at Sundance have achieved distribution deals. That’s because of the explosion of streaming and digital delivery systems. Of course, many of those deals are non-theatrical, and some are for acquisition prices as low as nothing (or nearly nothing–$25,000), which means that most independent financiers won’t recoup their investments.

Biggest sales: Since 2010, the movies that are sold for the most money usually have not been worth it. The winner of this game are Fox Searchlight and Focus Features, which bought well and had theatrical success with The Way Way Back and The Kids Are All Right.

The 8th Studio’s Balance Sheet

Still, the overall picture is far from pretty, and if we were to do a balance sheet for the Eighth Studio, the indie film industry, it would be bleeding more red than a Nicolas Winding Refn movie. In that way, the Sundance Infographic is also a cautionary tale. Fewer than 2% of the fully-finished, feature-length films submitted to the Festival will get any kind of distribution whatsoever. Of the more than $3 billion invested annually, less than 2% will ever be recouped.

Does that mean investors shouldn’t bankroll indie movies, and filmmakers should stop making them? Of course not. But I do wish financiers would invest more wisely, with seasoned guidance and a clear plan for distribution beforehand, and that filmmakers would concentrate on crafting far better movies. Creators and audiences alike would be better served with higher quality and lower quantity. The numbers make that abundantly clear.

Sundance Infographic 2014: The Festival by the Numbers

Click on infographic to enlarge.

Sundance 2014 Infographic produced by Entertainment Media Partners and Cultural Weekly.

Update: Since this infographic was prepared, Sundance added 2 additional films; 121 films were screened this year.

Business Lessons for 2014: You Are a Media Company

“Don’t Become as Obsolete as the Sears Catalogue”

Of the business lessons you may apply in 2014, here’s the most important: You are media company.

What kind of company did you think you were? Practically everything we do today is media: social, personal, or commercial entertainment. We all walk around with mobile devices in our pockets, devices that are really mini-movie studios, capable of creating, editing and distributing content worldwide.

Of course you are a media company. This is true whether you employ 100,000 people or you work for yourself.

In case this surprises you, here is a history question.

Why didn’t railroad companies become the airline industry? After all, the railroads had the financial capacity, and knew about aircraft technology. They should have, could have, become airline companies, instead of being superseded by them.

What stopped the railroads from transforming? A failure of imagination, their own limited definition of what they did. In short, they believed they were in the railroad business. They should have said they were in the transportation business. This is one of the most common business lessons taught in business schools.

A similar challenge faces every business today, and every creative entrepreneur. If you define yourself within the limited framework of your discipline or industry, it is likely that you will become as obsolete as the Sears catalogue. But before you ask yourself “Why didn’t Sears become Amazon.com?” you should simply redefine your activities and embrace your media-company reality.

How do you become a media company?

Do what media companies do: Empower others to share their stories and information through you. Give your customers/audience/consumers the tools with which they share, articulate and improve their lives.

In other words, if you make trench coats, think like a TV channel, not like a clothing company. If you are a journalist, think like a publisher, not like a writer.

Existing media companies are, of course, well positioned to take advantage of the concept. But, ironically, they don’t always think like media companies, in the way I am defining them. Movie studios and television networks won’t endure for another decade if they don’t listen to their fans and embrace their creative partnership. Traditional publishing companies, with their slow turnaround-to-print process and myopic view of how audiences seek their content, are already witnessing a defection of high-profile authors.

In this decade, a media company needs to provide mechanisms by which all customers are audience members and also co-creators.

What should you do?

1. Get over your blocks, your feelings that you don’t have the time or ability or skills to do media, social media or video. It isn’t that hard.
2. Create content that people love and want to share
3. Focus on storytelling, because the best story always wins. If your company doesn’t have a narrative, it cannot be a viable company.

Likewise, when creative people tell their own stories, they give their work extra value. For example, have you ever walked into an art gallery and had the artist explain her work to you? The artist’s story always makes the work more interesting and valuable.

In her new book Blockbusters, Harvard Business School professor Anita Elberse recounts her interview with Angela Ahrendts, the CEO of Burberry, the company famous for its trench coats and outerwear.

Images from Burberry’s Tumblr page

In the interview, Ahrendts surprisingly describes Burberry as a “digital-media company.”

Burberry has been so active in social media that it now has more followers than any other luxury brand. “And the company has launched several online destinations,” Elberse writes. “At artofthetrench.com, for instance, consumers can submit photos of themselves in its iconic rainwear. ‘Nothing is for sale; it is just a site to connect people,’ explained Ahrendts. At Burberry Acoustic, which falls under Burberry.com, people can find songs recorded exclusively by British artists who have been handpicked by Burberry’s chief creative officer.”

The strategy has worked. Burberry’s sales have tripled during Ahrendts’ tenure—which just ended when she got an offer she couldn’t refuse from another company. This month, she is moving to Apple, where she will lead strategy to grow sales Apple’s online and retail stores worldwide.

Whether you are a giant corporation or a sole proprietor working alone in a garret, your future as a media company is inevitable. If you haven’t embraced it already, now is the time. This simple mind-shift will transform what happens this year.

Top image from Audi’s YouTube channel. They’re a media company, not a car company.

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