Today kicks off Park City's annual Sundance Film Festival, where a final cut of independent films hit the big screen for the first time. Here, independent films vie for the attention of studio executives who come armed with millions of dollars and potential contracts for the next big thing. Previous prizewinners included Personal Velocity, Secretary and Real Women Have Curves.
Local film festivals, like the Carolina Theatre's Nevermore Festival in January, are created to showcase independent film for a regional audience. Larger film festivals such as Sundance, Cannes and Toronto function as a marketplace, where independent filmmakers can screen their films for studio representatives. Unless filmmakers can afford to self-distibute--and a master print on 35-mm film starts at around ten grand--film festivals are the only way to put independent films before an audience.
Sundance provides a window for fame and fortune, with an emphasis on fortune: Filmmakers are likely to find themselves in post-production debt, and Sundance is an opportunity to recoup those costs. Few filmmakers can afford to produce out-of-pocket, and most supplement their budgets with corporate donations, sponsorship and the occasion freebie (studio time or editing equipment). Not every debt needs to be repaid, and some corporate donations--imagine--also double as tax write-offs. For the most part, though, filmmakers are looking to pull themselves out of the red, maybe subsidize their next project, and even--with some luck--turn a nice profit.
It's a tricky, secretive and highly politicized process. "It's kind of dirty," laughs Jim Carl, programming director of Durham's Carolina Theatre. Studios send teams of researchers (read: spies), who keep their ears to the ground and ultimately attempt to outbid or outwit one another for distribution rights to potential box-office hits.
Carl recalls the independent film boom of the early nineties, which gained momentum following the debut of Steven Soderbergh's Sex, Lies, and Videotape in 1989. The independent film industry, if it could rightly be called an industry, exploded; building upon itself in a sort of chicken-or-the-egg marketing cycle. More people wanted to see independent films, new art theaters were being constructe, and studio reps were lining up to snatch the next big moneymaker.
"They learned their lesson," Carl laughs. Films like Happy, Texas and Spitfire Grill sold for millions at Sundance, only to languish in the box office. The bottom line, he explains, is that "good word-of-mouth and lots of buzz rarely translate to ticket buyers." Studios tightened their budgets, and these days the vast majority of Sundance films are never picked up by a studio. The competition is fierce, and some filmmakers have little choice but to sign away their films for a pittance.
Negotiating the terms of a studio deal is notoriously tricky. Once a filmmaker signs away the rights to his or her film, studios can release it in theaters, send it straight to video or do nothing at all. It happened with Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko, which inexplicably never saw wide release but became a new cult classic on DVD.
As the saying goes, it takes money to make money. Some well-endowed directors choose to avoid the legal snags by retaining all the rights to their films--the right to distribute in theaters, on VHS or DVD, pay-per-view or cable, both at home and abroad. "[Francis Ford] Coppola got burned with One From the Heart, in 1982," explains Jim Carl. Ever since, Coppola--as well as daughter Sofia, director of The Virgin Suicides and this year's Lost in Translation--have retained exclusive rights to all of their films. Same with George Lucas--ever notice that notice that Return of the Jedi and The Empire Strikes Back haven't yet been released on DVD?
Still, sometimes the least marketable films are the most successful. Christopher Nolan's Memento, for example, was never picked up by a studio. Instead, Nolan formed his own distri3bution company, New Market Films, distributed the film himself and netted a cool $20 million profit.
Success stories may be the exception at Sundance, but for any aspiring director who makes the final program, it's still a foot in the door. For more information on Sundance 2004, check out the organization's website at www.sundance.org.
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