Noah Harlan: This is a great time to make a movie

Noah Harlan has a piece that pushes back a bit on the market pessimism of Ted Hope's recent essay:

Kevin Kelly’s idea of artists needing 1,000 true fans willing to spend $100 each is spot on but when you have a global audience you may be able to accomplish the same thing with 10,000 less-true fans willing to spend $10 or 100,000 casual consumers willing to spend $.99.

Where once the idea of reaching tens of thousands of consumers was an incredibly remote possibility for independent artists it now happens all the time, just look at YouTube. Jaime King got to 6,000,000 (by his estimate) viewers with STEAL THIS FILM and the incremental cost to him was virtually zero.

In the next 24 months the ability to monetize online revenue in a meaningful way will become a reality. I make this guess about timing by looking at the uptake of other related technologies in recent years. Consider that YouTube was only created in February 2005 and was ubiquitous by 2007. Netflix was created in 1997 and had shipped a billion DVDs by February 2007; they shipped their second billion in the next 26 months. Hulu went live barely one year ago and is now a top online video destination.

Whether it’s through iTunes, Hulu, Netflix or Vodo, it’s coming and the numbers will be substantial enough to at least make up for, and likely far exceed, the revenues from media distributed through traditional bricks & mortar channels with it’s production, packaging, shipping and storing requirements.

What we must do is to reorient our business plans to look at the remarkable moment we are in and how new content, professionally produced and financed, can have a more successful life than ever. A moment with this much possibility has not existed in the content world in a very long time.

The Key Points

So let’s summarize the key points at work here:

1. Film is a risky investment. It always has been and it always will be. It is only a question of how to mitigate and evaluate that risk. (I say this because I believe if we are not up front with our investors we are bound to get into trouble down the line – also because some offerings require disclosure).
2. The contraction of capital means there are going to be fewer films made right now. If I can make a film right now it will enter the marketplace with less competition than at any time in the last ten years.
3. The cost of production is lower and incentives are better than they have been so your dollar will get you more than at any time in the recent past.
4. The films being made right now are going to be entering the digital marketplace roughly in line with when we will expect the consolidation of that marketplace to take place. These films will ride the first wave of global digital distribution revenue. We have geometrically larger audiences with geometrically lower cost. The decline in per-viewer revenue is irrelevant.
5. Whether you are making a traditional 90-minute feature or a ‘new media’ work, we are ALL in a new distribution model. As filmmakers we need to not cling to the arguments of past success but instead look at the future and show where our products can exist and thrive.

--The 401st Blow :: Thoughts On Media