Exhibition Comes To The World Wide Web

By Annlee Ellingson, Boxoffice Throughout the history of cinema, exhibitors have had to compete with new technologies as they became available to moviegoers. Television, videocassettes (and later LaserDiscs and DVDs), cable and most recently the Internet have provided increasing incentives for moviegoers to stay at home. It's the latter technology that could prove to be exhibition's biggest challenge yet - or its greatest ally. The startling success of ""The Blair Witch Project"" has demonstrated the Internet's value to the business. Artisan picked up the $40,000 pic at Sundance for $1 million, and it's already grossed over $100 million. All this on a marketing campaign virtually limited to its Web site, which had accumulated over 140 million hits at press time. But, while the Internet is a vast resource that the trade has barely begun to tap to its full potential, it also could be yet another competitor for moviegoers' limited time and attention. A handful of entrepreneurs looking to start up their own Web-based businesses have avoided the saturated e-commerce and auction routes. They've established multimedia 'netcasters that broadcast radio, television and film content into computer users' homes and offices instead, hoping to capitalize on the popularity of film through advertising and licensing while giving tyro filmmakers a leg up. Rodger Raderman, founder of indie Internet distributor and exhibitor ifilm.net, is just one of these luminaries. ""Lots of times in the film industry, I've watched [filmmakers] put all of their spare time and all of their spare money into making movies, [but it's] incredibly difficult for them to actually get their work in front of an audience,"" he says of his foray into Internet exhibition. ""So, taking that interest and matching that with a clear consumer interest for independent film [and] everything that's happening with digital technologies in terms of DV cameras and home editing suites, my feeling is [we're going to see] what we saw happen back in the '80s [with] the word processor and desktop publishing - the democratization of people being able to manipulate words and images. [What] really ended up on the World Wide Web was a bunch of pages that people created themselves. I think we're going to see the same sort of thing happen with moving images now that the technology is becoming so cheap and widely available.""For now, however, the technology is pretty limited. ""Our opinion is that what works best on the Web today is short-form content, shorter in length,"" says Mika Salmi, founder of atomfilms.com, a 'netcaster that specializes in shorts. ""The technology isn't quite there for most users to watch something that's even full screen. It's going to be a small box on their PCs."" Most consumers don't have the high-speed modem capabilities required for optimum media viewing. Dial-up modems, even those with speeds up to 56K, deliver jerky, fuzzy pictures and poor sound quality in a very small frame on the computer monitor. Rob Troy, a film lover who watches two to three shorts a week on the Internet, including on the ifilm and atomfilms sites, is frustrated with the software currently available for viewing. ""Streaming media is still susceptible to 'net congestion, thus interfering with the experience of viewing the material,"" he observes. ""Who wants to wait for the video to catch up to you when you're in the middle of a fast-paced comedy piece, for instance? And downloading these pieces also puts you at the mercy of online traffic."" The technology is on its way, though. ""Right now, anyone with access to the Internet and either the Real Player G2 or the Windows Media player can watch our films,"" Raderman says. ""The faster the viewer's connection, the better the quality of the video will be. We're still in the very early stages with this. ""[We're] looking at the coming of broadband availability, meaning pipes into the home can deliver a lot of data, and increasing compression technologies - compression means the amount of data that you can sort of squeeze down into the smallest amount - and then streaming technologies, things like QuickTime and Microsoft MediaPlayer and the Real Player."" All of this is very exciting for the indie filmmaker looking for alternative means of distribution, though the medium's effect on the exhibition industry is severely limited for now. However, several 'netcasters have already employed strategies that could take a bite out of traditional exhibition. Broadcast.com, a 'netcaster recently absorbed by search engine Yahoo!, has made several deals to distribute full-length studio films. It swapped $3 million in shares with Trimark in February, giving it access to 50 films in the Trimark library, including the ""Warlock"" and ""Leprechaun"" series and Larry Clark's ""Another Day in Paradise."" These pics will be available on broadcast.com either for free or on a pay-per-view basis, and the arrangement could lead to first-run features premiering on the Web. Broadcast.com made similar agreements with the Overseas Filmgroup, exchanging $1.5 million in stock for the rights to screen titles such as OscarÆ winner ""Antonia's Line,"" and with Always Independent Films, agreeing to run the smaller company's full-length indie efforts. Warner Bros. was the first major studio to get in on the action, distributing NYU Tisch School of Arts award-winning student shorts on Warner Bros. Online the same day the films were screened at the Directors Guild. Fox struck a pact with Intertainer Inc. to put some of the studio's theatrical and library titles on the web at intertainer.com. And, six months after striking a deal with broadcast.com, Trimark announced plans to launch its own exhibition site called CinemaNow, where the indie will screen films such as ""Eve's Bayou,"" ""Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss"" and ""Chinese Box."" Internet exhibitors feel that these alliances will result in a medium more akin to home video than traditional film, however. ""I think [Internet exhibition] will affect [theatrical film] similar to the way that the videocassette affected it, which has proven that people are going to see more movies now than ever before,"" Salmi says. ""It's a similar thing. It's another outlet for films, and, if you do start seeing big blockbusters on the Internet, people will have to pay for them the same way they pay for rented movies. It'll be just another window involved in there."" J.E. Henry, Senior Vice President and chief information officer at Regal Cinemas, agrees. ""We are aware that the technology [to view films on the Internet] exists in rudimentary form, but we realize that the distribution of movies over the Internet may be a viable option for studios in the future,"" he says. ""We believe the Internet will join existing forms of distribution. Whether it's a distribution channel that competes with first-run theatrical distribution, video distribution, pay-for-view, cable, standard broadcast or video-on-demand remains to be seen. Our strong belief is any home delivery of movies is still a video, in-home presentation that is essentially the same as renting a video or ordering pay-for-view. It doesn't replace the out-of-home, social experience of going to a movie theatre."" Troy acknowledges that ""the advantage of watching an Internet exhibition versus going to the theatre is the ease of access. Who wants to travel to a theatre, find parking, fight the crowds, when you could view the same content in your home?"" But he also insists, ""Film on the Internet will not keep me out of the [theatres], nor do I think it will keep any current filmgoer away from the theatres. If cable didn't kill the theatre market as was predicted in the mid-to-latter '70s, then certainly the Internet won't."" In fact, Internet exhibition could have applications valuable to movie theatres that resemble digital cinema, which beams in durable, flexible content from a satellite rather than shipping it in film canisters (see Boxoffice's article in the February 1999 issue). ""You will see more films and more types of programming being delivered digitally to theatres,"" Salmi predicts. ""In my personal opinion, I think theatres won't be especially tied to showing one film in each theatre. They'll be able to be much more flexible in what they're showing because they're going to have digital content there. They'll be almost like programmers, more like television in the sense that, when you go to a theatre, you have one theatre showing not only ëStar Warsí but five other movies. It's much more cost-effective, they won't have to have prints. They'll be downloading things either via satellite or via the Internet, and they can have a lot broader variety of programming."" Raderman forecasts a similar future for theatrical exhibition. ""I envision a day where we have thousands and thousands of films available on our servers,"" he says. ""Whether you're a theatre owner and want to project one of them on the big screen, or you're somebody at the office and want to watch it on the computer, or you're somebody in front of your television at home, you can find the movies you want and watch them when you want to watch them."" And, although the Internet could prove to be an important ally in the future of exhibition, everyone interviewed for this story agreed that the movie theatre business has little to fear from Internet exhibition. ""Regal Cinemas provides the moviegoing public with an experience that's unique - an experience that goes way beyond other forms of distribution,"" Henry says. ""The continued growth of boxoffice revenues - according to AC Nielsen EDI Inc., through August 5, 1999, boxoffice revenues are up six percent compared to the same period last year - supports our position."" Troy concurs. ""Most moviegoers still love the experience of watching film on the big screen,"" he says. ""Computer monitors are a long way off [from] catch[ing] up to competing with that experience."" The Internet exhibitors themselves seem to be the biggest proponents of theatrical film. ""If anything, we're trying to promote more and more the love of movies, so I think people get more interested in it,"" Salmi says. ""We're talking to all the major studios. They want to do interesting promotions with us. We have a community of people who just love film and are very into the cutting edge, indie film. I think that these are the people that studios want to influence and get them excited about their upcoming releases."" Raderman concurs with Salmi and with exhibitors and cineastes everywhere: I think that there's something unique and special about going to the theatre that will never go away.""Source: Boxoffice Magazine, www.boxoff.com