Film Discussion: Where Did The Indie Film Consumer Go? |
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| Written by Bruce Frigeri | ||||||
| Tuesday, 08 July 2008 | ||||||
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The question that every surviving dvd label is asking themselves is where oh where did the consumers of Independent and arthouse films go? It used to be easy, as in cost effective, to introduce a new dvd to this customer. They were smart, well educated and actually read things. Now, retail has abandoned them as consumers and it has become a very pricey proposition to find them on the internet. We certainly ran into this ourselves earlier this year. Our film, Romeo & Juliet Get Married, directed by the highly respected Bruno Baretto (Dona Flor And Her Two Husbands, etc) is a wonderful romantic riff on Shakespeare's classic tragedy. Reviews were very strong. We did ok with rental, but as far as sell through goes, in spite of a costly marketing effort, we barely made a ripple. The same held true for the highly regarded Khadak. This film has a built in appeal for people interested in Eastern religiion, environmentalism, politics and arthouse cinema. It played at Sundance, Venice and Toronto. Yet, without a deal with Blockbuster, we would have barely covered our theatrical investment. English language titles didn't fare much better. Crystal River, which is advertised on the front page of this site, is a beautiful film with strong appeal to women. Unfortunately, retail that caters to women has shown little or no interest in stocking the title. Which brings us back to the internet. All the marketing gurus claim its easier to reach your audience with the internet. This might be true. But reaching your audience and actually getting them to buy your product have proven to be two different things. This would explain the demise of so many dvd companies over the past six months. Yet, when film fans talk, they often complain about the lack of interesting films to see. There is a huge disconnect here between consumers and speciality distributors. Whoever figures out a way to consistently bridge it will become very successful. In the meantime, there are too many worthwhile films that no one is seeing.
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