The recent Power to the Pixel conference in London was focussed around questions like the one raised by digital film consultant Brian Newman - in a free world, how can we make content pay? We have to move with the times and stop wasting our energy on battling P2P sites which are, in a nutshell, what most people want. Sites like The Auteurs and Netflix are aware that online audiences want instant access to a wide selection of films and if they can’t reach it by conventional means at a reasonable price, they’ll head straight to pirate sites. So, what’s to be done? How can the industry move with the tide and begin to make revenue from this set-up? Filmmaker Jamie King asked himself this question and came up with VODO (short for ‘voluntary donations’) – a distribution model that he suggests ‘filmmakers all over the world have been wanting ever since they knew about distributing films online.’
VODO has teamed up with pirate sites in order to seed films far and wide. If you’ve made a short, why not put it out there? Especially if it’s finished the festival circuit – even if it hasn’t, do it anyway. By making your film available for voluntary donations you immediately increase the chance of making some revenue (not an easy task with traditional forms of distribution). Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation are one of the key organisations supporting the enterprise, having realised that this unmapped territory needs exploring. It’s an exciting time for independent filmmakers and I think we should all get in on the ground level – there’s lots to gain.
Brian is coming to London, to speak at the compulsory