IndieProd.Org

Where Have You Been?

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 11:50:11 -0800

First, thanks for the emails and messages. Second, sorry for the absence. For the past couple of weeks we’ve been working on a special project that consumed most of our efforts. No, it wasn’t summer vacation. What have we been working on? Well, you’ll have to wait until October 15th because I can’t say too much right now. Until then we will continue blogging and bringing you the news and insights from the indie film world right here at IndieProd.Org. In the meantime, keep sending me your emails and IMs. I’ll answer you questions and comments as quickly as possible. Thanks.

No Room for Niche Films...Duh!

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 09:11:47 -0800

What a difference a summer makes. "Little Miss Sunshine" was the surprise hit last summer. Fox Searchlight released it on seven screens at the end of July. It wasn’t an indie film, but it was a good example of a platform release. By summer’s end more than 1,600 screens were playing the dysfunctional family movie. As historic platform strategies go, that was a pretty fast build. This summer there doesn’t look to be a big platform film, be it an indie film or studio project. The film distribution business this summer is all about big or bigger sequels. Giant popcorn movies are filling the film distribution pipeline. Almost a month ago, I wrote about the challenges that indie filmmakers face in this kind of marketplace. Now Variety comes along with an article picking up on the same issue. (Are they reading my blog?) Variety pointed to the Irish-music-movie, Once, as an example of a small film that’s doing well. (I used that example as well). The film, while doing well, is not a platform release. It’s holding steady at 120 theaters. Like Sunshine, Fox Searchlight is also releasing it The other film that Variety made reference to is Waitress. (Gee, I mentioned that also…?) It’s a bit more of a platform release, but still not on the scale of LMS or the uber-platform movie, My Greek Wedding. That film opened with less than a $1 million dollars in its first week and grew to $214 million. Now that’s a platform! Creating a platform release is difficult and expensive. You have to keep the momentum up over an extended period of time. Healthy grosses each week are important or theater owners will dump the film in favor of something else that is selling popcorn. Our release strategy with Lost on the B Side is not a platform release. It’s a limited, simultaneous release to theaters in the top 100 markets. The film will probably not run more than three weeks in any given market. The strategy is designed to take advantage of local promotional partners: radios stations, retailers, and the theaters. The project benefits from the initial pop that is generated. We’ll see later this year. The Variety article has bit more information, but subscription is required.

The Battle For The Remote & Censorship

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 15:02:00 -0800

The Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction was just one battle in the war to control your remote control. The war is starting to heat up on the set of Nip/Tuck. FX is moving the show's location from Miami to LA this season. And the producers promise fans they will continue to spice it up. The show, in case you haven't seen it, is about two very confused plastic surgeons that have a great sex life. Too great, evidently, for the Parents Television Council who have petitioned advertisers to drop the show. Parents should definitely not use Nip/Tuck as an opportunity for quality time. FX won't tone it down. Multichannel has an article on the battle building between FX and the Parents group. At the same time, Multichannel has and article about the US Senate's effort to force decency on to television. (Did these guys never see Mary Ann in a bathing suit?) Sen. John D. (Jay) Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) is pushing legislation that would give the FCC authority to fine stations that use profanity in a "fleeting" manner, according to Multichannel. The legislation has already received a nod of approval from the head of the Senate Commerce Committee, Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii). So, the battle will continue. With programmers, producers, and broadcasters continuing to push the envelope, while the feds try to shut the barn door. Catch the Multichannel take on both stories here and here.

Big Move on Piracy in Asia...And at Home?

Fri, 13 Jul 2007 12:23:53 -0800

We're in talks with a major Euro-Asian film distributor for the distribution of our indie film, Lost on the B Side. So, this article from The Hollywood Reporter caught my eye. Operation Tripod, a far ranging crackdown on piracy, swept through various countries in May and June. The Motion Picture Association of America and governments in Asia ran the effort. In terms of product seized and arrests made, the numbers were pretty staggering. According The Hollywood Reporter there were 1,300 raids, over 800 arrests, and 3.3 million discs were seized. They cop action also picked up nearly 4,200 optical disc burners. That's a bigger operation than Best Buy. We've discussed piracy before from the perspective of the independent filmmakers. Clearly there is an impact on film distribution. The MPA puts the dollar value lost to piracy at more than $6 billion. Then this caught my eye. Probably the most striking number in the story. Operation Tripod seized 1.2 million discs in China and over 700,000 from the Philippines. The MPA says Asia accounts for $1.2 billion in piracy losses each year. Placing it second on the list. Number one of the list? The U.S. with $1.3 billion in annual losses. You can dispute the actual numbers, and many analysts do. But the point is made. Piracy, like a lot of things, starts at home. So, how should indie filmmakers deal with Asia when looking for film distribution? Cautiously. Find a good partner. Someone with a track record. Rely on them to Shepard your product through the marketplace. Established players have very little incentive to support local piracy. Indie filmmakers have much more to gain than to lose. The risks of loss to piracy are lower for indie films than it is for major studio releases. On the flip side, every bit of cash flow adds to incremental profits. It's the difference between making one or two films and being in the business ten years from now. As Regan said, "Trust but verify." Click to read the entire article from The Hollywood Reporter.

Shane Rides Again…This Time into Court

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 09:48:09 -0800

Let me get this out at the top: I would love to have the studios pay me several million dollars to distribute my last indie film. I have no moral problem cashing a check from the studios for the distribution of my indie film. But, the likelihood of that happening is not great. My business strategy is not to wait around to be discovered at my neighborhood's version of Schwab's Pharmacy. As an indie filmmaker I want more control over my destiny. Which is why I live and work in Seattle. Write, direct, and produce independent films. It's why we are into film distribution. There's another reason seek to carve out my own future. I don't trust the studios. If an insider like Alan Ladd Jr. can't trust them, why should some guy from Seattle? The New York Times has a great article on the Alan Ladd Jr. and his jousting with the studios. Film distribution is a tough, sometimes dirty business. And the NY Times tells you why. In case you don't know the name, his father was a successful actor in the heyday of Hollywood. I liked his style. Kind of a Bruce Willis of his day.

Alan “Shane” Ladd.

Jr., however, wasn't an actor. And Jr. didn't live off dad's royalty checks. Alan Ladd Jr. is a very successful producer and was a major, major studio player for twenty-plus years. He still is an active producer. His credits include Braveheart, Chariots of Fire, and Police Academy. As head of Fox, he gave the green light to Star Wars when everyone else passed. He also server as the Chairman of MGM. He's suing Warner Brothers over issues of accounting and credit. We've heard the stories of "Hollywood accounting." How bad is it? The NY Times shares one of Ladd's experiences with Warner Bros. over another Ladd film, Blade Runner. The studio stopped sending checks his way. Remember the re-release on DVD? How much did the studio make distributing that one? When asked why he wasn't seeing any money, the studio reportedly said that Blade Runner was deep in the red. Ladd hired an accounting firm to conduct an audit and Warner Brothers quickly cut him a check for $400,000. So, how bad is the accounting? Take a read of the NY Times article. It's very insightful. In the meantime, if a studio wants to send a check my way, give me a call at 323-627-3306 or you can find me sitting on a stool at Schwab's Pharmacy.

Fox and HBO Decide the Future of VOD

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 09:35:05 -0800

Fox and HBO have extended their decades old film distribution relationship for another ten-plus years. This deal gives HBO access to the Fox movies, a deal first constructed in the early 1980's. This is one of the reasons that the video-on-demand business has not taken off as many had predicted. The studios are in the film distribution business and they get a lot of revenue from Starz, HBO, Showtime, and other cablers to show their movies in specific windows. These are long term relationships will not go away easily. In the past HBO has been involved in such Fox features as Die Hard trilogy, the Star Wars franchise and Independence Day. According to Broadcasting & Cable, this extension gives HBO "digital-media rights including broadband and video-on-demand within the HBO movie premium window." Movies generally go from theaters, to DVD, to pay cable, to cable and broadcast television. The studios have tested new windows, such as day-and-date theatrical and DVD releases. VOD, limited as it is, has generally followed DVD because the studios don't want to risk their DVD revenue, which is what keeps their financial boats afloat. New media gives the studios an opportunity to test new windows. However, the studios will not easily risk their deals with cablers, like the Fox-HBO deal, to go tilting at new media windmills. This does offer indie filmmakers some opportunities. We're not tied to the same windows. We can get creative with our release strategies. The risk for an indie filmmaker is much less than the risk assumed by a studio on a $100-plus million dollar feature. To learn more about the release windows, check out my earlier blogs. You can also read about the Fox-HBO deal from Multichannel.com.

More Words on Making It Picture Perfect

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 09:17:08 -0800

The headline blog for this past week was about the design and development of movie posters for indie films. I was surprised by the questions and attention it generated. You can check out the blog here. It includes the poster designed specifically for our indie film, Lost on the B Side. This weekend the LA Times had an article about a fascinating new book on movie posters. It’s Anthony Slide’s latest book, "Now Playing: Hand Painted Poster Art From the 1910s Through the 1950s.” I’m going to run down a copy of it this week. The book deals with movie posters as art. Indeed the posters designed prior to World War II were works of art, literally. They were hand painted by artisans—in under an hour! Try that with Photoshop. Advertising, then as now, was an important part of poster design. The artists, like Batiste Madalena, Otto Wise, and Edwin Checketts, labored before the film was completed. They rarely saw the film prior to painting the poster and the closest they got to the movie was usually the production stills. I was surprised to learn, in the early days of cinema, there were often half a dozen different posters created for a theater lobby. Today movie posters are definitely not about art. They are a key marketing tool and are exploited as such. I have analyzed posters and DVD box art from hundreds of movies as part of my previous work as a video buyer. I can sadly say that for most projects the poster is perceived as an advertisement and little more. On the surface this may seem logical since posters are advertisements. Unfortunately this also means that posters tend to lack artistic creativity and end up looking similar to the two thousand other posters than preceded them. Here’s a great website for studying posters. It’s the Internet Movie Poster Awards website. Test yourself on the art of posters. Click through thirty or forty posters. You will find that they generally fall into two categories. The first is the star poster. This poster includes the title, tagline, and floating heads of the film’s stars. They star poster is advertising one thing. Star power. Since your indie film, like mine, probably doesn’t have a big named A-list star, this format doesn’t work for most indie films. Oddly enough, many B-films also use the star poster even when their star is stale and no longer a box office draw. The second format is the concept poster. It’s the poster that conveys a theme or subject. It’s called the monster poster, although it can be any genre. Instead of the floating head of the star you get the monster or the ghost. The key art of the movie conveys almost everything you need to know. A snappy tagline doesn’t hurt. Another great source for studying movie posters is the Key Art Awards. These are given out each year to Hollywood companies and individuals for poster and box art designs. The movie poster database also has a listing of the top ten best and worst posters for your consideration. Let me know what poster art you’re considering for your indie film. You can check out the LA Times article on Slide's new book.

NBC Finds Online Success with Heroes

Fri, 06 Jul 2007 05:42:00 -0800

I have a new hero and it's NBC. At the recent 360i "Search in the Media Ecosystem" gabfest, NBC shared with the audience that their series, Heroes, is doing well online. In revealing the numbers the Peacock network gave the web community an idea of how important a web-based presence can be to the life of a television series. Indie filmmakers should pay attention, too. According to Mediapost, NBC had a little more than 14 million viewers of the show on air. This compares to 7 million unique online visitors who surfed to the 360i microsite dedicated to Heroes. That's fifty-percent of the audience participating online. (Yeah, it took me a minute to do the math as well.) Now that's not to say that the Internet generated one-half of the viewing audience. But clearly the web presence helped the television series to develop a following and maintain an audience. The Heroes online activity included social networks, blogs, and an online game, according to Mediapost. How much did all this Internet exposure cost? And how can indie filmmakers use this strategy? In analyzing the amount of money spent online, the numbers are still all over the board. Heavy Internet spenders will allocate up to a third of a show's ad budget online. For most broadcasters, however, Internet spending is still less than fifteen percent of overall ad budgets. By comparison, most feature films will allocate 10 to 15% of the film's budget for online spending. These are numbers from the big studios, so it's difficult to tell how this compares with the spending by smaller studios.

NBC scored a hit online with the microsite for Heroes.

Driving offline behavior is the primary objective of most digital ad efforts. A consumer's money is still spent offline - watching a television show, going to the movie theater, or buying a DVD. These are largely offline activities. The advertising efforts are focused on building on these real world activities. Indie filmmakers, although we're working with smaller budgets, should strive for similar results. That is, our online efforts to promote an indie film should strive to push consumers to movie theaters and retailers, as well as online stores and websites. Search engine marketing and optimization are the Internet tools used by the studios and broadcasters to motivate consumers. These can be complex and sometimes expensive tools for indie filmmakers. (I'll post a few pointers on search engine marketing and optimization on the IndieProd.Org DIY blog in the coming weeks.) One thing is certain. NBC has put some hard numbers to its online effort. And the numbers are significant and encouraging. You can be sure that the other broadcasters and studios are listening closely. So, should indie filmmakers. One humorous note from the Mediapost coverage. The HGTV cable net ran a show "Living with Ed." It's a (short lived) reality series staring Ed Begley. They pushed the web hard, including search engine marketing. The problem was, people would Google: "living with ed" and the search engine returned websites dealing with "erectile dysfunction." Be careful what you search for. Thanks to the good people at Mediapost for their coverage of the broadcast industry. 360i's info on Search and Media.

Think Films Does Internet Big in a Little Way

Fri, 06 Jul 2007 04:20:37 -0800

One month doesn't prove much of anything. But, still this is an interesting chart from MarketingCharts.com. It shows the ten entertainment companies that advertised the most on the Internet during the month of May. The number one company was Disney. Probably not a great surprise since they have a large number of websites and an aggressive Internet-based effort. They spent $1.5 million during the month. That's a sizeable chunk of change, but not as big as I would have expected. Remember that wouldn’t buy two ads during the Super Bowl. What's most informative in the chart, is at the bottom. In May Think Films, which is a purveyor of decidedly indie films, came in at number ten with only $30,000 spent online for the month of May. The usual suspects are on the list, plus a few surprises. Check it out.

Blame Your Success on the Pirates

Thu, 05 Jul 2007 04:43:40 -0800

Disney's Ratatouille had 800 sneak previews in advance of its formal theatrical release, according to the Wall Street Journal. The film distribution business is a complicated one. The studios usually do sneak previews if they're sure they have a hit on their hands. If they think they're pushing a turkey up hill, they usually dump the previews and just try to sneak the movie into theaters. As indie filmmakers we don't have those type of film distribution "problems." I'd love to "sneak" my indie film into 2,000 theaters. (Any interested film distributors can give me a call.) The rat is doing very well. Almost $50 million in it's opening frame. But, wait, pieces of the film are also online and Disney doesn't seem too upset about the camcorder piracy. If Ratatouille opened poorly, if John McClane had pulled ahead of the mouse-house movie, you can bet that studio executives would be hollering to put the head of every camcorder pirate on the corporate pike. What's the purpose of the advance screening? To build word of mouse - pardon me, word of mouth. That's exactly what some kid with a camcorder did for Ratatouille when he shot pieces of the movie in a darkened theater. (I say "he" because girls are too smart to do that kind of thing.) My guess is that quarter of a million people saw the sneak previews of Ratatouille in the theater. I bet at least that many people saw a bit of the movie online from the bootleg copy. That's word of mouth. My indie film should be so lucky.

Ratatouille was no stinky piece of cheese.

Now, if the movie had been a stinky chunk of cheese instead of a wonderful Pixar work of animated art, the word of mouth would have been bad. And, yes, the studio would have been angry. But their anger would not have been over the act of the piracy, but rather over losing control of their message. In places like China, Russia, and elsewhere, there is a serious problem with piracy. That kind of mega-theft of copyright is disturbing, particularly when local governments do little to stop it. Yes, studios, actors, writers, producers, and others are losing hundreds of millions of dollars to pirates. There is however a different kind of "piracy" at play here with Ratatouille and other summer movies. It's called new media. And here's a clue:The media is the message. In the new digital age advertisers risk losing control over their message in a way not possible ten or twenty years ago. A kid with a camcorder can expose a bit of film to a huge audience and unravel an entire ad campaign...or give the campaign a boost. More and more, my attitude toward hometown piracy is "What me worry?" As indie filmmakers we have to understand that we have very little control over our message. Our biggest challenge when marketing an indie film is not losing control, but spreading the word. That's where we have to take advantage of the new media. Use every possible outlet to reach the audience. I would love it if some kid with a camcorder put my last indie film, Lost on the B Side on the Internet and it was consumed by 200,000 people. To paraphrase The Jerk: "That's the kind of spontaneous promotion that makes people!" And rats, and indie filmmakers, too. Here's a link to the Wall Street Journal article.

Future of Indie Film Gets Knocked Up

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 10:08:27 -0800

BoxOffice.com is reporting that six of the summer releases are already crossing the $100 million dollar mark. Five of the six are sequels, proving that the studios and theaters are definitely in the summer sequel biz. The films: Spidey, Shrek, Pirates, Fantastic Four, and Ocean’s 13 are all repeats. With the top three crossing the $300 million mark. What about the sixth movie to make the $100 million dollar summer club? It’s Knocked Up. It’s still going strong even in the face of very stiff competition. Why should indie filmmakers care? It’s very likely that Knocked Up has re-written the rules of comedy. A couple of weeks ago I said that if the potty-mouth film breaks $75 million it will mark a major departure in the approach of future Hollywood films. In Harry Met Sally, Sally had an orgasmic lunch and audiences laughed because of the embarrassingly absurd encounter. That was almost two decades ago. In Knocked Up (which I like) Harold Ramis, plays father to star Seth Rogen. They have their own lunch. The fifty-plus year old dad chats away with his son in the middle of a small café. He uses the f-word more than John McClane. Audiences didn’t find the dad’s language funny or odd. They accepted it as normal. Don’t we all use the f-word in the normal course of conversation with our parents or children? The change is not that potty-mouthed characters will be more acceptable. They already are. The change is that humor and drama will be more reality based. Or, at least the movie-version of reality. No subject will be taboo. As in Knocked Up, the topic of discussion will involve subject matter that twenty years ago made audiences uncomfortable. Today, these subjects are the norm. In a discussion several weeks ago with other indie filmmakers, I said that Die Hard 4 will not play with audiences quite as well as it did when the original hit the screens. The fast one-liners will not be perceived as real. My 15 year-old son and his friends saw the movie. They were turned off by the over-the-top action. The character seemed almost cartoonish. At one point in the movie, the bad guy even taunts Bruce Willis – “Go ahead, make a joke.” The movie will do well. It’s a big summer action flick. But it’s not gritty or real. And it will quickly be forgotten. Art mimics life. Young audiences, particularly, are looking for a Training Day – Man on Fire dose of movie-reality, which, in some ways, mimics life today. Just ask the citizens of England and Scotland living through the stress of the recent terrorist attacks. Indie filmmakers would do well to mimic life, to look for ways to speak with an authentic voice. It’s what indie film does best. Check out the reporting from BoxOffice.com.

AllofMP3: Russian Pirates and the RIAA

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 10:05:07 -0800

I admit I used Allofmp3.com - the rogue Russian music site that provided a huge catalog of mp3 files for pennies a song. To top it off, the songs were available at high-bit rates. It wasn't easy to get the songs. We had to open up the Euro equivalent of a PayPal account, and then purchase an XRoost card, which was used to fund the Allofmp3.com account. All that international banking in order to download a song for 25 cents. Now before you turn me into the RIAA for our $20 worth of piracy, understand that the tunes we downloaded were used exclusively for our Internet radio station, Steam.Fm. We pay royalties to ASCAP, BMI, and Soundexchange for playing the tunes on Steam. It's easier for us to pay for the download than to contact the labels and get a free promotional copy of the song. Allofmp3 is in the news again because the Russians shut down the site. The Bush Justice Department has been pressuring the Putin government to pull the plug on the unlicensed, but not necessarily illegal, download site. The Ruskies finally relented. The Bushies were holding up admittance to the World Trade Organization until Putin got tough on crime. Over the weekend Putin and Bush met in Maine for a series of BBQ-talks. It must have paid off. The Russians pulled the plug. But the ones and zeroes that make up the digital world are not easily constrained. Allofmp3 already has a new address: mp3sparks.com I'm not in favor of piracy. Bands work hard to create their music. Labels invest millions to market the music. The allofmp3...er, the mp3sparks.com experience points out the difficultly of keeping those little digital bits in the barn when the barn door is wide open.

Indie Films to Receive iPhone Treatment

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 05:43:40 -0800

With the new iPhone barely off the shelf, competitors are taking this opportunity to criticize Apple for the "closed" nature of the company's iTunes store. With few exceptions, Apple only sells music and video that will play on iPods, iPhones, and other Apple devices. This reality has competitors and open-music advocates screaming foul. The advocates shouldn't pick a fight with Apple. They're argument should be with the studios and labels. Apple has been able to build a huge business out of DRM-laden music and video precisely because the media being sold is controlled by DRM. Without the controls the studios/labels would not have participated in Apple's experiment. (For a discussion of DRM check out an earlier post.) The ease of buying and loading a song or video from iTunes is part of the reason that Apple's business plan has been a huge hit. Now the iPhone provides an extension of the iTunes platform. There will no doubt be a variety of iPhones released in the coming years. This in turn will lead to an expansion of the programming choices. Indie filmmakers, however, don't have to wait for Apple to become more indie film friendly. There are already sites on the Internet that provide users with the opportunity to download and burn a movie to DVD. EZTakes.com for example provides a mish-mash of indie film offerings that can be burned to DVD. By the end of summer, EZTakes plans to release DRM-free versions of their inventory for download to the iPhone and other similar devices. Indie filmmakers, of course, can take advantage of this trend and release short clips, missing scenes, new trailers, and other content free to the Internet with the objective of building an audience for the retail or theatrical version of their indie film. The digital world is changing. Indie filmmakers must get digital savvy and look for new and creative ways to create an audience. For more on the EZTakes catch this article from Variety. (Subscription maybe required.) Also, check out the IndieProd.Org blog on the convergence of filmed entertainment and the iPhone. We are in the process of testing the download of a full length feature, Lost on the B Side , to an iPhone. Watch IndieProd.Org for the results.

Can Indie Films Compete Against Deep Pockets?

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 14:47:33 -0800

The money keeps pouring into the movie business and the definition of indie film continues to be redefined. A couple of former Miramax execs were able to scrape together $200 million from investors to open The Film Department. They'll produce films in the $10 to $35 million-dollar range. They're making independent films in the sense that their funding comes from outside the studio gates. Although, General Electric is one of their investors and GE owns NBC-Universal. Legendary Pictures will spend a cool billion dollars on films. Their partner is Warner Bros. Definitely not an indie. They split budgets (and hence the risk) with WB. The studio will distribute the movies. Much of the new money flowing into the business is from "hedge funds" - investment pools from wealthy "qualified" investors. These funds are pursuing one of two strategies. The first is partnerships in the Legendary Pictures model. Go after more expensive fare with big names that should help to guarantee some box office success. In order to reduce the risks, these new players are partnering with the studios. The studios make their money, primarily, from film distribution fees. The second approach is working on smaller studio pics. These are films with budgets (generally) under $25 million. Smaller stars or bigger stars in smaller movies. Good Night and Good Luck with George Clooney would be an example. The Film Department will most likely let a studio handle the distribution. This means a couple of things for indie filmmakers. First, screen space will continue to be tight and get tighter. More movies chasing limited number of screens. There are 35,000 screens in the U.S. With only 500 films released each year there is theoretically plenty of screen space. With a single mega-film being released on 4,000 screens, the big Hollywood studios chew up more of the screen space. More fare coming to market means that indie filmmakers will have more problems finding theaters. The other problem is cutting through the clutter. Finding a voice will be more difficult. Getting your message out will take more effort and creativity. Indie filmmakers will have to play a more active role in film distribution. A role that most indie filmmakers find it difficult to assume. Can indie filmmakers compete in the hyper-competitive film distribution business? Sure. It's not easy. But indie films have a lot of advantages when reaching out to a niche market. You'll just have to do it without a $200 million dollar war chest and a studio partner. Read more about the use of Private Equity Funds from the New York Times. The Film Department story is covered by the New York Post.

Global Entertainment Converging for Growth

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 08:38:00 -0800

Last week I blogged about the terrific growth experienced by filmed entertainment and film distribution in the last year (2006). It was terrific if you don't look at the mirror-image drop in the business the year before (2005). Now comes a special report from PricewaterhouseCoopers that pegs the future growth at over six percent per year for the next five-plus years to $2 trillion dollars. Will indie filmmakers get a cut of that growth? The numbers get a little confusing because the "media and entertainment" industry is comprised of many divergent components including film distribution. The report reflects growth in filmed entertainment, broadcast television, television distribution, music, online elements, and others. Indie film and entertainment are buried in these macro numbers. Filmed entertainment in the US is anticipated to grow at 5.3%. Internet advertising will power forward by more than 13% per year. Growth in foreign territories will race ahead by nearly ten percent in some regions of the globe. Probably the most important take away from the PwC report for indie filmmakers is that the convergence of computers, television, and wireless devices will charge most of the growth in entertainment and media. It's exactly what we're watching here with our iPhone blog. So, how do indie filmmakers play the growth? With the Everywhere Strategy. Create content focused on your niche and make it available everywhere: in theaters, at home, online, and via wireless/mobile devices. It's not as simple as it sounds - assuming it even sounds simple - but it is achievable for indie filmmakers who are creative and disciplined. You can read about the Everywhere Strategy here. Also, there's a bit more coverage on the PwC report here at the Hollywood Reporter.