indie Seriously, is it over?

right, innovation is always key for people on the outside trying to get in. It may seem obvious, but once a channel becomes oversaturated, the rarity needed to stand out becomes extreme. If every movie out there is about cats, make one with dogs. If every film at the festival has two people talking in a room, make a movie about 6 people that hike across a mountain range in a blizzard. That may seem random, but it's incredible how many nearly identical indie films I see, if you just gauge by simple metrics.

I guess in a sentence, don't be predictable, it's not entertaining. You made a film in the style of David Lynch, and your script is based on a Phillip k Dick novel. Ok, I'll throw it on the pile. Tell me you made a movie based on the art of HR Gieger combined with the music of Sammy Hagar. and I'll think you're insane, but I guarantee I'll watch that movie.

I was originally talking about innovation on the format and structure end, but of course innovation in the creative product is a major part of the math.
 
Suspire said:
Actually Blair Witch was not the first. I know that Cannibal holocaust preceded it using the same theme 'found footage' . Sure, it wasn't as mainstream. Infact, it was banned in some countries, but it did present the idea of found footage before BW. In my opinion that bolsters the other idea about finding success; timing. Maybe if BW was 2 years sooner or 2 years later it would not have hit. Maybe the same could be said about Evil Dead. ..... Maybe the same could be said about The GodFather.
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Cannibal Holocaust was........ interesting. Not something I rewatched a lot, but that weird soundtrack that was slightly out of tune all the time because they mastered it on reel to reels just made the whole experience kind of surrealistically horrifying.

and to indietalk - I threw Dall E 2 a couple "shouting at clouds" image prompts, which you can find somewhere in that post. I wasn't crazy about any of them, but if you want any of them I'll drop the full res of it on the post.
 
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Have you tried getting a film out there and are disappointed or are you asking before you try?
 
Suspire said:
Maybe it wasn't a boom but there were micro-budget films being bought and distributed. A few that I know of:
War of the planets DVD Blockbuster video
Thumb wars DVD Walmart
SideFX DVD Walmart
Kisses and Caroms (Warner home video)
Star Warp'd DVD
Exile Streaming and available in Japan

So, it did happen enough to energize a lot of us.
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I guess this is kind of a semantics thing. Industry people would usually call most of these "videos"

What's the difference between a 90 minute film and a 90 minute video. it's a bunch of stuff. Like for example, in the 80s, they had a number of small companies that would redub japanese cartoons for american kids, and many of those cartoons had movies attached. In Japan they were considered movies, but here we called that market permutation videos. They were churned out in great numbers over the last 20 years of the 20th century, and faded slowly after 2000.

I think for most people, a film needs at least one recognizable star, and it should have 3 or more. So we may not be disagreeing with you so much as just attaching a different meaning to the word.

I knew this indie film director Named Alex Cox, and he made this film Repo Man way back when, and you could find lower budget movies like that for a long time.

I think you're thinking about the golden 80s vhs horror wave, which was kind of the big wave you're describing. It happened because of the advent of video rental stores, which created a paradigm shift in viewing habits. People began consuming more video than studios could provide, or they wanted unique stuff, and so you could find movies like "Splatter: Architects of Fear" lining the walls of the local pre blockbuster video stores.

Blockbuster itself was kind of the end of that era, as content production ramped up, and the internal brass pushed for an uptick in minimum quality. I think it was around 2000 when I last saw a 10k movie in a blockbuster.
 
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Actually, I'm not bashing or defending the possibility of micro-budget success. I simply wanted to strike up a conversation... Those films I listed that are in the micro-budget category and did indeed find distribution, well, I don't believe that after all was said and done than any of them made money. They weren't my films but I do know a few of the fellas who made them. I think I heard that at least some of them were out of the red after more than 5 years, mostly breaking even. Breaking even doesn't sound too bad. Profit is better but obviously anyone who looks to micro-budget film making as a viable profession is kidding them-self. I use to look at it as a stepping stone to greater things; get your work out there, and if you have something good to offer, someone might notice you or at least you would have something for your resume.
 
Nate North said:
Jackass was actually the only real modern indie rags to riches story I can think of, and that's just because they used a cheap gimmick over and over to achieve a gut reaction from the audience. South Park the decade before, with 2 animators working full time and pitching a demo episode, which later led to several studio features. So it has happened, for a very very few hardworking and creative people, and a few exploitative people. Ultimately, this is a puzzle to be solved, and I think it requires innovation at this point. What I often see at film festivals and indie markets feels like when the redcoats used to just march in rows into a hail of bullets. Yes, there's supposed to be a beaten path, but it doesn't work anymore, so it's guerilla warfare again, just like in the old days IMO.
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in both of those examples they were the on screen talent :(
 
sfoster said:
in both of those examples they were the on screen talent :(
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Really only Trey showed much talent, out of the 3, but in each case they found another avenue to counterbalance what was lacking. And as a voice actor, Trey is really more funny than he is talented. I think the quality in south park specifically is tightly focused on their chaotic irreverence blended with sometimes surprisingly astute observations about society.

The real shock was how competent they ended up being as musical composers.
 
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