A few months ago, we were talking with Vimeo’s creative director, Jeremy Boxer. We asked him what he was most excited about, and, without hesitating, he said Vimeo On Demand — Vimeo’s newish service that allows filmmakers to sell their work directly to their audience. Vimeo On Demand, he told us, is going to radically change not just the economy of filmmaking, but films themselves. We asked him what in the world he was talking about. “I think the first thing it’s going to do is erase the idea of traditional formats,” he said. “We’ve had filmmakers who’ve made 35-minute films about a specific subject for a specific audience, and they’ve done better than some feature films. It [becomes] more about the storytelling. I think you’re going to start seeing a lot more odd-length projects coming out in the next couple years.”
Making a film is one thing. Making money on a film is something else. And nobody knows this better than Mia Bruno, producer of marketing and distribution for Seed&Spark, a new crowdfunding, direct to consumer platform that’s currently disrupting the more traditional, entrenched distribution models. “Most filmmakers want the same thing,” Mia told us. “They want to pay back their investors, and they want to make their next film. So the question is how do you do that?”
Wendy Cohen has dedicated her life to promoting films that make a difference. You might call them advocacy films or socially conscious films. Or it might just be easier to call them by their names: Food, Inc.; The Cove; Inequality for All; Rich Hill; Waiting for “Superman” — just to name a few.