| Predictions 2005 |
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| Predictions 2005 |
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Each year IMAGINE provides this forum for our industry to share their views and predictions for the coming year. Some of them are dire predictions, some hopes and dreams. All have received considerable thought and make good reading. PUB
Steven Feinberg, Director Rhode Island Film & Television Office
My prediction? New England is going to be on the map---Hollywood style!
In less than one year in Rhode Island, Steven Feinberg brought the Showtime pilot "The Brotherhood" to the state with 100% of every scene filmed in Rhode Island. His 17 years and contacts in Los Angeles are paying off.
Grafton Nunes, Dean of the School of the Arts at Emerson College, former feature film producer
An explosion of high definition television sets sales and increased pressure from the federal government (which wants to recover bandwidth from the television networks to sell in order to generate government revenue) will immensely push forward the changeover to HD digital technology.
There will be an increase in digital production of motion pictures (using 24p HD as a capture medium over film) and there will be an increase in digital projection screens in he nation's theatres.
Dean Nunes was former assistant to directors Milos Forman and Paul Schrader and has been a feature film producer.
Charles Merzbacher, Chair Department of Film and Television, Boston University
The demise of theatrical distribution has been predicted many times before, so perhaps Išm acting like "Chicken Little" here, but I'm having a hard time
seeing how the multiplexes can continue to survive on the revenue generated by the success of a handful of blockbusters each year. Sadly, I therefore
predict wešll be seeing S.O.S. signs from exhibitors in 2005. We can only
hope that the social activity of watching and discussing films together carries on in peoplešs homes. Otherwise, we all risk becoming "Strangers on a Train."
Daniel Berube, Founder, Boston Final Cut Pro User Group; Producer/Editor, noisybrain. Productions, LLC
This is indeed a time when the role of storytelling is important in our community. As it becomes increasingly more difficult to digest mainstream media, we search for the ideas that express our sentiments about just what is going on in the "real" world. Makeovers and reality shows dominate the airwaves, but is this the best we have to offer? Sharing the experience of storytelling through filmmaking is what's important in our community, it's "our" reality. Our ability to do so in 2005 will ever be strengthened not only as the tools for Digital Cinema continue to evolve and become more accessible, but as like-minded digital filmmakers realize the power of collaboration and shared resources.
I predict that in 2005 the hammer to break our television sets will be handed to us as new technology emerges to allow us to distribute our digital storytelling literally into the hands of others. Internet 2, new codecs and wireless will allow us to take our stories to the streets. The digital filmmaker and the citizen-journalist may become one. Our ability to share the experience of cinema and reality as we
see it will be our hammer.
Jean Stawarz, screenwriter and assistant professor of Visual and Media Arts at Emerson College
Over the past few years and most likely in the next to come, I suspect that we will see this continued effort to copy what worked in the past year. By what worked, I mean what made money. Studios, directors, producers, and actors will probably look for big budget religious films, semi-documentaries, high-level CGI cartoon films, horror films and true life story features, the types that generated profits recently. Sadly, that has always been the way of the industry: where money grows, movies follow.
Also, indie filmmakers will continue to struggle to get their films into production and to secure theatrical distribution. With DV becoming so popular, there will be more and more (not necessarily better) films trying to make their way into film festivals and to get distribution in both the American and the foreign markets.
The collapse of the Canadian markets for live-action filmmaking seems to be completing itself. (The Canadian dollar has gone up so much against ours that the costs in Canada are no longer cheap. We may see the Canadian dollar and the U.S. dollar on par sometime in the next year or two; this hasn't happened in perhaps 30 years.) Meanwhile, Eastern Europe as a location destination is becoming very competitive, and I can only assume that more and more films will be shot there.
I suspect that studios will continue to want to do less development and pay less of the risk money to make a film, so financing partners will still be sought after. With foreign movie income increasing and U.S. decreasing, foreign audience tastes will be more important -- which is probably a good thing since U.S. audience tastes are bringing us films that are big on effects and short on plot and character.
Ms. Stawarz has worked as a screenwriter, story editor, and associate producer. Her production credits include the award-winning films POWWOW HIGHWAY and HENRY & VERLI, and the television dramas Spirit Rider and North of Sixty. Her work has been screened at many film festivals, including Sundance Film Festival, Montreal Film Festival, the Munich Film Festival, and has aired on PBS, CBC, and the BBC. The Telluride Indie Fest named her original screenplay, The Sculptors, one of the "Top Thirty Screenplays in the World." She has also taught at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.
Paul T. Boghosian, President of HarborSide Films
The geometrically accelerating trend of digital video will further democratize the visual communication business. Hundreds of thousands of filmmakers will now have access to equipment and be able to implement their unique vision for entertainment, political, and social purposes. An unintended consequence of this rapid proliferation of digital video will be the increasing insertion into the political process of attack videos that both misappropriate information and distort context and meaning. In specific, mendacious ways, such attack videos will further polarize the constituents in the red and blue states.
DVD-based "microcinemas" will be integrated into nightclubs, civic meeting halls, student unions, libraries and other such public meeting grounds. The rush to market segment and to reach audiences with specific, tailored content will produce a boon to independent, low budget filmmakers, who will quickly grasp the opportunity to share their vision. These new exhibition venues will attract the "youts," the hip, the soon-to-be hip and the wannabe hip.
The weakening of the dollar against foreign currency, especially the Euro, will bring production home again. Equally important are the new federal and state production incentives - and in some cases, subsidies - that will mark 2005 production year as a record revenue producer for total productions dollars spent in the U.S.
As one state after another climbs aboard the train that is pulled by the economic engine of film production, our beloved Massachusetts legislators will once again commission a new study to determine the economic benefit of production to the Massachusetts economy. This will prove to even the casual observer of the scene that Massachusetts can never be too far behind the curve of the financial reality that their brethren, even in supposed backwater states like Louisiana, quickly grasped years ago. A year from now, we will still be talking in Massachusetts about what the state can do to provide a film-friendly state for filmmakers. I hope I'm wrong on this prediction.
Paul Boghosian producer of UNDERCURRENT and "The Comedy Debates" for PBS. He is in development for two movies and a television show.
Scott Anderson, screenwriter and director of Harvard Square Scriptwriters
New England has more production companies making more indie films and documentaries (as well as works for hire) than at any time in recent memory, and more schools are offering film programs than ever before. Okay, technically that's not a prediction, it's just a statement of fact, so here goes: The numbers of both production companies and education programs will continue to increase in '05.
Now the glass half empty side of me sees this trend as meaning more companies chasing fewer clients, more films chasing fewer distributors and more people chasing fewer jobs - and more people, productions and companies looking for other people to work for free.
But the glass half full side of me sees more regional film festivals and more local support for these festivals. This slow but steady increase in
consumer awareness of indie docs and movies will continue. As
producers find more innovative ways to advertise their films they will find
consumers more willing to give them a try.
Joe Maiella, Sr. VP, Marketing & Sales, CrewStar, In.
While 2004 was somewhat uneven, we feel that 2005 is positioned to become one of the most consistently active periods in the past five years. The reason for this lies in the continuing recovery of many corporate and commercial markets now that cutbacks and other adjustments post 9/11 and the recession have been made. FY 2005 also represents the first "budget" year in which companies, typically forming budgets in the August/Sept. 2004 timeframe, can have more substantive reasons for a positive economic outlook. As further evidence of an increased confidence (and investment in 2005), we have also seen an upsurge in requests for services in support of independent projects, including one client who has only now secured funding for a sizable, cable program series originally proposed in December 2001.
Employment levels are increasing as more organizations are seeing this recovery stretched to the limit with current staff. Many continue to utilize staff outsourcing and use of freelance production technicians via resourcing companies (like CrewStar) as a way to backfill for an increasing work volume without making a commitment to the overhead and other obligations of taking on full-time staff.
In terms of production media formats, we have seen more requests for HD production crews, and yet the predominant format for field video production is split between BetaCam SP, DigiBeta, and DVCam. It will be interesting to see how the new, low-cost HD cameras cut into this market, and which of our crews decide to acquire this equipment.
Distribution options appear firmly (and finally) tilted to the DVD medium for consumer markets, while many corporate entities utilize everything from VHS to live satellite to streaming media to "on demand" to live events to distribute their programming. This trend will continue in 2005. In addition, the multitude of distribution options, while often used for repurposing and redistribution of current programming, will give rise to more production origination in 2005 as clients will see the ease of and return on reaching audiences that may have been ignored due to previous distribution limitations.
CrewStar, Inc. is celebrating its 10th year in providing production crew and talent payroll and international booking services to a worldwide cache of clients. Most of their business serves corporate and commercial production companies, advertising agencies and event groups.
Martie Cook, former TV writer-producer and assistant professor of visual and media arts at Emerson College
The key word for the film industry in 2005 will be "big." Studios that were once fierce competitors will continue to pool resources and make big budget blockbusters with big stars, all the while hoping to find big audiences and thus get a big bang on their original buck. They won't always be successful because deep down, audiences are tired of the same old, same old and are looking for something new and different.
Sequels and prequels will continue to be hot, as will remakes, including remakes of old TV shows. And of course, there will always be teen flicks because teens go to lots of movies and they rent and buy lots of movies. Family movies will continue to get made and they will find audiences especially if they are adapted from successful children's books and/or contain well established teen stars.
In all this, the occasional character-driven, small story indie will find its way into theaters, delighting both critics and audiences like a breath of fresh air. But overall, indies will be fewer and farther between, as these movies get more and more expensive to make, and distribution gets harder and harder to find.
2004 was a bleak year for good movies. Sadly, I don't anticipate 2005 being much better. Studios need to take more chances (no guts, no glory), but I don't see that happening anytime in the near future.
Ms. Cook has worked as a writer/producer for all four television networks and PBS. Her writing credits include Charles In Charge, and Full House. Her producing credits include Entertainment Tonight, America's Most Wanted, NBC Nightly News, The Today Show and the Emmy-nominated children's show Zoom. Ms. Cook's screenplay Zachary's Truth was optioned by Universal Studios.
Newport International Film Festival Industry Predictions by Carmen Hawkins De Cecco and Sky Sitney
The increasing polarity of industry ideologies will produce two kinds of work in the next few years. Major studios caught up in FCC restrictions and the current puritanical tone of the mainstream media - exemplified by the refusal of CBS and NBC to air the United Church of Christ commercial featuring handicapped, gay, and people of color trying to enter church - will produce benign, presumably unoffensive, family-oriented programming. Simultaneously, artists rebelling from this kind of repression will push the envelope with works more extreme, offensive, and raunchy. For example, Lukas Moodysson's A HOLE IN MY HEART, arguably one of the most graphically devastating and violent films to be picked up for major distribution in recent memory, might not have been inspired in more tolerant times.
The re-election of George Bush will also have an enormous impact on filmmaking, and specifically, documentary filmmaking. In anticipation of the U.S. Presidential election, several films were made specifically (e.g. Farhenheit 911) to prevent his re-election. Now, political films will channel their activist intentions differently. There will be more films about Iraq and the impact of our foreign policies on developing countries torn apart by civil war. Essentially, films will be made that will offer an alternative to the kind of information we receive on Fox news. Yet, they will have to re-articulate what we as audiences, and citizens, can do with this information. In general, I predict a surge in meaningful, grass-roots commentary on how the U.S. positions itself in a world torn apart by rampant poverty and civil strife, as well as dark and explicit dramas meant to galvanize viewers into taking action to change the socio-political climate.
Sky Sitney, NIFF Programmer
Carmen Hawkins De Cecco, NIFF News Editor
Marty Feldman, The Camera Company
2005 will definitely be a transitional year for the video industry as the move to HDTV is certain to gain momentum. The availability of lower cost high definition televisions will fuel the need for more programming which in turn will be less costly to provide because of lower cost production and postproduction equipment.
The new HDV format is sure to do for high definition in this century what DV did for standard def back in the 90's. Who ever thought we would see television networks using small, low cost portable equipment to produce even their news, documentary and reality-based programming? Yet it is commonplace today. That trend will continue and probably accelerate with the proliferation of HDV. In fact, one major Boston television station has already made a purchase of a HDV camera.
Marty Feldman, Manager, Broadcast Division, The Camera Company, Norwood, MA
