New Film Distribution Method Sees BitTorrent Take Starring Role

[admin]

Hollywood veteran James Cromwell has produced a new film, 'A Lonely Place For Dying', that will try out a new distribution model centered on the BitTorrent community.

Instead of seeking funding via the usual Hollywood sources, the film will be released in serialized format that will be free to download via the BitTorrent powered VODO. Other P2P partners include The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, uTorrent and FrostWire. Viewers can download for free, and if they like the film, they can offer donations which will become the funding source for polishing off the film, and getting it ready for a theatrical release.

So instead of seeing theatrical release end up illegally shared on BitTorrent networks, the producers of 'A Lonely Place For Dying' is hoping to reverse the process, to build up presence and publicity for the film online, before it gets screened.

"We're really excited about this release and the model the producers are following," VODO founder Jamie King told TorrentFreak.

"It's important to show how the popularity we can build for movies online can convert into paying cinemagoers down the road," King added.

This isn't the first time that producers have played around with the idea of using P2P to promote films, or to fund independent productions via the Internet. For exampple, 'The Tunnel' was funded entirely by selling frames of the film for $1 each, and then releasing the movie on BitTorrent for free, to promote the DVD edition of the film.

[drfsupercenter]

That's kinda what I thought I would do if I ever made a movie someday, just to prove that piracy doesn't actually hurt the film industry (not like I'd wind up making a movie, but still)

[admin]

The problem with this approach is that, if the movie isn't actually any good, then it will backfire (not saying 'A Lonely Place For Dying' isn't any good). This is probably why traditional Hollywood would loathe to move to a system like this, because they won't be able to get away with making bad movies any more (it's already a lot harder than before, since if people trash the movie on the net, movie ticket/disc purchases will go down at the same rate as pirated downloads are going up, for those that still want to check it out, but don't want to pay).

Box office records have been broken so many times for good movies recently, despite Internet piracy, so I'm guessing it's the crap that's making Hollywood much less money than before. Hollywood's business model is to make crap and have people pay for it, multiple times if necessary, with the occasional good movie. DVD was great, because not only could they get you to pay for crap at the cinema, those that didn't can buy crap and watch it at home. Then of course, people discovered you could rip DVDs and upload them online, and then the game changed. Blu-ray is great because people can re-purchase all the good movies again, but most are wary about re-purchasing their crap movies, which is why Blu-ray isn't as much of a hit as DVD was.

The Internet is a real threat to their business model, because crap gets filtered out, and people don't have to pay to watch crap any more. Which is why studios use DRM, why they're threatening ISPs, and why they're lobbying the legislature, to force people to continue to pay for crap, and to sue those that don't want to and/or thrown them off the Internet.

3D has given them a lifeline, because there's no easy way to recreate that true cinema 3D experience at home. And so every crap movie these days comes in 3D. But the 3D fever is dissipating, thanks to short-sighted greed via high ticket prices.