I had lunch yesterday with new friends from Indiepix, Bob Alexander and Danielle DiGiacomo. We had a great discussion about the changing business of distribution, after which Danielle sent along an article from Indiewire about a Tribeca panel, In a Time of Change, that dealt with some of the threads we were chewing on. It seems odd that Soderberg and Wagner were dominating that particular discussion when they are still struggling with how to incorporate new trends in media consumption and peoples’ expectations on content availability to the old way of doing business (sorry, day and date isn’t news - Greenwald was making money on theatrical after selling hundreds of thousands of DVDs). Navin of BitTorrent gets one line in, but it is much more interesting in terms of shifting distribution paradigms.

Everyone and his brother is uploading content to the web. If you can access that content via your television, in addition to downloading it for iPod or your cell phone, isn’t that a serious new frontier? And folks like Indiepix are helping makers to get their DVDs produced and distributed while keeping a lot of the profits. It costs a few bucks to get a DVD pressed or to take up some server memory so why pay for bricks-and-mortar operations or huge P&A when you can mobilize your own network to generate sales? Not to mention search engine maximization or utilizing the incredible potential of software like Amazon and Netflix are employing that helps you find content you are interested in - filmmakers are still holding onto the idea of a theatrical run for the “cache,” as Danielle noted.

She is right on, but if you want to make living as a filmmaker, you need to sell your content. And lots of $20 sales fueled by a great festival run and successful online marketing seems like a better way to pay back investors and get money for your next project. Theatrical run will always be great because as Soderbergh notes, it’s a great date activity, and those films will be the cream of the crop (she says optimistically), but we all know that there is tons of great material that will never see the heralded theatrical run. Get smart! Make your next film by selling the one you have.