What an indie movie deal means in the age of on-demand

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• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  Now: the changing world of making and distributing movies.

  Jeffrey Brown was at the Sundance Film Festival this week. And here's the second of two reports he filed from there, part of our ongoing series NewsHour Goes to the Movies.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  A world premiere at Sundance. Earlier this week, director Joe Swanberg got the red carpet treatment for his new film, "Digging for Fire."

  The 10-day gathering in the mountain resort town of Park City, Utah, is for those who make and those who love independent films, and it's still a touchstone for the health of the industry. It's a scene, all right, a place to see and be seen.

  But for Swanberg and other filmmakers, it's more than that.

• JOE SWANBERG, Director:

  Sundance is a market.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  Yes.

• JOE SWANBERG:

  I mean, I am here to sell my movie.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  Yes.

• JOE SWANBERG:

  I'm here to see other friends' films. I'm here to appreciate good art, but I'm here to sell my movie. It's a market.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  Just getting here with a film is a major achievement. For this year's festival, there were more than 2,300 dramatic film and 1,800 documentaries submitted. From those, 184 were accepted.

  A showing here is great. A launching from here is even better. That's because, while technology has made it cheaper and easier than ever to make a film, it's in some ways harder than ever to break through, to get people to see your film.

• CHRISTINE VACHON, Producer, Killer Films:

  I brought my first feature film here, "Poison" by Todd Haynes, 1991, I think, and it won the Grand Jury Prize.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  You won — you won the big prize.

• CHRISTINE VACHON:

  And I was, like, how hard can this be? And since then, I have come back with 21 movies, and we have never won again.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  You started at the top and then…

• CHRISTINE VACHON:

  Total deep dive down.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  Christine Vachon can afford to laugh. One of the co-founders of Killer Films, she's a veteran producer of dozens of small-scale movies and number that reached larger audiences and garnered awards, including "Boys Don't Cry" and "Still Alice."

• CHRISTINE VACHON:

  We also have to start focusing on, well, what is the right platform?

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  At Sundance the other day, she took part in a panel on a major topic of discussion here, the rise of video-on-demand platforms, pushing many new films straight to a small screen, including, of course, television.

  She told me it's a profound shift, forcing people like her to rethink their own identities.

• CHRISTINE VACHON:

  One of the things that I say, for example, when I talk to young filmmakers — and I have to say this to myself, too — like, maybe it's time we stopped calling ourselves filmmakers. Maybe it's time to start calling ourselves content makers or storytellers, because there is — just to say a filmmaker limits the expectation to a certain length and a certain expectation of a theatrical release, for example.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  Yes, like it's going into the movie theater.

• CHRISTINE VACHON:

  That's right.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  Yes.

• CHRISTINE VACHON:

  And now…

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  Which is not the case anymore.

• CHRISTINE VACHON:

  Well, it's not the case for many, many stories. And the fact is, that doesn't make them any less compelling.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  Think of your own viewing habits. Are you still going to the movie theater as often as you used to, or are you watching more on demand, at home on your TV set or on one of the many other screens you might own?

  The answers to those questions are providing some new challenges and opportunities for filmmakers.

• KERRY TRAINOR, CEO, Vimeo:

  The next challenge is, how do I distribute it? How do I get it to audiences? And what video on demand provides is an open platform for any filmmaker to sell a video anywhere in the world for any price they want and have it to be consumable on any device.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  Harry Trainor, CEO of the video-sharing Web site Vimeo, thinks the new on demand model can work for filmmakers who don't need a pass audience.

• WOMAN:

  As more creators came to video, more viewers came to watch them.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  The key, he says, is to reach the right audience, one willing to pay for digital content they can access when and how they want.

• KERRY TRAINOR:

  When you're selling a piece of work, it really only takes tens of thousands of buyers for selling something at $5 or $10 to make hundreds of thousands of dollars.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  At Sundance, Vimeo announced a new partnership with Indiegogo, a crowdfunding Web site that allows filmmakers to raise money from individuals, targeted funding, targeted distribution, direct from and to the consumer.

  Indiegogo CEO Slava Rubin says it's an exciting new world, but hardly the end of the challenge.

• SLAVA RUBIN, CEO, Indiegogo:

  It's easier than ever to become a filmmaker. That doesn't mean it's easier than ever to become a sustainable filmmaker. Getting the attention, being able to monetize is still challenging.

  We live in a world of Twitter and Snapchat, where people need things quickly and the next story. And you need to really engage with your audience and create relationships. Don't just think about it as one-off film, one-off short. Think about it as you're creating a relationship with your audience and you're creating a career.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  Or in the case of the Swanbergs, two careers. Director Joe Swanberg, who we met earlier, is the husband of director Kris Swanberg, who had her own film premiering at Sundance.

  These two are used to the indie life.

  So, you can make a film for under a million dollars?

• KRIS SWANBERG, Director:

  Yes. I have only made films for — both of us have only made films for under a million dollars.

• JOE SWANBERG:

  Yes, we have made a lot of films for under $10,000.

• KRIS SWANBERG:

  Yes.

• JOE SWANBERG:

  You can — these days, you can make a film for almost nothing.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  Joe Swanberg, just 33 years old, has had the longer career, turning out film after film, mostly shot in their home city of Chicago, and sometimes literally in their home, where the movie "Happy Christmas" takes place.

  Kris Swanberg's new film, "Unexpected," is her third, a story of a Chicago high school teacher — Kris was once a teacher herself — who finds herself pregnant at the same time as one of her students.

  In just thinking about the economics of the independent filmmaking, you're two-income independent family, aren't you?

• JOE SWANBERG:

  Yes, to some degree.

  I have historically taken all of the money that I have made off of a movie and then invested it in the next movie.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  You have?

• JOE SWANBERG:

  So we're more like a two-gambler family than a two-income family. I mean, it's really — it's a tricky industry, and it's an industry that pays off if you invest in yourself. But that payoff comes in weird ways and over a long period of time.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  And there's a third member of the team, son Jude, who's now appeared in two of dad's films.

• JOE SWANBERG:

  I always say, like, if we owned a flower shop, he would start working the flower shop when he was 12. Yes, Jude's part of the traveling gypsy pack of independent filmmakers.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  Two filmmakers, two films at Sundance, but what happens to those films afterwards?

  Kris Swanberg knows what she wants, even if, these days, it sounds almost quaint.

• KRIS SWANBERG:

  I made the movie to be seen in a theater. I would love for that to happen. It's important to me. And I think it legitimizes the film, and I also think that it — it finds a new — a theater-going audience that doesn't necessarily buy things on VOD.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  Producer Christine Vachon works at a higher dollar level, but she too is mindful of holding down costs as the economics of the business change.

• CHRISTINE VACHON:

  There used to be a kind of character-driven drama, right? And those are always the toughest, because they have to be really good to work. Those used to get made pretty routinely, either independently or by some of these, you know, independent studio operations, at like $8 million to $10 million, right?

  And now we're making them routinely at $3 million to $5 million.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  That's a big — that's a big downward push, yes.

• CHRISTINE VACHON:

  Yes.

  We have this joke that five is the new 10, that three is the new five, one is the new three.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  Yes. Yes.

• CHRISTINE VACHON:

  You get — you know, hilarious.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  Less money per film, but more players, including now Netflix and Amazon, and more options for distribution. Somehow, many independent filmmakers make it work.

  And late today, Joe Swanberg learned that Orchard Films had purchased his movie for a theatrical release in North America for $2 million.

  Meanwhile, Kris Swanberg is still waiting to hear the fate of her film to see if it comes to a theater or a smaller screen near you.

  From the Sundance Film Festival, I'm Jeffrey Brown for the PBS NewsHour.