By Colin Cairnes – Wednesday 14 August 2013

There’s a school of thought that widespread piracy can be to the filmmaker’s benefit
but that seems driven by a defeatist attitude that says the pirates/downloaders are
always going to be one step ahead with the technology and their ability to skirt the
law, so why bother fighting it?

I’ll admit [brother] Cameron and I were both shocked and flattered to learn that tens
of thousands of people illegally downloaded our film 100 Bloody Acres.

But if we’re serious about the sustainability of independent filmmaking in a very
tough environment, we need to deal with the issue that a large portion of a film’s
potential audience believe it’s fine not to pay for your film. The “try before you buy”
claim of some who download seems disingenuous… while no doubt some people
might go off and “do the right thing” when the opportunity arises (and questions of
timing and accessibility are key considerations in looking at solutions), why would
they when there is so much more product waiting to be consumed?

The ultimate impact to the people who have downloaded an indie film (in our case
35,000+ people) is that they are inadvertently compromising opportunities for the
filmmakers to make another film. Downloaders may have enjoyed the film, shared it
with their networks, and might even be looking forward to the next one, but in
denying the film significant revenue, they may in fact be helping to create an even
greater risk-averse approach amongst investors. This in turn could limit the volume,
and perhaps more importantly, the diversity of independent and genre fare available
to audiences.

Future investors may look at the box office results of an independent film and
wonder if certain filmmakers and genres are really worth investing in. Grand ideas in
circulation like “wow, they were downloaded so many times that they must be
popular and people must like their film” hold little water in the world of those who
decide what gets supported.

This is a cultural, generational issue, exacerbated by, and tangled up with, problems
in the way that the industry handles its product. As an industry, we’ve been slow to
respond, but it’s not too late; we have to tackle these issues, for the survival of the
independent scene in particular. Films like ours that rely on building word of mouth
are the ones whose potential margins are the easiest to erode.

Just because the activity has been apparently normalised, doesn’t mean it’s right.

Maybe we can engage with that “lost” audience, find out how it likes to consume film
and how we can bring them back into the paying fold. Clearly a cinema release is not
the be all and end all now. That will mean filmmakers, distributors, exhibitors and
audiences trying to understand each others’ needs and habits, and all making some
compromises.

There’s been a bit of talk lately about theatrical windows and how limited release
films with little advertising spend, such as the one we made, might benefit from
substantially closing that gap, and we agree that the current system is totally
outmoded for a film like ours. We know there are people out in the suburbs or in
regional areas who have downloaded the film because there was no other way of
seeing it, although their inner city cousins may have had access to a single screen
(assuming they knew it was playing).

The current situation in Australia is a relic from a pre-YouTube, pre-bit torrent past,
where there were more screens devoted to alternative product, and the pirating of
VHS and DVDs may have existed, but was a pretty labour intensive and more easily
investigated crime! What used to be arthouse or alternative cinemas are playing the
same Hollywood product you see in the shopping centre multiplexes, and that’s a
reasonable business decision.

But it means we’ve given people another excuse to illegally download films like ours
because they’re harder than ever to see the “old school” way. Filmmakers working
with lower budgets and P&A spends are screwed if they get caught up in the dated
model we have now. So we need to either fix that release model so that it offers scope
for ALL films to find their audience and make everyone a buck, or to join with fellow
filmmakers and other lateral thinkers to create a new model.

Colin Cairnes
Co-Director/Writer, 100 Bloody Acres