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Every year for the last two decades, upstart film makers have journeyed to the Sundance Film Festival in the Utah ski village of Park City, clutching their short films or documentaries in hopes of enticing Hollywood to give them their Big Break. More often than not, the movies are quirky, weird, or just plain strange. And increasingly, they're finding their way on to the Internet, thanks to a growing band of Internet companies that come to Sundance in search of fresh content.
Nearly a dozen dot.coms have landed in Park City for the Jan. 20-30 event, attending hundreds of screenings in what has become the nation's leading film festival for independent movies. Last year, only one Net company, San Francisco-based AtomFilms, made the trek from Silicon Valley to the film festival -- where a future blockbuster called The Blair Witch Project was first shown and sold to a Hollywood studio. "The kind of directors who bring their films to Sundance bring the same kind of edgy films that play so well on the Internet," says Skip Paul, co-chairman and CEO of IFILM, which distributes films online as well as providing news and other information for filmmakers.
For dot.coms, the name of the game these days is attracting mass audiences. Restricted by current technology that makes downloading too slow to view longer movies, companies are instead hunting for bargains among more than 2,000 shorter films available for viewing at Sundance this year. None are likely to fetch anywhere near the $1 million that Blair Witch received last year from Artisan Entertainment. In fact, most go for as little as $500 a pop. But this year, dot.coms are offering the hot new currency: stock options in their companies.
SLEEPERS.
Stuart Acher hasn't yet recouped the $9,000 it cost him to make his short film, a sci-fi thriller called Bobby Loves Mangos, from the advance and royalties paid to him by dot.com AtomFilms. But the film is getting wide distribution, he says. AtomFilms not only distributes films on the web but also helps younger film directors distribute their films elsewhere, such as on airplanes or in shopping malls. This year, says AtomFilms Chairman Mika Salmi, the company is coming to Sundance to find new product as well as to sell films on behalf of its roster of filmmakers. Among the films AtomFilms is shopping at Sundance include sleepers such as Elevator World and The Hangnail.
Even Net companies that haven't fully launched their sites are scouring Sundance for content to put before their cyber-audiences. San Francisco-based clickmovie.com isn't yet ready to display its patented tranz-send broadcast technology, which it says enables Internet viewers to download full-length movies over traditional modems. Still, the company is hitting the streets at Sundance and may bid on some of the more than 1,000 full-length films that will be shown or available for VCR viewing.
And where do most of these films have their grand premieres? Check out the Atom Short Bus, a converted motor home that AtomFilms has decked out with its gold and black logo. Inside, aspiring filmmakers can escape the cold, have a drink, and make deals under racks of VCRs that await the next Quentin Tarantino.
Ronald Grover in Los Angeles EDITED BY DOUGLAS HARBRECHT
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