A conversation with Jonathan Marlow, Director of Content Acquisitions for VOD pioneer GreenCine
GreenCine is an online DVD Rent-by-Mail service and independent film distributor, with a large catalog of films available on your website as Video-on-Demand (VOD). In your own words, “GreenCine LLC (www.greencine.com) is the #1 shop and stop for film addicts, featuring one of the largest libraries of independent, international and documentary films in the world and exclusive interviews with the world's most influential filmmakers. GreenCine offers more than 30,000 films for rent through its award-winning DVD Rent-by-Mail service and over 10,000 titles available on-demand from its extensive VOD library from its own site and through its technology partners Akimbo, Google Video and others. Supporting one of the largest film communities on the Internet, www.greencine.com enables members to review and debate their favorite films and connect with other members with similar interests.” Originally appeared in April 2006 in the Zoom In email newsletter
Q. How did GreenCine get started?
A. GreenCine was launched in June 2002, primarily as a DVD Rent-by-Mail service. It was created by as a side-project of eLine, a San Francisco-based technology firm, and co-founded by Dennis Woo, GreenCine's Managing Partner. Our VOD service debuted in September-2003. We will introduce a long-awaited sell-through service in March.
Q. Why are DVD rental customers drawn to your site over Netflix, Blockbuster, or Walmart?
A. According to our customers, it is our selection (which, while slightly smaller than some of our competitors, is better focused on our areas of interest- independent, international, documentary, esoterica- and includes thousands of titles not available at other services). They also appreciate our articles, interviews and primers, which allow for the discovery of little-known films. Wal-Mart, furthermore, is no longer in the Rent-by-Mail space – we outlasted them (and about fifty other nascent Rent-by-Mail services).
Q. Did you have the same immediate success when you started offering VOD, or did it take time for users to get accustomed to watching movies online?
A. We launched our VOD service with only a dozen films, among them Ted Bonnitt's documentary Mau Mau Sex Sex. It was the first "watched" title of our VOD library and, similar to the Rent-by-Mail service, it occurred moments after we launched the service. We now have over 10,000 titles available on-demand – twice the number of titles available on CinemaNow and Movielink, combined.
Q. That’s an amazing number of VOD titles -- far more than I would have imagined. Is it fair to say that your Rent-by-Mail program has supported your venture into VOD?
A. It was initially believed, and I wager correctly, that it would be quite difficult to build a VOD-centric service that would've attracted much attention. Based on the lackluster results of the existing VOD-only services, the evidence seemingly proves this assumption.
Q. Do you premiere films on VOD? If so, how have they done?
A. A number of films, after ending their festival life, have surfaced on GreenCine. Generally, they perform quite well; several rank among the best-performing titles that we have. Given that they are unavailable elsewhere, this is not surprising. One of the initial reasons for introducing our Video-on-Demand service was to create a low-risk, low-cost avenue for film distribution, allowing well-known and unknown films to compete equally for the attention of potential viewers. In that way, we quickly increased our selection by offering titles that were not available in any format. This has allowed a number of rights-holders to make their films available without the investment of replicating thousands of DVDs.
Q. Do you see Rent-by-Mail continuing, or are you planning to move entirely to VOD?
A. With the introduction of sell-through [retail sales of DVDs], we will continue to support each avenue of delivery as long as there is interest from our customers to do so. In this way, we are completely "format agnostic." We are more concerned with the films themselves than the methods of delivery. However, it is clear that the Rent-by-Mail model will diminish as a force in the video rental business. One service is immediate, the other is time-deferred. Consumers will ultimately prefer the convenience of immediacy when a transparent PC-to-TV bridge appears in a majority of homes and the number of available mainstream titles significantly increases. Although Rent-by-Mail will suffer, physical video stores with sizeable libraries (such as Facets in Chicago, Scarecrow Video in Seattle, Le Video in San Francisco and Kim's Video in New York) will remain viable resources for hard-to-find titles.
Q. In the world of the bricks and mortar video store, independent stores are able to compete with the large chains by offering adult video content, which stores like Blockbuster will not stock. For many of these stores, it’s the only way they can turn a profit. Is this true of GreenCine, which offers an adult section called BlueCine?A. BlueCine contribute much less to the bottom-line than you might imagine. There is a great deal of competition in this space from adult-only sites. We are not known for our adult content and, therein, audiences do not tend to gravitate to our site for these films. The rental of these titles represents a small percentage of activity on the site.
Q. VOD is still in its infancy, and certainly falls into the category of a technology “hereafter devised.” Given that 10 years ago the idea of the portable DVD or the video iPod- in essence, movies you can hold in your hand- sounded like science fiction, what sorts of challenges is/will VOD face from unions and the government?
A. It is difficult to predict how the government will attempt to interfere with new forms of film distribution. The only thing definitive is that they will attempt to interfere in some way.
Q. Given that these new technologies will be affected by the lively debates in Congress over copyright law, what’s your opinion on the Sonny Bono Act?
A. I completely disagree with the repeated extensions to the Copyright Act. In short, I believe that it is ultimately harmful to our artistic community and contrary to the intentions of the Framers of the Constitution.
Since we continue to work directly with the copyright holders, changes to the Copyright Act honestly do little to impact our efforts. If, however, a flat 50-year amendment to Title 17 were to miraculously appear (an unlikely, but quite delightful, development), we would certainly have a remarkable increase in available VOD titles overnight.
Copyrights
The interests of cinephiles and studios are often at odds, and the Sonny Bono Act, which extends copyright protection means that many old, rare films will remain unavailable to the public until 2019 at the earliest. In the studio years, when directors and producers were employees of the studio, this means that the artists themselves, if still living might have little or no say in whether or not their films are distributed through a company like GreenCine, and the studios themselves might see no financial incentive in dusting off those prints and converting them to a digital format. And for independent filmmakers working in earlier decades, rights to their films might exist in legal limbo, meaning that for all intents and purposes they are not available for distribution, regardless of the filmmakers intent. If, for example, copyright law was simplified so that all works were subject to a flat copyright term (such as Marlow’s example of 50 years), this might re-empower both filmmakers and independent distributors to make rare cinematic gems available to the viewing public.
Q. What should filmmakers know about VOD that might affect their choices in terms of shooting format, story development, and casting?
A. I do not believe that is worthwhile for filmmakers to overly concern themselves with delivery methods when they are considering their various choices while producing a project. For VOD, these choices truly do not matter. The selection of a good script and remarkable cast is key regardless of where the film will be seen.
Q. Your VOD service is offered through Windows Media Player for streaming and as DivX for download. What plans do you have to offer your content on other codecs?
A. If there is a demand from our customers, we will add new codecs or revise the encoding specifications of the codecs already in use. Granted, the lack of reliable DRM (Digital Rights Management) plays a significant role in these decisions, which explains why we have been (as yet) unable to offer our titles in QuickTime or H.264/MPEG-4.
Q. How has customer participation shaped your business model and website?
A. Our customers contribute ratings, reviews and list for films in our catalog which, in turn, help other viewers determine the qualities (or lack-thereof) of films that might otherwise go unknown. As a discovery mechanism, this has proved useful for our content partners and our customers since it leverages one of the most positive aspects of the Internet. It serves as a great equalizer -- the under-$100,000 films and the over-$100,000,000 films appear with their own individual catalog pages for our members to compliment or criticize accordingly.
Q. What kinds of movies have done best on VOD? Worst? What accounts for the differences?
A. The same issues that govern theatrical or sell-through success similarly apply to VOD. If the film is written and/or directed by a moderately established individual, if it includes at least one familiar person in the cast, if it has collected some accolades at festivals or public screenings and if it is marketed in some fashion to promote a few of these attributes, it will perform well. If, instead, the film is written and/or directed by an unknown, includes no actors that are even remotely familiar, has never appeared anywhere else and is not marketed at all, it will likely perform poorly.
Q. What have been some of your GreenCine success stories?
A. Our effort to corner certain genres, such as the impressive MGE library of Polish films, five dozen exceptional Hong Kong titles from Tai Seng Entertainment and a variety of classic exploitation films from Media Blasters and ei Independent Cinema, has proved a successful strategy. We have also pursued an "auteurist" path and added a number of films by independent directors that we like, such as Hal Hartley, Caveh Zahedi and Jon Moritsugu. Expect more of the same in the months ahead.
Despite occasional distractions, Jonathan Marlow is a writer, producer, cinematographer, critic, curator and composer. He is currently the Director of Content Acquisitions for the independent film distributor GreenCine. Concurrently, Marlow consults for a handful of organizations devoted to the noble effort of film preservation and regularly hosts film screenings showcasing remarkable cinematic works otherwise unavailable on video, on-demand or otherwise.
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July 31, 2006 - 2:22pm
