Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 26, 1994 TAG: 9403260109
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID REED ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE LENGTH: Medium
"The emerging technologies are going to change film production and distribution pretty radically by the turn of the century," Michelle Brannigan, director of Virginia's Center for Media and Culture, said Friday.
Bell Atlantic is experimenting with videos on demand in Fairfax County; and the Internet, a worldwide computer network, recently offered its first film for people with advanced computer hardware and telephone line connections.
But independent filmmakers attending a conference sponsored by the center said they are unlikely to get much more exposure or make more money when people tap into the new technology.
The tolls may be too high for independent filmmakers to get on, said Steven Ross, whose documentary about the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike, "At the River I Stand," was shown during the conference.
"The second the new highway gets built, and you're poor and you've got your old jalopy, you're not allowed to get on it," Ross said.
Ross said the documentary, which cost $100,000 to make, was shown on public television and made available to schools and libraries. But moving from nontheatrical distribution of video to home video would cost about $60,000 to buy the copyrights to music and news footage.
Ross said independent film production will become less expensive with the new technologies, such as video compression where images and sound can be tightly stored, transported and then blown up to their original size.
Paul Wagner, who premiered his documentary, "Out of Ireland," at the conference, said cable television has helped independent filmmakers.
But Wagner said, "We live in a mass society. Whatever programs get mass promotion and mass distribution are the kind of films that will be seen by the most people. The economics are always going to be thin."
The introduction of television and then cable television really did not help independent filmmakers, who were in their heyday when there were only 16-millimeter films, said Morrie Warshawski, an arts consultant.
Warshawski, author of the 1994 book "Shaking the Money Tree: How to Get Grants and Donations for Film and Video," said independent filmmakers will continue to be "eaten up by commercial concerns" unless they get their own publicly backed channel.
by CNB