Internet | Reports

Dot-com Dinosaurs

1 Jan , 2001  

Written by Michele Meek | Posted by:

The rise and fall of several Internet entertainment sites have left some filmmakers wary.  Who can you trust?

Imagine if big Hollywood studios with monstrous budgets and sleek marketing engines suddenly started tumbling down, making way for the rise of indies. Sound like your dream come true? Well, perhaps now you might picture the glee of smaller-shop entertainment web sites observing the demise of the star-studded iCAST and Pop.com. Trust me, I should know. As the founder of two such sites (NewEnglandFilm.com and BuyIndies.com), I’m feeling that glee myself.

Those who were part of the web business in the early days (circa 1994 A.D.) will tell you: It wasn’t always like this. Once upon a time, Yahoo! was run by two guys out of their college computer center just (imagine this!) for fun. The Internet was truly a level playing field — where anyone could offer up his or her opinions, expertise or ravings for the world to hear.

Picture the shock, either accompanied by delight (read: IPO) or disgust (read: no IPO) of these early pioneers when they saw the mammoth that emerged next. The Internet began to show all the familiar signs of a blockbuster — the millions, the stars, the premieres. Like "Waterworld" or "Titanic" — it was oversold, over budget and overvalued. It got ugly.

But now it seems the party is over. So, now what? Who will survive the winding down of the web and who won’t? Who can filmmakers trust? And why did all the money, all the stars, and all the connections not help some of these infamous dot-coms?

Startup to Shutdown

Just a year ago, dot-coms were being formed at a breakneck pace. Now, they are disappearing at the same rate.

"One interesting example of this is the number of dot-coms covering the Sundance Film Festival last year," says FilmThreat Founder Chris Gore.  "There were 25 dot-com companies who sent journalists to cover Sundance in January 2000.  For the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, 18 of those companies no longer exist.  That is very telling."

Local hero David Wetherall led the go-broke-quick pack with iCAST, an entertainment portal complete with music, video, chat, etc. In September 1999, "Boston Magazine" wrote, "Wetherell is convinced that the Internet is finally poised to bury network television, and he’d like to be the one with the shovel." This over-confidence may in retrospect seem like a classic case of hubris, but at the time iCAST had it all — the financial backing of powerhouse CMGI, the marketing engine of AltaVista.com and Compaq, and the participation of some of the most talented players in the music and film industries. Yet, it just wasn’t enough.

"iCAST tried to do too much too quickly," says a former Producer at iCAST. "The site was never properly planned out because we were under enormous pressure to be one of the first to launch in the entertainment portal space." Ironically, one of the competitors iCAST was racing against time to beat out was Dreamworks’ much publicized, yet never launched Pop.com.

"The content they were trying to provide was interesting," says Boston filmmaker Ellie Lee. "But ultimately you need to have some scheme to become financially viable." Lee only found out she was featured on iCAST after hearing about it from a friend. "It’s strange that the most obvious things like contacting the filmmakers and using them to promote the site would be overlooked."

"The big companies are dying off like lumbering dinosaurs unable to support hundreds of employees and a mountain of overhead," said Gore, whose indie magazine FilmThreat.com has over 85,000 subscribers. "FilmThreat.com, run out of my home office, with just a few people, is able to go head-to-head with entertainment destinations supported by big bucks behind them because our content delivers a no-nonsense look at the world of movies.  The irony is that tiny sites like FilmThreat.com, Chud.com, Coming Attractions and Ain’t It Cool News, sites run by individuals out of their bedrooms will be the ones to outlive the well-funded, big entertainment dot-coms that are wasting money for a share of the internet audience."

Actually, it seems the whole point of the web seems to have been lost on some of these folks. You don’t have to be big, to look big on the web. For example, sites like NewEnglandFilm.com, FilmThreat and BuyIndies.com can be updated by one person, whereas sites like Playboy.com and IFilm.com require as many as 10 people to update their front page, according to Gore. "That’s just not smart design," as he puts it.

Don’t Get "Stuck" in the Web

By now, you’ve heard of filmmakers or you yourself have been a member of an entertainment site that’s gone under. So how can you better prepare yourself? How can you be sure to come out on top?

"The dot-com world can wait," says filmmaker Ellie Lee. "Build interest for your film via the festival circuit. Don’t be in such a rush."

Of course, the web does also offer a huge marketing potential for indie filmmakers — the key is to make sure that you are the one that ends up profiting from your film. Once you’re ready to jump into the dot-com world, Lee and others feel there are things you can do to protect yourself.

"Research what kind of financial compensation the various dot-coms offer and compare them," says Lauren Ivy Chiong filmmaker of "Holy Tortilla" and "Testament." "Some may offer no payment, but may be worth the exposure they offer. Others, like AtomFilms offer full distribution for your short film in venues beyond the Internet. AtomFilms also offers the most compensation, and is therefore the most competitive dot-com to secure distribution with."

Filmmakers seem fairly unanimous in certain pieces of advice for deal-making on the web:

  1. Get non-exclusivity. If you can, make the agreement a non-exclusive agreement that you can terminate within 30 days or some other reasonable period of time.
  2. For distribution deals, get a lawyer. If your film is getting ‘picked up’ for distribution from a dot-com, find out exactly how they’ll be promoting your film, how long the agreement is for, etc. In short, get a lawyer.
  3. Ask for a termination clause. During negotiations, ask for a clause to be put in the agreement that states the rights reverting to you if the company goes belly-up.
  4. Research the company. Talk to other filmmakers who’ve been working with the dot-com and find out what they think, how they’ve been promoted, etc.

As for who the survivors will be, I certainly have my own predictions. One thing I can tell you is the filmmaking community is cheering them on all the way. As Chris Gore says of AtomFilms and IFilm: "Both have shown an amazing commitment to supporting independent filmmakers and that is admirable.  I am rooting for both of them.  If they stay focused and lean, they’ll both be there."

[Note to readers: If you’ve been holed up in the editing room for the past six months, you can catch up on the dot-com disasters at www.fuckedcompany.com or "Industry Standard’s" Layoff Tracker (http://search.thestandard.com/texis/trackers/layoff).]