GreenCine Thinks
Outside the (mail)Box A conversation with Jonathan Marlow, Director of Content Acquisitions for VOD pioneer GreenCine
By Annie Young Frisbie
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 their 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.”
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.
“We
are more concerned with the films themselves
than the methods of delivery.
”
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 handheld 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.
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?
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.
