Independent Film is any film not produced by a major studio. Some are large budget and some are small budget. Clerks was produced for only 27,000 dollars on credit cards and was sold to Miramax for 1.5 Million Dollars. One film that played a huge role in the development of smaller budget films is sex, lies and videotape.

The film was written by Soderbergh in eight days on a yellow legal pad during a cross country trip (although, as Soderbergh points out in his DVD commentary track, he had been thinking about the film for a year).

Soderbergh's commentary also reveals that he had written Andie MacDowell's role with Elizabeth McGovern in mind, but McGovern's agent disliked the script so much that McGovern never even got to read it. Laura San Giacomo who was represented by the same agency had to threaten to leave that agency in order to be able to play Cynthia. Soderbergh was reluctant to audition MacDowell but she surprised him, getting the role after two extremely successful auditions. The role of John would have been played by Timothy Daly, but delays in completing the financing for the film led to Peter Gallagher getting the role instead.

sex, lies and videotape is important in film history for making independent film a widely known genre. In his book Down and Dirty Pictures, Peter Biskind explains that the unprecedented international success of this low-budget film was instrumental in the beginning of the 1990s independent film boom. The film is also important for launching the career of Steven Soderbergh, who became a recognized director of both mainstream and arthouse films, and for launching or boosting the careers of many actors. Prior to this picture, leading lady Andie MacDowell was principally known as a fashion model whose entire performance in Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes had been dubbed over by Glenn Close. The film was also significant in that it featured James Spader playing the sympathetic protagonist, as in many of his past films he was best known for playing the role of the villain (in particular Endless Love, Pretty in Pink, and Less Than Zero).

The following was announced this past week in regards to the original film:

Park City, UT—Sundance Institute announced today that Steven Soderbergh's sex, lies, and videotape (1989 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award Winner) and Wendell B. Harris's Chameleon Street (1990 Sundance Film Festival Jury Prize Winner) have been selected for the Festival's From the Collection screenings. Each year the Festival presents two retrospective screenings of influential feature-length films from the Sundance Collection at UCLA, paying tribute to significant works in the history of independent film. The series reflects Sundance Institute’s commitment to collect and preserve independent films for contemporary and future audiences. Celebrating its 25th year, the 2009 Sundance Film Festival runs January 15-25, 2009 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden, and Sundance, Utah.

sex, lies, and videotape / U.S.A. 1989 (Director/Screenwriter: Steven Soderbergh)—Steven Soderbergh's ground-breaking debut film about a man who films women discussing their sexuality, and his impact on the relationship of a troubled married couple. The Oscar-nominated film won the Audience Award at the 1989 Sundance Film Festival and the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. The film is credited for its pivotal role in revolutionizing the independent film movement in the early 1990s. In 2006, sex, lies, and videotape was added to the United States National Film Registry as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." Cast: James Spader, Andie MacDowell, Peter Gallagher, Laura San Giacomo.

The producer credited with helping to launch the careers of Vincent Ward and Jane Campion says he would sell his films for $2 on the internet if it would get them to fans when they wanted them.

John Maynard wants New Zealand to pioneer an iTunes-like system for movies - getting films out quickly and cheaply on the internet to stop people turning to illegal downloads.

The Australasian producer, who has worked on two movies each by Ward and Campion, said the growth of iTunes had slowed illegal downloads of music. This week he told the Screen Production and Development Association (Spada) conference New Zealand could lead the world by adopting a similar model for films.

"It could happen in New Zealand - it's one of the few places in the world I know that can change very, very quickly culturally," he said. "I would rather sell my movies for $2 a download and make it available to its audience" than have people steal them.

In April, the Motion Pictures Association representative in New Zealand - Tony Eaton of the New Zealand Federation Against Copyright Theft - recommended Hollywood studios create a New Zealand website for legally downloading movies to reduce internet piracy.

Yesterday, Mr Eaton told the Spada conference that more than a third of the $6 billion film studios lost to piracy in 2005 was from illegal internet downloads.

He said the new James Bond film Quantum of Solace had been illegally downloaded 3.2 million times - before its New Zealand release.

Until recently, the federation's focus has been on pirated DVDs. Demand for movie downloads in New Zealand has been stunted by slow broadband speeds. But it is expected to increase when broadband gets faster.

Sony Pictures New Zealand general manager Andrew Cornwell said music downloads were easier to sell because they downloaded much faster than films.

There is a huge battle brewing between film producers, ISP's, Copyright Law and the consumer. Hopefully, the consumer will win.

For many North Americans, Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire will be the first slice of cinema sampled from the location of the world’s largest film industry.

The city formerly known as Bombay, India – Mumbai - is home to Bollywood, a massive film industry that cranks out twice as many films annually as Hollywood. But it is only courtesy of a 52-year-old Englishman that a Mumbai movie is finally connecting with the average North American movie fan, via film festival acclaim, critical raves and growing Oscar buzz. "[Mumbai] is just coming at you the whole time and you can't control any of it," says Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle of the world’s fifth most populous metropolitan area during a recent interview with FilmStew in San Francisco. "You can try. You can futilely try to control it and you'll end up with rubbish." "What you've got to do is just embrace how out of control it is and how impossible it is apparently to find a pattern in anything, but if you do trust it, there is a pattern there," he continues. "It does work. Against all the odds, it does work and you will find it eventually. The country gives it to you back eventually.” “You start work, and you think, 'We're never going to get this. We're never going to get anything done today.' By 4 o'clock in the afternoon, you've got everything you've ever wanted."  


The story of a teenager from Mumbai's slums who makes the most of an appearance on the Indian edition of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, Boyle's heartfelt drama (co-directed with local Loveleen Tandan) has been creating a stir ever since its world premiere at August's Telluride Film Festival. It went on to win Audience Awards at the Toronto International, Chicago and Austin Film Festivals and has been nominated for six British Independent Film Awards, including Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Independent Film. Harrow native Dev Patel, who received a British Independent Film Award nomination for Most Promising Newcomer, plays Jamal, the 18-year-old accused of cheating when he gets to within one answer of winning the quiz show. Boyle's original plan was to cast all of his actors in India, but he ran into trouble when it came to casting Jamal. Not that the young Indian actors he saw weren't good actors. "But they are all built like bodybuilders," Boyle reveals. "If you want to get on in Bollywood, you have to look like a hero. You've got to be able to take the shirt off and kind of like dance in the waterfall in Switzerland. They all looked wrong. I didn't want anybody that looked like that." It was Boyle's 17-year-old daughter who clued him to Patel, a co-star on a favorite TV show, the British series Skins. "Dev plays a comic character in it. He was good and he looked dead right for me. He was kind of nothing looking, not particularly handsome, a bit scrawny, and I kind of liked that look. And I met him, and he was cool," Boyle recalls. In the film, Jamal faces arrest and even torture when the powers that be decide that there is no way that an uneducated Mumbai "slumdog" could possibly know so many correct answers. The only way to clear himself is to tell his life's story, the source of his knowledge springing directly from hard experience. It was those twin conceits of the game show and personal history revealed and taking on nearly epic proportions that enthralled Boyle when he first read Beaufoy's screenplay. "I love the idea of India, that it was portrait of India that was clearly changing,” he explains. “It’s such an extraordinary culture and history and yet it's clearly changing all the time. Those are things I responded to, that I jumped at." "I've always wanted to make a film about seeing a person age," he adds. "Normally, it's done, they're 80 and they're on their deathbed and they're reminiscing, and they're trapped by their memories really in a way. But he's 18 and he's got a fistful of memories, and they set him free really, because he's got his whole life in front of him really. I loved that fact, that was quite kind of radical, and I thought, quite cool. I'd never seen that before."

A growth in infrastructure is also fueling the acceptance of small budget films
Written by Gouri Shah

Walk into any multiplex today and chances are, a majority of the films being played out on those screens are small budget films featuring new talent. Whether it is the hilarious comedy about non-resident Indians called Loins of Punjab, thriller Johnny Gaddaar featuring newcomer Neil Nitin Mukesh, films such as Bheja Fry and Life in a Metro, or internationally acclaimed films such as The Namesake—industry experts say it is clear that audiences are developing a sensibility for small, independent films.

The box-office takings aren’t bad either: Madhur Bhandarkar’s Traffic Signal, which cost Rs5 crore to produce, made Rs15 crore at the box office, says an industry analyst. Right on cue, some film production houses are setting up separate divisions or companies under the parent brand to work on small budget projects. These have budgets less than Rs5 crore, and are generally less dependent on commercial success than mainstream Bollywood films.

“Today, production houses don’t have a choice but to start looking at small budget films or independent films. With actors turning producers, producers are now looking at lesser known names and smaller projects as an effective way to keep the ball rolling,” said Taran Adarsh, trade analyst, and editor of Trade Guide, a film business weekly. Top Bollywood actors such as Shah Rukh Khan, Juhi Chawla, Aamir Khan, Arjun Rampal, Ajay Devgan and wife Kajol have set up film production houses of their own. But why would studios set up separate divisions for budget films? Industry experts say there are several reasons ranging from de-risking their portfolio and clarity in brand strategy, a shift to large studio formats, to ensuring the inflow of new talent. They are also using high-content “art” films as an inroad to the international awards scene and markets beyond non-resident Indians.

“Today, with multiplexes, these small budget films can actually be made, and can be given a theatrical release to audiences with a growing sensibility for such work,” said Siddharth Roy Kapur, executive vice-president, marketing, UTV Motion Pictures.

These projects have a longer shelf life compared with bigbudget films, where the opening week is extremely crucial. “So, you could release a few prints first and the perception created by running full house for the first few weeks is extremely effective. Buzz is built purely on word-of-mouth,” said Navin Shah, chief executive officer, P9 Integrated Pvt. Ltd, which has a separate unit, P9 Searchlight, for small budget films.When it comes to selling an independent or small budget film, it’s vital to work smart. “You are catering to a discerning audience and, more often than not, (are on) a modest marketing budget,” said Shah. His company, which was responsible for marketing Traffic Signal, sponsored T-shirts with the logo ‘Traffic Signal’ for a large group of traffic cops running the Mumbai Marathon early this year.

There are two revenue streams for both big and small budget films: theatrical—through the number of prints sold—and non-theatrical—comprising home DVDs, satellite rights, DD telecast rights, etc. The only difference is that the territories and rights for big budget films are much larger. They also have additional streams of revenue comprising music rights, downloadable properties such as wallpapers, ringtones, music and international releases which are very rare for small budget films. Still, small is clearly getting big in filmdom.