FILM FINANCING AND THE TUNNEL

5 September 2011 

Last Friday at AFTRS I had the privilege to hear from the team behind the feature film "the Tunnel", Australia's first crowd funded feature.  "the Tunnel" took on the interesting task of funding itself frame by frame.  By selling prints of individual frames from the the final film for $1 they were able to raise the money needed to get started, pushing through production as the rest of the money came trickling in.  The film was then released worldwide, for free.   They struck a deal with Bit-Torrent, and made the free download service their main release platform.  Simultaneously they released it on DVD with a standard distributor, sold an iPad app with the film and a load of extra features, and screened it on ABC's iView for a month.  Since the release they've screened in several theaters around the globe and are about to have the official US premiere at the upcoming Screamfest in LA.   Needless to say, there was a lot any film maker could learn from them.

One of the interesting things mentioned on the night revolved around the spike of interest they saw when they released their website.  As soon as it went live, they noticed a sharp spike of pageviews, a nearly vertical jump.  Frames sold quickly, and they raised a large portion of their initial budget in a very short period of time.  But then, the spike tapered off just as quickly.   They realized that they had a very narrow window of opportunity to maintain their audience, and instead of waiting until they had all their financing in place, they made the important decision to begin shooting the film on what they had.  This enabled them to immediately begin posting new content.  Interviews with the cast and crew, behind the scenes footage, film maker video blogs etc... By giving the newly won audience a reason to return to the site,  they began to regain the momentum needed to see the rest of the film financed.    Attention spans are terribly short online, but frequent, new, sharable content earns its audience.

Once the film was completed they were able to sell the rights to several small distribution channels, namely airlines, the ABC for it's online iView platform,  and the DVD rights.   These sales, in conjunction with the frames of the film sold to online fans have helped them nearly break even, and as of Friday the producers were confident that over the next few weeks the last of it would come in through frame sales online.   That means that Australia's first crowd funded feature will break even.  But can it be considered a financial success?  I would argue that it can.

The Tunnel will continue to make money through DVD and Blue Ray sales,  and it still stands to be distributed in theaters through more official channels as well.  But the most valuable asset generated by the Tunnel is it's the audience.  Merely by breaking even, the film makers have made themselves a success.  Any film maker without a following, who makes a film, breaks even, and retains a way to stay in touch with the audience can repeat the process on a greater scale.  It makes them  a viable investment as content producers.  It makes what they do sustainable, and that's something to get excited about.

All that to say, the Tunnel is just another example of how to work with the new landscape of distribution and content creation.    The doors are wide open!