Indies vs Studio films

[Flimmaker1473]

Which are better?

I have always felt that Indie films are better at this point. Most cases the director and producers pour all the money that they have into it so the only thing that matters is the story. And you have B listers who would normally play supporting roles in a Studio film get starring roles in Indie films (Radisha Jones and Andy Samberg).

Studio films can be great too. But you have the Michael Bays of the studio films who one job is to make a film that appeals to the masses that probably sucks. But will make $800 million.

 

[jax_rox]

There's really extreme ends of both spectrums.

There are some really profound and compelling studio films, and there are some really compelling and profound indie films.

There are some terrible studio films and there are some really terribel indie films. THe thing with studio films is, at least the bad ones generally have some kind of redeeming quality, even if it's only the fact that it is made well. In indies, you can have terrible movies that have such low budgets they weren't even made well.

Indies allow you a bit more creativity without the controlling hand of a studio, though taht said if you are at a certain level, you can be as creative as you want without fear of being controlled.

 

[rayw]

"Better" is a rather subjective term not easily quantified for apples to apples or dollars to euros or high school football to pro football comparisons.

Industry standard attempts to quantify the customer satisfaction with a film product FOR COMPARISON PURPOSES would be comparing:

• Worldwide Box Office Receipts (People vote with their dollars)
• Domestic Box Office Receipts
• Average Revenue per Theater (For comparing limited release films, like indie films, against wide release films, like studio films which pervasively have mandatory showing contracts with the major theater chain owners)
• Critic and (paying) Audience reviews (A film can be loved by one and not the other, or receive a lot of revenue but still disliked by the audience)

I've compiled a decent enough sampling of recent independent films, their theater showing counts, box office receipts, and critic & audience reviews, as well as having watched many of them myself (comments/remarks at the lower half of each spreadsheet.)

I've done my homework.

- 2010 Independent Film Distribution & Revenue Analysis: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AsBznn8D13zOdHh6cHJBMW5aQkZSMzZYR2V3VUxQVUE#gid=0
- 2011 Sundance Feature Film Distribution & Revenue Analysis: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AsBznn8D13zOdGlCeDRmWTFCYXJRWjJ3SUphZDNzMGc#gid=0

Objectively, I find studio products, marketing aside, to be consistently more entertaining per "batch" of a year's films. It appears the more experienced heads you get on a project the better the outcome because everyone sees what needs to be "fixed."
For every ten studio films two or three I find fairly entertaining - irregardless of box office receipts, which is most often correlated to marketing expenditures.
For every ten indie films maaaaaybe one will NOT be some exposé on dysfunction as entertainment (which I loathe.)

But... if slow, dry, long cuts of insufferable characters staring endlessly into nothing for time filler between time filler montage shots of leaves in the wind and empty streets to make a 30min film into a 110 minute film is what you like, then... indie is often the way to go!

 

[WalterB]

......................................
But... if slow, dry, long cuts of insufferable characters staring endlessly into nothing for time filler between time filler montage shots of leaves in the wind and empty streets to make a 30min film into a 110 minute film is what you like, then... indie is often the way to go!

Thanks for the idea!