Paul from Hot Aches posted some news last week about his plan for his latest film Odessey. As well as realise it onto DVD he is premiering the film at the works and across the interweb free of charge for ten days from 10th November. It is a really brave step forward, but I think in the long run he could potentially change the way that film are financed.
The reason I think this is that take red bull and felix baumgarten, he had 8 million LIVE view on the internet. Thats live views, after that there were hits from YouTube and global news that was dominated by this. Whilst I don’t think he will get 8 Million viewers in those first ten days of free downloads. I imagine it could be counted in the tens of thousands, who knows he might reach hundreds of thousands.
Each of those viewers will be a climber, so imagine the nbext time he makes a film and turns to sponsors and says, I want to make a film that is free for download, its going to include four or your sponsored climbers. My last film got x thousand viewers. What is that worth to you as a sponsor? For the big companies the like of The North Face, Berghaus, Mtn Equipment, Mtn Hardware it must sure be worth more than a few thousand pounds. Given that Berghaus recently not only made adverts for cinema but TV as well, and TV adverts just for the air time don’t come cheap. Hit up a couple of other sponsors for slightly less and what you have is a way to fund films. Sell a Blu-ray version for the ultra hi-def fiends and the future is intersting.
Then again it might just be an experiment to see if he can get more sales.