Hulucination- In The Darkness: Hulu’s First Long Tail Movie
By Chadwick Matlin
At what point does a movie stop being a movie? In the Darkness, Hulu’s first fictional “movie,” which had its online premiere last week, may not qualify. Darkness is 60 minutes long, was shot in five days, stars no-name actors, and for its first four weeks will be distributed only online.
Whatever it is, In the Darkness shows us yet another possible future for entertainment: one where movies turn the Web into their personal theaters. As usual, we can blame this new business model on the financial crisis. Darkness’ producers—a gang of relative newbies—originally wanted to make a bigger, more costly film. But that required raising funds as the financial system teetered, which happened to be precisely when no one was eager to donate to pet projects. So the producers scrapped the big-film idea, narrowed their scope, and came up with In the Darkness, a movie that was cool enough to merit making, but small enough to merit a different distribution method.
The movie’s plot is not as revolutionary as its business model. Two kids get killed in the high, lonesome hills, and detectives investigate. (Things, of course, are not what they appear to be.) But that’s all right , because the thing didn’t cost much money. One producer, Jeremy McGovern, declined to offer the budgeting details, but it’s not too difficult to tell the video was inexpensive. Not because it looks cheap—the shots and sets actually do look reasonably cinematic—but because there aren’t any locations. Nearly the whole video takes place in a scorched nature reserve somewhere in the mountains, an aid to the video’s aesthetics and economics.
And if you’re distributing a movie online, you’ve got to keep costs down. For now, Darkness’ only revenue stream is through Hulu’s advertising. McGovern wouldn’t share how much revenue they need to take in to be profitable, nor how much of the revenue goes to Hulu and how much to the filmmakers. (On the TV side, it’s estimated Hulu gets 30 percent to 50 percent.) Hulu did, though, specify the number of ads that had to be in the video based on a formula of a certain number of ads per hour of content. (Darkness has six ad breaks.) The Darkness crew wasn’t allowed to increase the ad load to try to make more money. Hulu, as the distributor of a film without corporate backing, was largely in control. (The producers were able to negotiate a certain amount of promotional love from Hulu. In the contract was a stipulation that Hulu promote the film on its movie channel page.)
Just because the movie’s model is new doesn’t mean it will work. On top of the Hulu cut, theDarkness producers have to also split their ad revenue with IndieFlix, a distribution companythat helped them get Darkness on Hulu in the first place. A few weeks from now the movie becomes available on DVD and iTunes, where it’s possible the film will make more money than on Hulu. Does that mean the producers should continue to encourage people to watch for free, or do they point them toward the more permanent—and profitable—options? It’s a question symptomatic of a film—and a media—industry that is uncertain about the way forward. Does it care more about audience or profitability?
In that sense In the Darkness is a typical movie. And yet Darkness can’t in good conscience be called a “movie”—it’s too short. But that doesn’t make it a TV show—it’s too standalone. It’s far too long to be a digital short. And “Web video” does a disservice to a work that carries a certain amount of narrative gravitas. We can’t quite call it a “made-for-TV movie,” either—it wasn’t made for TV. It’s partially a “made for online” movie, but it’ll find an afterlife on DVD. Because it’s a derivative of things we’ve already categorized, the movie defies categorization.
Thus I propose that we call In the Darkness a “Long Tail movie.” Its creators are tossing it into the ether, hoping that it catches some buzz. If it does, ad revenue and maybe some DVD purchases will lead to a modest profit. If it doesn’t, it still has a chance to break even because it was made on the cheap. The idea of the Long Tail benefiting films isn’t new.Netflix (NFLX) is more or less based on that idea. But what makes In the Darkness different is that it was made exclusively for the long tail. It’s not benefiting from it after the fact. It may be short, it may be low-budget, and it may be digital, but it’s still a movie—a Long Tail movie.
Originally published on Tuesday, April 6, 2010 on The Big Money (www.thebigmoney.com)
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