Video on Demand Allows Tribeca Festival to Go Beyond New York

See indie films in your living room at the same time festival-goers do

Video on-demand remains, more than a decade after its invention, a frustratingly immature platform though which to watch films. But since 2010, the Tribeca Film Festival has been creating an online experience that allows people far from lower Manhattan to enjoy an online experience that approximates the experience of actually be here. Who knows, maybe someday the major studios will take a lesson.

While Tribeca opened Wednesday night with a screening of "Five-Year Engagement" at the Historic Ziegfeld Theater, there already a slate of films being released on the festival website available for viewers from around the globe, and there's always something to watch.

"We promote it as a festival experience year-round," explains Todd Green, general manger of Tribeca Film, whose responsibilities includes managing their various platforms, including vide on-demand. "So we source films from all over the world, but over half of our films from any given year will be from the Tribeca Film Festival…. You're gonna get not only the film, but you're gonna get a few pieces of short-form content—director's interview, in some cases it'll be red-carpet footage from the festival."

Green admits that there's a stigma to VOD, similar to the way people react the phrase "direct-to-video," and he understands that for a lot of filmmakers, the big screen is the ultimate goal. But like a lot of problems, Green says there's a simple solution.

"Economics—for the filmmaker it's economics. For the consumer, I think it's just becoming aware of, Boy, you know, I can see a film, in a lot of cases with us, during the same window as the theater."

Once filmmakers realize they can have their movie just a few thumb twitches away from 40 million couches across the country, they get a lot more enthusiastic about the format. And for most smaller films, while a theatrical release is the dream, the reality is that a TV is a perfectly acceptable way to view a film, especially with the technological advancements in home video equipment.

"As people put more and more investment into their home video systems, as they improve on their televisions and sound systems and all that, it really starts to become even more powerful, because they're gonna understand that they can really have so many choices of content," says Green.

Among the innovations people like Green are bringing to marketing and release strategy is making films available online one the same date that they appear in theaters. This year people movie lovers will be able to see four films from this year's festival (of which NBC 4 New York is a sponsor) on the same day the first screen in New York: the French-Canadian crime thriller "Sleepless Night"; the romantic comedy "The Giant Mechanical Man," starring Jenna Fischer, that was written an directed by her husband Lee Kirk; "Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story," a documentary that follows up on an NBC News special from the '60s and the effect it had on the life and family of one of the outspoken subjects; and "Death of a Superhero," starring Andy Serkis as a therapist trying to help a teen come to grips with his terminal cancer.

While Tribeca and other distributors are embracing the VOD technology with both arms, the major studios have struggled to navigate this new world and still make decent box officer returns.

"There's a lot more at stake (for the big studios), quite frankly, to take a leap of faith and try to experiment," concedes Green. "But I think the industry as a whole is going to get there…it's inevitable, the consumer is just going to demand it."


The Tribeca Film Festival runs from April 18 to 29.

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