Tribeca launches Web site for digital transfers

Reframe cuts production, distribution prices for fledgling filmmakers

By Danny King -- Video Business, 6/11/2008

JUNE 11 | New York’s Tribeca Film Institute this week launched a Web site where fledgling filmmakers and rights holders to rare or educational movies can digitize and sell their content at reduced prices. Tribeca also has enlisted Amazon.com to help process and distribute the films.

The service, called Reframe, lets filmmakers transfer videos to DVD or downloadable files for free while charging as little as about $400 for transferring a 90-minute film in 16mm format, a process that can cost thousands on the open market, said Brian Newman, CEO of the Tribeca Film Institute.

The non-profit Institute is starting the service as part of an effort to ensure that hard-to-find films aren’t relegated to a video format that a progressively smaller percentage of the U.S. audience is using. Newman estimates that about 10,000 movie, documentary and educational film titles will be available on the Reframe site within a year, with about a fifth of those either already available or in the process of being transferred.

“We felt like there are lot of films and videotapes that are disappearing from public use because they haven’t had the money to invest in digitalizing these products for DVD and digital downloads,” said Newman. “There are a lot of documentaries made and not all of them are hitting theaters.”

Among the fictional titles on the site are Richard Attenborough’s Oh! What a Lovely War, Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander and Sally Potter’s Orlando, which retail for between $12.99 and $26.99.

About a third of the films now available on the site are documentaries, including 2006’s Air Guitar Nation and 2003’s My Architect. Fritz Lang’s Metropolis is available for $27.99.

Filmmakers and rights holders, which will have a year to pay film-transfer fees, will make 40% of all revenue from DVDs and downloads that sell for $50 or less, with a sliding scale allowing for progressively higher royalty rates as the average selling price of the film increases, Newman said.

Tribeca’s partners in the project include the MacArthur and Warhol foundations, which contributed a combined $1.2 million, and Amazon.com, which will help process and sell the DVD and downloadable versions of the films with its CreateSpace and Unbox services, respectively.

The Institute is part of the Tribeca Film coalition co-founded by actor Robert De Niro. It puts on a New York film festival for independent movies each spring.

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