Another Filmmaker Purposely Releases Film Online For Free
from the getting-there dept
Michael Moore made some news by releasing his latest movie for free online, but some brushed aside that idea, since Moore is an activist and his message is more important than the business side of things. But it appears that other popular filmmakers are diving into free internet distribution as well. Wayne Wang, who has directed such well known movies as The Joy Luck Club, Smoke and Maid in Manhattan is releasing his entire latest feature-length film online for free. It’s not downloadable, but the entire movie is available at YouTube and embeddable. So grab some popcorn and watch it here:
Admittedly, this was an independent production done quickly on something of a whim, and Wang was worried about being able to get it going through normal distribution channels — but it’s yet another experiment to watch, as more movie makers realize that there’s more to making successful, money-making movies than getting people to pay for every single viewing.
Filed Under: business model, free, movies, princess of nebraska, wayne wang
Comments on “Another Filmmaker Purposely Releases Film Online For Free”
depressing, but good
The underlying story is a tad depressing, but its a good movie. Or at least the first 44:00 if it is. That’s when my youtube player stopped being able to download more of the file. I’ll e trying to finish watching the movie tomorrow.
This video is not available in your country. Yay…
(which is Canada… so, not that far)
too long...
It’s really awesome he put it out there like so, but the movie is too long to watch off youtube (for me anyway).
If you’re going to release it, go all the way and throw a torrent out there.
Moore is still a capitalist....
My understanding is the movie will only be available for free for a limited time and then people will have to purchase a DVD to watch it. That also explains why it is not downloadable. So much for free.
Re: Moore is still a capitalist....
Releasing movies for free doesn’t mean you’re not a capitalist or that you aren’t trying to make money. It is a different business model in which you use the free online copy as a way to get people to buy the other content rathr then getting them to pay to see it twice.
Re: Moore is still a capitalist....
Moore is still a capitalist….
Huh? Did anyone claim otherwise? Our argument has been that it IS capitalist to give away the content, as it maximizes other aspects of your business. So why would you even bring it up?
My understanding is the movie will only be available for free for a limited time and then people will have to purchase a DVD to watch it. That also explains why it is not downloadable. So much for free.
Huh? Again, you are very confused. The movie IS downloadable via BitTorrent.
Try again.
Moore is a Glutton
Moore should do a positive or entertaining movie for once – instead of downbeat, negative diatribes. He obviously likes to eat. So maybe a documentary about food or restaurants. Or if he still wants to keep with his “this is what’s wrong with America” style, he could use himself as an example of a fat self-centered ugly American and show everyone what’s wrong with that.
Re: Moore is a Glutton
“use himself as an example of a fat self-centered ugly American and show everyone what’s wrong with that.”
That would be a hit since a lot of Americans could relate to the subject matter…lol. I used to see myself that way until I decided to make a change and start shedding the blubber and toning up…much happier now 🙂
Holy Cow
Michael Moooo.
Am I being particularly dense...?
I read the summary and all the comments, yet I still have no idea what this movie is called! Everyone just refers to “…the movie…” – is that the official title, then?
not avaible in my country… *doesn’t understand why*.. 51st state and all.. *moans that proxy servers in america are slow*
“…not available in your country”
Is it available anywhere? If people in the USA and Canada can not access it and me over in Germany cannot either, could it be that the vid is only available in Asia?!? 🙁
Who cares what Michael Moore thinks?
I pinched off a large turd and named it Michael Moore.
Not in New Zealand
Is there any way to tell what region a youtube video is limited to, other than just trying to play it from random places and/or via random proxies ?
Re: Not in New Zealand
I googled today the expression “This video is not available in your country” and I found this thing that allows you to see in which countries a given YouTube video is not available.
Here’s a forum page:
http://hackpedia.info/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=7705&p=52326
Here, user1 says that he cannot view this video – not available in his country – and, by coincidence, it’s the same video that is discussed on this page:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKgbIz6CM_E
User2 gives him this url:
http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/rKgbIz6CM_E
I think it’s clear how you obtain from a video’s url the second url mentioned here (the last part is the videos name, actually – rKgb…etc)
I put that second url in the browser, click Enter, and it pops up a file save dialogbox, not a page in the browser. I clicked “Save”, and it’s a file about 8 kB, with no name extension – but actually, it’s a textfile, with HTML-like code in it. Use Notepad to open it. And inside, I found this code:
KY YE BY IO CX BS YT MO CM TJ TF PN TH KR MV KM SO GN AS RW ER SN MY BV TO TK KN IL ME AL MZ NO DJ UA AG SA FR UZ JM RS IM FK CH VE SJ PW CU MH BZ AZ NF KZ AN TR TC BT GI AT SG NG PT MQ MC SE RO NP HU LB GB CF AR MG PM GF VU LA LU FO CK AE SV ML AM CR GQ WS SZ ZM VA ZA GU CI LV HK MT UM KI MW NI WF LK PS VI TT MU BD DE FI OM LC DK CC TG SK GR IE GL EG PA VC LS IN MP SI SB RE TD PH HM AD UY UG MM FM KG CS CD PG PY ES DO GP JE PK HR PL GM ID SR GA CZ AI SD SL VG GT TV IT NU GW GG TP BH LT TZ BJ BA IQ KP DM BF MS BM BE TM NR DZ GH FJ JO CL BO CG NE CO CY BW SC GD KE PR MA CN QA IR CA AQ MK GE BN IS RU CV BB NL AW MN AU BR ST HN ET TW BI PE NC KW TN LY VN SM NA TL AO KH HT LI EC AF JP GS SY MX GY LR EE MR ZW NZ EH BG MD SH PF
So, there’s obvious, that these must be two-letter country codes, and there are a lot of countries “denied”. For instance, I can see: RU – Russia, RO – Romania, HU – Hungary, etc etc NZ (you), AU (your neighbours). I numbered the above country codes, and there are 244 countries there! I googled how many countries are in the world, and it seems that there are 245. So the one country that is not here is obviously the US. The only country where that video is allowed.
And this procedure mentioned here can be done with every video, to find out where is restricted in the world (and then we can deduce where is permitted). Yeah… No comment.
Re: Re: Not in New Zealand
sorry, the editor ate the html tags that I wrote in the answer. Here it is again:
((media:restriction type=’country’ relationship=’deny’)) KY YE BY IO CX BS YT ………………………….MR ZW NZ EH BG MD SH PF ((/media:restriction)) (I replaced the angle brackets with two parentheses)
The Video is down for me
With FIREFOX you can...
For those that don’t know, there are add-ons (download helper is the one that I use, it will even convert from flv to any type of format that you prefer) to Firefox that will allow you to download embedded videos from places like YouTube. Just thought I’d try to help you all out. 🙂
Still waiting...
Has anyone seen this yet? If so, can they poste the name of the movie so we who are denied watching it can at least look it up on IMDB and see what we’re missing.
Please…?
Re: Still waiting...
Has anyone seen this yet? If so, can they poste the name of the movie so we who are denied watching it can at least look it up on IMDB and see what we’re missing. Please…?
It’s in the link, but the movie is called “The Princess of Nebraska.”
country limits are a pain to everyone
This is not available in your country (Germany where I am located on business assignment). How sick I am of this comment. I watch the Daily Show and South Park online on their official sites and patiently through the advertisements. They even work (blackberry, suzuki, infiniti, south park dvd, etc). But when I try to watch Eureka (Sci-Fi, Sarah Connor Chronicles (Fox), or even Saturday Night Live, no dice: Not available in your country. So what do I do, go to peer-to-peer. And guess what, no ads what-so-ever. How is this in the content provider’s interest? Seems like a stupid and limiting policy for everyone involved.
Admittedly, this was an independent production done quickly on something of a whim…
You can probably redundantly add in “low budget” in that sentence. The CNN link had the director saying he had money left over from his previous independent movie (“A Thousand Years of Good Prayers”) and he used the leftover to shoot “The Princess of Nebraska” for youtube distribution.
Certainly you’d want to try this distribution experiment on a low budget film.
Compare this to Michael Moore’s “Slacker uprising” with an estimated budget of $2 million.
For reference, Michael Moore’s normally distributed movies had budgets like $4 million (“Bowling for Columbine”) to $9 million (“Sicko”).
Wayne Wang did “Maid in Manhattan” on a $55 million budget.
None
‘This Video Is No Longer Available’
…might aswell have torrented it. YouTube is crap anyway.
You CAN download this video
check out Firefox’s downloadhelper addon.
somebody in the US PLEASE PLEASE download this and upload the torrent so the rest of the world can watch it. we’ll be eternally grateful!!!
watch all movies
serious stuff… plaster topics are pretty sobering. In case you’re interested, here’s some neat information about watch all movies I found helpful