Joss Whedon Releases New Film On Demand

Rambo Tribble (1273454) writes "Popular director Joss Whedon has taken the film world by surprise by releasing his latest offering, 'In Your Eyes', available for download on the same day it premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. The new release comes from Whedon's own "micro studio", Bellwether Pictures, and is featured on Vimeo as a $5 rental, (free trailer). Whedon mused, 'It's exciting for us because we get to explore yet another new form of distribution — and we get $5.' Mr. Whedon has a history of pushing the delivery envelope, as with Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, in 2008."

Comments

Looking forward to it!

[Slartibartfast]

Joss Whedon is just such a fun filmmaker, even if he wasn't the director for this particular movie. Look at Buffy, The Avengers, even Cabin in the Woods, which was a thoroughly enjoyable re-imagining of the tired horror flick. And this one just so happens to be partially filmed in my town; I haven't seen the movie yet, but if you see a gas station with tanks right out of the 50's, that ain't no prop, it's for-real. (Though they stopped pumping gas five or six years ago due to the storage tank needing to be fixed up.) Really excited for this one.

Quality?

[mythosaz]

Can anyone comment about the quality of this film? Is this Cinema quality? Direct-to-Video? SciFi channel? YouTube?

While watching SHIELD the other week, they transitioned seamlessly to a Captain America commercial -- and I wondered if I was still watching SHIELD until 5 seconds later, a actual car crash stunt happened, and I knew the budget for the 30-second commercial was higher than the entire episode of SHIELD that I had been watching.

I'll gladly pay $5 to watch a new movie in this "new model" of distribution.

....but I won't pay $5 to watch something that should have been released to YouTube.

Louis CK

[future assassin]

Louis CK did pretty good with his pay what you want experiment and his own production. If could get a download that plays on any video player tha say day or even month after it came out of the movies I'd be all over it. The last time I went to the movies was to see The Road after spending nearly $50 between me and my son on tickets and popcorn I said fuck it this is enough and haven't been back. At $5 per movie Id' be buying prrtty much any good movies that comes out. Hell even for the price of the ticket $10+ tax each person I'd could buy 4 movies and enjoy them at home.

Re:Can I pay not to have to watch it?

[Princeofcups]

And he also has this weird fetish for 100-lb. waifs beating up hordes of 250-lb. guys that drives me crazy.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Careful!

[lennier1]

The movie was worth the five bucks to watch it on Vimeo, but their Flash-based player (no quick way to switch to an HTML5 version) resulted in such a choppy playback that the constant pauses and buffer attempts added another half hour to the whole thing.

Since it's a 95 minute movie we're talking about a quarter of the time being spent on just waiting for the fucking site to do its job again.
Before anyone asks: The 100MBit connection has never been a problem before and the necessary software was up to date as well.

Hope you'll have more luck. Except for the predictable end it's quite a nice movie.

Re:Can I pay not to have to watch it?

[NotDrWho]

Not so bad if that's your fetish. But it just drives me nuts. I prefer my heroines to be at least somewhat grounded in reality. Personally, I always thought the best sci-fi heroine was Ellen Ripley. She had real strength of heart. There was no need to write her as some kind of superman ninja who could alter the laws of physics to beat down everyone and everything around her.

Writing your heroine as a guy with tits isn't "empowering." It's just fucking lazy.

Well... no.

[Slartibartfast]

The *EQUIPMENT* has come huge lengths. You do, however, lack the writers, acting talent, stage hands, etc., etc., etc. If you give me eggs and cheese, I give you cheesy eggs. A French chef gives you a souffle. Having the ingredients is only the first step.

Re:Well... no.

[lagomorpha2]

You do, however, lack the writers, acting talent

Lacking those doesn't seem to have stopped a lot of big studios either.

Re:Well... no.

[NotDrWho]

Acting and lighting are what usually really give the no-budget indies away these days, not the FX. The acting, in particular, in most of these homemade movies is fucking godawful. Some things you just have to spend real money on. You can pirate a copy of After Effects, but you can't pirate a real actor.

Rent vs own

[Bram Stolk]

I do not like renting, I prefer to own.
Just put it up on AppleTV so it conveniently becomes part of my iTunes lib.
Also I don't have patience for sloppy flash based players.

Please justify $5 for one rental

[MetalliQaZ]

Dear Mr. Whedon,

Please justify the $5 cost to rent your film. I can rent your latest superhero blockbuster over the weekend for $2 from Redbox. I can own Louis CK's latest show forever for $5. Why is your content so much more expensive?

Thanks,
a fan