Bicoastal/ international Propaganda Films has entered into a co-production and licensing distribution deal with Seattle-headquartered AtomFilms, a prominent firm in the online short film entertainment market. The alliance is the latest in a string of developments that extends the reach of the broadcast advertising community to the Internet market (SHOOT, 3/24, p.1).
Per the deal, Propaganda (which also maintains bicoastal/ international Satellite) and AtomFilms will co-produce short films proposed by directors, management clients and other talent from within the Propaganda ranks. The films will be distributed and spotlighted on a special section of AtomFilms. com. The Propaganda portion of the site is expected to launch in the next couple of months.
The deal will result in the production of between 10 and 20 short films annually, with budgets ranging from "several thousand dollars to considerably more," according to Propaganda COO Trevor Macy, who added that a large portion of the films, though not all, will be shot on digital video. The association will also give Propaganda a link to up-and-coming directors whose shorts are licensed by AtomFilms independently of its relationship with Propaganda.
"Our focus is to make the creative vision of Propaganda filmmakers available to a much wider audience," said Propaganda president Rick Hess. "AtomFilms is the perfect partner for this."
The first of the co-productions is expected to be Violet Crumble by director Morgan J. Freeman, which will be shot within the next 30 days. Macy said Propaganda is in the process of "developing a relationship" with the director, whose feature debut, Hurricane Streets, won the directing and audience awards in the dramatic competition at the ’97 Sundance Film Festival.
Also on tap is Choke, a two- or three-minute comedy that was conceived and will be directed by Paul Boyd, who is repped by Propaganda for music videos. His commercial work is handled by Atlas Pictures, Santa Monica.
AtomFilms also seeks traditional distribution deals for the films it licenses via cable TV channels, airlines and the overseas market; the company will explore those avenues for Propaganda fare as well. "One of the reasons we chose Atom was because they have very good offline distribution," Macy said. However, he added, "We’re not locked into that. Depending on the circumstances, we may approach it differently."
But Propaganda will license select titles to AtomFilms for worldwide distribution, including Sleeping Beauties, a ’98 short brought to Propaganda by director Jamie Babbitt, whose feature, But I’m a Cheerleader, screened at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The director is not currently repped by Propaganda, but Macy hinted that some manner of association would be forthcoming. "We look forward to doing a lot more with her in the future," he said.
Beyond the AtomFilms partnership, Macy said that Propaganda will soon announce "a feature deal with a major distributor." He explained: "Studios are interested in us because we bring a very young, cutting-edge, filmmaker-driven perspective to projects that studios don’t often get because of their scale and scope. We intend to take advantage of that."
Recently, Propaganda has been involved in the packaging and financing of a couple of features. Also on tap is a digital film by Propaganda director Steve Hanft. Ideally, Propaganda will produce films like Satellite director Spike Jonze’s Being John Malkovich. The film was co-produced by Propaganda prior to the company’s sale last year to a private investment group headed by Sundance co-founder and former CEO Gary Beer (SHOOT, 4/16/99, p. 1). "Malkovich was [produced by] the previous regime," Macy said. "But it’s a great example of the kinds of things we’d like to do in the future."
Propaganda’s forthcoming arrangement with a Hollywood studio would not necessarily preclude a broadening of the association with AtomFilms for the potential production of longform or other content. Thus far, AtomFilms has limited itself to short films, but in December, it acquired animation studio PixelWave, Pasadena, Calif., now called the Atom Studio.
According to AtomFilms senior VP of creative development and PixelWave cofounder Dean Terry, who spoke with SHOOT prior to the announcement of the Propaganda-Atom alliance (SHOOT, 3/24, p. 1), the Atom Studio is a research and development operation focused on "next-generation online entertainment" as well as "next-generation advertising integration"—or enhanced branding solutions beyond banner or rich media ads. Conceivably, these ad messages would either be the actual content or embedded in entertainment content. "One of the reasons we were brought in is because we’ve worked with a lot of large corporations, helping them to enhance their brands and doing online projects," Terry said. "We’re definitely working on that."
Other observers of the short film online business speculate that when broadband permeates the marketplace and feature films are available online, companies like AtomFilms will branch out into longform fare.
Propaganda’s own Web site is currently in the beta testing stage. Macy said it will be geared toward the distribution of the directors’ commercial and music video reels. However, he did not rule out the prospect of some overlap between Propaganda. com and AtomFilms.com—meaning that some film content may appear on Propaganda.com, just as it’s possible that commercial or music videos will appear on AtomFilms.com. "We’ve given that issue a lot of thought," Macy said. However, at this juncture, AtomFilms will distribute short films only.
AtomFilms has additional offices in Los Angeles, New York and London.
