How "corporate" is Deluxe, plus things we WON'T be doing

I had a long and interesting telephone conversation with my contact, friend and occasional panel sparring partner Owen Thomas today. When he is not a producer for his very talented wife May Miles-Thomas through their production company Elemental Films, he has been spending more time thinking about the realities and future of independent film in the UK than anyone else that I know. While he won't use the c-word abut himself ('consultant', that is) he is not only very knowledgeable but also living proof that you don't have to be based in London to be an authority in these matters, seeing that he is recently transplanted from Glasgow to Edinburgh.

Moving on from the over-used and over-wrought 'long tail' concept for niche films, he challenged me over whether Deluxe was right to focus purely on the theatrical market (Rank sold off the DVD replication business in a separate deal from Deluxe), with sister companies ranging from Panavision to Capital FX all focused on the up-stream film service market. Surely, he said, he and I had agreed on a number of conferences and panels that the money was in the ancillary platforms for film.

I agree and disagree. From a producer's perspective he is absolutely right that the money is downstream, but while we personally both love the cinema experience, I would go one step further than him. I would defend it by speculating that while the current booking practices of one title having 3-4 screenings per day for 1-2 weeks will soon die, there will be more variations of films through a phrase that I'm trying to coin, which is, "the one screen digital multiplex." That way cinema will survive and Deluxe Digital Services will prosper.

He touched a more raw nerve when he asked me whether not Deluxe was "too corporate?" Too corporate for me, ex-journalist and honorary digital viking that I am, but more to the point, too corporate for small producers. He made the valid point that the Deluxe website is US-centric and gives no indication of the UK/European/ROW operations, unless you dig your way down to the "Contact Us" section.

There is some truth to this (help, I'm turning into Scooble in no time) but it would be a shame if this gave the impression that we do not care for or want to work with smaller projects than the $100m Fox and Paramount ones. We do. Passionately. As do our sister operations EFILM and Capital FX. No project is too small for us to consider, as we would not rather sit and twiddle our thumbs waiting to get to make the DI for the 22nd Bond film than work with local non-studio production outfit. And there's nothing stopping us from juggling several different size balls/projects at once. To paraphrase the inscription on the Statue of Liberty, 'Bring us your poor and needy projects.' And when you do, ask for me or Liz.

Owen is more correct in that Deluxe will not be streaming content to your mobile phone or doing a video-on-demand deal with film distributors any time soon.