Andrew Kosove is an Academy Award-nominated producer as well as Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Alcon Entertainment, the studio behind THE BLIND SIDE, THE BOOK OF ELI, DOLPHIN TALE and other great creations, including Ridley Scott's highly-anticipated new BLADE RUNNER film. I recently had a chance to sit down with Andrew and in line with the making of a film, our conversation flowed from Development to Finance to Production to Marketing to Distribution & Exhibition.

Development

Someone comes to you with a great idea and you love it, what are some of the ways you might use technology during the research and development phases?

-you're asking this question as it relates to film but as a parent I see this as raising children. The ability to gain access to information almost instantaneously and without friction is an enormously wonderful research tool. If you come and you want to write a script about King Arthur and the legends of the roundtable and you want to come up with a new take on that, you can go on Google and pull up every article ever written on this topic and think about it and do research. If you're writing a book about a terrorist incident and you want to know what would actually happen and how would this be done, it's like you have an infinite library at your fingertips. As a technological advance, it's enormously valuable.

I see it with my own children, I have a 7-year-old and once a child knows how to spell and is fluent on a computer they can gain access to all kinds of information about all kinds of topics. My child is passionate about fish, he goes on the computer all the time and looks up fish, he gains access to information so much more quickly than I could have possibly thought about doing when I was a child. The immediate access to information is a very beneficial tool for both research and development and we certainly utilize it here very effectively on various projects.

Could the next big film franchise be based off of a video game? The new CALL OF DUTY generated $400 million in its first 24 hours, how might you identify the next franchise if it's not based off of a book or TV show?

-this is a very good and complicated question. Video games present a substantial challenge to the film industry. There is no question that the Under-25 audience, especially males, have become increasingly distracted away from going to the movies and I will be fascinated to see how IMMORTALS performs on this weekend with CALL OF DUTY having come out because of course you're gonna have some bump there and it will be interesting to see.

There's also opportunity, because the ability to brand something, to create something that exists over multiple platforms such that people who enjoy it in one form are motivated to buy it in another, is a unique opportunity that did not exist a decade ago. We talk about this here with some of our properties, how to make them work on different platforms. What we're trying to do now aggressively is think about how to use this universe of video games and online and social interaction to build out properties and promote our properties among multiple platforms - we just did this with some real success with DOLPHIN TALE. There's a DOLPHIN TALE app, did it have a profound impact on the campaign? Probably not but we're beginning, we're taking our first steps and we understand the importance of this new environment we live in.

Finance

Film production today tends to be bimodal, one cluster is small-budget independent films and the other cluster is big-budget tentpoles. Since visual effects and other technologies are continuing to get cheaper, what are some of the factors that have ramped up production costs and caused this split?

-the bifurcation of the marketplace is driven by the fact that the major studios are focused on global growth and they understand, rightly so, that the biggest growth opportunities that exist in the movie business are outside the United States, they're overseas in emerging markets like Russia, Brazil, China and India. In order to bust through in those markets where there is highly competitive local-language product, one needs to try to latch onto branded properties because you can clutter bust with those kind of films, the Iron Mans, the Supermans, the Harry Potters, whatever the case may be, and that's why the studios concentrate the bulk of their resources on these branded-property tentpole movies. It's part of their global growth strategy and it makes perfect sense for them. Then you have the far other end of the spectrum, the side of the business which is much more art than commerce, which is the Off-Off-Broadway, low-budget films. What's happened is that the field that we play in is right in between those two, which is what we call the commercial center: mainstream commercial movies with commercial narratives but not the kind of films the studios are making anymore.

What I think is interesting is that the advancements in technology and the decreasing price points of doing visual effects opens up the possibility, and this goes back to your previous question, of creating smaller movies that have branded property elements that can be built out in a transmedia way and that's a very exciting dynamic possibility. You as a young filmmaker can take a digital camera that didn't exist a decade ago, can do some visual effects that you never could have done a decade ago, and all of a sudden your storytelling abilities are expanded enormously as compared to what someone your age could have done in, say, 1995. That's very exciting because it creates opportunities and evens the playing field and I think that it's a very positive thing for the business.

Production

THE BLIND SIDE was shot on film (Arricam), THE BOOK OF ELI and DOLPHIN TALE were both shot digitally (RED One), how does this transition change the creative dynamics?

-let me start by saying that I'm a fan of the RED camera, I think what Jim Jannard and those guys over there have done is terrific. I think that the looks of THE BOOK OF ELI and DOLPHIN TALE speak for themselves, they're lush, wonderful-looking films.

In certain respects, shooting digitally is very helpful, you're not calling the roll and so on and so forth, you're just loading the cartridge and going and going and this helps with pacing. In other respects, there's certainly a learning curve to it, there were issues on DOLPHIN TALE that were challenging at times but they had more to do with the 3D aspect than with the RED camera. I think that digital technology is only going to get better and better. I think it is very hard for the naked eye - even for people who make their living in film let alone for a regular citizen - to tell the difference between film and digital at this point. I think you're going to see more and more digital filmmaking, especially from younger people who are making their own films and I think that's a hugely positive thing for the business because it breeds democracy and gives everyone an opportunity.

Marketing

How does technology help you put together a marketing campaign?

-technology is integral to all of our campaigns. Movie campaigns are not analogous to campaigns for other consumer products. If you and I come up with a new type of toothbrush or toothpaste or whatever, we can take it out there and put it on the shelves, it sells or it doesn't and we take it back and repackage it and send it back out. Movies don't work this way, you get one night at the rodeo and if you don't get it out on the dance floor and get it going then another new product comes in and you're gone. The distribution of commercial films now is so wide that if you don't gain your traction you won't be able to hang in the marketplace.

Movie campaigns are more analogous to political campaigns, you load up all of your media on the front end, you spend all of your money and you get to election night and you either win and you get to keep going or you lose and you quickly fade to the back of the pack. In that regard, reaching people in the most effective, efficient way is hugely important.

I believe that technological advancements have the potential to greatly increase the efficiency, lower the cost and improve the messaging of movie campaigns. The biggest limitation that the industry has lived with for years is the disproportionate influence that television advertising has had on film campaigns, and TV advertising is a very stupid way to advertise a product by and large and especially a film. The problem with film is taking something that's 1 hour, 45 minutes long and explaining it in 27 seconds, in a certain sense it's a wonderful art form - and it is an art form in and of itself - but it's not the best way to represent the product. It means that for certain kinds of films, if you can't boil them down quickly then they just can't connect to the audience from a marketing standpoint, because Americans aren't as heavily dependent on reviews and so on and so forth. I'm not talking about art films or specialized films, I'm talking about wide-release pictures.

The technology exists today where you can go on your iPhone or I can go on my iPad and go to Rotten Tomatoes and I can find out what all the reviews were on a movie, I can watch the full trailer, I can find out where the showtimes are for me, I can find out what other people have been saying about the movie, all of the information is gathered in one place. These kinds of technologies are going to have a larger and larger influence on how movie campaigns are marketed. From my point of view that's a positive thing because it takes it out of a world where someone can spend $40 million on a TV advertising campaign and blitz their way to an opening weekend.

The world of social media interaction, Twitter, texting, the lack of friction of communication changes all campaigns for all products. It's had a profound impact on all political campaigns - President Obama ran the first truly modern campaign in 2008. As a company, we're spending a larger and larger share of our resources online, we have a devoted department to social media-driven advertising and online efforts, and we embrace and support these technological developments.

As for filmmakers, it puts an enormous pressure on them to make better films since you used to be able to steal an opening weekend before everyone met at the water cooler at the office on Monday morning and said "forget that". Today, I pick up my Blackberry and I just text you and you say "that movie is great" or "that movie sucked, I'm not going to go see it". There's no friction to communication and so it's changing human interaction in every regard, in ways that are unimaginable. It facilitates word-of-mouth very quickly, and the business is trying to get comfortable with that reality. I think it is much more of a positive than it is a negative.

Distribution & Exhibition

In the next few years will we see the end of physical media in terms of no more shipping film canisters to exhibitors, instead they log in and download it then play it back on the big screen?

-absolutely. Warner Brothers distributes all our films and so we're piggybacking off whatever their print costs are. Our print costs have gone up in the past few years because we're paying for what are known as virtual prints, which is essentially our contribution and the industry's contribution to exhibitioners to help them transition to a fully digital universe. A decade from now, this investment will pay off a thousand fold in cost savings because, exactly as you say, you just go online and download it and boom, you have the movie. The world of physical film canisters is gone. Ten years from now, a DVD will be like an 8-track tape. This world is done, it's over, it's a digital world we'll be living in and this is a very positive thing in a multitude of respects.

This transition is a positive in film distribution and also in the world of home entertainment, because ultimately with a company like Alcon - just as with a major studio - our asset is our film library. The biggest limitation to a film library in the long term, even for titles that are beloved, is access to them. It's always been physical brick-and-mortar, your DVD is out for a few weeks and then a new DVD comes in to Wal-Mart and now you can't find yours, shelf space is limited. In the digital universe, shelf space is unlimited. You will be able to go onto your TV and you will have access to thousands and thousands of movies. You'll be able to say "I really loved that movie MY DOG SKIP, I want my kids to see it" and bam, away it comes. That doesn't exist today and so for good movies it will meaningfully increase their value. Obviously, brick-and-mortar is a cost and so you'll get rid of shipping, handling, you'll eliminate them and improve profit margins.

The challenge for the business will be to figure out how to maintain a reasonable price point in a digital universe as opposed to a brick-and-mortar universe. If that can be done, and I believe it will be done successfully, this is some short-term pain but long-term a hugely positive transition for the film business.

As the economies of scale become more favorable, in 10 years might Alcon be in the distribution business?

-that's an interesting question. The answer is probably no. Actually, it's a fantastic question, you are correct in that the barrier to entry of distribution will decrease to some degree and when you think about a digital universe and the ways in which you'll be able to distribute movies in non-traditional ways, it's going to be fascinating.

The theaters are very nervous about this, I think that they should be but at the same time I'm a believer that ultimately the cheapest way for you to get out of your house - and people like getting out of the house - is to go to the movie theaters. Compare it to going to the zoo, going to the ballgame, it's still the greatest entertainment value proposition there has ever been: you can go and watch something that cost $150 million and you pay $11, that's a terrific value proposition. You go out and you get to share the emotional experiences with others, people are fundamentally social animals and so I don't believe that the theatrical business is going to fall on its face. The theater owners are concerned because the ability for you who made that terrific special effects film that we talked about - the one that couldn't have been done 10 years ago and shoots with a digital camera - you're going to be able to get it out into the universe in ways that were once unimaginable.

As it relates to getting into distribution, we're not in distribution because in our relationship with Warners we piggyback off of the strength of their pipeline. This means all of the other movies they are doing, the output deals, etc, I can't really see us bringing that in-house here. We'd rather pay a very low distribution fee, which is what we do, and have someone else take care of that and keep ourselves very small and nimble. I like being a small business.