‘Ink’ – The Movie That Blew Up On BitTorrent
Written by enigmax on February 05, 2010In November 2009, an indie movie received unprecedented worldwide attention after becoming a massive hit on BitTorrent networks. ‘Ink’, which was downloaded well in excess of 400,000 times, shot into the top 20 movies on iMDb. In a new interview, the creators talk about their experience and the future of movie distribution.
Written and directed by Jamin Winans, Ink is an indie movie about a mercenary who appears in the dreams of a comatose 8 year old girl. As with most movies, one part of the story was particularly predictable. It was quickly ripped and ended up on BitTorrent.
Just over a week after becoming available online in early November 2009, Ink pushed into TorrentFreak’s chart of top 10 most pirated movies with an incredible 400,000 downloads.
Unlike the majority of Hollywood movie bosses, the creators of Ink – Jamin and Kiowa Winans – decided to embrace their new-found pirate fans after the extra publicity pushed the movie to 16th place on IMDb’s movie meter and boosted DVD and Blu-ray sales. Kiowa wrote to TorrentFreak and said that the movie ending up on BitTorrent was “absolutely” the best thing that could’ve happened to it.
Now, Lars Sobiraj from German news outlet Gulli has interviewed Kiowa to see how things have progressed a couple of months on from the initial excitement.
As previously reported, Ink has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times, so just how many of those translated into real-world sales? Kiowa says that is really hard to put an exact figure on that – they haven’t sold a DVD or Blu-ray for every download but sales have unquestionably gone up.
Money also came in from other routes too. As the movie gained popularity on BitTorrent, many Ink downloaders suggested that there should be a ‘donate’ button on the movie’s website so that fans could give money freely.
“We put that [donation link] up at the urging of some of the downloaders with the message ‘if you have watched Ink online for free and would like to contribute what you can, click here’,” Kiowa explains.
“Guess what country has been the most generous? Germany! Germans have been twice as generous as Americans so… thank you Germany. We have also shipped a lot of Deluxe Bundle fan packs to Germany so Ink seems to be a big hit there.”
Gulli asked Kiowa if she felt the movie had fallen victim to piracy, a notion she strongly denies.
“I think to say victim is to characterize piracy as an all-together awful thing. The piracy of Ink is unquestionably responsible for its popularity around the world. Sure our trailers have been out for over a year and have had plenty of views outside the US, but we think that 70% of the illegal downloads are coming from outside of the US and we do get a good number of international buyers at our online store every day,” she explained.
Before Ink was pirated, the movie’s IMDb rating was a lowly 12,991. As reported in our earlier article, it reached 16 and even moved up to the 14th position at one stage. Incredibly it has stayed as one of the top 200 movies in the world for the last two months, a feat that would have been impossible without the extra exposure.
Looking forward to future distribution models, Kiowa feels that everything will change during the next 10 years as people demand instant and simple access to media and their TVs and computers merge together into one device.
“That said, I’m not sure what the revenue model will be for films,” she notes. “Hollywood producers are quickly finding out that the instant films start circulating on DVD they will wind up on torrent sites.”
Kiowa broadly puts BitTorrent users into two camps – those who want media in an instant and those who want it for free. Noting that there are those who fall into both categories, she acknowledges the challenges that lie ahead in figuring out a way to make this situation bring revenue to the filmmakers.
“I think a reasonably-priced instant download the moment the movie becomes available would largely cure the piracy issue so we will see how it all shakes out over the next several years,” she adds.
As most observers are aware, many music and movie companies consider torrent sites as entities to be crushed and in recent years have set about a strategy to achieve that. Gulli asked Kiowa if she believes that is the correct strategy to deal with the problem.
While one could argue that non-physical digital formats such as MP3 are part of the reason that piracy has flourished in recent years, Kiowa feels that the invention of the iPod has helped to reduce piracy, largely through the existence of competition from one service – iTunes. The movie industry needs to catch up.
“Until the equivalent of the iPod is invented for film or long-format video files I think that piracy is going to be a huge battle ground, one in which I doubt Hollywood will win,” Kiowa predicts.
“There is always a smarter programmer out there that can move faster than bureaucracy. The film industry really needs to set its sights on overhauling its distribution system. Right now there are horrible things like region-coded DVDs that tie up a film’s rights in various countries and this is what has made the film business plenty of money over the years.”
The industry needs to move its thinking to encompass global distribution, says Kiowa, not concentrate on pushing movies out to dozens of separate territories.
“We are going to keep all the rights to Ink and not give them away country-by-country so that when that iPod-for-movies emerges Ink can be the first film that debuts to the whole world,” she says, adding: “That is the hope anyway.”
Looking to the future, partner Jamin is currently working on scripts for two new films, one a sci-fi psychological thriller called ‘The Frame’ and another a sci-fi fantasy called ‘Myth of Man’.
“For the time being we’re just really happy that Ink is rolling along and gaining fans around the world. How ever people come to the film, we’re just happy that they are watching it, Kiowa concludes.
“As Jamin likes to say, the battle of independent films is not piracy, it’s obscurity. Hey – at least we’re winning that one!”
The full interview conducted by Lars Sobiraj, is available here.
Previously: Oscar Pirates, Fewer Films Leak Online This Year
Next: LG Shows How To Play Pirated Movies On TV
74 Responses
Interesting…
but….but.. but… the MPA/MPAA and IFPI/BPI say bit torrent is only a ‘bad thing’… could they be…..liars?
::Shocked::
I wish people would stop talking about “illegal downloading” and “piracy.” Filesharing is neither of those things, and in the face of unquestionable success I think it’s unfortunate that the Ink folks continue to use such hate speech.
I’ve donated to them after i watched the movie, great guys, great movie. And all around they fight for what we want.
And they understand us, although they are in the other camp where we usually get the lawsuits from.
I really do hope they get enough momentum to change some principles.
Still so much talk about “curing” the “piracty issue”. BitTorrent downloading is the greatest distribution network imaginable! We made our film specifically for downloaders, and we are going to release it for a one-week BitTorrent only run. Downloaders are not against people making money from their craft, they just don’t want to be forced to pay for something that they are not sure if they want. Successful films in the future will spend less time fighting downloaders, and more time marketing to them.
@selfhelplessmov
..still a pretty mediocre movie.
How the gatekeepers must love to hear that
This is quite interesting. Thanks for the article.
Sclek
Think I’m gonna have to watch this thing..
@2 eZee.se
You, my good sir, blew my mind.
I’m all for the principal point in the article, but the movie was crap, stopped it 1/3 way through.
^ same as Lionshare, all for the principal but that movie as well was crap
“Kiowa broadly puts BitTorrent users into two camps – those who want media in an instant and those who want it for free.”
That is a fairly good segregation to be honest. But i would add another camp: The camp that wants to try before they buy it.
Unlike a vacuum cleaner or a pair of shoes, you cannot get a refund for movies, games or music once bought and tested. I prefer spending my money on something worthwhile, rather the wasting it on stuff that turns out to be junk.
An added plus for both me and content owners is that i see much more content. If my budget, for example, is $100 a month i can buy two computer games legally at most.
If i can’t swap them ill go for the known good titles, and i won’t try adventuring in an unfamiliar genre or buying indie games because in my example, i can just get two games a month. If they then ill be stuck with them. Perhaps i won’t even buy that many as a precaution, just to save money.
But if i download things, i can see many more games. There is a higher chance that i buy more, and I might even discover that i really like a particular genre (Game, Band, Book, whatever) which in turn opens up potential for future sales.
Hence, Same with the Ink story. Its free marketing, and if something is really good, people will buy it. Not everyone, not even everyone who likes it, but still a substantial amount of people.
Nice to see some support for bit-torrent for a change just go’s to prove what everybody has always know that Hollywood studios are a bunch of money hungry b4stards run by fossils that fear what they don’t understand and can’t control
well you cant please everybody …
but i thought it was a great film, one of my favs of 2009 without a doubt, good story and pleasant visuals [apart from that dudes nose lol] but dont forget it was made on a smaller budget than most films.
Im eager to see what the makers come up with next.
And im glad that bit torrent has helped them and happy that there glad about it too :-)
but….but.. but… the MPA/MPAA and IFPI/BPI say bit torrent is only a ‘bad thing’… could they be…..liars?
::Shocked::
ffs it makes a change to see such sense in an industry thats full og greed, We applaud you
yaaa…. Out of 1 M movies that get pirated, one of them may get popular… but it’s up to the producers if they want their movies to show up on torrent sites, not you guys!!
Whether the movie was good or bad isn’t the point here. The point is it gained popularity due to piracy.
Anyway, I’d love to see the usual trolls and slackers here who can do nothing but whine actually make a movie themselves :)
People who are against filesharing like to think for some reason that it’s all about “stealing”.
We download movies, music and games to see if we like them, then we go out to the theater/store and buy what we downloaded. We do this because most of the movies, music and games that are out today suck.
Also, I should have added the word “see” next to the word “buy”.
Piracy is a classic double-edged sword. It brings benefit to the obscure, making their products more and more viable in the commercial market through the exposure of free distribution.
Then, just when the creator is poised to finally make a living selling copies of their music/movie/book/game, piracy distributes free copies of everything leaving the creator holding the actual expense of the original production.
While claiming the piracy is actually “free speech”, of course.
Ah the good old donate button.
Its a very difficult week for the neomind trolls.
ahhhhh the try before you buy scheme really does work then……Lahahaha
@21, RM
I fail to see your argument in that post. Anything you tried to bring up was proved wrong in the article… care to give it another try?
Why can’t the uploaders wait at least 3 months before uploading another persons intellectual creation. Give the music artists a chance to sell their works for a period of time.
I buy a lot of what I download but still wouldn’t mind waiting. Anyways, if a consumer loves a particular artist, chances are they will buy the work no matter if they have downloaded it in the past. I spend about 2,500 dollars a year on music alone, and I buy none of it from the country I live in, because it it just not available to buy at the record stores. I do what I can to support the artists by buying their music. I like the sound quality and being able to have the art-work etc. People!, give the artists a chance, and wait a while! Thank You
Damn, I’ve downloaded this movie like 2 months ago and totally forgot to watch it. Oh well
On another note, nice to see some open-minded people working in the industry for once instead of those stock-up greedy dicks who can’t get on with the times
I “acquired” the movie just like a lot of people and after watching it I purchased the deluxe set (which is well worth the money.
Entertainment is just one of those venues where you can purchase and not have any rights to return if you are dissatisfied and that is the main reason I like to preview movies before I spend money on them multiple times (netflix, theater, dvd, etc).
@ 21 Feb 05, 2010 at 18:54 by Reasoned Mind: shuddap, you wrote that artists lose money at shows. You’ve lost any respect.
I believe file sharing also boosts revenues for the so called blockbusters such as Avatar but that boost is actually unnoticed due to the already big revenue. That is, if the said blockbuster is actually good and not just labeled as a blockbuster…
It’s like when you have a product that leads the market with the largest market share: you may advertise but any increase in sales, if any, will be smaller than a new entrant or a less popular product. It’s an asymptotic behavior (or whatever u call that) with an initial steep growth and then gets almost horizontal after a while, probably due to saturation as the money ppl have to buy stuff is finite.
In any case, it is pretty much clear that P2P popularity is directly proportional to revenues and offline popularity. Surely a case for proper study b4 writing things like or mascot troll RM wrote. If it was just an impersonator please forgive me ;D
cheers
The anti piracy groups are not going to give two shits if this movie was pirated. They didn’t sign up with them, they are not protected by them. As far as they are concerned it’s none of their business…
Are you trying to confuse imdb’s top 250 movies list and its moviemeter on purpose? Moviemeter (I don’t even know what it is and I use imdb a lot) is not the same thing and you should make it clearer.
yet another article stating the obvious facts that Hollywood fails to see.
and that is why they will ultimately fail.
I think this is great and all.. really I do, im not trying to be a downer here.. but I found the movie REALLY REALLY BAD..
I mean not hollywood bad.. its just like.. nauseating bad.. the camera switches more times than Transformers.. the graphics are always blinding me with strange lights and weird ass people are running around not making any sense and the special effects seemed paper thin..
I know you have to pay attention.. but I just found the movie unwatchable.
I mean I couldnt even get through the first 15 minutes, and im the type of person that can usualy sit through and entire HORRIBLE movie..
I think its success is great.. I just wish it was on a good movie.
I downloaded and never watched it, and I remeber when the directors came over to reddit…but man why are they lauding the americans….do they know really how many americans downloaded it..?? Maybe it was more germans…. or better yet maybe it was more interesting to germans…dont single us out and compare our donations to some other country…..sheesh you didnt do that for canada or togo , or thailand or china….sheesh
In the good old days before the movies, the artists would set up a tent in a fair and invite people in. Whoever enjoyed the show and stayed until the end of the performance would then have to pay for it. If you did not like it you could leave in the middle. If it was pretty obvious that you were the town beggar, the artists would allow you to see the performance for free.
In the digital age, it’s only fair that people are allowed to watch the content they like and then “if” they like it, be invited (donate button here) to contribute how much they can.
All this talk about copyrights is just nonsense. How about “consumer rights”? When and how have we allowed them to be stepped upon? When and how have we allowed “by the people, for the people” to be changed to “by the exploited artists, to the greedy corporation”?
I just want to point out about the donation figure, and not to argue anyone’s generosity, but everyone in America is broke right now. Just keep that in mind.
@Anonymous: Oh, and the “consumer” doesn’t have lobbyists, the companies do. If we had lobbyists and large funds from which to dole out re-election funds / bribes, then we’d have more rights.
This would be a better story if Ink didn’t suck so much ass. But it does. So all you’re really left saying is “lots of people took something being given away for free!”
Well okay. Works for cheese samples at the supermarket all the time. It ain’t news.
You know what else is big on bittorrent ? Hentai. How about a story about how the hentai industry has made it big in this alternate media distribution marketplace. You know, a real underdog rags to not-riches-cause-nobodys-paying tale.
Or were we thinking that movie producers get more excited about 400,000 downloading their movie than 300,000 which they had no box office for ? Right.
It really sucked if it is the one about the ‘dream land’. Icky terrible
Hom3r says: “yet another article stating the obvious facts that Hollywood fails to see. and that is why they will ultimately fail.”
Do you mean “ultimately” in a “eventually the sun will die” kind of way ?
Because I’m not real sure what else you are waiting for here. A low budget, painful to watch movie which had no commercial merit, didn’t make any money, then made no more when it was given away for free.
Yeah, why aren’t those license-to-print-cash idiots jumping on that boat.
Anyway, it’s nice to have a fallback community if somehow the 9/11 conspiracy theorists have just gotten too logical for you.
I didn’t like Ink until it was around half to three quarters of the way in.
All the shitty lighting/contrast effect pissed me off, and i found myself asking – ‘why?’ a lot.
Like… okay… he has to beat on a drum to open the portal…. but why? He has a shit load of other drums, will they not do? Why does no one else have these drums?
Other things pissed me off as well… but after a while i just got bored of picking holes in it and tried to enjoy it – and i did!
The blind guy is a great actor. Dude should be in some bigger films.
I had NO. FREAKING. IDEA. that Ink would turn out to be [spoiler material]! Didn’t see it coming at all, even though all my friends did.
In other words – if you’re going to watch this film, do four things:
1) Assume it was made by some talented film students who, with a better budget and some proper experience (so they stop trying to be edgy with ghay lighting and crappy effects), could do really well.
2) Watch it to the end. It gets better and better.
3) If something doesn’t make sense, just roll with it. It’s probably not going to be explained.
4) Be impressed by the fight scenes. Seriously – shits actually pretty good considering!
I think we’ve finally discovered the real reason that Hollywood fears file sharing so much. It’s not lost sales, they made record profits last year. They fear exactly what happened here – an indie movie gets popular because of bittorrent. Think of the implications for the future of the Hollywood business model. They profit through control. When they don’t control a movie like INK, they have no way to generate any revenue from that production. If this scenario starts to catch-on, indie films will be directly competing with Hollywood schlock on an almost level plying field. This is great news for consumers!
Oh yeah, before I forget…
To Reasoned Mind,
Your customers HATE you!
They hated you yesterday, they hate you today, and they will hate you forever. Remember, nothing you do matters. Don’t even bother getting out of bed. Why?
Because your customers HATE you!
That doesn’t make it right.
I’m a fag, Please rape my face
free downloads? you kidding right? Aint no such thing as free downloads, i pay a lot of money yearly for that internet access, and yep, i get charged for my “free” downloads by my isp, not to mention all the equipment needed that doesnt come cheap…
@3 Stop trollin’ broseph
Brudda says: “I think we’ve finally discovered the real reason that Hollywood fears file sharing so much … They fear exactly what happened here – an indie movie gets popular because of bittorrent.”
Yeah, because you not paying for their movies was just a waaaaay too obvious answer.
“Think of the implications for the future of the Hollywood business model. They profit through control. When they don’t control a movie like INK, they have no way to generate any revenue from that production.”
That would have no implications for the future of Hollywood, given that you are already describing the past and present.
Indie films which make no money are the ones Hollywood already passed on since they won’t make any money. You somehow think that Hollywood is then scared when they turn out to have made the right choice.
All you are telling us is you don’t realise you are stupid and have no idea how anything you are referring to works, nor what many of the words you use mean.
“If this scenario starts to catch-on, indie films will be directly competing with Hollywood schlock on an almost level plying field.”
Yeah, almost level except for the making any money part. You know, like as though this was business venture that employs people, needs investors in order to operate and people can go bankrupt over.
Has the P2P community considered founding some kind of Moron Institute for Movie Production Consulting which could get these ideas out into the not-for-profit marketplace where they can do some good?
You could travel around grade schools and share your invaluable ideas with the kind of movie productions which have no interest in revenue.
i mean it was a cool movie, invoked alot of emotion, however I really dont’t get it. Why did they even want the girl in the first place? what were they planning on doing to her? whats with the drums? and why did jacob have the power to call for help? and if he had that power the whole time why didnt he just keep that thing with him instead of making that dramatic run sequence. Cool movie but alot of stuff didnt make sense
im all for the filesharing.. but lets be honest..all the ppl who say they download a movie to see if they like it before buying it are full of… music,sure sample it,games sure sample a level.. but i doubt 1 out of 10000 ppl download a movie then after watching decide “hey im gona go buy that movie so i have 2 copies” lol
The film is ok but I’m a little thrown off by it’s film’s crappy color. They should’ve invested in a better camera such as the Red One.
“46 Feb 06, 2010 at 04:50 by Reasoned Mind
I’m a fag, Please rape my face”
YOUR WISH IS MY COMMAND MASTER!
ROFLMAO :D
I hated this movie.
I have a secret. Sodomize me… and I’ll tell ya
@ 22 Feb 05, 2010 at 18:54 by Reasoned Mind
Piracy is a classic double-edged sword. It brings benefit to the obscure, making their products more and more viable in the commercial market through the exposure of free distribution.
Then, just when the creator is poised to finally make a living selling copies of their music/movie/book/game, piracy distributes free copies of everything leaving the creator holding the actual expense of the original production.
While claiming the piracy is actually “free speech”, of course.
COMPLETE BULLSH!T….stop spouting the party line and actually READ the article, if your going to complain about the ‘pirates’ posting unreasoned nonsensical dribble – and you do often – then does’nt that apply to you as well?
or are your ethics arbitrary?
Ahhh, that movie looked so promising judging from the trailer, but when you watch it, it reeks of low budget.
I got so disappointed halfway into the move that I quit watching it.
If only the move had a bigger budget and better actors…
@Reasoned Mind
Hey reasoned, you brought up an interesting point that I would like to address. It chiefly concerns to fact that, as you stated, file-sharers are often largely responsible for giving previously obscure products viability commercial viability. I wouldn’t even mind going a step further and stating that it’s very likely that file-sharers have single-handedly BROUGHT much obscure consumable media to market.
I suppose what I’m getting at, RM, is why aren’t the MPAA, IFPI, “MAFIAA”, and their cohorts compensating file-sharers for the file-sharers’ marketing and advertisement of those products?
This movie worked well and received pretty good donations but why in this world i CANT EARN A DOLLAR AND HAVE LIFE??
Even NEOPILES avoided a DATE with me :(
Is it because i’m a LOWLIFE??
While I’m happy to see how ‘Ink’ proved that BitTorrent is a more than adequate channel for media distribution, I have to say, nonetheless, that the film was mediocre at best. I downloaded it. I watched it. I didn’t hate it. I didn’t like it. I deleted it. I won’t be watching it again.
Downloaded it after it was launched, watched it, shared it, and I really appreciate their model.
That said… the film is too bad.
Glad to see a follow up on INK… Well worth the money.. Great Film.. Great Ideas.. Looking forward to the next DoubleEdgeFilms Release..
FWIW, Ink is also available as a “Watch It Now” movie on Netflix. Personally, I really enjoyed it. Was it low-budget? Yes. But I think they did a great job with what they had to work with. My only major complaint was that some of the acting was sub-par… not Hayden Christensen bad, but certainly not as good as it could have been. For an indie flick this one was pretty good. And major kudos to them for acknowledging filesharing’s role in its success.
wheir can i donation
@#3 – I completely agree. Not only referring to filesharing as “piracy” sounds very not-respectful, we also should keep in mind that robbing ships has nothing to do with downloading and sharing files over the internet.
About the movie – I didn’t download it yet, but I probably will. And nice to see that the creators support this kind of distribution.
you can donate here http://www.doubleedgefilms.com/
this movie sucks anyway…..
It is an over rated piece of cow dung!
This movie reeks of cheesy lame plot.
OMG i remember how awful and agonizing it was watching this movie.
This is great! I’m glad Ink is doing so well.
I definitely agree with them on one point–releasing movies online at the same time as releasing them on DVD would definitely raise sales. And if you figure that a much larger percentage of online sales would be profit (because you don’t have to make disks or packaging), it would be feasible for production companies to lower the download price and still make a hefty profit!
Of course, they’d probably argue that this would only facilitate piracy, but honestly… how hard is it to copy files off a DVD these days? Not very.
It’s so cool.
Welcome to my blog:www.omnilens.net
Welcome to my blog: http://www.omnilens.net
“Until the equivalent of the iPod is invented for film or long-format video files…”
Apple iPad.
@72
The iPad fails.
Wonderful movie though. I’m usually a high budget B-movie junkie, but this had the feeling of a extremely low budget A-movie.
“I think a reasonably-priced instant download the moment the movie becomes available would largely cure the piracy issue so we will see how it all shakes out over the next several years,”
This! This is how you kill piracy. Please vengeful Gods of Ancient Media look kindly upon this woman for she would be your savior.
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