It was doom and gloom among feature-film financiers at the 23rd Annual Vancouver Film and Television Forum (Sept. 24 to 27), the conference side of the Vancouver International Film Festival.

‘U.S. distributors are doing fewer acquisitions and paying less, and there are fewer TV presales for movies on the international market,’ said Nicolas Chartier, president of L.A.-based sales and financing company Voltage Pictures, who took part in the World Sales Update panel.

Banker Suraj Gohill, senior VP, CIT Group, entertainment finance and advisory, added that movies in the $5 million-$15 million range are facing the most difficulty.

‘The presales just aren’t there, so producers have to put their equity in,’ said Gohill. ‘The value of unsold rights is getting more difficult to predict, and distributors are pickier. The volume coming through my door is way down.’

Matt Dentler, head of marketing and programming at New York’s Cinetic Rights Management, which sells films for VOD platforms, told audiences that movies are selling to distributors for half as much as they used to. In this grim marketplace, online distribution is becoming a viable revenue source.

‘Our theory is that this is a new ancillary market,’ said Dentler. ‘And ancillary market isn’t a bad word.’

Cinetic is looking for films with mid-to-high production values that have some critical acclaim or festival awards that they then distribute over various digital platforms. While the revenues in the digital world are not big, Dentler says there is some money to be made.

‘You won’t make money in 12 months, but you will in 48 months,’ he says. ‘We do commission deals, so we only make money if you make money.’

Dentler also works with filmmakers whose films are two years or older to see what rights are still in effect and whether they can do any streaming deals or transactional downloads.

Viral and grass roots marketing, he added, is important to build buzz on a film that is going straight to a digital platform.

‘Next week we are doing a free outdoor screening of a film in New York, then putting it on a video-sharing site for free for 24 hours and then taking it down and selling it on Amazon.com,’ said Dentler.

A market check on the documentary genre was more upbeat, with panelists noting that there are still numerous opportunities to sell docs for television. Panelist Scott Hooker, senior executive producer of long-form programming at MSNBC, said he is moving towards more partnerships to help finance the 75 hours of documentaries he commissions a year.

‘We are exploring coproductions more seriously as a way to get $500,000 into a doc by partnering with Canada or Europe,’ said Hooker.

Hooker says MSNBC’s preferred model is to acquire all rights, with NBC Universal distributing and offering between US$200,000 to $250,000 per hour. He adds that they also do license-only deals and acquisitions.

Hooker says he is looking for ‘prestigious one-off docs’ and commercially viable doc series, noting that the cable channel’s highest-rated show is Locked Up, a doc series that goes inside American prisons. Crime and the environment are hot topics, he adds.

‘We try to commission programs with a three-year shelf life, so they can’t be too topical, although we occasionally do event films with less shelf life,’ he says.

Knowledge president & CEO Rudy Buttignol noted that the re-launched educational network has six new documentary strands.

‘We are starting with acquisitions, but there will be financing for presales as we move forward,’ says Buttignol.