A little backstory about how this topic came about :
I got a message from a fellow QSS'er, TerriKhali, who had a question about why I indexed a movie as independent. The film in question was Appaloosa. She wanted to know why I listed it as independent even though the movie is fill with big actors and is produced by New Line Cinema, I told her I only put the independent film index when a film has a limited release and/or has played in film festivals.

So this raised the question: what makes a movie independent? Appaloosa was produced by a big movie company and in most moviewatchers minds, indie is usually from small companies, with little known actors, and little money. But that is not always the case, well at least it does not start that way anyway. For instance, (a great example made by Terri) Take a film like Star Wars, that started off small from a little unknown movie production company named LucasFilms and due to its insane popularity, as you all know, Star Wars in now a juggernaut of a franchise and LucasFilms is now one of the biggest movie productions out there.

(Example made by me) Now take an independent movie production like Fox Searchlight, who made great films like Slumdog Millionaire and The Wrestler, but they also produced The Hills Have Eyes and Street Kings, neither one of these are independent but they came from what is considered an independent movie company.

My conclusion is that it all depends how companies spend their money for the film. Now even though there are companies that are easily seen as Hollywood only companies or independent companies, there are still films that lie between those two differences.

So what does indie mean to you? Is it about the money or does the name of the movie company let you know it is indie or not?

>>>Credit to TerriKhali for highly suggesting I post this topic<<<

"Independant film" to me means a film produced by "average joes" with their own money, and equipment, with no backing from any major studios, or offshoots of major studios (like Fox Searchlight).

That's just my interpretation though.

to me Independent means little distribution. It can't be a wide release "in theaters everywhere." also the marketing of the film is usually creative and lower budget which makes it interesting, if you actually get to see the advertising since that is usually limited also. So distribution, budget, and a random ass director are the factors for me. I think there can be famous actors in the movie since it is up to them to forego the pay if you look at something like "little miss sunshine" or the recent "away we go." Granted these are more popular indie films i think this all can be said for a majority of them.

That's what I think of it.

No big money backing. Everything else I m flexible on.

i agree with several other posters that an independent film is one that is made outside of the financial strings of major studio backing, however in reality very few films that reach us plodding masses are really purely independent (primer would be a good example, i suppose) so we end up extending the "genre" tag to a broader spectrum of movies and the term "independent film"ends up being used more and more to describe films that are simply unpopular or obscure.



this would be pretty much exactly what i mean by stretching the definition of what an "independent film" actually is ... a random ass director. really? its like you somehow completely miss the point. terms like independent film, action movie, drama, art film are pretty fucking redundant and serve no purpose but to divide an audience so movie studios can market more shit to more people . it makes no sense why people need to categorize things into whats popular and what isn't, all forms of media seem to do that: music, books, television, video gam-- lol i just noticed your sig. fucking. lol.

Independent is all about who directed the movie, as well as what kind of audience it is originally intended to be viewed by. Although most good independent movies go on to be viewed by a larger audience; like film festival winners and standout performances.