Thanks to Crooked Brains, this landed in The Bowl.
I guess we’d be the seeds you spit out if we were driving…
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Month: December 2008
Categories
A Word On The Educational Market
Jon Reiss guests blogs again:
At the recent FIND conference on the state of independent film, I had the pleasure to meet Robert Bahar who made the wonderful Emmy Winning documentary Made in L.A. We were discussing the problem of releasing a film on DVD prior to or simultaneously with an educational release.
I have learned since the release of Bomb It that it is traditionally difficult to have an educational release after or concurrent with a DVD release. This is because educational institutions will eagerly buy your dvd from Amazon for 19.95 rather than pay the educational rate of $195.
Robert told me about his ingeneous solution which was to put a notice at the beginning of the film – similar to the FBI warning – that the film was for home use only and not for educational or public performance. In the authoring they disabled the ability for people to pause for a few minutes after this message or fast forward through it. Eg any teacher would have to play this warning – indicating to students that it was being shown illegally. Pretty smart!
Robert is smart in another way in terms of his film. He has set up with his fulfillment company (the wonderful Neoflix) to provide various community screening packages for sale on his site for various size screenings. Check out his site to see how he has set this up. Make sure to check out his amazing “Event Planning Toolkit”.
Let us know what you think of what he is doing.
You can also respond directly to Jon at:
jon@jonreiss.com
FilmInFocus is the rare studio-sponsored site that is not all about promoting their product (well, not exclusively). It fosters a community of cineastes.
FIF has a featured article on David Lynch On Sound. I love articles like this because frankly sound is always an afterthought for me on my films and I have been trying to change that. Finally setting up a home theater sound system was a big step forward this year. Lynch is always a fun read (and a funner watch) because his mind is one of a kind.
It also made me recall this great article by Antonioni on NYC In Sound (with a forward by Walter Murch no less!).
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Playing For Change
“Playing For Change” combines three of my fave things in one nice package.
I have always wanted to see the definitive busker documentary. Every time I encounter one in a subway station, my spirits are lifted. I would time my trips and pick my destinations if I knew when I could find who performing where. It’s a good day when I encounter two good acts in the same day. Every once and awhile I wonder what’s stopping this doc from getting made.
Definitely one of the most watched and loved videos of the year was “Where The Hell Is Matt?“. Beyond the silly dancing and great locations, I like the inherent message that the “Where The Hell Is Matt?” structure gives in terms of a one world connectivity.
“Stand By Me” has always been one of my favorite songs. For me it was first delivered by John Lennon on his “Rock & Roll” album and that led me to Ben E. King’s sweet sweet voice. If I wasn’t thankful enough for John already, that upped the ante.
This trinity joins together in “Playing For Change”. I really enjoy the voices as well as the video as much as the song here.
The feature doc is much more than this song and features a great number of performers throughout the world. I look forward to seeing it. You can learn more about it on the link at the top of this entry.
Whomever came up with Z-Cardz gets extra points in our book. They are cards but then you punch out the shapes and assemble into 3-dimensional creations. They increase your fun by letting you be the one to build them.
Here they are taking over our computer again!
Brent concludes…
Another scary thing about the NYC DIY Dinner discussion is that essentially it’s asking filmmakers who’ve likely just worked for several years for no money to now take further losses and develop things they have no intrinsic passion for, just so that thing they do have passion for gains validity.
Filmmakers like me already spend 70% of our time looking for permission (ie funds) to make our films from people perhaps not in the best position to be gatekeepers, and now that looks to be expanded to 90% or more. Our pay just went down, as if we were making enough to subsist on to begin with. Already, incomes in this country have been relatively stagnant for 30 years despite rapid growths in technology and productivity in most industries.
We’re all expected to do more for less money. That seems exponential with independent film, and as I said, we’re now going to have to figure out how to do that part of it we love even less often for less money.
How do we improve this? Your idea about helping each other is a start. I suppose if it weeds out the ones with fleeting delusions of grandeur and dreams of wealth, that will help. If it means less films are fast-tracked, more time is spent on each film, then each becomes that much more focused and worthwhile in terms of individuality and distinction, then there is something to be hopeful for.
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1000 True Fans
Kevin Kelly’s articulation of survival on the long tail was one of the essential readings this year for anyone trying to figure out a new paradigm for Indie and Truly Free Filmmaking. It may be old hat out in blogland, but it is a concept that still hasn’t been discussed enough among indie filmmakers. It promotes the notion that:
A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author – in other words, anyone producing works of art – needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.
As a fan of a great deal of diverse artists, I regularly marvel at how musicians in particular do a good job of maintaining an ongoing dialogue with their fans. Filmmakers, outside of Kevin Smith, don’t seem to embrace this necessity. I suppose it can be argued that prolific artists working in multiple formats, like Michel Gondry, do it well too. The Safdie Brothers are another good example amongst the more emerging set. But as Kelly points out:
The key challenge is that you have to maintain direct contact with your 1,000 True Fans. They are giving you their support directly. Maybe they come to your house concerts, or they are buying your DVDs from your website, or they order your prints from Pictopia. As much as possible you retain the full amount of their support. You also benefit from the direct feedback and love.
To ignore this advice and still hope for the industry to simply discover you and reward you, limits your options to mainstream tentpole pictures. This may well be some filmmakers’ dream, but they might as well plan to win the lottery. What is so exciting is that there has never been a better time to plan on building the apparatus that allows you to be a Truly Free Filmmaker. The tools to build your 1000 True Fan circle are there. Kelly illuminates:
The technologies of connection and small-time manufacturing make this circle possible. Blogs and RSS feeds trickle out news, and upcoming appearances or new works. Web sites host galleries of your past work, archives of biographical information, and catalogs of paraphernalia. Diskmakers, Blurb, rapid prototyping shops, Myspace, Facebook, and the entire digital domain all conspire to make duplication and dissemination in small quantities fast, cheap and easy. You don’t need a million fans to justify producing something new. A mere one thousand is sufficient.
… This small circle of diehard fans, which can provide you with a living, is surrounded by concentric circles of Lesser Fans.
I have frequently feared that it is the dream of stardom and wealth that fuels both the indie production cycle and film school enrollment lists. Maybe that is because the possibility of survival and being a true artist seemed so impossible. But that does not have to be so, if you invest some time and energy in building your own support system.
Young artists starting out in this digitally mediated world have another path other than stardom, a path made possible by the very technology that creates the long tail. Instead of trying to reach the narrow and unlikely peaks of platinum hits, bestseller blockbusters, and celebrity status, they can aim for direct connection with 1,000 True Fans. It’s a much saner destination to hope for. You make a living instead of a fortune. You are surrounded not by fad and fashionable infatuation, but by True Fans. And you are much more likely to actually arrive there.
Any way, read the article and take it to heart. And for those of you who already know this gospel, please help to promote the word.
