Year: 2009

Categories
Truly Free Film

Hope For The Future pt. 6: The List #’s 22- 25

22. Financiers are collaborating with each other. Groups like Impact Partners that provide regular deal flow, vetting, and producerial oversight for investors with common interests lowers the threshold number for investors interested in entering the film business. IndieVest is another model based on subscription, deal flow, and perqs. The high amount of capital needed to enter the film business has limited its participants. The film business has its own vernacular, and mysterious business practices. It is an industry of relationships. Collaborative ventures like this help to solve many of these threshold issues.

23. The US Government, at the city, state, and federal levels, recognize the positive economic impact of film production and have created a highly competitive market for tax subsidies and credits. The vast amount of experimentation in this field has allowed for it to grow forever more efficient. Although these benefits are designed to attract the highest amount of spend, and are thus most beneficial to Hollywood style models, the steady employment these credits have helped to deliver, develop a crew and talent base more able to also take risks on projects of more limited means. The “soft” money they provide a project is often key to getting the green light.

24. A greater acceptance of a variety of windows in terms of release platforms is emerging. Filmmakers were once the greatest roadblock to a pre-theatrical release DVD. Filmmakers are experimenting with everything from free streaming to the filmic equivalent to a roadshow tour. It is only through such endeavors that we will find a new model that works.

25. Industry leaders have said publicly that they will share the meta-data that a VOD release generates with the filmmakers. Although license fees have dropped considerably, filmmakers have new options on what to ask for in return. I spoke on a panel with two notable industry leaders who said they would put it in their contracts that filmmakers can receive and share the data the VOD screenings of their films generate. This information will become important the more filmmakers seek to maintain direct communication with their audiences.

Categories
Truly Free Film

Printing: Posters & Postcards

As mentioned a few days back, our Film Festival Strategy brainstorm continues…

Jon Reiss offers this up:

A very necessary expense in your publicity campaign are postcards and posters. These can be expensive but fortunately there are a number of on-line printers that are relatively inexpensive (eg 4000-5000 postcards for $100). One hidden cost when it comes to printing is shipping so I do recommend using a printer near you – so before you buy – make sure you include shipping in your cost estimate. I actually send an assistant or intern to pick up my printing from “Next Day Flyers” since the shipping almost costs as much as the printing. Sometimes your local printer will even match an on-line printers prices – or come close enough to make it worth your while. But they won’t cut their prices unless you have a comparison price.

Regarding Postcards – they are cheap enough online that you could print them for each festival or theatrical screening even if you only print 500 at a time. The old way of doing this was to order a ton and then use stickers for your specific screening time. Unless you have some slave labor around – buying new postcards for $50 is going to be cheaper than paying someone to print and apply stickers to each post card – you have better things to do with your time.

Three important notes about posters:

1. Most on-line printers will not print one sheet size posters.

2. Printing standard film size posters – 27″x41″ – is very expensive (for film festivals you only need one or two which will cost about $50 each – but for a theatrical release you will need more than that). The reason that these posters are so expensive to print is that they are too large for standard offset printing (the cheapest kind of bulk printing). However nearly all theaters (all the ones that I dealt with) will accept posters that are 24.5″x37.5″ which is the largest size that you can have printed offset. This will save you thousands. (Although the best price I found was $1200 for 2000 posters – a pretty good price).

3. You can get a lot of mileage from 11×17 posters. Most storefronts won’t put up a standard or near standard one sheet when you are promoting in a town. But they will put up a 11×17 poster. And these are much cheaper. You can get a 1000 for around $300. They are also good for wildposting/wheatpasting as they fit on most electrical boxes. (18x24s are also a good size for this) But be careful with wildposting – you can be fined thousands of dollars for illegal posting if there is anything on the poster that will track back to you or the theater!)

Printers:

Next Day Flyers based in Compton California

Got Print based in Burbank California

jon@jonreiss.com

Categories
Truly Free Film

What Got This Blog Started (For Me)

The conditions were there.  People were already talking.  Everyone over at The Workbook Project and FH2A were already leading the charge.  More voices were needed though.  And I was asked to give this talk, see…

Now you can truly see how much I need my hands to be able to speak.  This is just part one of six.  And  yes, it is my way to stay nasally through all six.  The rest are all there on Vimeo — so I just learned.  Check them all out, or not.

What of course will keep this blog going in the new year will be your participation.  We have so much ground to cover.  What is working well?  What isn’t? What are the goals and what are the steps to take us there?  We can’t wait for someone to lead us.  We must collaborate.  
Independent film culture — its content and its infrastructure — is at stake.  
I tell my son that it is a great time to be young because there is so much exciting stuff that MUST get done to save the planet.  Okay, so I give him a bit bigger agenda.  All I want from  you is to save indie film.  Happy New Year!
Categories
Bowl Of Noses

Free Rice: Win & Feed The World

Free Rice is one of those sites where you click on it and you do something good. Although with Free Rice you do more than just click. You play a game and the more answers you get right, the more people you have fed. The questions are hard; they are geared to adults — or rather smart kids (maybe third grade and up).  You leave with knowledge and the United Nations has supplied more hungry people with more food. Everybody wins!

You know you made one of your New Year’s resolutions to do more good for the world, right? Well, here’s a way if you don’t actually want to get up to do it!

Happy New Year! (p.s. this is a recycle from another one of our blogs — TheNextGoodIdea — so we are doing our part in conservation!).

Categories
The Next Good Idea

Free Rice: Win & Feed The World

Free Rice is one of those sites where you click on it and you do something good.  Although with Free Rice you do more than just click.  You play a game and the more answers you get right, the more people you have fed.  You leave with knowledge and the UN has supplied more hungry people with more food.  Everybody wins!

You know you made one of your New Year’s resolutions to do more good for the world, right? Well, here’s a way if you don’t actually want to get up to do it!
Happy New Year!
Categories
Truly Free Film

What Do You Want Our Film Culture To Be?

Is this the time of the year that we are supposed to reflect?  Or is it that the point when we get to dream?  Is any point in time truly different in this regard  — or has the calendars and clocks once again fooled us into thinking we are supposed to do something different based on what has passed?

Well, since we can only really move forward in this game, I am going to choose Door #2.  What are we reaching for? We can build anything, right?  So: what do we want our film culture to be.
It probably makes sense to know what we want to build or at least build towards before we start building.  We are moving on from a limited-supply, gatekeeper-controlled, impulse-decided entertainment economy into something new.  The more we ask ourselves what we want this new paradigm to be, the better off we will be once we have created it.  I wonder how much closer we can get this year.  How would you define this new paradigm?  Hmmm….   
How about:
1. Diverse stories.
2. Diverse methods — be they structures, techniques, tools,or platforms — of telling stories.
3. Accessible when I want it.
4. Accessible where I want it.
5. Audiences able to “try on” different films for low cost.  Very low costs.
6. Narrative worlds that are accessible across many different platforms, being told in different ways on these different platforms, with unique content for each of them.  
7. Filmmakers accepting responsibility for accessing audiences.
8. Filmmakers devoted to maintaining relationships with their audiences.
9. FIlmmakers united in sharing their audiences with other filmmakers.
10. Filmlovers dedicated to curating for their social circle.
11. No rigidity in terms of “windows” for different platform releases.
12. Audiences initiating some projects, be it through content or financing.
13. Exhibitors working together to strengthen audiences’ bond with indie/free/art film.
14. A return of critical community that helps us recognize what is artful and ambitious in a particular work, how it fits into our times, and how things might have been different.
15. A creative community knowledgeable of the vast communication tools available on the web.
16. Filmmakers knowledgeable on how to lead a long and sustainable life creating challenging work.
17. A business infrastructure that is focused more on quality and long-term sustainablity than quantity or immediate financial gain.
18. A festival apparatus that is based on a short and intense flurries of making work available to an unprepared audience but instead on year-round aggregation and enhancement of that audience.
19. Open source practices and general transparency in actions and practices is essential to a truly free film culture.
What have I forgot?  What should we add to the list? And why did the answers get longer as the list itself got longer?
Oh, and Happy New Year!  Thanks for reading and energizing this quest for change and growth this past year.  How can we make an even bigger push this coming year?