Manohla Dargis’ recent thoughts from the Cannes Film Festival pointed out this hole in film festival information. Particularly in this day and age of a plethora of choices and easy access & distribution of information, why aren’t festivals telling the audience these details?
Fests, please take note. Filmmakers, please make this request when you apply. Without A Box and Festival Genius, please allow and supply this information.
I forget again who sent me this link, but I found CoffeeAndCelluloid’s post on their KickStarter experience illuminating.
Although I have yet to engage in a crowdfunding attempt yet, I have been contemplating. And I have been providing some advice, thoughts, and general consulting to those that have. I think the points Joey Daoud raises about needing to raise a fan base first, having some investment pre-committed, and needing to have supporters, promoters, and blogs lined up in advance are all right on. He’s helping all of us learn how to make this better together.
Joey also posted many good links to bring more perspective on the whole crowdfunding experience:
“While the plan could be a boon for consumers, it stands to be highly disruptive for the movie business…”
Distribber’s Adam Chappnick tipped me to this WSJ article on Time Warner Cable’s pitch to Hollywood to open up a new distribution window that “would allow consumers to watch a movie at home just 30 days after its theatrical release—far earlier than the usual four months—for roughly $20 to $30 a pop.”
Variety has now chimed in on the window issue, and not surprisingly, they seem to want to keep it open longer. They also getting into the price point of it all, both stating that Hwood feels the $20 price too low, but also pointing out that VOD sporting events that once the price gets close to $50, people tend to watch in groups.
What works for Hollywood product does not necessarily apply to Indie, or TrulyFree, films though. Hollywood’s been manufacturing the desire for their type of work for a century. They have trained their audience well. Indie film’s audience remains relatively clueless about what work is out there, much less understanding why they might want it. Desire for Hwood stuff is highest when it hits the screen. Indie work needs time to build that interest. How we do that is still a major question.
Steve Rosenbaum had an interesting post on Mashable awhile back, where he started to lay out some relevant questions about what the correct equation is for creation and curation:
it’s impossible to imagine curators as adding value without a reasonable economic arrangement to content creators. But the ethical issues around attribution, re-purposing, and editorializing around others’ content is far from resolved. Respect and remuneration seem to be reasonable starting places.
Mind you: curation is very different from aggregation. Curation provides the filter and the context. With the vast myriad of options out there, how much do we value the trusted sources that point us in the right direction
Today’s guest post is by John Bradburn.
Why do kids make music and not films? It’s a right of passage for teenagers up and down the land to jump in a van and travel the length of the country with instruments to play shows. These same kids save up to buy guitars and record demos. They may not make a profit but they enjoy the ride. I want to know why this doesn’t happen with filmmakers. What are the barriers to grassroots film exhibition or Film Gigging and what can we learn from the model most bands work on?
Kids don’t make films. For the cost of a set of instruments you could buy a digital camera and a laptop. Four people can make a film quite easily and with the same level of technological skill needed to record and mix a demo. But kids don’t. Jean Cocteau famously stated that film would only be an art when its materials were as cheap as pen and paper. Well now it’s certainly as cheap as an Ibenez guitar.
The film industry looks like the music industry if we thought we could only record songs with orchestras in the Albert Hall. There is no lo-fi film circuit. There are small budget shorts but 95% are aiming at the mainstream. There are even less film ‘labels’ that fund and distribute films like albums. CDs and DVDs are physically the same. If you can get an album reviewed you can get a film reviewed. So logically there should be an equal amount of indie film labels as there are music labels.
Today’s guest post is from David Brendel.
I was walking down 6th avenue Saturday morning past the IFC Theater and overheard some guy bitching about the ticket price: “$12.50?!? Are you fucking kidding me? Whatever happened to matinees? They got matinees at the AMC.” Whether or not he was right, it wasn’t the cashier’s fault, who was taking the brunt of the rant.
I paused to eavesdrop, and to read the blown-up review of “Daddy Long Legs,” the story of an irresponsible, abrasive father who sounded a lot like the guy grumbling at the cashier. The crank proceeded to buy a ticket to “Daddy Long Legs,” and I followed suit.
Today’s guest post concludes Sol Tryon’s tale of some of what he learned and loved from making and distributing The Living Wake.
Having seen the challenges of indie films hitting theaters with little to no marketing budgets, we have set a theatrical schedule that allows us as the filmmakers really support the film in each market where we release it. We have set up a network of influential people and companies to support us by doing hosted screenings for nearly every single screening we have. This creates more of an event type of feel to the traditional theatrical experience as well as the opportunity to cross promote with our host for each particular screening. The way it works is that the host targets their friends, fans and supporters to come to their specific screening while we market to our networks as well. The idea being that we are able to bring awareness to our host and their work as well as them bringing audiences we wouldn’t have necessarily been able to reach ourselves into the theater. Ultimately what it all comes down to is a targeted grass roots network that will hopefully spread through word of mouth. While we don’t have unrealistic expectations for our theatrical box office numbers, we do believe we will significantly raise the awareness for the film in general and hopefully that will lead to larger interest in the DVD, TV, VOD, digital and foreign rights.
