By Kellie Ann Benz
It’s what fills our daydreams.
The Duplass Brothers, Lynn Shelton, JC Chandor, Katherine Bigelow and Benh Zeitlin, Steven Soderbergh, before he started threatening to retire on an annual basis. Robert Rodriguez, before he started making kids movies.
These are the names that rotate through our filmie craniums.
But the main reason that all of us fill our daydreams of indie film mega-success is because of one man: Quentin Tarantino.
Soderbergh kicked off the curiosity for ‘indie film’ with SEX, LIVES & VIDEOTAPE in 1989. His self-shot film’s sly peek into naughty suburbia catapulted what was then just Robert Redford’s labour of love festival called Sundance into water cooler conversation. While the film got raves, the filmmaker himself didn’t get people talking. Then an unknown video store clerk named Quentin Tarantino came along in 1992. His darkly witty, wildly violent character comedy RESEVOIR DOGS, not only solidified Sundance’s position as pop culture’s new cinematic tastemaker, but Tarantino’s wickedly entertaining persona was just the PR injection to the solar plexus that indie films needed.
Check out one of his first TV interviews with a practically baby-faced, pre-Daily Show Jon Stewart here and his lively chatter with a youngish David Letterman here.
While Tarantino was burning up the late night talk shows, sending millions of movie goers into the theaters for his giddy gorefests, he was also igniting the imaginations of thousands of potential filmmakers everywhere.
This is what made day dreamers out of all of us.
Now, as the swirling business that the Sundance Film Festival has become winds down for another year, we all know that the dreams that Soderburgh inspired and Tarantino inflamed have bred a pool of hopefuls so vast it’s nearly impossible to wade through it to find the gems.
Even Sundance itself has returned to indie films which slipped through their mitts the first time around. During their January 20th day long celebration of failure, they righted a wrong when they honored Wes Anderson’s career starting BOTTLE ROCKET which was originally rejected by Sundance programmers back in 1996.
While the debate rages on about what an indie film really is anymore, and the industry evolves with the rapidity of a rolling bolder down the lane of our career dreams, there’s now a slew of causalities as filmmaker Morgan J. Freeman so bravely revealed right here on this blog last week.
So what becomes of the cinematic day dreamers now?
If you’re reading this blog, you’ve already joined the enlightened army. While Sundance rages, you’ve no doubt been bombarded with the kind of distribution, monetization, self-release take-away’s that are making your head spin. If you were one of the over 10,000 rejections from Sundance and are starting to question whether your little movie made with indie spirit will ever have a festival audience, you’re clearly not alone.
There’s no question that the indie film festival process has developed a barrier that some just cannot scale anymore. But the barrier only exists because we have all put our eggs in a very tiny basket, while the truth is that in almost every city in the world there exists a film festival today.
Sure, not all film festivals have markets where theatrical distributors are looking to pick up new titles, but then again, the distribution route might not be what your film needs. Maybe what you film needs are the ivies of a number of festivals to propel its marketing campaign before its online launch?
Maybe what your film needs is to find its niche market and burrow into that world in a way that no other films have done? Maybe what your film needs is a companion short that you can both use to self-release to independent theaters?
Just as the indie film world has changed drastically, so too must your attitude towards what success means. You didn’t work this hard and toil for this long to let a few festivals determine the worth of your effort, did you?
Maybe just maybe, NOT getting into Sundance or Tribeca of Seattle or any of the big name festivals you’ve submitted to could be the best thing that ever happened. Let Wes Anderson be your daydream guide on this new avenue of thought. And let these sites be your new resources:
Free Film Festivals: http://voices.yahoo.com/angelo-bell-presents-top-free-film-festivals-for-8542807.html
Women’s Film Festivals: http://wellywoodwoman.blogspot.ca/p/womens-film-festivals-around-world.html
Horror Film Festivals: http://www.biglistofhorrorfilmfestivals.com/
Underground Film Festivals: http://www.undergroundfilmjournal.com/underground-film-festivals-list/
Comedy Festivals: http://www.moviemaker.com/articles/coolest-film-festivals-comedy-festivals/
Don’t fancy wasting your money on other people’s opinions at all? Have a knack for marketing and an audience keen to see your next project? Then by all means, in today’s market, you can bypass the festival circuit entirely and go straight to self-distribution.
Self-Distribution sites: http://www.pbs.org/pov/blog/2013/12/for-filmmakers-diy-digital-distribution-platforms/#.Ut7FcBBQ3IU and http://www.pbs.org/pov/filmmakers/diy-digital-distribution-platforms.php#.Ut7GnBBQ3IV
Now, a final world on all that inspires us.
Filmmaking is a bold career choice. It requires the maniacal dedication of a fanatic, the dogged determination of a zealot and most of all, the patience of a saint. Now that you’ve made your first film, or first three, you know. You now know what it takes.
It doesn’t get easier. There’s no moment in this career where the skies open and the money falls and your freedom is honored and respected.
What happens at the next stage of the journey is that more people have bigger stakes in the decisions that you make. The bigger the budget, the bigger the risk and if you want to see the true character of financial risk takers, spend an afternoon in a casino. Don’t gamble, just observe. Those are your producers. Your producers, that is, when their life doesn’t depend on you being remarkable.
So if you knew, if you could have a crystal ball into your future and you could see that where you are right now is the easiest part of the journey, would you keep going?
The indie market has changed and though your inspiration might have initially been Soderbergh, Tarantino, Wes Anderson or today’s Lynn Shelton, there’s no denying that clinging to their career models is missing out on your own personal creative evolution.
Today, the world of indie filmmaking is wide open, and there’s been no better time that right now, for each daydreamer to make it their own. Go forth and conquer!
Kellie Ann Benz writes about films, and makes them too. She publishes the short film resource, The Shorts Report and writes for Canada’s National Screen Institute news, Canadian Screenwriter Magazine, Playback and many more. Also the Writer/Director of four award winning shorts, Kellie Ann recently completed her first feature film, NAKED NIGHT BIKE, and is anxiously awaiting news of festival invites. @shortsreport & @shockbuckpics
