I was meaning to build more Simple Fixes. I have posted some here already. Imagine how fast and far we could travel, if we all just generated a Simple Fix a month. Or even a year. Our progress would be astounding.
Here our filmmaker world people generally desire first and foremost to get funding for their film. You’d think there would be a single place you could turn to and find all the sources gathered or at least many of them. I don’t know of such a place.
So I built one.
Jon Kilick and I have a fair amount in common — but we also seem to see the state of the world, or at least our film culture and industry, in a very different way.
We both also recognize — and encourage others to recognize — some really important things about the film world, namely that this is a great time to be a creator. We have
All it needs is a final card “Please don’t talk or text during the movie”.
Mel Brooks is a national treasure.
By Jay Webb
Previously: IndieStreet Post #2: “Word on The Street”
The “Word on the Street” is: Cooperation
Indieconomies of Scale Part 1 (of 3)
How can we apply the word “cooperation” to an industry whose namesake automatically pushes us away from the very notion? At IndieStreet, we are hoping to bridge the conceptual gap from “artistic & independent” to “business-minded & together” through a simple explanation of what we call Indieconomies of Scale.
We hear a lot of buzz in the Independent film academic space about how filmmakers must start cooperating for the industry to survive, but we have yet to see many examples of execution. This post will not express a concern about the “industry” as an abstract whole, but is more concerned about you as an individual filmmaker. I love great storytellers, and there is a threat to individual independents who do not start grasping technology advancements that can uncover the benefits of community and emerging markets. You are a hard worker who makes a film and tells a touching story with all of your heart, but you can’t figure out the best way to navigate the transitional market in a way that will maximize your film’s potential reach or return. Well you are in luck! You (single frowning Indie filmmaker) are not the only one with this dilemma…and you are also not the only one in the world with a quality story told in an innovative way. There are others just like you. My bet is that you can find at least one other like-minded filmmaker (or better yet another filmmaking team) from somewhere on the globe who you admire that has a similar passion, energy, niche target market, and can mutually agree that you are at the same career stage (which, let’s admit it; the level of “Struggling” encompasses at least 90% of Indie filmmakers).
Context, and the lack there of, exposes a great deal. In a world of abundance, the common mind is revealed. We all receive the same inputs, it is surprising we don’t have more of the same outputs.
Take a look at this montage of final shots and decide if our common usage has removed or added new meaning to our common crutches. Granted, out of context is something entirely different from the closure such shots may bring at the end of an emotional ride. Still there is something to be learned from how we do things — not that I know what that is yet, but…
By Roger Jackson
Previously: Secret 19-Point VoD Marketing Plan, Part II
Before I dive into the final part of the Marketing Plan, a quick Kinonation update. We’re now delivering 3 or 4 films a day to video-on-demand exhibitors. That’s a thousand films a year. Not bad, and we’re just getting started. For me the best part is when people respond to films we distribute. One of the dozens of Kinonation films that went live on VoD in August was “Good People Go to Hell…” It’s an honest, objective and entertaining doc about hard-right Christianity. My favorite online review: “Great movie. Great education about a world I didn’t know much about. Though I don’t share their views, I love listening to people that have passion for what they believe in.” Kinonation isn’t the director, obviously, but there’s enormous satisfaction from helping filmmakers get their films seen, worldwide. That’s what we do. That’s what we love.
OK, back to the Secret 19-Point Marketing Plan. Here’s 13-19.
13. Mailing List: For indie films, building and exploiting a mailing list can be the single most important marketing action. Why? Because these are the people you’ve already connected with — maybe via Kickstarter, or at a festival screening. They CARE about your film. So you’ll get a high return on investment (in time & effort) from communicating with them. You should start building your mailing list early — at the inception stage of your film project. Collect emails relentlessly — at parties, events, festivals. Ask for business cards, and then be disciplined about adding that name & email to your list. You don’t need fancy software — a simple list in Excel or Word is fine.
14. Google and SEM: I truly believe the holy grail for VoD marketing is effective SEM — Search Engine Marketing. It’s what Wall Street brokers would call arbitrage. The internet just makes it scalable. Here’s an example: your film is on Vudu, price is $5 for a rental. You get 50% of that five bucks — $2.50. So you can afford to spend $2.49 on advertising for each rental, since you’d still make a penny. Obviously that’s cutting it a bit fine, so let’s say you’re OK spending $2 to get $2.50 back. You could do that all day, right? That’s SEO arbitrage, and that’s the Google business model.
by Kirsty Stark (Producer), Ella Macintyre (PMD) and Victoria Cocks (Writer/Director)
Part 5. Release: Wrap-Up & What’s Next
Our final step in this stage of the Wastelander Panda journey was to release the films. We did this in three stages – a preview at the SXSW Film Festival in March, two back-to-back screenings at a local cinema in Adelaide on May 27th, and an online release that same evening.
We had different reasons and goals for each of these three steps:
