We are on the verge of a new film culture and infrastructure.
So now you’ve watched the first three parts, right? And you are dying to watch Part Four. Well wait no further.
Some Job Opportunities in Indie Film with Ted Hope (part 4) from Hope for Film on Vimeo.
Once again, courtesy of Chris Stetson. Give this man a job!
Back in 1995 I wrote an article for Filmmaker Magazine entitled “Indie Film Is Dead”. My efforts to call attention to the changing indie dynamic hardly began with Lehman Brother’s collapse; my attempts to make filmmakers empowered are long founded. And we still have a lot of work ahead of us. It begins with identification of both what could be, what should be, and what does not need to be. Although it has been a long fifteen years, I remain quite optimistic that we will build it better together.
Awhile back here on Truly Free Film, I looked back at that article that I wrote to go public with my fear we, the indie community, had grown complacent. Each time I revisit it, I gain some new perspective. I have been truly enjoying Scott McCauley’s recent posts reflecting back on the history of Filmmaker Magazine, and was quite pleased when Scott ask me to take another glance for the magazine. It again has strengthened my conviction that we can move our culture and it’s apparatus forward. This is that reflection:
I think we tend to view the past as the present and overlook the world we are really living in. Furthermore, there is always a tremendous gulf between thought and expression. As a culture and as an industry, we are very slow to react to change and particularly to clues as to what is around the bend. We only alter our behavior when the pain of the present outweighs the fear of the future. We need our canaries to have bullhorns, but usually I find that it is so easy to get so far ahead of the parade, that the crowd forgets you are leading it. The big change for today is how easy it is for people to participate. When I wrote IFID I got a nice response from ten or fifteen people but it was mostly about the wish for someone to build the system so they could benefit from it. I write to get discussions started and hope that we can all move them into action. Now when I post something particularly applicable to our culture or industry over 100 people comment and many more pass it around retweeting and posting on FB and the like. That discussion is slowly also leading to action. Indie has bifurcated into Truly Free, which is sorting out a series of best practices, and the prestige & genre arms of the corporate well-capitalized entities that still rely on practices of old.
Looking back at the article, it feels like a Macy’s Parade float of a giant tweety bird pulling down a 1000 fire alarms,
Today’s guest post is once again from filmmaker Zak Forsman. Yesterday we ran part one of this post.
Now, it should be pointed out that we are not alone in trying to aid the floundering LA indie scene. There are two other LA based screening series that we have partnered and networked with. Cinema Speakeasy by Saskia Wilson Brown has had great success hosting short film workshops where the audience is invited to offer creative feedback on films in post. Film Courage Interactive, hosted by Karen Worden & David Branin, bookends their screenings with a indie film quiz show with sponsor-donated prizes and a filmmaker therapy session of sorts where filmmakers discuss the more pressing issues of the day. All of us are building a network that we hope will grow into an alternative to film festivals, where the filmmaker can make a little dough showing their movies.
Experience has taught us that many filmmakers we invite to participate often need guidance and motivation. For that reason we have adopted a tiered revenue-share model where the first 40 seats go to the venue, the next 40 go to the filmmaker and the last 20 go to CINEFIST. Anything over 100 ticket sales are split evenly. In addition to having to first satisfy the venue’s cut, the filmmakers need to meet promotional commitments in order to participate in the box office sales. It’s not automatic. Having the filmmaker push and promote can often be the difference between 15 people or 150 people attending the event.
Today’s guest post if from filmmaker Zak Forsman.
If you haven’t heard of CINEFIST yet, let me explain what it is: myself, Kevin Shah, Jamie Cobb, Neha Shah and Erik Reese — all members of the Sabi Pictures family — needed a new company to separate the production of our films from the distribution and exhibition of them. CINEFIST was born out of that need. When people ask, I say “it handles all things distribution and exhibition.”
If you were to visit the web site you’d see that in addition to an online store (selling DVDs, soundtracks and posters), there is a section for our Quarterly Los Angeles Screening Series and some tools and services on the horizon like our own VOD portal, a private invitation-only community forum, and a digital cinema census. For the purposes of this article I’m going to focus on the screening series, why we started it and what we’ve learned about live events.
In September 2009, I was reading this blog, Ted’s blog, and an new article entitled “18 Actions Towards A Sustainable Truly Free Film Community”. In that article he listed a number of areas where a member of our community could deepen their involvement through mentoring, collaborating, learning, evolving and more. As I went through the list, I was happy to note that we were doing each of these in one form or another with one exception — curating. We weren’t involved in supporting other filmmakers’ work or elevating our local community’s awareness of the works we admired.
Become a PMD. Commitment can be more important than experience.
Some Job Opportunities in Indie Film with Ted Hope (part 3) from Hope for Film on Vimeo.
Part One, Part Two, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven.
In the end, The Way We Get By by far exceeded our expectations. It was an unbelievably rewarding journey during one of the most difficult economic times in our country. We learned to never underestimate the support that can come from that small niche audience every film has. The people of Maine knew our story and wanted to help support our success. In every screening we’ve attended, there has been someone in the audience with a Maine connection there to support us. Going local paid off for us nationally—literally. Maine was a critical factor in making The Way We Get By a national success.
And an amazing blessing for us as well. Leading up to our national broadcast, a group of vendors in Maine decided to throw us an amazing wedding in Maine—-for free. A dream wedding we could never afford. Over 60 wedding vendors from across the state donated their services for our special day.
Today’s guest post is from filmmakers Gita Pullapilly and Aron Gaudet.
With film prints in hand, it now changed our game plan. Though we knew likely we’d lose money realizing nationally in theaters, we were banking that the film reviews and national press would bring a greater exposure to our film—and if not help our bottom line—at least help our careers.
In the end, we decided to alter our business plan, aware of the risks, and launched a national theatrical run.
The money we had made in Maine allowed us to bring on International Film Circuit as our distributor for a national release.
Our national non-profit partners couldn’t provide any financial support to us, however they shared film and screening information with their members by email, on their websites, and on their social networks. Now it wasn’t just us tweeting something or adding an event to our Facebook fan page to our few thousand followers. It was a large network of organizations reaching hundreds of thousands of people.
