Category: Truly Free Film

We are on the verge of a new film culture and infrastructure.

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Truly Free Film

DIY Chronicles: THE WAY WE GET BY (Part 3 of 5): Going Local and Maximizing Your Distribution Window

Today’s guest post is the third of five from filmmakers Gita Pullapilly and Aron Gaudet concerning their experience making and distributing THE WAY WE GET BY.

The students at Harvard Business School realistically saw no way for us to do a theatrical run without a significant investment in film prints and print and advertising. But they noted that by leveraging our POV broadcast with a DVD release, we could feasibly make our first real revenue stream. That coupled with a strong educational and community screening plan showed that there was perhaps some hope of making a living. However, they all agreed, it was going to be A LOT of work.

The one date we knew we couldn’t move was our broadcast. The Way We Get By was going to be a common carriage POV Special on Veterans Day (November 11). We knew we had to come up with a strategy to market and promote the film leading up to the broadcast and direct our audiences towards the DVD.

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Truly Free Film

DIY Chronicles: THE WAY WE GET BY (Part 2 of 5): Timing Is Everything

Today’s guest post is the second of five from filmmakers Gita Pullapilly and Aron Gaudet concerning their experience making and distributing THE WAY WE GET BY.

In November, we got a call from POV. We were being picked up for the 2009 season. Around that time, we also found out ITVS LINCS had approved us for funding. With a national television broadcast now in place, we were on the path to reaching our goals.

Now, we had to figure out the festival, theatrical, DVD, digital and online markets. Surely with a broadcast in place, other outlets had to at least be interested?

We started reaching out and calling theatrical and DVD distributors, trying to see if maybe with a television broadcaster in place, they would want to acquire our film. Our eagerness quickly turned to despair as we began to place more calls to distributors.

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Truly Free Film

The Shape Of Things: Towards A New Organizational Structure

Today’s guest post is courtesy of James Fair.

When I wrote ‘Linearity is the Enemy’ for Ted last month, I briefly mentioned how I felt the ‘family tree’ style organisational structure of filmmaking could look more like a ‘mind map’. I want to clarify my point a little further and follow it with why I think it is relevant.

In Figure 1, I have drawn what many consider to be the model that represents filmmaking structure best.

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Truly Free Film

DIY Chronicles: THE WAY WE GET BY (Part 1 of 5):Finding A Spot In the Line-up

For the past five years, Aron Gaudet and I dedicated our lives to making and distributing our film, The Way We Get By. Our story takes place in Bangor, Maine and profiles three senior citizens, who have dedicated their lives to greeting troops heading off to war and returning home. The story is about finding purpose in your life and the role service plays in helping overcome your own personal obstacles.

 

For our three subjects, greeting troops changed their lives, and in many ways, this film changed our lives—personally and professionally. We want to share with you the journey that we took—to inspire you to find your own business model to extend the life of your film and reach the largest possible audience.

 

FINDING A SPOT IN THE LINE-UP

 

Aron and I had certain goals we wanted to accomplish with our first feature-length project. We wanted to make a quality film and get it in front of an audience, but we also wanted to establish our careers as filmmakers. This meant some of our choices would be made because it was the best move for our film, and some would be made to help our careers.

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Issues and Actions Truly Free Film

Saving The Internet Through Storytelling

Today’s guest post is by John S. Johnson.  The Harmony Institute, a research group that John runs, is offering a free new guide to help combat the Telecom’s tales in their efforts to end net neutrality.  Here he explains a bit of the why and wherefore you need to download it (for free!) and read it NOW.

In 2010 it’s easy to forget how profoundly the Internet has revolutionized the way we communicate, interact and access information. When you logged on this morning to check your email, bank statement, or local news you may not have noticed that there are very few limits placed on the sites and services you have access to. While some people must crash the couch of their best friend to catch the latest HBO release, since he’s subscribed to all premium cable channels while they’re still stuck with rabbit ears on their TV, no one has an edge over anyone else when it comes to what we can access on the Internet.

Yet this principle of net neutrality that allows all sites, services and applications on the Internet to have equal access to consumers, and vice versa, is being fundamentally threatened. Today the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is looking to revise rules that have kept Internet Service Providers (ISPs) at bay for decades. These companies, like AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner and Verizon, would love to become the gatekeepers of the Internet, reserving preferential bandwidth for those sites and services that make them the most money.

And I can guarantee you HopeForFilm is not one of those sites.

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Truly Free Film

Theatrical: To Do… or NOT To Do.

Today’s guest post is from Orly Ravid of The Film Collaborative.

Theatrical: To Do… or NOT To Do.
(or perhaps more, HOW and WHEN To Do):

We all struggle with this, filmmakers, distributors alike. I remember giving a presentation to distributors about digital distribution and theatrical came up. I talked about the weirdness of showing a film 5 or 6 times a day to an almost always-empty house save a couple showings. This makes no sense for most films. When I released Baise Moi in 2000 we broke the boxoffice records at the time, and the “raincoat crowd” did show up at the oddest morning hours, but that is the exception, not the rule. Not every film has an 8-minute rape scene that just must be seen by post-punk-feminists and pornography-lovers alike. It’s an odd set-up for smaller films and it’s not the only means to the end we are looking for.

Recently The Film Collaborative released Eyes Wide Open in NYC, LA, Palm Beach and Palm Springs. We have a little over $10,000, all in it will be about $12,000 tops). We have made our money back and the great reviews and extra marketing / visibility will drive ancillary sales but we also did not invest or risk too much as you can see.

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Truly Free Film

Transmedia, me, and Braden King

I became interested in Transmedia as a way to deepen both the narrative experience and the relationship between the experience and the participant.  It frustrates me how feature films often feel disposable and not truly resonant for most viewers; I know we – as both creators and viewers — don’t have to settle for this.  This situation is partially derived from both the creators’ and the industry’s reliance on a single product as representative of the movie experience; we don’t have much other than repackaging to show for our engagement, and that engagement is too often 100% passive.

We have reductive in our expression of narrative.  I generally define the Six Pillars of Narrative as: Discovery, Process, Production, Participation, Promotion, & Presentation.  Creators limit themselves when they draw the line between art and commerce, thinking marketing techniques don’t warrant their creative hand.  We shouldn’t ignore aspects of narrative that deepen the dialogue with those who become the very community we want.

As a film producer, I have a specific (and rather limited) way of thinking about process.

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