Jeremy Juuso has an interesting post on Baseline Intelligence that Phillip Lefesi tipped me to. Jeremy analyzes the 1st & 2nd weekend returns of DIY vs other specialized releases. The DIY films hold their own on the first weekend, but are surpassed by the corporate releases thereafter. What is not mentioned however, is that the DIY films are not only probably more profitable, but the DIY films are still owned by the filmmakers (presumably). If the exhibitors take 50% of the gross, the differential for rentals is only $25K between the two over the first two weeks. You have to figure that the corporate releases are spending more than $25K over the DIY films in marketing costs. The DIY team would thus be making more money as well as owning their film and controlling their release. Check it out.
Category: Truly Free Film
We are on the verge of a new film culture and infrastructure.
Whenever I walk into a grocery store, I can’t help but wonder if people really want so many choices. But does the same applies to tomato sauce or frozen waffles also apply to art, literature, music, and movies? Sure Pandora can source new music for me based on my prior expressed preferences, but music also works as a background pleasure. The same is hard to say for movies. And man, do we sure have a lot of great stuff readily available to us. What are we going to do to filter and search through all our choices?
Today’s guest post is from filmmaker Chris Ohlson. Chris produced one of the indie films that I truly enjoyed last year, THE OVERBROOK BROTHERS. Check it out; you won’t be disappointed. He’s making the move into directing now.
I was recently invited to the IFP Narrative Filmmaker Labs with my directorial feature film debut Melvin. (the IFP Labs workshop and mentor 10 narrative works-in-progress that showcase ‘creative promise and vision’) To be able to participate in the Labs was a truly humbling and altogether amazing experience – and I have much to share.
But first, some quick and fast back-story. I’ve been a working producer and production manager surviving by doing commercials, web series and music videos. In recent years, I have acted as some variation of a producer on films like The Overbrook Brothers, Lovers of Hate and The Happy Poet. So that’s what I do, but not necessarily who I am. I am a filmmaker.
Back to the Labs. Early in the week Scott Macaulay (Editor of Filmmaker Magazine and producer of Gummo and Raising Victor Vargas, among many others) said something that brought the Labs to life for me. “As a producer,” he said, “I try to learn from my mistakes and I try to never make that particular mistake again on the next film, or the one after that.”
Simple enough, right? But I was thunderstruck.
Today’s guest post is from Elizabeth Strickler, informing us of what is going over at InMediaRes this week (and a wee bit of cross promotional activity).
In Media Res is dedicated to experimenting with collaborative, multi-modal forms of online scholarship. Each weekday, a different participant curates a short (less than 3-minute) video clip accompanied by a 300-350-word impressionistic response. We use the title “curator” because, like a curator in a museum, the participant repurposes a media object that already exists and provides context through their commentary. Theme weeks are designed to generate a networked conversation between curators and the public around a particular topic.
For the week of July 26-30th, the theme is “Transmedia Now”. The curators are: Christy Dena, Marc Ruppel, Robert Pratten, Brian Newman, and Ted Hope.
Categories
PMD Rising
As some of you may know, I coined a new crew category titled the Producer of Marketing and Distribution (or PMD) in my book Think Outside the Box Office. I came up with the idea when trying to think of a solution to the enormous amount of work that distribution and marketing can be for filmmakers without a distributor. The concept boils down to: you didn’t make your film on your own – why should you release it on your own. You can read about the concept of the PMD in one of my other posts. I am happy to report that this concept is gaining traction. I was spurred to write this post after 25% (20 out of 80) of each of my Perth and Adelaide workshops indicated that they wanted to be PMDs (this is before my upcoming classes in Sydney and Melbourne). In Adelaide, the SA Film Corporation has plans to set up an in house PMD to help support the distribution efforts of independent filmmakers in South Australia.
Also just this week Adam Daniel Mezei who in January wrote a great blog post about the responsibilities of a PMD, has set himself up as a PMD for Hire. One of the attendees of my Amsterdam workshop has another PMD site and is already working on a Dutch film as a PMD. A group of Vancouver attendees formed a PMD support group this past month.
Back in the day, back when indie film was a workable financial enterprise, back before I ran the San Francisco Film Society, back before there was a Double Hope, back before I was part of This is that, I had a production company called Good Machine. James Schamus and I founded it together, and we later partnered with David Linde. Mary Jane Skalski and Anthony Bregman were also partners, and we had the good fortune to work with a host of other talents including my later partners Anne Carey and Diana Victor, and Ross Katz, Glen Basner, Heta Paarte, Lamia Guelatti, Melinka Thompson-Gody, Jean Castelli, Kelly Miller, Dan Beers, Eric Papa, Jawal Nga, and many other later-legends to be.
As good as the films we made, as great as the individuals we got to collaborate with, we also had a genuine fondness for memos and how-to’s. Those were the days when you stored things in file cabinets. The 90’s are in boxes now in my garage. Once things went digital, it as if they are lost. I stumble through less. When they were paper I occasionally had the pleasure of sorting through the files, finding choice nuggets. My madeleines… like this.
Categories
Why Producers Are Valued
Ages ago, I wrote a post about why Producers matter. All of that hold’s true, but none of it is why we get hired. In these days when jobs are scarce and many a long time cohort is looking at new enterprises or a new career, I find myself often reminding my brethren of the simple truths of what “they” want from us. Producers are respected for six things I figure:
- Validation – Your support of them means that the project is real (or at least they think it will mean that for others). It may be it’s own category, but I think the “Cover Your Ass” criteria is a subset of this; those that are in the employ by others, need to make sure they have someone else to blame or deflect off when SHTF. That someone is often you.
