Category: Truly Free Film

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

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Truly Free Film

Who Is Really Prepared For Sundance?

If only I had more hands.  And more time.  And less things that really got me excited — like movies I want to make.

Anyway, I have been wondering what films and what filmmakers had gone ahead and made a trailer, built a website, had been blogging, placing clips on line.  You know: all the sort of stuff that needs to be done so you can truly launch at Sundance.  
It currently looks like the list of Those Who Are Prepared is not surprisingly dominated by those that have the most funding (and thus the most hands).  But it really doesn’t have to be so (I know that’s a lot easy to say, than do, but still…).  
Cinematical has run with a good opening list of the trailers for Sundance films.  I hope someone does a list of websites soon too.
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Truly Free Film

What’s Needed Now? Chesanek contemplates

Brent had some thoughts to the question of what’s needed now:


I completely agree about what’s needed. If you notice, Pitchfork is a conglomeration of so many sections, from lists to music videos to interviews, etc., that it becomes a one-stop shop for visitors, or at least a magnificent starting point to news, reviews, features, interviews, videos, etc.

This could be done for our community, but adding a local basis with subdomains. So NYC film events and reviews of films playing here is one subdomain, LA, Seattle, Boston, Philadelphia, Orlando, Austin are others. They could all share content but arrange it based on the local scene and screenings and then could add local content.

Getting audiences to a specific time and place to see a film is just as crucial as getting them a review of that film. Imagine a public iCal or Google Calendar with film schedules, not showtimes necessarily, but dates and schedules, so we can see, for example, The GoodTimesKid is playing only FOUR DAYS this week at Anthology while Pleasure of Being Robbed is playing for the next 10 days at IFC. One calendar with all the theaters’ schedules. Is there anything like this?

Right now in Google Reader I have all these feeds in a folder. But the problem is that things disappear as I read them, and then articles and features don’t get the face time that they do on Pfork or in a more traditional magazine format. So I read a Hammer to Nail review and then the next day I don’t have that review or that screenshot from the film there to remind me that the film is playing, nor do I have a schedule of how long I have to see that film. RSS readers and scroll-down blogs are magnificent, but again, they don’t lend repeated viewing–they’re designed to do the opposite.

Pitchfork is setup so well I prefer going to it rather than subscribing to its feed. It encourages browsing and promotes repeated viewing of its features. I think for our purposes, Pfork is arranged better than content in an RSS reader or scroll-down blog. If I go to Pfork, I get new content as well as another reminder of that record they loved and reviewed 3 days ago–while I didn’t have time to seek it out and listen then, I do today. The more we see something, the more inclined we are to look into it or at least remember it.

Building something like this for my own use is possible if I scour the web daily and go crazy coding something myself or figure out how to customize iGoogle or My.Yahoo, but maybe it could be stronger if there was one central build of it, at least for each metropolitan area. I know the web is very much about letting users decide on their content, but I think it’d be more effective in promoting the lesser-talked about films if it was moderated by a party with that goal. Pfork is still not user-generated in the least, but it’s absolutely a community and beyond, because record stores notice their sales heavily correlate with Pitchfork’s content and because there is such a large anti-Pitchfork crowd.

I ask again, is there anything like this?
–Brent Chesanek

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Truly Free Film

Brand Sponsorship: The Various New Tools

I got one of my first breaks in the film business over twenty years ago.  I walked into a production office and told them that I could raise over $100K of product placement for their indie film.  No one was doing it in those days and there was no how-to guide.  I told them they did not have to pay me unless I was successful.  I went to the library did some research on companies, and started cold calling.  It was pretty much a piece of cake.

Nowadays there are many product placement agencies that the brands contract with to seek out good placement opportunities.  On a typical indie film, you hire a rights clearance and product placement person to work with you clearing and obtaining trademarked items.  It’s a labor intensive field based around relationships and know how.
With the ubiquity of user-generated content, new opportunities have risen not only for the brands, but also for filmmakers.  Although I don’t know of any pot-of-gold stories, there are a handful of new services looking to bring efficiencies to the field by helping brands and creators utilize various online tools.  Granted no artist desires to turn their work into a walking advertisement, but brands also have an incentive to bring audiences to a work that they are featured in.  Careful consideration can yield a win-win situation.  
Which of these new services are the best?  What other ones are out there?  How do they differ?  I don’t know, but maybe some of you do.  These are the ones that I have found so far:
PlaceVine
StoryBids
XLNTads
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Truly Free Film

Wanted: A National Collection Agency

Over the years I have heard filmmakers, executives, and lawyers profess the need for a public collection agency to work with international/territorial film licensors.  The concept is that there would be a neutral party that the licensors pay their contracted fees to, and in return for both collecting these fees and dispersing them out to the contracted parties, the agency takes a small percentage.  Although there is no US body doing this on American filmmakers behalf, these collection agencies do exist in other countries.  It remains a good idea, but the need has morphed and expanded with all the activity in the DIY distribution arena.

It’s hard enough to think all the bookers at the the various theaters want to hear from all the filmmakers eager to screen their work.  It’s harder still to imagine the theater owners want to squabble with these filmmakers over how much they are owed.  What’s needed is a neutral party to collect and distribute the theatrical receipts and a set of rules on what needs to be provided to demonstrate earnings.
This would be a great undertaking for either the IFP or Film Independent to embrace.  Frankly though it could be done just as easily as a for-profit venture and is the sort of low-cost infrastructure build that is perfect for the risk adverse type that still wants to be in the media space; I have to imagine that for less than the cost of another Sundance-wannabe feature, an investor could create a self-sustaining entity that benefits the entire community and our culture as a whole.
Such an agency would also be a very unique entity in terms of its data mining potential.  How great would it be if the funder embraced an open source attitude too?  Well, a guy can dream can’t he?
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Truly Free Film

Who Is Doing It Well?

What are some good examples of filmmakers, beyond our TFF Heroes, who are reaching out to audiences early, engaging them with good content, maintaining a rich dialogue with them, and then working with them to get their work seen?  Who are those artists who are providing more than the one way relationship of “here is my film to watch”?  Who has reach beyond the limits of a single film / single platform paradigm and climbed on the cross-platform cohesion engine?  

We want to know.  We want to help your work reach the audience.  We want to show how it can be done.  And we’d like to discuss it.  If you generate this work or just locate it and love it — even if you hate it! — please bring it to us.  Let’s build this list too.
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Truly Free Film

A Word On The Educational Market

Jon Reiss guests blogs again:

At the recent FIND conference on the state of independent film, I had the pleasure to meet Robert Bahar who made the wonderful Emmy Winning documentary Made in L.A. We were discussing the problem of releasing a film on DVD prior to or simultaneously with an educational release. 

I have learned since the release of Bomb It that it is traditionally difficult to have an educational release after or concurrent with a DVD release. This is because educational institutions will eagerly buy your dvd from Amazon for 19.95 rather than pay the educational rate of $195. 
Robert told me about his ingeneous solution which was to put a notice at the beginning of the film – similar to the FBI warning – that the film was for home use only and not for educational or public performance. In the authoring they disabled the ability for people to pause for a few minutes after this message or fast forward through it. Eg any teacher would have to play this warning – indicating to students that it was being shown illegally. Pretty smart!

Robert is smart in another way in terms of his film. He has set up with his fulfillment company (the wonderful Neoflix) to provide various community screening packages for sale on his site for various size screenings. Check out his site to see how he has set this up. Make sure to check out his amazing “Event Planning Toolkit”.

Let us know what you think of what he is doing.

You can also respond directly to Jon at: 

jon@jonreiss.com

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Truly Free Film

Slowing It Down: Chesanek’s Counterpoint Concludes (Part 6 of 6)

Brent concludes…

Another scary thing about the NYC DIY Dinner discussion is that essentially it’s asking filmmakers who’ve likely just worked for several years for no money to now take further losses and develop things they have no intrinsic passion for, just so that thing they do have passion for gains validity. 

Filmmakers like me already spend 70% of our time looking for permission (ie funds) to make our films from people perhaps not in the best position to be gatekeepers, and now that looks to be expanded to 90% or more. Our pay just went down, as if we were making enough to subsist on to begin with. Already, incomes in this country have been relatively stagnant for 30 years despite rapid growths in technology and productivity in most industries. 
We’re all expected to do more for less money. That seems exponential with independent film, and as I said, we’re now going to have to figure out how to do that part of it we love even less often for less money.

How do we improve this? Your idea about helping each other is a start. I suppose if it weeds out the ones with fleeting delusions of grandeur and dreams of wealth, that will help. If it means less films are fast-tracked, more time is spent on each film, then each becomes that much more focused and worthwhile in terms of individuality and distinction, then there is something to be hopeful for.