Category: Truly Free Film

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

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Truly Free Film

1000 True Fans

Kevin Kelly’s articulation of survival on the long tail was one of the essential readings this year for anyone trying to figure out a new paradigm for Indie and Truly Free Filmmaking.  It may be old hat out in blogland, but it is a concept that still hasn’t been discussed enough among indie filmmakers.  It promotes the notion that: 

A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author – in other words, anyone producing works of art – needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.
As a fan of a great deal of diverse artists, I regularly marvel at how musicians in particular do a good job of maintaining an ongoing dialogue with their fans.  Filmmakers, outside of Kevin Smith, don’t seem to embrace this necessity.  I suppose it can be argued that prolific artists working in multiple formats, like Michel Gondry, do it well too.  The Safdie Brothers are another good example amongst the more emerging set.  But as Kelly points out:
The key challenge is that you have to maintain direct contact with your 1,000 True Fans. They are giving you their support directly. Maybe they come to your house concerts, or they are buying your DVDs from your website, or they order your prints from Pictopia. As much as possible you retain the full amount of their support. You also benefit from the direct feedback and love.
To ignore this advice and still hope for the industry to simply discover you and reward you, limits your options to mainstream tentpole pictures.  This may well be some filmmakers’ dream, but they might as well plan to win the lottery.   What is so exciting is that there has never been a better time to plan on building the apparatus that allows you to be a Truly Free Filmmaker.  The tools to build your 1000 True Fan circle are there.  Kelly illuminates:

 The technologies of connection and small-time manufacturing make this circle possible. Blogs and RSS feeds trickle out news, and upcoming appearances or new works. Web sites host galleries of your past work, archives of biographical information, and catalogs of paraphernalia. Diskmakers, Blurb, rapid prototyping shops, Myspace, Facebook, and the entire digital domain all conspire to make duplication and dissemination in small quantities fast, cheap and easy. You don’t need a million fans to justify producing something new. A mere one thousand is sufficient.
… This small circle of diehard fans, which can provide you with a living, is surrounded by concentric circles of Lesser Fans.

I have frequently feared that it is the dream of stardom and wealth that fuels both the indie production cycle and film school enrollment lists.  Maybe that is because the possibility of survival and being a true artist seemed so impossible.  But that does not have to be so, if you invest some time and energy in building your own support system.

Young artists starting out in this digitally mediated world have another path other than stardom, a path made possible by the very technology that creates the long tail. Instead of trying to reach the narrow and unlikely peaks of platinum hits, bestseller blockbusters, and celebrity status, they can aim for direct connection with 1,000 True Fans. It’s a much saner destination to hope for. You make a living instead of a fortune. You are surrounded not by fad and fashionable infatuation, but by True Fans. And you are much more likely to actually arrive there.

Any way, read the article and take it to heart.  And for those of you who already know this gospel, please help to promote the word.
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Truly Free Film

Lets All Watch Together

Part of the problem of the moment is that as we all retreat to our private screens and sound systems, we lose the glue that conversation brings, that thing that creates community.  Remember movie theaters?  Remember how you went out for a drink with your friends afterwards and spoke about what you last saw.  How great was that!  How are we going to do that when are watching on our computer screens and HD monitors?

As much as I will always love going to the cinema and talking about films afterwards, we all have to recognize that most media will not be consumed that way.  Without that, how are we going to facilitate conversation and appreciation about cinema?  It can’t all be after the fact blogging.  We need real time discussions.
I recently got to see a new technology that addressed this, that allowed multiple viewers to watch simultaneously the same thing, see their friends who were doing the same thing, and communicate in real time while they continued watching.  Okay, so its a little different than sitting in a big dark theater with beautiful projection and downing some coffee afterwards.
Facebook’s Connect site browser is a step though in this direction.  BBC news ran an article on it and its got me thinking…

The built-in socialising tools on sites such as MySpace and Facebook will mean that friends can virtually gather, for instance, to watch a video via Hulu and chat about it all in the same place.

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Truly Free Film

Twitter Review (sort of)

I confess: I am truly new to all of this social networking stuff.  This blog is about two and a half months old.  I think I have only been on Facebook for 5 weeks.  Our film production company has a MySpace page but I am not a MySpace member.  I know I blog about some stuff here that the digi-elite embraced eons ago.  Let’s just say although I am a newbie, I am passionate advocate — and a textbook example of how you can teach an old dog some new tricks.  And I recognize how much my community has to learn.  Admit it: the film biz is filled with Luddites.

I was a very slow at making a commitment to the social network world.  I pondered FB membership for months.  And I mocked the young ‘uns in our office who sang its praises.  I am a convert now, but I am still only using it to maintain a dialogue about the emerging new paradigm for non-Hollywood cinema (I hate describing things in contrast to, but …).  To that end, I am have the same issues Pericles commented on the other day: I am confused whether I should just “confirm” everyone that friends me in an effort to expand the circle, or should I limit my connections to the people I actually know or do, or could do, business with, or at least those that have the courtesy to write and explain why we should be “friends”.  I lean to the former but haven’t jumped in yet.  Some of my hesitancy comes from my expectant embrace of the more social aspects of the technology — and frankly I don’t want to be more social.  I have been trying to figure out how to have more time to myself and my family for a long time.
Which brings me to my fears of using Twitter.  When I was looking for an article on how Twitter might be best applied to the film world, Beth’s Blog led me to the OReillyRadar posting of some of their report “Twitter And The Micro-Messaging Revolution” .  I’d love to see the whole report; if you want to buy it for me for the holidays, you can do so here.  Reilly’s preface documenting his adaptation to the technology echoed what I had suspected — he joined for business reasons and soon found himself using it for social updates too.  It was inspiring though.  
I would like to hear further how filmmakers have effectively used Twitter to communicate with their audience, but this piece alone, got me a lot closer to embrace the present a bit more.  Any filmmakers out there with Twitter experiences to share?
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Truly Free Film

Who Do You Really Need To Meet At Film Festivals?

Film Festivals are a bit like conventions or auto shows.   The bigger ones get the entire industry and they transform from a cultural celebration to one big networking showdown.   The energy is driven by the potential more than the reality: will your film be discovered and you be given a pot of gold and the keys to Hollywood?  Many try to adjust to reality and just hope to meet some agents and distributors that they can follow up with later?   The ambitious dream of meeting financiers or movie stars.

For years, I have recommended that filmmakers concentrate on just meeting other filmmakers that feel simpatico with, folks that they can share information with, that can become their de facto support group.  Forget about the distributors.  Forget about the agents.  I mean they each can be very helpful — but mostly for a select few filmmakers.  And I still think that’s good advice, but now there is another class of individual to add to the list of whom you should really want to meet.
Sundance 2009 will be remembered (among other things) for the year that the programmer and booker became rock stars.  Now more than ever, we need curators.  We need people who can filter the stream of films that come begging for our attention.  With more and more filmmakers not just recognizing the need for, but embracing, filmmaker-driven distribution, filmmakers need direct interaction with these bookers and programmers.
How great would it be to have a party or something at Sundance where filmmakers and curators could actually get to meet each other face to face?  Great for the curators.  Great for the creators.
Now’s the time for filmmakers to build their checklist and try to meet the bookers who truly love art film, indie film, truly free film.  Seventy independent theaters are getting together in Salt Lake in the days prior to the Sundance festival to figure out how to make all this work better.  The Art House Convergence is a promising program; you can’t tell the players without a program.  Imagine if your sales agent and rep could introduce you to these bookers, instead of just buyers who might offer you tens of thousands for a twenty year license.  Then they’d really be working for their percentage.
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Truly Free Film

Hope For The Future pt. 3: The List #’s 9-13

9. Plenty of DVD manufacture & Fullfillment places (see sidebar).

10. Plenty of places to place your content online for eyeballs to find (anyone want to generate a comprehensive list to share?).

11. Things like Netflix and Blockbuster.com make it possible for anyone with a mailing address to see any movie he or she wants. A lot of viewers who haven’t had access to theaters or even video stores that stock smaller films can now get them if they know about them. (thanks Semi!)

12. The Major Media Corporations retreat from the “Indie” film business. This will open up distribution possibilities for entities not required to produce high profit margins or only handle films that have huge “crossover” potential and necessitate large marketing budgets.

13. A new turn-key apparatus is evolving for filmmakers who want to “Do it with others” in that they can hire bookers, publicists, marketers – all schooled in the DIY manner of working. Instead of hoping for a Prince Charming to arrive and distribute their film, TFFilmakers are seeking out the best and the brightest collaborators to bring their film to the audiences.

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Truly Free Film

Hard Times: The Refrain Continues

Why do you need to plan to distribute your film yourself?  

Answer number 29: 
Because there won’t be anyone left to do it for you!

One of the downsides of all of us being so well connected and tuned in, is the bad news gets to us all much faster.  Hopefully, the upside is we can react positively much quicker too.  Time will tell.
If you didn’t notice, media in all forms is in a tailspin:  Layoffs at Universal and Paramount; NBC contemplating reducing nightly programming;  the NY Times mortgaging their building; The Tribune declaring bankruptcy;  publishers slashing employees and limiting releases.   I do hear that Jack Daniels posted high profits this quarter though.  My business partner’s exit strategy of a liquor store in a fishing town is looking mighty wise…  When Barry Diller is the loudest voice calling out corporations on the greed inherent in firing 500 more people to save a few million dollars, we know the world is changing.
David Carr’s “Stoking Fear Everywhere You Look” captures these times quite well.
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Truly Free Film

It’s Two Separate Schools: Chesanek’s Counterpoint (Part 5 of 6)

Brent continues…

This discussion can’t proceed forward until the two schools of thought here are separated. One school says traditional narrative is dead and new storytelling methods MUST be applied to new distribution models, while the other realizes there is still a market for narrative feature films that can be accessed through new technology and distro models.

If you want to expand your so-called brand while creating “content” and label yourself as a “creative” (in reality, it’s not a noun) or just want to create infinite ways and media for telling a story, then you’re in this field, so these are some options, these are the issues. If so, then it’s likely none of these marketing terms seem pejorative to your craft.

But many do find these terms pejorative. If you lean towards uninterrupted, feature length art films that show restraint and dexterity in the information provided to an audience, believe in the quality of a screening environment, are not about pushing as much content and info as possible but rather about expertly pursuing a craft you and many others still love but realize there are new opportunities for these works to be seen, then there is this discussion over here, these are the issues on this side of the situation.

These two worlds remain very closely aligned in discussions, and it seems not fully distinguishable from each other just yet, but also not completely on the same page. We need to clearly delineate and grow from there, learning from both sides but never assuming these schools are the same.