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It’s not enough any more to think outside the box. I think we need to smash the box to bits.
We need a total systems reboot of the indie film infrastructure. And I don’t think we can continue to wait and hope someone else is going to build it for us either.
I have been trying to help however I can help best. Perhaps these posts can be your guide:
It’s time to start your holiday gift giving. I assume you are giving all of your loved ones memberships to film support organizations or community theaters, right? But there are some things that money can’t buy, and we should all make sure our giveaway goodie bag is filled with them.
This list are some of my gifts I have gathered specifically for you. I want to thank you for being part of this, for reading and contributing to this community. You appreciate. You support. You read. You share. You do. You give me hope and courage and faith.
How can I give back? I ask myself this all the time. We all should. Can I do more? What can I provide? How best to show my thanks?
Consider each of these #SimpleFixes a small token of my appreciation for you. Each will make our lives better. Each of these can be built and we will all be closer to a world we want, one that supports the culture we love, the culture we want to contribute to and be part of.
I am donating my ideas to the world. I want nothing back — although I would like them to happen. Call it a Potlatch. I am giving away these babies, these cherished goods, but this should be a group effort. Imagine if we all generated a “simple fix” to enhance the things we care about? Even each of us giving one #SimpleFix a year would move us forward far faster. We may even be able to alter our course so we and IndieFilm don’t fall off the cliff into oblivion!
It’s time we used our cognitive surplus and made some things happen, don’t you think?
Most of these Simple Fixes have not yet been done. You may have noticed that I have done some of these though, but need your help with them still. If you join in, we are going to start to gain momentum.
I recognize it’s not enough just to list them as I now have. We must build them, and soon. Maybe a whole bunch of us need to gather, together with our friends in tech, and start to solve it.
If we ran together, I think we’d have enough speed to really fly. Check out the list below, and let me know what more you have to add. I have written further about each of them if you click through the links.
By Marc Schiller
Back in early May, I had the pleasure of attending “A2E: Artist To Entrepreneur” a fantastic lab organized by Ted Hope and the San Francisco Film Society. Over a three day period, a group of extremely talented filmmakers, technologists, marketing and distribution experts came together to explore new paradigms for film distribution.
On the first day of the lab, Ted and his team passed around a worksheet that all of the filmmakers were asked to complete. While filmmakers are often asked to submit information when applying for funding, few are compelled to explore their film from a marketing and distribution perspective as effectively and as thoroughly as the A2E worksheet demanded.
If you make films, it is your responsibility to help others discover what is good to watch. If you love films — or a particular type of film — it is your responsibility to help others learn to appreciate those films too. “Discovery” is not something you can expect others to EVER do unless you yourself embrace the practice first. “Spreading the word” is part of a filmmaker’s job description, albeit sincerely & authentically.
Independent filmmaking must be a community activity if it is to survive. You can’t leave good films alone. You have to make it your battle to get those movies seen. If you don’t accept this as your mission, you are helping to hand indie it’s death sentence.
I love
Part One: The Stuggles You Are Facing and How You Can Cope
By Jon Reiss
Since the collapse of the traditional distribution for filmmakers in 2007 we as a community have been struggling to figure out new solutions of how to monetize our work – in other words: how to make money from our content and create a sustainable living. In this two part series I will reformulate and address some of the problems we are facing – but also present some potential solutions for independent filmmakers. These thoughts come from a creating a series of new presentations on Artistic Entrepreneurship over the past year that I presented at the recent SFFS A2E Workshop (http://www.sffs.org/Filmmaker360/A2E-Artist-to-Entrepreneur.aspx) and this spring’s IFP Filmmaker Labs (http://www.ifp.org/programs/labs/). I welcome your comments!
While there were a number of factors that caused an upheaval of the distribution landscape in 2007 and while there have been many positive signs of improvement, filmmakers and all artists still face an enormously changed market for content.
By John Root Stone
Online video is exploding
The global market for online video is expected to grow to $37 billion by 2017. In April, according to Comscore, 182 million Americans – 83% of US Internet users – watched 38 billion videos online. This growth is fed by a vast and ever-growing supply of content that is original and archived, professional and amateur, and distributed across more platforms than anyone cares to remember.
It’s a challenge and an opportunity
For filmmakers, this growth and complex market mix makes it increasingly difficult to find useful and profitable distribution channels. The film distribution hierarchy of yesteryear is flatter than ever with first run premium content competing nearly side-by-side with user-generated content (UGC) for the audience’s time. While this offers both challenges and opportunities to filmmakers, understanding how to take advantage of this new marketplace is anything but simple.
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Two weeks ago at The San Francisco Film Society we launched A2E (Artist To Entrepreneur), a specific line of programming designed to provide filmmakers with the necessary entrepreneurial skills and best practices needed to have a sustainable creative life. We launched with A2E OnRamp, a workshop to allow filmmakers to budget, schedule, and predict possible revenues for their film throughout the direct distribution process.
Before we rolled up our sleeves to start the practical, I warmed up the crowd with a series of short lectures focusing on what all filmmakers should know about the film biz, the current culture, and recommended best practices for themselves. Last week I shared with you what we discussed about culture in general. Prior to that, I shared with you what I felt we had to recognize and accept, at least for now, about the film business.
Today, I offer you my recommendations on best practices in times like these if you want to have a hope of a sustainable creative life as a filmmaker. Don’t worry if it looks like there is more than you can currently achieve. It is a process and you are not alone. It gets better. We can build it better together.
