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Truly Free Film

How Are We Supposed to Make Exciting Content when “Content” is Such a Boring Word?

By Reid Rosefelt

Content-Graphic 1Who was the person who decided that the plain vanilla word “content” was going to stand for all the stuff that gets put up on social media?

Whoever it was should hang their head in shame.

If the history of human experience is an empty vessel, I suppose if you were a dullard you could opine that “content” is what fills it up: literature, music, movies, religion, politics, sex, joke-telling, criticism, talk show hosting, blogging, Power Point presentations, tweeting, posting, and pinteresting–it’s all content.

But I don’t think that Steven Spielberg, Kathryn Bigelow, Steve McQueen, Lorde, Vince Gilligan, Banksy, Jim Jarmusch, Louis C.K., Jane Campion, Jay-Z, Guillermo del Toro, Zadie Smith, Dave Eggers, Jony Ive, Park Chan-wook and Sara Bareilles, woke up this morning and said, “I can’t wait to start making content!” There is no poetry in “content.” There is no transcendence in “content.” There is no glory in a life devoted to content.

People who live to make beautiful things know that language is a glorious stew–spicy, subtle, sweet, sour, creamy, crunchy, familiar and foreign–so they aren’t aroused by the bland mush of words like “content.”

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Truly Free Film

The 360 Equation: The One Business Model Every Filmmaker Needs To Know

By Marc Schiller

One thing is clear; for independent cinema to grow and thrive, it needs to find a more sustainable business model. And while there’s been a lot of hype around new forms of “alternative” distribution, few people have an answer to the question: “How does this new approach to distribution make more money than the more traditional approach?”

Akin to the old catch-phrase “Where’s the beef?”, today smart filmmakers are asking “Where’s the business model?”

Having spent the last three years analyzing all aspects of independent cinema in incredible detail (from production to marketing to distribution), I’ve developed my own answer in the form of an equation. With the recent launch of BOND360, I’m calling it the “360 Equation”:

Community + Data + Content Bundling + Dynamic Pricing = Revenue

Treated separately, none of these elements (Community, Data, Content Bundling, and Dynamic Pricing) will bring financial success on their own. They are only pieces of a much larger puzzle. But when you put all of them together, and execute them well (that’s the hard part,) they form a very potent combination. And if you develop and distribute your film in a certain way, adopting the 360 equation will definitely bring in more revenue for an independent film than any of the traditional alternatives.

So first, let’s break down each component:

Community: Today when people hear the word “community” they immediately think that their community equates to the number of fans and followers their film has on Facebook and Twitter. And while this is indeed a form of community, in itself its not at all what community is about.