Tag: distribution

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Truly Free Film

Why on Earth Would I Give Away My Academy Award Shortlisted Film For Free?

By Rahul Gandotra

A few days ago I shared a sampler that allowed people to watch my film for free with a dear friend. Just to make sure the sampler worked and she could put it on her website, I followed up and got this response from her:

“I got everything and it works. I was just not sure that this [your film] is what you actually want to be giving away for free.” I paused and asked myself, “Yes, why the hell are you doing this?” – momentarily ignoring all the months of research I had done.

I replied, “Long story. For now, just share the sampler and let people see the film for free”. This post is about that “long story”.

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My film “The Road Home” is about a boy who escapes from his boarding school in the Himalayas to get back to his parents in England. As you might imagine, I poured my sweat and soul into making it. And given I didn’t want this film to be seen only by friends and family, I worked equally hard submitting the film to festivals and trumpeting from the rooftops of Facebook about each screening.

But I was left with a sour taste in mouth after my festival run. Why? Because I got invited to some festivals where I saw 30 people in a 500-seat theatre watching my film. All the while I’d continue to get Facebook messages and emails asking, “Hey when can I watch your film?” I’d reply, “Well it was playing in your city on this date.” And the common refrain I would hear is, “Why didn’t you email me?”

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Truly Free Film

Indie Street Post #1: Introducing “Group Distribution”

By Jay WebbScreen shot 2013-08-19 at 4.51.06 PM

Step 1 to building a street: Clear the Brush and raise the land.

1. The Tycoon.

So it seems appropriate to start this series of posts by explaining how IndieStreet came to be.  Last year, I was completing a screenplay that I had been working on for a few years, and was about ready to start the daunting fundraising process.  Before I started sending out the business plan for the film, a friend of mine, Chris, told me that he wanted me to first meet his old boss who had just sold his contracting/tech company for a cartload of cash.  He said that this Tycoon was looking for an alternative investment, so maybe this film raise was going to be simple.  HA!

By the second month of presentations and dinner meetings, it seemed to both my friend and I that the Tycoon was our guy.  He met with us on numerous occasions and seemed in many ways to actually be courting us.  More importantly, each meeting resulted in more synergy and productive dialogue than the previous.  

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Truly Free Film

10 Questions Every Filmmaker Should Ask Themselves

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.

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Truly Free Film

The Discovery Of Good Movies Is A Job For The Community

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.

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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.

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Truly Free Film

Digital Distribution, a Complex Way to Make Money

by Andrew Einspruch

Filmmaker Andrew Einspruch recently attended the Australian International Documentary Conference and wrote a series of articles for the event, which he’s graciously allowed us to reprint here. These articles originally appeared in Screen Hub, the daily online newspaper for Australian film and television professionals.

Tim Sparke, CEO of Mercury Media International, subtitled his talk Digital Distribution in a Traditional Market at this year’s AIDC with “Only for the Brave?” It is certainly a brave new world for filmmakers, with distribution possibilities popping up like mushrooms, and with a few dominant players emerging in certain markets. This is the context within in which your distribution decisions must now be made.

“The digital market can no longer be ignored,” said Sparke. “Over the past two years, those distributors who have schooled themselves on the complexities of the market, balancing digital against traditional and experimenting with creative windowing, have seen good returns.”

So how do you come to grips with that complexity?

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Truly Free Film

Its About The Art, Not The App

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.

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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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Truly Free Film

From Out of the Wreckage, A Future Rights Model

by Andrew Einspruch

Filmmaker Andrew Einspruch recently attended the Australian International Documentary Conference and wrote a series of articles for the event, which he’s graciously allowed us to reprint here. These articles originally appeared in Screen Hub, the daily online newspaper for Australian film and television professionals.

Film distribution is broken. Ask any producer who has ever felt that the amount they get for their work seems paltry compared to what others are making. For that matter, Peter Broderick has been saying this for years at SPAA Fringe.

There are lots of online film distribution platforms duking it out in the nascent VoD space. From the behemoths like iTunes and Amazon Instant to YouTube and Vimeo, to any number of small players trying to carve out a spot in the world. Andy Green’s Distrify is one of the ones actually making it work.

Green held an intimate session at this year’s Australian International Documentary Conference called Future Rights Model, and talked about how they built the platform. He’d been a filmmaker and experienced first-hand the frustration of getting stuff out into the world. For example, one distributor, when asked about making DVDs available for one of his titles, told Green, “It’s a small film. I’m busy.”

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