Why do we wait so damn long for our projects to come together? Do we fetishize “permission”? Is it akin to waiting for Prince Charming or the like? Is patience really a virtue for creative endeavors? Have we fooled ourselves into thinking we can depend on anyone other than our family, friends, and collaborators? In telling how he is putting together his latest project, filmmaker Rodney Evans sums up a feeling many filmmakers know too well: “Enough of the bullshit, the jig was up.”
I have never been big on career strategizing. I tend to follow where my passion leads me and trust my gut instincts. After several years and endless meetings on a larger period film ($1.5m – larger in my world) I started to crave the idea of doing something contemporary on a really small scale with the minimal resources that I had immediate access to.
This idea was also sparked by my experience at the Binger Film Lab’s Director’s Coaching Program in Amsterdam (binger.nl) where I managed to shoot a 10 minute short film in 8 hours with a 3 person crew and 2 actors. This short BILLY AND AARON, part of the larger period film DAY DREAM, premiered at Tribeca last year and has played 25 film festivals since then. It was a startling reminder of how little was actually needed to make a good film that you could be proud of.
Coming from a documentary background where I was used to working as a one man band it felt very natural to be working this way and would be an asset to certain types of stories. With the experience of shooting the short fresh in my mind I had been back in NYC for a couple of weeks in the summer of 2009 and was invited to a production of a play called THE HAPPY SAD by my friend Ken Urban. I had seen an earlier reading of the play at Playwrights Horizons and found it genuinely funny and profoundly moving while also dealing with topics like open relationships, internet hook-ups and fear of commitment that I saw playing out around me in so many of my friend’s lives (and my own). These issues seemed so prevalent within my circle of friends but were so rarely dealt with in films in any kind of realistic or meaningful way. I immediately saw its potential as a film and when I mentioned that to Ken he told me he had already begun adapting it into to a screenplay. After reviewing each draft and giving my feedback, the third draft really struck home and I knew I had to direct it. It would still need focusing and more revisions to fully transform from the stageplay into a film but the essence of it was there.
With the finished screenplay in hand it became time to think about how we would raise the necessary production funds to get the cameras rolling this summer. After a great info session hosted by Yancey Strickler at the Kickstarter headquarters the idea of crowdfunding started to feel like a viable option for starting the fundraising process. As I walked to the subway with a filmmaker friend we discussed how difficult it can be to ask for the resources that you need to make work and that for artists at a certain stage in our careers (beyond emerging but not yet mid-career) we both had the feeling that we should be pretending that there was enough support from grants, foundations and traditional industry resources to make our films. We needed to get over the shame about the fact that these resources were not forthcoming and start pursuing different models. Enough of the bullshit, the jig was up.
I think for filmmakers of color who are not interested in doing genre material but more focused on pushing aesthetic boundaries while still also being emotionally engaging, the deck was stacked even more against us. Instead of going to the same doors over and over again only to find them closed for the umpteenth time I decided to utilize Kickstarter to reach the communities that tend to embrace my finished work and actually see it as a reflection of a personal experience that they rarely get to see on screen. In short, I was going where the love was.
It is now day 8 of our 30 day Kickstarter campaign and we are 25% of the way there and it has been a lot of work to get this far. (Ted: I wanted to post this last week but was in Beijing — so now the time is even shorter!) It’s taken 3-4 hours of email outreach per day plus the help of friends and supporters in spreading the word virally. My laptop and I are closing than ever before and we still have 22 more days to go! I see this effort as larger than myself though and it points the way towards more community-based models for filmmakers to use in order to get work produced and distributed.
A great source of inspiration over the past few months has been the distribution efforts launched by Ava Duverney with her first narrative feature, I WILL FOLLOW. Here was a self financed, microbudget feature with impeccable writing, acting and directing from an African-American filmmaker who decided to stop waiting for someone to give her permission to make a film. The African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement or AFFRM (https://www.facebook.com/affrm) is the distribution model she created with much success by pooling the resources and organizing power of the largest African-American film festivals in the country. It was great to witness the large turnout on her opening weekend to support an independent filmmaker’s vision all fueled by grassroots, inexpensive marketing techniques. It’s a new successful, community-based model that works. It got me thinking about how so many of the sources and inspiration for the stories that I tell come from relationships and experiences that I see around me on a daily basis. How could those communities be brought into the filmmaking process to tell alternative and original stories?
As an educator I worked at a non-profit organization called Reel Works (www.reelworks.org) from 2009 to 2010 where I taught a documentary lab for at-risk teenagers. I currently teach in the Film and Media Arts Department at Temple University in Philadelphia 3 days per week. Over the years I have been greatly inspired by the process of helping young people to tell their vital stories and by the bravery and daring they exhibit during the process before anyone tells them what they can and can’t do. These are qualities that I absorb from them and also try to nurture as I help guide their films to completion.
With my microbudget feature THE HAPPY SAD centering on alternative, risk-embracing twenty and thirty-somethings looking to expand “proper” notions of romantic relationships it seemed like a no-brainer to incorporate these students into a collaborative filmmaking process since they showed similar traits and qualities in their own lives and artistic practice. It seemed like a natural extension of the dialogue that had begun in the classroom with students able to receive course credit for hands-on experience in feature filmmaking. It’s a model that merges my roles as an educator and indie filmmaker while also providing students with their first foothold in the industry, working side by side with experienced professionals. It seems like the right production model for this film and exemplifies a lot of the ways that I have been rethinking the means and methods of filmmaking.
I used to pour all of my passion and energy into one project that I would focus on for many years until it got done. As I evolve, I have learned the value of not placing all of your eggs in one basket but having 2-3 different projects of different size and scope so that I can continue to make work under different circumstances. I think directing skills like most other skills atrophy when not put to use so this is a way to stay nimble and keep exercising those muscles while providing opportunities for emerging film professionals as well. I mentioned this new project and its trajectory and production model to a filmmaker friend. His email response (posted below) made me feel less alone in my quest for new models in the face of an industry that has collapsed but also never functioned as a support mechanism for our work in the first place.
“I think we came to similar moments, as I’m planning to shoot a lower budget film this summer also, and I just had to put the long simmering project on the side for the meantime. We are too old to wait around forever, and I think we have to be creative daily as filmmakers to figure out how to keep making films.”
So here’s to an adventurous summer of collaborative filmmaking. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
RODNEY EVANS wrote and directed BROTHER TO BROTHER which won the Special Jury Prize in Drama at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. The film was nominated for 4 Independent Spirit Awards in 2005 including Best First Film, Best First Screenplay and Best Debut Performance for Anthony Mackie.
What do you do? You have no money but KNOW your film has an audience. Even sometimes with great content, the world conspires and leaves us all alone, just meat for the vipers. Often, a good movie is not enough to make it in this world. Faced with surrender or the long hard road, it’s then that the real filmmakers, the ones passionate about their babies, are willing to sharpen their claws and dig in.
Audrey Ewell first guest posted with the now legendary “Younger Audiences & Creators Tell Old Fogies To Shut The F Up!”. She has continued to be a generous contributor, sharing her knowledge and experience in both making and distributing her work. Today’s guest post is a case study in DIY/DIWO distro. Read on!
Until The Light Takes Us, a documentary about black metal (a violent music scene from Norway) premiered at the ’08 AFI Fest in LA. We spent the next year playing festivals and turning down terrible offers. It was a hard time for film, and a terrible time for docs, as you may recall, but no time would ever be so hard that I’d be willing to take a $10,000 MG on an all-rights deal, with a 25% back-end that we’d probably never see anyway, or a 25K all rights offer from another distributor who wouldn’t guarantee theatrical or even DVD. We didn’t want to just get shunted to the VOD ghetto to sink or swim without any support.
By the summer of 2009, confident that the film had a sizeable and reachable audience, we decided to keep our rights and do it ourselves.
INITIAL BUDGET: zero dollars. This was before people were talking about working distro dollars into your budget. It had never occurred to us that we’d go DIY; ours was an award winning film with a passionate core audience and enough headline grabbing content (murders, suicide, church arson, nationalism, Satanism) that we thought our floor was a little higher. But a mix of bad economic timing and a treatment some buyers thought was too “arty” limited offers. We knew we had to take a DIWO approach – doing it with others. The others we had at that point were our fans. And thankfully, they showed up.
SOCIAL MEDIA AND ORGANIZING: Remember Myspace? When we got back from Norway, where we’d filmed for two years, we actually set aside time every day to send out 300 invites/messages to likely fans. We built up about 18,000 fans there, and then watched as everyone stopped using the site. Then Myspace randomly deleted our page anyway. That sucked, but was a good lesson. We don’t own social media pages – so have a lot of them. But we’d at least gotten the word out to those 18K people. One of those fans offered to make us a facebook page. I said sure, and we now have over 200 of those; more than half are fan-made. I encouraged fans to make pages for their city, as I think it gives them more of a sense of ownership and involvement with the film’s success there, and because they know their community better than I do, and are already part of the audience, so it becomes peer to peer marketing. BTW, you can now do on Twitter what we did on Myspace: just follow people you think will be into your film, or who talk about similar films.
THEATRICAL DIY: We put out the word that we were taking the film on tour. We told fans that we needed 3 things to bring it to their city: 1) a list of the indie/arthouse theatres near them 2) calls/letters/visits to those theaters to request the film 3) commitments to flyer and blog for us.
Our fans happen to rock, so we got the help we needed. I booked the film into 12 cities, either one-offs or weekends – I billed these screenings as sneak-peaks, wary of over-playing markets that we’d want to hit with longer runs. (And I avoided NY and LA.) The screenings were a success. My partner Aaron Aites and I did our first one in Austin during but not part of SXSW. A risky move. Our amazing new friends at the Alamo Drafthouse were kind enough to clear a midnight screening with the festival (fair warning: if you go this route, you risk pissing off the festival unless it’s cleared with them). Since Aaron’s band Iran was playing that year, we piggybacked our travel arrangements, got press lists from friends, and promoted it to film and music fans alike. A perfect fit. The screening sold out. Next stop: Seattle International Film Festival. I mean, we weren’t technically in it… but that didn’t stop us getting some of the indie film write-ups that were in the air. We booked a few late nights at the Northwest Film Forum – sold them out. One kid told us he’d driven 5 hours to see the film, not sure if he’d ever get another chance. We did Q&As, then headed to Portland for more of the same.
We continued with non-piggyback screenings, with lots of sold-out shows. We tried to hit the right balance with press – enough to get the word out, not so much as to have shot our load if we made it back later with a longer run (which was always the end-game). Toward the end of our solo bookings, we decided to just go for it in San Francisco, a market where we knew we had a huge audience – we booked a week with a museum screening series and went after press. We were about to approach distribution services to take over, so we wanted to show we could perform over longer runs. And we did. Variance Films came on about a week later, and the first thing they did was get us moved over to the Roxie, continuing our SF run.
DISTRIBUTION SERVICE, THEATRICAL DIWO: We then raised a P & A budget of 25K off the strength of those solo screenings and having Variance onboard. $25,000 dollars: AKA “nothing,” to distributors. And we started our formal US and Canadian theatrical release.
Variance handled bookings, ads and co-promotions, we managed street teams and did nonstop interviews, and also brought on co-promotions through our music contacts. A very deserved shout-out to Emma Griffiths at EG-PR who took on this indie doc about a foreign music scene and worked it like crazy. We also eventized many of our screenings: we launched in NY with a party at the Knitting Factory where Dave Pajo of Slint/Papa M, Kyp Malone of TV on the Radio, and some of our other indie rock friends played (btw, our film is about metal – this did not impress the core audience terribly much, but we had a secondary audience that we wanted to reach, and we also had a second NY launch party a few days later which was all metal bands). We continued to open runs with giveaways, bands, parties. For our Canadian premiere, the film was projected onto a giant screen made of ice, outside, in the winter (fitting our film’s aesthetic and subject matter). Elsewhere, fans flyered like crazy, set up FB pages for their town, blogged, talked about it on forums. We only ran print ads when theaters demanded it. People came out. Our opening weekend per screen avg in NY was over 7K . Sadly, we only had one screen here, the indie loving Cinema Village.
We grossed about 140K overall, in 35 cities. We paid back the theatrical investors, with a little extra on top. Toward the end of our run, the film went up on the Sundance Channel’s broadcast schedule, and theaters backed off. By then we’d drastically expanded our fan base and found distribution partners for DVD, VOD, Digital, TV, etc with Factory 25, Gravitas, The Sundance Channel, and Dynamo on our own website (since we kept non-exclusive streaming). I like retaining some control over this thing, and I like having partners, so this is the best of both worlds, and it was brought about largely by our theatrical success.
KNOWLEDGE TRAVELS (AND SO DID WE): In fact, it worked so well that I repeated this process in Europe. I set up a three week screening tour (mostly at festivals and arts venues with cinemas) from London to Krakow, met contacts who facilitated us selling the film to a German distributor, and then took everything I’d learned and theatrically distributed the film in the UK in the spring of 2010. That made a profit, and we then self-released a very profitable DVD there. We later sold digital/VOD rights to a UK company.
The rewards of all these DIY and DIWO releases were great: the film has a much higher profile, my partner and I have fantastic contacts and relationships with great companies and venues and people all over the US and Europe, we’ve grown our own audience, (with street team captains who I know by name and keep in touch with because they’ve become a part of my world), and had utterly amazing experiences. The downside is that I stopped being a filmmaker for two years, and became a distributor, promoter, sales agent, community organizer, online work-bot; it was 18 hour days, 7 days a week, and it was completely exhausting. Now at the end of it, I’m glad I did it, but I can’t wait to make a film again!
I hope this is helpful info for some of you who are doing this now or are thinking about it. I’m happy to clarify anything in the comments.
— Audrey Ewell
Audrey Ewell is a filmmaker living in Brooklyn, NY with her partner Aaron Aites and their three rescue animals. More info on her current film can be found at http://www.blackmetalmovie.com
How do you do it? If the mainstream industry and the mainstream festivals are not responding to your work, does it mean there’s no audience or community for you work? HELL, NO! You just have to bring it to where they are. It might be hard. It might be grueling. And it will be brutal, but it can be done.
Filmmaker Bob Ray guest posts today to show us all how it is done. He has hit the road couch surfing and community building. The kindness of strangers can be key but nothing is more so than being true to what you love and have made.
Bringing It To The People, The Badass Way: No Distrib, No Festivals, A Lot Of Help & Support
I’m honored to throw down a blog entry here. I follow this feed and put to use the wisdom gleaned from these pages. There’s a dialogue out there (and in here) about the ever-changing distribution landscape, the role of film festivals, self-distribution and the like. I hope my experience adds to this conversation and we’re all the richer for it. We’ll see, it might. It just might.
The stranger we met on Craigslist was nice enough to let us crash at his apartment in Boston. The suspiciously empty living room and the lack of a single morsel of food in the kitchen led me to believe that this was either a freaky sex pad or a murder house. We never found out which. The ghost of a woman and her dog haunted a New Orleans mansion we’d been at only weeks before. There were high-rise chickens in Florida, a crippling stunt and a pitch to IFC in NYC. I sat in the theater chair where Lee Harvey Oswald was nabbed. Whiskey-slapping in Greensboro, a near riot in Mobile and a fistful of pills in Houston. Weirdness abounds. And that’s just a few of the nights of the last film tour. Hey, at least we didn’t go to jail this time.
Around mid-2010 I finished my newest film, Total Badass. I skipped the film fests and, instead, I’ve been touring the film all over the US. With my hometown of Austin as the hub, I toured for five weeks out West and another five weeks out East. I screened in over 60 cities and racked up about fourteen thousand miles in total. I traveled America and had a blast. Now I’m perched to tour Europe in a few months. Australia and New Zealand look pretty tempting as well.
Name’s Bob Ray. What’s important to know is this: I’m an Austin-based filmmaker who will whip out films of all manner: narratives, cartoons, docs and music videos, short and/or long. Lately, it’s been all docs and ‘toons. Long docs and short ‘toons. My first two feature length flicks, the stoner comedy Rock Opera (1999) and the roller derby doc, Hell on Wheels (2007), premiered at SXSW and went on to screen at tons of fests, get great reviews and land small distribution deals that saw the films released on DVD and Video on Demand. All in all, my flicks have screened at over 75 film festivals in a handful of countries and garnered plenty of spectacular reviews. I attended many of these film fests and had a blast while making a pile of new filmmaker friends. All good stuff.
Despite my previous successes (or maybe in light of them), from the get-go it seemed that the odds have been stacked against Total Badass. Here’s why: Total Badass is a raw film. Raw by design, but it’s raw. At its core, the flick is a gritty and hilariously offensive, yet touching tale of a man striving to leave his creative mark while dealing with a family crisis and trying to fly straight long enough to finish felony probation. It’s a funny and intimate story about redemption, finding your purpose and the importance of family, but along the way, there’s plenty of way-over-the-line humor, high doses of drug abuse, rowdy music, graphic sex, racy racial humor, weed dealing and some dangerous trashcan jumping. You might find it hard to believe (and for some, this is almost a requirement for documentaries), but Total Badass contains no agenda to affect social change, end oppression or save the planet (I’m all for those things, btw). Total Badass features no famous artist, celebrity, singer, philanthropist, comedian or politician. Total Badass is a film about Chad Holt by Bob Ray. And you’ve never heard of either of us.
To overcome these crippling blows, I felt that what the film really could use was a big, wet stamp of approval from a top shelf fest. I feared that most fests would be too timid to screen the flick due to the rampant cocaine snorting and cock sucking, er, the controversial subject matter. I needed someone keen who could see the forest for the freaky trees, someone who could peer through the bong smoke and embrace the heart and soul that lie at the center of the film.
With fingers XXX-ed, I entered Total Badass into several top-tier film festivals: Sundance, Berlin, Rotterdam, IDFA, SXSW, Tribeca, Slamdance, Los Angeles, True/False, Full Frame, etc. We found not a lick of love there. I soon grew sick of waiting for others to validate my work. And I was annoyed with blasting off entry fee after entry fee like shooting bullets at the night sky.
Sometimes it seems the world is against me. Here I was again: me versus everybody. Plan A was shot. I needed a plan B.
I know what I want, I just need a new way to get it. The goal is to get the film out and in front of the people who’ll appreciate it. I want to get the flick reviewed and hopefully build an audience for my movies. I want to do the work that’ll do the film justice. There’s no point in making the damn thing if no one’s gonna see it, right? I am also, by collecting piles of fantastic reviews and making waves, looking to get the attention of the film biz and, ideally, find a distributor to pick up wherever I leave off. If I can actually make some spare change in the process, all the better. It’s sure to be an adventure wrapped in a lesson and shoved up an enigma.
It’s very DIY around here. I’m willing to sleep in strange places. I’m willing to drive long stretches and make new friends of total strangers. Even with a lack of money, there are other ways to get things done.
Bands surround me. I live in the Live Music Capitol of the World. I’ll take a page and tour around, band-style. I’ll hop in a car and hit a new city every night, screen films, do a Q&A, sell merch and party. I’ll repeat for weeks on end. Sounds solid. But first I gotta sell the idea to a bunch of cinemas.
My name carries little to no weight. It sounds kinda cool and reads palindrome-y, but that’s about it. So I partnered up with some names that do. The Alamo Drafthouse has screened many of my films. SXSW has shown 11 of my films in the last 10 years. The Austin Chronicle gives me ink with kindness. The Austin Film Society is a benevolent institution that likes to help. I teamed up with them all. These would be my promotional partners. I’ll package and pitch the tour as a slice of Austin coming to towns near and far. Everybody loves Austin’s weirdness.
It’ll work because my films are Austin-centric. Total Badass is about an Austin underground icon, Rock Opera is a fictional tale set in the real Austin music scene of the late 90s and then there’s Hell on Wheels. I was privy to the birth of modern roller derby and I made a doc about it. Roller derby has since exploded in popularity and Hell on Wheels is the de-facto history book for the movement and Austin is its birthplace. This doc enjoys a built in fan base in every city where roller derby exists, and that’s all of them. If I can convince cinemas to screen two films a night, I can double dip with a screening of Hell on Wheels and Total Badass. And with Hell, I can team up with derby leagues in a cross-promotional extravaganza. So I did that.
Booking is a pain in the ass. Packed with maps, spreadsheets, emails, pitches, phone calls, scheming, plotting, conning, negotiating, math, business b.s. and other seemingly endless and entirely thrill-less work, it all pains my ass. And it takes forever. Four months before the launch date for the tour I was researching and contacting cinemas, partnering up with derby leagues and filling up the calendar. Here’s a depressing surprise: just finding indie cinemas is a bit of a chore. Some cities, big cities even, just don’t have one. On the flip side, you’ll occasionally come across theaters that are totally down with the idea and jump right on in.
Business-wise, I work out door splits. Usually, I get around 50%. I’ve yet to four-wall a venue and couldn’t afford to if I wanted to. What the cinemas want to know is how we’ll be bringing an audience. Cuz we all know that it’s not with ads, as there’s no ad budget. The way we do it around here is with piles of hard work and creativity.
Promotion was grass roots. We teamed up with derby leagues and partnered w/ local film groups and local filmmakers. We worked with fests that had screened my past works. We sought out music, culture or film writers who have written about off-the-beaten path events and harassed them for press. We sent out press releases, screeners and email reminders. We teamed up with radio stations and held ticket giveaways. We hit up university film clubs and sought to meet professors who’d encourage their students to attend. We teamed up with film societies to help spread the word. We reached out to every blog, newspaper, ‘zine, and radio station and angled for coverage. Getting the word out is half the battle.
On the tour, we screened some of my CrashToons cartoons (www.CrashToons.com) in front of Total Badass and Hell on Wheels. The ‘toons are super-short and punchy-funny and set a good tone for the night. Chad Holt, the subject of Total Badass and a good friend, accompanied me on the tours, contributed to the tour journal (http://crashcamfilms.com/tourjournal.htm) and hosted post-screening Q&As with me. With Hell on Wheels, we partnered up with leagues all over to present the flick. This partnership allows us to grow our audience and hopefully turn on some local filmgoers to the derby scene in their own community. After Hell screenings, I’d do a Q&A w/ the derby gals.
Steve Bloom & Shirley Halperin’s fine stoner film guide “Reefer Movie Madness” features a killer review of my first flick, Rock Opera. I contacted the author and we scored a case of books to give away as door prizes. We also gave away DVDs of Rock Opera, to help tie it all together and to create a more festive environment. After the Q&A, I’d mingle with filmgoers and sell DVDs, shirts and posters and give away stickers and condoms (for the after-parties, duh).
Life on the road is odd and fun. Of the ten weeks on the road, we only needed to rent a motel twice and only slept in the car twice. The rest of the time, we found couches, beds and floors to crash on. Sometimes, during the Q&A, we’d beg for a crash-pad. It usually worked. People like to help.
My experiment, in part forced by a flood of film fest rejection letters, has me evaluating the value of film fests versus taking it straight to the people. In one sense, I got out of touring what I would have gotten out of film fests: loads of reviews. Behold a pu pu platter sampling:
“Total Badass is both a portrait of life on the artistic and social fringe and a thriller… a working-poor man’s cross of Frederick Wiseman and Hunter S. Thompson.“
-The New York TImes
“The title couldn’t be more apt.”
-Time Out New York
“Total Badass is a wild, unique ride, deep into the Austin counterculture… it’s entertaining and shockingly funny, and undeniably touching… a thunderbolt of a documentary.”
-Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
“[Total Badass director] Bob Ray is Austin’s newish lowbrow Maysles brother… Chad Holt comes off charmingly as equal parts Texan Keith Moon and crispy Richard Benjamin, talking blue streaks and rolling joints in his probation officer’s parking lot.”
-Village Voice
“A ballsy feature-length documentary… a totally unapologetic profile of the ubiquitous Austin hero.”
-Vice Magazine
“A psychological treat”
-Phoenix New Times
“An outrageous and hilariously seedy journey into the Austin underground… [Total Badass] bravely goes where no documentary film has gone before.”
-Flavorpill
What we didn’t get was the attention of industry folks. I’m not sure we’re on anybody’s radar. But we are armed with badass reviews, so we’ll try to work that angle next.
Also in the con column, I personally missed the camaraderie and fun of screening flicks with new and old film friends and peers at film festivals. This is not to be overlooked. Many, if not most of my filmmaker pals I’d befriended at fests. While on tour, I met up with and crashed at the houses of lots of these same folks. Film fests are a fantastic way to connect to likeminded peers in a kickass film friendly environment.
Back to the pros: in addition to one hell of an adventure and some awesome reviews, I found in my possession a bit of cash. I spent about seven grand on Total Badass (not including my time, and I did not pay myself). I grossed a little over eight grand on these tours. I’ve yet to do the math and find the net (there are many things to factor: gas, printing, shipping, DVD replication, t-shirt and poster costs, food, etc.), and none of this takes into account working my ass off for four months to book and promote the tour and being on the road for five weeks (twice). But when I guestimate the expenses, I still come out ahead.
Now, for many filmmakers out there, making a film for seven grand sounds nuts. And grossing eight grand on a tour is peanuts. But for us low-to-no budget filmmakers, this is all good stuff. I’m not sure how touring would transfer to a larger film with a greater budget. There might be something to the old adage “you gotta spend money to make money.” I might have more insight on that if I’d ever spent money, or had money to spend. But with no budget to promote, the attendance was hit or miss. We had some big hits, but also a few whiffs. I read of people spending upwards of $10,000 for a publicist for a single film festival screening, or dropping twenty grand for theatrical publicity. Those numbers blow my mind. For all I know, that’s money well spent. Maybe you sell soooo many more tickets that it comes back to you. I have no idea. My little film cost only $7000, so spending nearly three times that amount (let alone finding the money in the first place) seems like a steep hill.
Since we’re talking about cash and film fests, let me add this: It’s tough being at a film festival screening where 600 people are watching and enjoying your film. It’s awesome that they are there and all is going well. But when your film costs $7000 to make you figure that each person paid $10 to see the flick, and if you could keep all the box office, you could almost pay off the cost of making your film. Granted, there might not be 600 people at your screening if it weren’t for the fest, and the theater needs their cut (and I do realize that most film fests work tirelessly to put on a good show and have a great deal of overhead, so I begrudge them not). But if you don’t get a cut of the door, and you aren’t one of the few to benefit from industry and press exposure at said fest, the fun and experience might not be so sweet in the long run. At the end of the day, meeting filmmakers and having a blast is great, but you have a movie that still needs to be paid for.
If you submit and do not get into fests at all, the taste is downright bitter. I entered Total Badass into upwards of a dozen fests and all it did was add about ten percent to the budget with fest fees. We got nothing for our effort. Didn’t move an inch. All I have to show for that pile of spent cash is a digital stack of rejection letters and greater debt. It can be quite irritating.
In the end, It’s kinda hard to tell if I’m better off not having hit the fest circuit. On the one hand, I racked up some pretty amazing adventures and I made my budget back (depending on how you do the math). On the flip side, I really did miss the fest atmosphere and being able to meet up with fellow filmmakers.
I hope Total Badass will manage, one way or another, to find its place in cinematic history alongside films like American Movie, Billy the Kid, The King of Kong, Hated and Grey Gardens. In such terrific flicks about interesting folks with passion and drive, we spend time with these individuals and find that despite their eccentricies, we share common needs, desires and goals. The small, universal truths.
Still in the thick of things with Total Badass, I’m currently setting up a European tour. The costs will be greater, but so will the adventure. If you wanna help us get there, swing by http://kck.st/g4VgjJ and throw down for the cause.
In the mean time, if you’re itchin’ to eyeball some clips from Total Badass, go here: http://www.TotalBadassTheMovie.com and click the “peek” page.
My CrashToons cartoons loiter here: http://www.CrashToons.com They are NSFW but are funny and super-short.
If you wanna keep abreast of our tours, the site with all that juicy info is: http://www.BadassFilmTour.com
If all goes well in Europe, we might attempt a New Zealand and Australia tour in late 2011.
Kevin Smith recently began traveling with his new movie Red State. Maybe touring films around is catching on. Surely his tour will proceed on a much grander scale. Perhaps we can compare notes later on.
And, if you’ll pardon the personal shout-out, I’d like to say a HUGE thank you to Mia Cevallos, the producer on Total Badass and the Tour Producer without whom I could have done none of this. You rule, Mia!
— Bob Ray
With ass kicking music videos for the likes of Nashville Pussy, Fuckemos and Riverboat Gamblers, a slew of freaky CrashToon cartoons, and three critically acclaimed features: the stoner-comedy Rock Opera (SXSW ‘99), the modern era roller derby doc Hell on Wheels (SXSW ‘07) and his newest flick, the crazy-fun, touching and out-there documentary Total Badass, Bob Ray catapults the Austin counterculture onto the big screen, reveling in its inspiring, unique and deliriously offbeat glory. Behold the oddities and awesomeness: www.CrashCamFilms.com
What is it that a camera sees? Do we need to accept and conform to the dominant storytelling paradigms, or is there actually more that we can be striving for? Perhaps no life and work embodies these questions as well as Ricky Leacock. Filmmaker David Van Taylor guest posts today with an examination of him and these issues, and the difference between documentary and essay film. There is a lot that can be said about these subjects, certainly enough for a six hour documentary AND many blog posts.
For over a decade, Lumiere Productions has been working to create TO TELL THE TRUTH, a 6-hour history of documentary film. As the title suggests, we’re not interested in appreciating documentary just as an art form, in “film for film’s sake.” We’re exploring how documentary operates in the real world, where non-fiction films have both causes and consequences.
One joy of this project was our in-depth 2004 interview with the late lamented Ricky Leacock. Ricky was part of a small group that helped invent “Direct Cinema” (aka “cinema verité”) in the late ‘50’s and early ‘60’s. For many, this was the beginning of “real documentary,” since much of what came before entailed what we now call “re-enactments” or other intrusions that Ricky and his colleagues found a way to avoid.
Here’s a clip where Ricky describes his awakening, with the help of Bob Drew, to a new documentary concept. Note—he’s not talking about equipment or even technique. He’s not talking about intrusion or reenactment. No, the most critical shift was his understanding of what constitutes an interesting subject and a worthwhile impact on the viewer.
The (much-deserved) postmortem ado about Ricky has stressed this ability to be “fascinated,” and his lifelong quest to convey “the feeling of being there.”
But … it has been scarcely noted that these core convictions about what makes a good documentary are, if not dead, then distinctly out of fashion. We are in the midst of a documentary renaissance in theaters, on TV, at festivals. It is dominated, though, not by Ricky’s brand of cinema verité, but by essays and exposés on distinctly important topics—in Ricky’s words (not mine!), “films that convert people to this that and the other thing … all this left-wing, politically-correct bullshit.”
This opposition—between films “fascinated” by human stories and films that aim to change people’s attitudes about a critical issue—is not new in the history of documentary. It wasn’t new at the time of Ricky’s epiphany, either. For all their innovations, Leacock et al. were also standing on the shoulders of Ricky’s erstwhile mentor Robert Flaherty. The director of Nanook of the North, Man of Aran and Louisiana Story—whose work prompted the popular coinage of “documentary”—created observational, character-centered story films before the technology existed to do so. He believed the essence of filmmaking was “non-preconception.”
But in the same era as Flaherty, a very different mold was being forged half-way across the globe. Committed Soviet Communist Dziga Vertov, in Man with a Movie Camera, Three Songs of Lenin, and Enthusiasm, pioneered montage-driven essays about mass movements and social issues. The films, often distributed through innovative grass-roots “outreach,” were explicitly intended to change the world.
You can view documentary history as a pendulum swinging between these two poles—observational and argumentative, Flaherty and Vertov—due to shifting historical and political contexts. For example, the argument film dominated in World War II, when governments around the world sponsored documentaries for propaganda. Observational cinema returned, as “cinema verité,” in the ‘50’s, when McCarthyism (like Stalinism) made direct political expression dangerous.
As I see it, most prominent documentarians these days are children of Vertov, whether they know it or not. (Most don’t.) I’m not sure we yet have the historical perspective to know why that is. It may have something to do with a long-term conservative political tide that has left many viewers eager for a strong opposing voice. But whatever the reason, critics, viewers, film students today seem more likely to complain that a documentary doesn’t make a clear statement than to complain that it has an axe to grind.
I’m pretty sure Ricky couldn’t have been too happy about that. I’m less certain how I feel about it. Maybe the argument film is what we need as a culture right now. And let me be clear: these are not simple, black/white distinctions, even at their root. Vertov was a master of “fly-on-the-wall” filming, though he then manipulated the heck out of it in editing. (He also coined the term “kino-pravda,” which translates as “cinema verité,” now connoting a very different kind of film than those he made.) Flaherty, on the other hand, was famous for manipulations as he was filming—there’s a shot in Nanook where you can see the rifle the Eskimo would have used if Flaherty hadn’t asked him to use an old-fashioned spear—but made films that appeared as seamless and natural as life itself.
The controversy at the time about Flaherty’s poetic liberties still echoes today. HBO is about to release Cinema Verité, a (fictionalized) condemnation of how observational filmmakers allegedly exploited the Loud family in the ur-reality series. Perhaps it’s always the case that f you put something on the screen that appears unmanipulated, from Nanook to An American Family, you open yourself to feelings of betrayal when viewers discover that the documentary lens has in fact had a hand in shaping events.
Maybe that’s another reason argument-driven documentaries dominate today. We’re all convinced that everyone’s trying to spin us, from elected officials to news reporters to the kid with the Flip camera. So maybe the best we can hope for is that they’ll spin us straight—not pretend that they’ve gone in without preconception and are just trying to convey the feeling of being there.
Figuring out the last couple of decades will probably be the hardest part of making TO TELL THE TRUTH. I’d love to hear what anyone out there—documentary filmmakers, dedicated viewers, or just film lovers in general—thinks about this perspective on recent doc history. Am I on target, or full of BS? If I’m right that argument-driven docs dominate the scene now, why do you think that is? And is it something to be embraced, to be combated, or somehow to be transcended?
Right now my personal feeling is: Ricky, please don’t go. We need you more than ever.
— David Van Taylor
David Van Taylor and Lumiere Productions are currently completing 2 episodes of TO TELL THE TRUTH. For more on the history of documentary, including additional clips of Ricky Leacock, please follow TO TELL THE TRUTH on Facebook.
Indie Filmmakers used to think that once they made their movies, their only real option was to surrender — to surrender to the market and the middlemen who decided on a film’s applicability to an audience or community. Those days are now gone and good riddance! The services and tools we have to get our work out and on the screens of what has long been under-served under-educated audiences and communities increase every day. As those options expand, so do the choices of content, form, and aesthetic — we are becoming truly free in terms of how, what, and where we can tell our tales. The sky hasn’t fallen; a thousand phoenix have risen.
Today Orly looks at new platforms and toolkits that allow filmmakers to sell or rent their films directly to fans. The Era of Artist/Entrepreneur is here! Now all we have to do is fight for a free and open internet…
In a new media world in which people sometimes conflate distributor with platform and buyer with online/digital store, I want to draw that distinction and highlight a few new and compelling DIY options (platforms or toolkits) for filmmakers to sell or rent their films to audiences / consumers directly. TFC always encourages filmmakers to develop their own brands while also noting the importance of being connected to other brands that generate significant traffic and indie film consumption. In other words, sell direct to your fans off your site and other sites and social networking platforms and/or via other DIY platforms or tools but also recognize the usefulness of being available where average film consumers go, i.e. via Cable VOD if you can manage it, and other key platforms/online digital stores (depending on the nature of the film) such as: Amazon, Netflix, iTunes, Vudu, Hulu, Sony Playstation, Xbox etc.
The few DIY platforms or toolkits highlighted in this blog are: Distrify, EggUp, Groupees, Stonehenge’s iPhone Apps. Next time we cover this topic, we’ll investigate more into DIY platforms FansofFilm and Open Film (7,000 films, 70% shorts).
Peter Gerard & Andy Green, the co-founders of Distrify, are both filmmakers who formed Distrify. I met with Andy @ SXSW.
Distrify is not a film sales platform – it’s a toolset. One can use Distrify to sell a film anywhere on the web and via social media platforms. Once your trailer and film are on Distrify you embed it on your website like http://www.justtogetarep.com/ and Facebook page like https://www.facebook.com/just.to.get.a.rep?sk=app_203403406338325
You can then start telling your film’s fans about it and ask them to embed the widget on forums, blogs, websites, etc.
Distrify’s “sell-movies-socially” tools are designed to make effective social media marketing profitable. If your trailer and film are on Distrify, when you share the clip, you’re also sharing the store to buy the film or find out about upcoming screenings. When your audience shares it further, you’re always spreading the point-of-sale along the way. Anyone who shares it gets paid a share of sales they generate.
One does not have to start selling through Distrify right away – one can use it to promote screenings and events through the trailer interface. Here’s an example of an upcoming Anime release that is using the Distrify player to promote upcoming screenings: http://www.we-loveanime.com/
If the film’s not available in the user’s area, they can make their interest known directly through the player as well. Distrify compiles the statistics for filmmakers and give them the mailing list data – all free. Any new screenings you add are also automatically listed in all the players that have been embedded around the web. And when you want to start selling the film, you can add it as well.
There are no up-front charges, fully non-exclusive, and they don’t need any rights. They take a small transaction fee on sales (see specifics below).
In the Beta period it is free to sign up and upload one film to Distrify. They don’t charge for uploading or hosting and there is no subscription fee for a Beta account. They do charge a 30% revenue share on sales. They note that their profit “is around 3% to 5% so it’s costing us around 25% to deliver the service to the customer. We’re working hard to reduce these costs and when we do we’ll hand the saving over to the rights holder.”
Distrify Beta Pricing
Free sign-up for a one-film account
They charge a 30% transaction fee on all sales made through Distrify
They split the 5% affiliate revenue with the filmmaker.
Beta users will be given a special offer when they leave the Beta period, and normal account pricing will be determined at that time. And filmmakers keep all their rights.
How do you get paid?
Each month if you’ve earned sales revenue they will send you a sales report and transfer your earnings to you directly via PayPal or bank transfer. You may be charged by PayPal or your bank to receive the transfer. When you get your first sales report, they say “just let us know how you prefer to be paid”. What about affiliates?
“We will soon offer your audience the ability to earn a share of revenues that are generated from their sharing. Once this is enabled they will earn 5% from each sale they refer to you. We are currently offering to split the cost of the revenue-sharing with you. This means we only charge 27.5% on a revenue-shared sale. You keep the remaining 72.5%.”
Peter Gerard followed up further noting that whilst still in Beta their pricing is FREE to sign up and sell one film and a 30% transaction fee on all sales through their player and there are no costs for special encoding. Their Beta period ends in June and after they will continue this pricing option and offer some premium plans.
“EggUp is a publishing platform for filmmakers and film distributors. We help filmmakers and distributors rent and sell their films online while preventing piracy. Our free online publishing tools can help you distribute and sell your film or video which is all packaged and encrypted into a file called the Egg. The Egg is currently available for download and allows consumers to watch and share with friends and family virally while filmmakers are able to make money. With EggUp you get your own website to promote your film, together with an integrated pay per view solution. We also list your films in our film catalog called GoEggit. Distribute the Egg on your own website, and other online retailers with your very own buy now button without setup fees and inventory.”
Payment options: FREE, Rental, Purchase. Filmmaker will be able to choose several options. Accept Paypal and major credit cards. Customer credit card information does not go through their servers. They only link to the filmmaker’s Paypal account. Paypal holds customer’s credit card info.
They are Worldwide and can Geo Filter as needed.
Content: Currently about 60 films due to focusing on developing technology and negotiating deals with international governments and studios. They will be ramping up pretty quickly in the next 3-5 months with content.
When I asked about revenue thus far to filmmakers they answered with this: “It really varies since it’s up to the filmmakers. Some filmmakers make $0 due to they are not marketing their content or older film with no cult following. While others are getting consistent purchases daily since they have a full marketing strategy including PR pushing their film. It adds up but nothing making millions”.
EGG UP’s FEES:
Full length features: $1.25 per transaction ($2.00 – $1,000.00 retail)
Short film: 15% per transaction ($0.99 – $1.99)
EggUp noted that they are reviewing their fee structure and may be changing it soon.
I was introduced to this platform via TFC client (and HopeForFilm Guest Blogger) Ari Gold (Adventures of Power). Thomas Brooke who demo’d the platform / service via Cisco’s WEBEX. I was impressed with the simplicity and comfort of the interface.
Thomas Brooke is the Founder and CEO of YAWMA. YAWMA is the social media technology company that operates Groupees. Thomas describes GROUPEES as:
“A Flash sale (24-48 hr) platform focusing on digital media entertainment (music, games, film) - Like Groupon in the sense that we’re crowd-sourcing but deal isn’t dependent on a certain number of users buying and “tipping” the deal; rather we start with the good deal but the content owners set a goal and if achieved it unlocks extra exclusive content (to incentivize users to work as a group and spread the promo through their social graph) - There is a high degree of Facebook and Twitter integration so purchases spread virally - Flexible SaaS based system supporting product bundling, multiple pricing options (fixed price, pay what you want), inclusion of charity, etc. We’ve set Groupees up as an on demand platform where content creators/licensors sign up to run a single promotion, all of which is configured through a web interface. It is a platform by invitation only- we’re sourcing quality independent music, games and film.”
Their next Groupee starts on Wednesday so if you go to: http://groupees.yawma.net
you will see the promo vid and count-down clock now live.
Here is a screenshot and the model we’re using for projections on Music groupees.
FEES: The model split is reflected at 60-40% (in favor of filmmakers).
When I asked why they were more expensive as Apple (which takes 30%) Thomas answered:
“While it is true that Apple takes 30%, they don’t do anything for their 30% beyond providing a distribution system. Fact is we’re not just a point of distribution. We’re pretty sophisticated technology with a high degree of customization, strong FB and Twitter integration and 100% pr support (strongly question this, what do they mean by 100% PR support?) for every promotion we run. Groupon is really a better business analogy, and they take 50% but have nowhere near the social media integration or customization features. I do appreciate your asking whether to make mention but I’m certainly comfortable with this.”
“In terms of film/video, we can support straight download in any format and also video streaming. As mentioned, the service requires buyers to register so all files are secured behind a firewall. I think for indie film the concept of bundling films from different film-makers might work very well as it provides good cross promotion and from the consumer’s perspective allows you to get two cool films from a single purchasing experience. Definitely one of the premises of our platform is convenience as people are overwhelmed by our digitally connected world so by featuring quality indie entertainment as a part of a single promotion, consumers get the benefit of a curated good deal on relevant media/entertainment. I think also there is an opportunity to bundle films with music, especially where there’s a good thematic connection. Obviously, a soundtrack with a film is a no-brainer as well. We’re also currently looking at possibly bundling a video game that is from the horror genre with a horror film. “
Groupee Platform Features
-Support for all digital media formats
-Support both video download and streaming
-Web-interface for creating and configuring the Groupees promotion
-E-payments through PayPal and Amazon payments
-Live World map that tracks purchases as they occur around the globe
-Facebook and Twitter integration so purchases spread virally
-Real time sales statistics and reporting
-Flexible promotional programs including Fixed Price or Pay What You Want payments, charitable giving, cross-promotional bundles, goal setting with incentive giveaways
-Cloud-based, highly scalable platform capable of supporting 1,000,000 downloads per 24 hrs
.
STONEHENGE – Distributing films worldwide via Phone Apps — FilmApps…Get Your Film in More Hands
Stonehenge Productions enables film producers to sell their films on iTunes, Android Market and Amazon Appstore as applications for the iPhone, iPad and for Droid platforms.
Their pitch: “With a low start-up cost of just $680, you can have an application of your film available on Phones everywhere !! You keep 100% of sales revenues minus the 30% that Apple charges.” What do you get for $680?
An iPhone FilmApp
Embedded film in the App (better than streaming)
About page/synopsis
Twitter/FB/Email (Sharing) integration,
A merchandise page for users to buy merchandise, DVD…(e.g. Amazon)
Links to the film’s/director’s site (opens within the App)
A trailer/video clip viewer (user can watch the trailer, clips, outtakes, behind the scenes)
Photo gallery of shots from the film
an RSS/News feed for any feed you would like to provide.
Custom Graphic design and layout (using your art).
Turn around is typically two weeks and then 7-10 days at Apple.
Got other ideas? Let us know what you’d like
How?
Contact Stonehenge Productions and we’ll provide you with further instructions to upload your content. It will then be turned into a customized application. You’ll get final review and you’ll continue to hold all rights to the film.
We’ll submit it to Apple and manage the whole selling process through the App store OR we’ll put it on the Android Market or Amazon Appstore.
Mark Smillie of Stonehenge notes “we are really working hard to build FilmApps that encourage participation over the lifecycle of the film…so pre-release to build awareness and fan base, at release to drive fans to the theater and post release to sell the film through the App channel.”“We build for Apple, Android and sell on the iTunes, Droid and Amazon app stores.”
Their latest press release for our App for the film: Race to Nowhere. It’s a good example of a social activism app paired with a film App. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/03/prweb5193274.htm
Another testimonial Mark showed me is from John Paul Rice of “One Hour Fantasy Girl” “Apps for films work: Itunes report for One Hour Fantasy Girl in Q4 2010, rental/downloads up 558% over Q3. Credit goes to @WeGoTo11” John Paul Rice President No Restrictions Entertainment from Twitter:https://twitter.com/norestrictions/status/53291871367200768
* That’s all for now folks. More platforms and tools and DIY solutions next time.
Orly Ravid has worked in film acquisitions / sales / direct distribution and festival programming for the last twelve years since moving to Los Angeles from home town Manhattan. In January 2010, Orly founded The Film Collaborative (TFC), the first non-profit devoted to film distribution of independent cinema. Orly runs TFC w/ her business partner, co-exec director Jeffrey Winter.
I’ve written a lot about the increasing responsibilities of filmmakers and the absolute need to focus on audience/community building. How to we get our work seen in an entertainment economy that has shifted from being based on scarcity and control, to one of super-abundance and ever-increasing access? The tools get better daily, and slowly we start to map out a series of best practices.
In today’s guest post, filmmaker Ari Gold writes precisely of that challenge and how he’s managed to find some success without following the standard release plans. Ari directed one of my favorite all-time shorts (Helicopter), so I am excited to see his feature debut ADVENTURES OF POWER.
In a case of life imitating art imitating life, my air-drum comedy “Adventures of Power” is now launching a real air-drum competition [http://AirDrumBattle.com]. Rock-star drummers are lining up to participate. How in hell did I become an event planner? I used to think you just made a movie, and watch it go to theaters. But that’s not how it works these days, not for most of us. Independent filmmakers who can’t afford advertising have to find a way to get the word out about their movies – I’ve decided to become an event planner in order to do it. “Power’s Air Drum Battle” is the second initiative that I’ve done during the slow-burn release of the movie: we’ve already saved a music school with our charity auction, and so now we’re just going to have some fun. Anyone want to become a star by air-drumming?
They used to say you write a film 3 times: when you write it down, when you film it, and when you edit it. Making my movie, I learned that the first and third “writes”, you can be a perfectionist. But the second time (the shoot) you have to be a philosopher, because you’re not the one doing the writing. The shoot takes on a life of its own – often like a minor apocalypse. I would now add a fourth time you “write” a film – and that’s when you bring it to the world. That’s another one that’s hard to write yourself, even when you’re doing it yourself. Getting people’s attention without having the traditional press in your pocket is not easy to do.
I first conceived of “Adventures of Power,” a spiritual/political/absurdist fable about air-drumming and the American Dream, while living in a copper-mining town in New Mexico. The miners were going on strike; there were fights in the street. The story about a copper-mining dreamer making something out of nothing seemed to me to be a perfect combination of the ridiculous and the sublime. I don’t think I could have predicted the wild journey of bringing the “little epic” to the masses, and how much I’d feel like that miner. Broken bones, lightning strikes against the crew, death threats from copper-factory bosses (and eventually, on the plus side, invitations to countries from Finland to Thailand) were not what I expected. I wasn’t expecting my rough-cut to be reviewed (mostly badly) and the final film which I love to get no press whatsoever. But suddenly I have 100,000 fans on Facebook. How’s that work?
The sleepless, terrifying night before my shoot started, I received the following email advice from my brother: “Have fun, have fun, have fun.” And my friend from Germany wrote that before he shot his last film, he told himself “things will go wrong. not work out. i will be disappointed, frustrated and lost at times. but thats not bad. or wrong. as long as i can lay in bed at nite and honestly tell myself: i gave it all i got.’ this is not about winning. this is about doin´ it. with all your might and love. than the gods will look after you.”
Both of these emails were incredibly helpful. The winds of fate, weather, casting, financing, and distribution are often out of our control. I’ve had fans begging to buy my movie for many moons, while it navigated the perils of a distribution business in transition. I realized I couldn’t just walk away from the movie when I finished it. It played Sundance, won a bunch of prizes, and then I still had to put it out on my own. I have no idea if 100,000 new fans will ever pay the bills, but it’s great to know that all the hard work is finally bringing the fable to the masses. Every once in a while, people take power into their own hands. Power to the people!
— Ari Gold
Ari Gold’s first feature film “Adventures of Power”, an epic comedy about air-drumming and the American dream, won best-of-festival prizes at film festivals around the world, and was called “One of the funniest films in recent years” by New York Magazine. His short films “Helicopter” and “Culture” won prizes around the world, and he is currently at work on a new feature. AriGoldFilms.com
http://AdventuresOfPower.com Now on DVD
DVD includes 2 full hours of bonus materials, making-of, Ari’s student Oscar-winning short film “Helicopter”, interview with Neil Peart, bonus scenes with Jane Lynch, Adrian Grenier, Tim & Eric, and more.
Independent filmmakers are always on a search for new ways to get their films seen. Audience building is part of any practical artist’s plan. The tools we have available for this improve consistently. Regular readers of this blog probably share my fascination for innovative approaches to distribution, particularly with efforts that put audience first. It’s refreshing to see discussions that once were limited to the marriage of form and content to now embrace a three way coupling and add presentation (aka platform) to the mix. Do certain subjects or story-telling methods require unique forms of presentation?
Ray Privett considers this in today’s guest post.
“I know words no one else knows anymore.”
– dumb jack in Zenith
Readers of HopeForFilm.com are familiar with VODO and Bittorrent (both the protocol and the company). Gregory Bayne mentioned them in a HopeForFilm post about his release of Person of Interest, and VODO shows up in occasional lists here of filmmaker tools. That said, readers might be curious how bittorrent tools have been useful as part, rather than the entirety, of a release. One such release is Zenith, from my company Cinema Purgatorio.
Zenith is a film by Anonymous – no, not that Anonymous – which we’ve been releasing in extremely conventional as well as unconventional ways. Since long before the release began, Zenith has had an extensive online transmedia campaign. Then we played twenty-some traditional movie theaters as well as temporary venues, and did a fairly conventional cable VOD and DVD release. iTunes is coming soon. Meanwhile we have released the first chunk online under a creative-commons license, free to download with VODO and Bittorrent. After downloading, supporters help bring forth further chunks of the film, new materials, and limited edition Blu-Rays and masks. For $1000, you can even can meet a character from the film in person.
The VODO release, and the release in general, have been big successes so far. In the first ten days, more than 500,000 free-to-share downloads of Zenith’s first 30 minutes led to more than $5000 in audience sponsorship, and notable increases in film-related website pageviews and mailing lists.
Would we like more? Well, of course. However, we’ve thought of this also as a way to celebrate and share the meta world of the film, increase the general viewer base, and develop ongoing relationships with fans. Hopefully our successes are only just beginning.
Not all projects would benefit from a promoted VODO / Bittorrent release as much as Zenith. Zenith’s cyberpunk atmosphere, surplus of internet paraphernalia, and – most importantly – achievement as filmmaking qua filmmaking likely resonate with the bittorrent userbase. Also, Zenith’s time-jumping, cliffhanging, idea-heavy substance – think The Da Vinci Code / Blade Runner / The Big Sleep – works well with the serialized, participatory release method that bittorrent and VODO can provide. Contemplative documentaries and slow burn chamber dramas might not function well in this forum; however, disruptive, episodic cliffhangers can. Or, in a different direction, harrowing, up to the minute, war-zone reportage that needs exposure to and funding from strangers might benefit from a modified approach, if they can take the time to develop the infrastructure (which is a big if).
Offline, and in private, some of our esteemed colleagues have criticized Cinema Purgatorio for pursuing a relatively traditional release on such a forward thinking film. I understand their perspective; Vladan Nikolic – who may or may not be “Anonymous” – even was cautious about the “theatrical” and DVD release. However, without those traditional elements, we wouldn’t have achieved the same level of press coverage and relatively secure income from traditional sources as we have. We would have depended too much on the technology of the future to achieve a release in the present. That’s fine for people who have infinite venture capital behind them, and who are more interested in proof of futuristic concept than in contemporary result. But for a release with more modest resources, and which actually must stand up and run on its own feet, I think this has been the right way to go. Zenith’s release has looked both forward and backward, using methods of the past and the future to achieve a unique and successful release in the present.
For me the question is this: As Zenith is a film set in both the present and the future, which is deeply enriched by past science fiction filmmaking and literature, does our multi-platform release resonate with the substance of the film proper better than a purely digital release would have? Vladan Nikolic and the other filmmakers, and everyone in the viewing community, are the most important ones to answer that question. I look forward to ongoing discussion with them as the release continues forward, and I look forward to seeing how other filmmakers – hopefully many of them real independents, other true “Anonymouses” with no connections to big powerful players – use bittorrent-related methods into the future.
— Ray Privett
Ray Privett is founder of Cinema Purgatorio. He ran New York City’s Pioneer Theater and managed Facets Video’s Exclusive DVD line when each was at its most successful.
