IFP » Marketing

What to expect when your expecting to get into a film festival

Kat Candler — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 16:39:12 +0000

In the spirit of SXSW starting this weekend, I’ve put together a list of things you can expect when taking your short film out into the world.

But let’s start with … Making movies is hard. And you’re gonna get rejected. A lot. And getting rejected repeatedly can kill your soul. I remember a student getting rejected by her second festival. She threw up her arms and said, “I quit!” I looked at her and said, “You gotta be kidding me. Really? Cause if you can’t take this … I don’t know, dude.” You have to have solid-steel thick skin. Or at least be able to fake it.

Still from Candler’s HELLION

So let’s turn the table and start with the idea that you’ve made a really great short. It’s awesome and it’s getting into some festivals. What could happen to my little film? What should I expect from my film festival adventure?

The holy grail would be that someone sees your short, falls in love with it, falls in love with you and wants to turn it into a feature film with (of course) a million dollar budget. Holy shit, that’d be rad. It happens. But it’s rare. Very, very rare.

Here are some things that are more likely to happen …

1) New Friends! You’ll make new friends with some amazing filmmakers. Those friendships will last a lifetime. You’ll call on each other over the years to swap scripts, help each other out on set or call up for advice. These relationships are just as valuable as getting that million dollar film deal. No lie.

2) New Collaborators! You’ll find new collaborators. You’ll see other people’s work that excites you and people will see your work and want to work with you. Finding new people to work with as DPs, Editors, Production Designers, actors … is such a reward. With that said, go watch a ton of films at the festival.

3) Exposure! People will see your film. You’ll have an audience, in a theater, seeing something you and a team of bad asses made. And you never know who’s in that audience. It could be an agent, a manager, a financier, a new fan … But I think something that’s pretty important when you’re on the circuit with a short film is to have a feature script ready to go. If someone does come to you with that golden ticket, you better be ready.

4) Awards and Reviews You could win an award. And that award could get you the attention from other festivals or industry folks. And then you can put that festival laurel and that award on your postcards, posters, website. Same with reviews. You can rack up some great press and reviews and use that in your publicity materials. Building a name for yourself through press, reviews and awards, will legitimize you in people’s eyes.

5) Meeting the Programmers It’s great to meet and befriend the programmers. Establishing those relationships can last a lifetime. And when you come back with that feature film, those programmers will be super excited to see your new work. The door opened with that short film.

6) Distribution Distributors will probably contact you. That’s awesome. Do your research into the company. Talk to other filmmakers that are housed at that company and what their experiences have been like. It’s exciting, yes, but do your homework.

Still from BLACK METAL

I’m going to reiterate number one, one last time. Make new film friends. I swear to god, this is the best part of the community we work in.

My Brooklyn: A Case Study in Viable Theatrical Self-Distribution

Dan Schoenbrun — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 22:56:23 +0000

My Brooklyn will be opening for a 3rd week run at the reRun Theater in DUMBO Brooklyn. For tickets click here.

Kelly Anderson and Allison Lirish Dean’s My Brooklyn, a documentary about the forced gentrification of Downtown Brooklyn’s Fulton Mall, opened theatrically this past January as part of IFP’s new partnership with the reRun Theater, and promptly sold out every screening for a week straight. Each night, audiences crowded into the microcinema, some sitting cross-legged in front of the screen once the theater’s actual seats had filled up, others piling into a makeshift standing-room section by the bar. On most nights, a line formed just outside the door made up of people who’d failed to nab a ticket ahead of time, all waiting to see if they’d be able to squeeze in for that evening’s show.

In total, My Brooklyn sold over 800 tickets that first week. When the film returned to the theater for a second run, ticket sales were even higher. Now, as the film prepares for a third engagement at reRun starting March 8th, IFP sat down with director Kelly Anderson to discuss how her film was able to break out without the help of a formal publicist or distributor, and without her having to spend money on anything except physical assets like posters and postcards.

Director Kelly Anderson

In the interview, Anderson details how she prepared for her theatrical release, how she structured her digital and physical marketing campaigns, her strategy for press outreach, and why an emphasis on post-screening events and conversations was key to engaging and growing her audience.

Much has been written over the past few years about the need for and purpose of theatrical in a landscape increasingly dominated by ancillary markets. But the success of My Brooklyn presents a viable model for a certain kind of independent theatrical, and a case study for how such a release can dramatically affect a film’s lifespan.

Inception & Production

IFP: Let’s start early. Can you talk about the genesis of the project?

Anderson: Interestingly, I think the way the film originated is connected to why it’s been successful. Everything started as a partnership with the organization Families United for Racial and Economic Equality (FUREE). (Producer) Allison Lirish Dean and I made an organizing film for them. And as we were doing that, which was a work-for-hire project, we came up with the idea of making this bigger film.

IFP: Were you already formally engaged in the topic of gentrification in Brooklyn when you partnered with FUREE?

Anderson: No. Not at all. In fact, I felt it was an issue that had already been done on film, and not the kind of thing that I wanted to get too deeply into. But one day I was in my office at Hunter College, where I teach filmmaking, and Allison came in. She was getting an urban planning degree at Hunter, and she said, “I want to make this film. Should I take a class to learn how to make a documentary?” So we started talking, and by the time she left, I had committed to working on this film for FUREE with her.

She’s the one who found FUREE – she was doing an ethnographic research project about Fulton Mall for the Pratt Center for Community Development in Brooklyn. So she had already met a lot of the people who would eventually be in the film. I think a lot of why the film is doing well is that these relationships are now years old, almost a decade in some cases.

Allison Lirish Dean, Producer of MY BROOKLYN

IFP: How have those relationships paid off?

Anderson: To the extent that we could, we tried to forge partnerships with the people in and around our film as we were making it. Those play out over the long-term, and especially through distribution. This film took so long, and we talked to so many people, and then kept in touch with all those people. I mean not every week, but we had a good list of people that had talked to us during the making of the film, or served as a resource in the film.

And then – all of those people became part of this big database that we kept. So when we finally premiered it, we got in touch with them all. I think it definitely starts in production – with tracking everybody that you talk to. And you get busy, and it’s hard, but it’s important.

The thing about My Brooklyn is that we’re not creating a movement – we’re just tapping into an existing network of organizations and people who are interested in the film’s issues. So for me, it was more about just finding like-minded people, whether they were in the film or not, and being in touch with them about the issues in an ongoing way. I don’t think we talked to anyone specifically about helping or promoting the film once it was done. It was just kind of obvious to them that because they were interested in these issues that they would want to eventually see the film and be a part of it.

IFP: How hands-on was FUREE during production?

Anderson: Well, it’s very tricky. The first film that we made for FUREE – Someplace like Home – they controlled the editorial line, and distributed it entirely on their own. I went to a couple screenings, but we weren’t deeply involved in it. On My Brookyln, we were very, very careful with FUREE to say, “This is separate. You guys don’t have any editorial control over it.”

We have a good relationship with them, because they’re in the film, but I think it’s very important when you’re thinking about partnerships not to give away your independence as a filmmaker. So especially since FUREE is so invested in the downtown Brooklyn situation, it was important to us not to have them anywhere on the packaging on the film. They’re just like any other subject that we included, except that when it came time for distribution, they really took an active role.

IFP: Let’s talk about marketing during the production phase. What types of social media tools did you utilize before the film was finished?

Anderson: The first thing we did was a Kickstarter campaign, to raise money to hire an editor. I’d been editing on my own for a couple years, but with this one, I was just too close to the material. So we did a Kickstarter campaign and raised $20,000. What was great about Kickstarter is that it was the first time we really put the project out into the world. After the Kickstarter campaign, we already had several hundred people who were invested in the project, even if they had just contributed a dollar, or five or ten. If they donated, we had their contact info in our database, and we were able to reach out to them down the line. Kickstarter is really good for that.

IFP: How early were you on places like Facebook and Twitter promoting the film, and what was your initial messaging?

Anderson: To be honest, at first I was annoyed… I went to this workshop and heard all about how filmmakers have to be doing social media and all of that community-building stuff during the making of the film. And for me, it was really overwhelming. I couldn’t believe that in addition to getting this film made, I was supposed to be on Facebook telling people production stories, or whatever you’re supposed to do. We didn’t do that kind of thing so much. But the Kickstarter campaign forced us to start building an audience. I wouldn’t have done it if it wasn’t for Kickstarter. I never saw the value in saying, “My movie’s coming out in two years.”

IFP: How did the audience develop over time? Were there periods when people were especially active on social media, or engaging with the film in other ways?

Anderson: The Kickstarter campaign took about a whole summer, so during that time there was a lot of press and a lot of interest. And we just gathered those names. But after that, we didn’t really do much until the Brooklyn Film Festival, where we premiered the film in June of 2012. We did a lot of outreach for that.

Still from MY BROOKLYN

Festivals & Event Theatrical

IFP: Tell me a bit about your festival premiere, and the lifespan of the film on the festival circuit from there.

Anderson: The Brooklyn Film Festival was great, and I think it was really great because Nathan (Kensinger) from the festival really got our film – he understood it and really wanted to show it. It wasn’t completely ready, and he kind of pushed me. He just said, “You have to do it, because Bloomberg is going to be out of office in a year, and now is the time.”

So we did it, and it was great. We sold out every screening, but those were the kinds of screenings where a lot of your family and friends come, so you still don’t really know if it’s going to translate into a bigger push. But we did win the Audience Award, shared with Su Friedrich’s Gut Renovation. That also made me think, “Wow, something’s going on with this issue,” because her film was dealing with gentrification in Williamsburg.

IFP: And how did you move from that festival premiere to holding one-off community screenings?

Anderson: After the Brooklyn Film Festival, we just got inundated with requests from community organizations. A lot of people and local organizations who are either in the film or close to the issues started to hear about it, and we did probably fifteen one-off screenings total.

That included Filmwax. I was talking with Adam Schartoff (the founder of Filmwax) about how there were all these films coming out about development issues. And so he came up with the idea of doing a series called Brooklyn Reconstructed. What was great about that was how it helped us to build an audience over time – there was this collaboration among filmmakers to get the word out about each other’s films. We were working together to figure out how to get the audiences from one film to go to the next one.

IFP: Who were some of the other partners that you held those one-off screenings with?

Anderson: There were a couple churches that hosted screenings – either their social justice committees or in collaboration with a grassroots community organization. And then people started contacting me. Schools were big – I did one screening at Long Island University, and another at Brooklyn College.

IFP: How were your deals for these one-offs structured?

Anderson: One thing I learned was – at first, you’re so broke that you want to get something back from every screening. Unless you’re the kind of person who just wants people to see your film and you show it for free everywhere, which isn’t a great idea either. But doing all these community screenings – many of them I ended up wanting to do for free. There were times when I would even negotiate an agreement to get a screening fee or split the door. And then, when it came time for the screening itself, I just couldn’t take the money, because the organizations were doing such good work.

Overall, I think doing all those free community screenings worked out great. First of all, it built up a huge amount of goodwill among people who could then turn around and promote the screenings at reRun. We had built those relationships. And it wasn’t just a monetary transaction – it felt like we were in some kind of joint venture.

IFP: Did the organizations you partnered with for those one-offs help with promotion? Or was it still mostly your team spreading the word about the film?

Anderson: The organizations would always help spread the word, but I would do it too. I would post about any and every new screening on our Facebook page, and get the word out via email as well.

This is where that email list becomes important – at every screening, I passed around a clipboard. I didn’t just leave a clipboard sitting by the door. I stood up there afterwards and said, “Hey, if you like this film and you want to know where it’s playing, or if you want to tell people to see it, we need your word of mouth. Sign this paper.” It’s so obvious, but I feel like people are shy to do that. I would put all of those names into the database, so after the summer, I had at least 1,200 emails on that list.

And going into reRun, I wrote to those people and said, “Look, you’ve seen the film, so you’re now an ambassador for the film. If you want other people to see it, spread the word. We need you to do it or it’s not going to work.” So I think that was what was really important about those curated community screenings. We used them to develop this really good list of people who are really close to the issues in the film – what you would call the low hanging fruit. Those are the people who are going to come out if there’s any film about gentrification in Brooklyn, so they’re the ones who can then talk it up to other people. From there, I think we did eventually break out of that like-minded audience.

IFP: One worry I’ve heard is that these sorts of community-based events might cannibalize the audience for an eventual theatrical in the same city. Did you find that to be the case?

Anderson: No, I didn’t find that to be the case at all. But I’m kind of glad I didn’t know about reRun, because I might have had that same fear, and held off on the community screenings. Because like I said – we really did do a lot of screenings. I would say that before we went into reRun, at least a thousand people had already seen the film in New York, mostly in Brooklyn. But instead of that being a problem, it actually became an asset.

I think the thing you have to consider is – who is the audience for your film? If it’s just your friends and family and people who worked on it, then yeah, don’t show it too much before your theatrical run. But if you have a film that you think really has an audience out there, then I would take the gamble and throw it out into the world first, and get a core of people talking about it.

Crew of MY BROOKLYN

Ancillary Markets

IFP: Where were some of the other places that the film was available before your theatrical?

Anderson: Well, I’m part of New Day Films, which is a cooperative educational distributor. I’ve done all my films through them, including My Brooklyn. The way it works is it’s a collective, and it’s owned by all the members. We basically do the work that an educational distributor would, and we do about 1.5 million dollars in educational sales a year.

So it’s a pretty successful model, and what I’ve learned at New Day is that the educational market – which is selling to universities and colleges – is a potentially lucrative one, especially for social issue films. But you can also undermine yourself completely by making the film available too cheaply too early. I’ve made the mistake of putting a film on Netflix too early in the process.

Look, if somebody wants to use the film in their community and they ask me for a copy, I’m going to sell it to them at a home video price. But I’m not going to make it all that easy for a professor to buy a copy of my film for $25, because that does undermine sales. New Day has done a lot of research on this, and it really does. But the film is also available to stream directly on the New Day site – there’s an option of a $4.99 individual stream that you can enable.

IFP: Do you know what the total numbers were for the educational and streaming sales before reRun?

Anderson: No, because I just started distributing it through those channels around the same time as the reRun run came about. I haven’t done any real marketing yet, and I’m still getting the packaging together. I’ve probably sold only ten educational copies – but hey, that’s a few thousand dollars.

Considering Theatrical

IFP: Did you always envision doing a traditional theatrical run for My Brooklyn?

Anderson: No, because first of all, I had never made a film that was feature length before – all of my previous films have been broadcast length. But with this one, I hired an editor, and she kept cutting it really long. It’s the first film I had that felt like it could do a theatrical. And then what happened was, after we were at the Brooklyn Film Festival, I started getting this outreach from certain small theater owners in the city saying, like, “Oh do you want to come show at this theater?” But the deal was you had to pay – as I got into the details I found out that you had to pay $11,000 dollars.

IFP: It’s called fourwalling.

Anderson: Yeah – fourwalling. And I couldn’t do it – I was broke, and there seemed something kind of cheesy about paying for your own theatrical. I don’t know – I think it’s okay if you do it. I just wasn’t convinced I could make the money back. So that was the end of that. I thought about it for about a day. But then Adam from Filmwax came to me and told me about the new collaboration between IFP and reRun, and I was like, “great.”

IFP: What was your initial reaction to hearing about the program?

Anderson: The first thought I had was, “Great, maybe I’ll get the Times review.” Because that’s the thing you can’t really get out of the community screenings – the press. It’s really hard to get certain press interested without a week run. But really, there didn’t seem to be much of a downside to the deal. It seemed cool. I’d never been to reRun, but I’d heard of it, and I liked the idea of it being this kind of artsy venue.

I did initially worry about how much money I would have to spend, because I was kind of stressed about money. But I thought about it and realized I would just mostly have to pay for postcards and posters, and that I would probably at least break even given the share of the door I would get from IFP.

IFP: Did you consider hiring a publicist or a distribution consultant to help with the process?

Anderson: No. Though I did hire (Associate Producer) Fivel (Rothberg) to help with outreach for the second week, once things started to take off.

Events and Partners

IFP: One of the things that I think really helped with the run was the fact that you had so many different partner organizations co-sponsoring nights. What was your initial theory behind doing that, and do you feel like it helped bring people out?

Anderson: Well IFP suggested doing that, which was great, because I hadn’t really thought about it as an option. I mean – I knew I would come out and do Q&As, and that Allison would come for some too, but then IFP suggested having sponsors and partners come out to participate in each screening, which turned out to be really helpful. I really tried to think about it not only in terms of who would be a good speaker, but also who had a good outreach capacity themselves. So a group like moCADA – the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts – I knew they had an amazing social media presence. I see their stuff all the time all over Brooklyn. So I thought they would be great to take an active role and help spread the word. I also reached out to groups that I knew because they’d invited us to show the film already over the previous summer. It was all people we had connections to, really.

Another important thing that IFP suggested was to make sure we weren’t reaching out to all the same types of organizations. I realized I had six events planned, but they were all around the same topic. That’s when we started thinking, “Hey, maybe we can get the photographer who’s in the film to come and show some photos, or somebody to come out and talk about the cultural life and hip hop history of Fulton Mall.” So we started getting creative – thinking a little bit more outside of the usual suspects.

Photo by Jamel Shabazz

IFP: And what do you think the benefit of that was?

Anderson: It was great, because not only did it bring out a different audience each night, but it allowed us to put the film out there as a multi-faceted work of art. It wasn’t just an activist tool, you know? The film has a lot to say about culture, and about history.

IFP: When you were attaching partners to come and help with each screening, how did you frame the ask specifically?

Anderson: Well, more often than not, they’d already seen the film, so I knew they liked it. After I saw how things were going at reRun, I’d talk to them about how much fun it was to do these screenings, and how the discussions afterwards had been amazing so far. Then I’d ask if they – or their organization – could sponsor a night, and if they could come and speak afterwards. I’d make clear that they didn’t have to prepare anything formal, because it’s so short – it’s just a forty-five minute discussion. I would say, “After people see the whole film, they don’t really want to listen to a lecture. They just kind of want to have back and forth, but your expertise is so strong in this area that I’m going to frame it as a discussion around a specific topic.” And people would really respond to that. You’re not asking that much of them. It’s one night, and I think a lot of the guests ended up having a great time talking to folks. That whole vibe of hanging out and discussing these issues was very rich at reRun.

IFP: Were there things about your post-screening events & conversations that changed or evolved as the run went on?

Anderson: Less formal presentations. I learned that the main thing is to just turn it over to the audience. And even if we billed it as a conversation about the next election, you don’t have to talk about that. You just bring someone who could talk about it if people want to. I mean, the best discussions we’ve had were with guests who, instead of talking, moderated a discussion with the audience.

IFP: Do you think that giving audiences that kind of experience helped spread the word of mouth for the film?

Anderson: Yeah, I think so. I have no way of knowing for sure, but I know that we did generate a lot of word of mouth. I’ve had people tell me that they were in a café, and somebody was sitting next to them talking about My Brooklyn. It seems like there’s been a lot of filtering out into the community in general. The other thing that started to happen a lot was people would come see the movie, and then come back again and bring a friend the next night.

IFP: People wanted to keep participating in the conversation.

Anderson: I think people like the fact that it’s not just a screening – it’s a conversation And if they feel upset about the issues, or if they want to talk about it, they know that if they go to reRun, it’ll be screening and they can talk about it.

IFP: When I talk to other filmmakers about this model – about putting an emphasis on events and conversation each night, a lot of people sat, “Oh, that works for My Brooklyn because it’s a social interest documentary.” Or, “That works because it’s a Brooklyn film screening in Brooklyn.” But do you think that this type of model can be adopted across the board by independent filmmakers?

Anderson: I think it’s a really deep question. I don’t think it’s just because the film’s about Brooklyn and we’re in Brooklyn that it’s worked. I think that’s made it a little easier, but I’ve had the same type of experience screening the film in Vienna. People come out to see it, and talk about it, and relate it to their lives.

I think that it gets at this deep question of – why do you make films? Maybe that’s what people need to do – sit back and think about why they made the film that they made. Do you just want people to come into a theater and look at it and go home, or do you want people to talk about it afterwards? If you think people are going to want to talk about your film, then I think, yes, this model can work. What you want is for someone to leave and go tell someone else to go see it, so why not start the discussion right there.

If you have a film that you think has value for people – whether it’s political or not – then this model can help. But you have to think very specifically about the types of people that your film might speak to, and then you need to think about how to find those people. So if your film’s about music, you find people who are really into thinking and talking about music, right? And then you find those organizations and places that can reach those people, and you get them involved.

IFP: I also think that it goes to the question of, why a theatrical at all? What’s the point of putting your film on a screen and asking people to come out and see it when they can stream it at home on their couch for five dollars. Turning each night into an event, or at least a conversation, it lets people participate in the experience rather than just view passively.

Anderson: I had audiences at reRun that were upset that the speakers took up all the time, because they had so much they wanted to say. That’s the thing – people are coming out not only because they want to see the film and listen to a speaker, but because they want to be able to speak out about what they just saw.

Press & Outreach

IFP: You mentioned earlier about the importance of compiling a large email list. Can you talk a bit more about your process with that?

Anderson: I started a list that was at first just the Kickstarter people, but then I added to it anybody who was interested. This is important – you need to get an email program like Vertical Response or Constant Contact – one of those. Those are true opt-in lists, so you don’t have to go off-shore to one of the ones that let you spam. These are very strict about who’s on your list and who you can mail to – it’s true opt-in email list development. So the people from the Kickstarter campaign were the basis for that list, but anytime anyone would write to me or the website with a question – asking when the next screening was going to be or talking about how the types of issues the film explores were happening in their city, they would go on the list.

And there are obvious people that you forget. At one point I realized that my crew – people who worked on the film like the sound mixer and different PAs and the music people – they weren’t on that list. You have to make sure that all of the people affiliated with the film are on the list that you’re sending out updates to, because they’re a key audience.

IFP: What was your outreach strategy surrounding the festival premiere?

Anderson: We compiled a list of blogs – Brooklyn based blogs. Fivel Rothberg did it, who’s our Associate Producer on the film. Any blog that dealt with development, or with Brooklyn, we compiled a list. And then we did a press release about our premiere and additional press releases every single time we had an upcoming screening.

The other thing I did, which I think is important, was after we had that initial list of blogs, anytime I read an article that referenced a topic like gentrification in Brooklyn, I would write down the name of the reporter. So I had this growing list of reporters who were interested in my topic. I don’t know if any of that turned into anything tangible, but I think it might have.

IFP: Did you ever consider hiring a publicist?

Anderson: No. Someone did say to me recently, ‘Oh, it’s so interesting this strategy you have for PR. Most filmmakers hire a publicist.’ And I’m like, “Are you kidding me? We have no money to hire a publicist!” I was already thirty thousand dollars in debt when we did the Brooklyn Film Festival. Look – there are certain people that I personally don’t know how to reach, like the New York Times. But that for me was the insane upside of reRun. This partnership with IFP and reRun was amazing. I never realized that once you get a theatrical run, you can gain entry into getting the big reviews – Variety, Bloomberg News, The New York Times. I don’t know if those places would have written about the film if we didn’t have a theatrical.

But you always have this sense that there’s this magic that PR people can do. And there are lists of press that we just don’t have. But I’m trying to get them – like lists of African American media in Brooklyn. You just have to keep thinking – who are the people who have an interest in seeing this film? Because a lot of people have come out to reRun, but it’s a tiny, tiny fraction of the people in Brooklyn who are probably interested in this topic.

IFP: And how do you activate audiences during the reRun run itself? How did you task them with staying involved?

Anderson: I say, “Before we start the Q&A, I’m going to pass around two clipboards. You don’t have to sign if you don’t want to, but one of them is for My Brooklyn – if you like the movie, sign it and we’ll keep you updated. We need you to tell people about it, it’s all word of mouth.” I’d usually say something like that. And the other clipboard I’d pass around was a list for FUREE. I knew people would want to know what they could do about the issues that the film brings up, and I couldn’t answer that question specifically. It seemed like passing around a clipboard with FUREE’s contact was one way for people to get on a feed. And I would tell people, “You’ll hear from them once a month, and that’s it. If you want to know what the next big rezoning is going to be, or where, get on this list.” And I think people appreciated that. I’ve had other filmmakers say to me, “Oh, don’t you find that to be aggressive – to hand around a clipboard?” No. People don’t have to sign it. So that was the ask, and a lot of people signed.

IFP: Let’s talk a bit more about press. What were some of the other major outlets that you targeted personally?

Anderson: Well as I said earlier, we had no idea how you get a Times review, so we let IFP handle that. IFP did, like, the big film press – critics and so on. But there was definitely a certain amount of personal outreach that we did to people that we knew.

The big one was WNYC – Brian Lehrer’s radio show was huge. So many people came to the theater and said they were there because they heard us on the radio. We got that show because Allison knew someone who worked at WNYC who was able to put in a word for us. I don’t think that’s the only way to get on the show, but I think when preparing a press strategy, it’s important to do an inventory of who you know. Like, for example, during our second run, I was thinking about who else I knew, and I remembered that Errol Lewis – who has a nightly show on NY1 – had taught at Hunter College, where I teach. So I contacted the professor that he had dealt with, and said, “Can you give me his information?” And I just reached out to him and said, “I never met you while you were at Hunter, but this is my film and what I’m doing.” And he ended up saying, “Sure, come on the show.” So I think working those personal connections is really important. And they may be like a friend of a friend or something, but that’s okay.

Other press… we got this piece in the Atlantic that was great. This reporter came to the theater – she covers gentrification. Tons of people saw that piece. I know because we track the trailer hits on Vimeo, and it was like 1,500 people watched the trailer from that one thing. Sometimes when I’m reaching out to press I make it a more specific ask. Like – you can offer to write something. That’s what I did with the Huffington Post. We linked up with a reporter there when we did our Kickstarter campaign. He was a great connection, because every time there was a news peg related to our issue, he would do something to get us involved. There was a report that came out about gentrification as it was shown in the last census, and he called us, and was like, “Can you guys be interviewed?” I was like, “Sure. Right away!” Cultivating those people who are really into your issue – not just the film critics- I think that’s really important.

IFP: Were there pros or cons to you doing this outreach yourself as the director of the film, rather than somebody else doing it for you?

Anderson: Well I know what the cons are – it’s hard to just keep asking people for things. What was great was having (Associate Producer) Fivel Rothman doing it too. Because a lot of times, I did the ones that I had a personal connection with, but for some of the colder ones, it’s just nice to have someone else to work with you.

IFP: Do you have any other advice for filmmakers attempting to spearhead a press campaign without the help of a publicist?

Anderson: You have to get good quotes from people. Even before your theatrical, you need to get your press quotes. Call up influential writers or academics, anybody. We had a quote on the postcard from a guy named Don Mitchell that said, “Anybody who cares about cities needs to see My Brooklyn.” And Don Mitchell happens to be a very famous geographer – I don’t think most people know who he is, but they see that quote on the postcard, and it looks like someone who knows what they’re talking about. And that’s such a great way to get people interested in seeing your film.

IFP: What about physical marketing? Can you talk a bit about how many posters and postcards you printed, and your strategy for distributing them?

Anderson: I think I’ve probably had about thirty or forty 11×17 posters in addition to the ones I gave reRun to hang up. So those we went around and distributed. That’s a really good way to involve people, actually. There was one guy who lived in Bed Stuy, who said he’d be willing to distribute posters. He just offered to do it – he came to the movie over the summer, and he was like, “Whatever I can do. I’d be happy to get the word out.” So I was like, “Sure.” Now he’s a rep for the film. Before every run, I just give him a pile of postcards and posters, and he goes around and distributes them in his neighborhood.

And that’s great – because he’s got those relationships. People living in a neighborhood are likely to have relationships with some of the business owners there, which is really good because then they’ll let you put a poster in the window. There aren’t many places that you can randomly hang stuff in – you need to ask. So I think it’s really great to have a person in each neighborhood near the theater if you can.

In terms of postcards, I would recommend printing around 2,500. And it works. During the run, I asked a lot of people how they’d found out about the movie. And people told me that they picked up a postcard in a local business in their neighborhood. That’s how they heard about it.

IFP: Did you devote any money to advertising – either online or in print?

Anderson: Nope. I didn’t think of it. Maybe I would have. Actually – I did a couple of Facebook pay to promote posts. I think I spent around twenty dollars promoting Facebook posts.

IFP: Tell me a bit about the online campaign surrounding the theatrical release. How did you use Facebook, Twitter, and your email list to promote the run?

Anderson: Well one thing we did that I want to mention is – we got a website up. We designed a WordPress site that basically listed upcoming screenings, and had a description, the trailer, a list of key people involved with the film, and a blog on the front page. And as much as we could, we tried to keep that blog from feeling too stale or old. We would also accumulate press on the website, and had photos so that press that needed pictures could grab them. That’s all really important – to make that stuff easily available.

So besides that, there was a Facebook page. Twitter we haven’t used as well as we could. But one thing we’re doing now is – we’re actually setting up a bulletin board for people who want to discuss the film. That’s not up yet, but it’s something we’re thinking about, because Facebook and the website, they just don’t seem like the best places to have a conversation.

IFP: What about the Facebook event for the run? How early did you set that up, and what was your general strategy around promoting that?

Anderson: The difficult thing about doing a Facebook event for a theatrical run is that you can really only have the event show for one day in the calendar. So one thing I learned to do is go in every day during the reRun run and change it to the next day so that people continue to see it in their Facebook accounts. Otherwise it’ll just go into the past events folder and you’ll never see it again. Another key thing we did with the Facebook event was make people hosts, people close to the film who could then turn around and invite their own friends in a personalized way. That’s important.

I do think it’s also important though to not to think of Facebook as the world. There are still so many people who are sending out emails about events. The most valuable thing to me is – you have to personally ask. I remember at one point thinking, “Who are the ten people I’m going to get to sit down and write emails to their friends to tell them about this movie?” And the ask is not just, “Please share.” No. It’s, “Isabel Hill – you know a lot of people who care about this issue. Will you commit to me that you’re going to sit down in the next two days and write an email telling friends how important it is and why?” People don’t want to do it, but if you can find a few, I think it goes a really long way. Like, if a personal friend sends me an email saying that I have to see this film and it’s not just a forwarded thing, it’s actually really valuable.

Audience at MY BROOKLYN Screening

Looking Ahead

IFP: What are your next steps for the film? Do you have more theatrical planned outside of New York?

Anderson: I hope so. I certainly know that I get emails from all over the United States, if not the world. I’ve gotten really serious emails from Washington DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago, Boston, LA, so I know there’s an interest in doing more. Whether we can figure out how to organize a whole theatrical run in all those places, I don’t know.

But because of this reRun run and the attention around it, I’ve also gotten a lot of requests from festivals that I never even applied for. Those include Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival, Frankfurt. Belfast, Vancouver, New Orleans. I’ve gotten a lot of people just requesting the film out of the blue. And I got invited to go to China! That came in through the website too, so at first I thought they maybe have the wrong person or something. But it turns out that the American Planning Association does this conference in China, and the goal of it is to bring in people from outside the professional planning world. They invite a couple of provocative keynote speakers, and then everyone breaks out into groups and discusses. So I’m totally excited about that, that’s hopefully happening this summer.

For me, being able to travel with the film is amazing. The conversations internationally are super interesting, or even in other cities in the US where there are differences in terms of what’s happening there. It’s always very substantive. I get very few filmmaking questions – nothing about what I shot on or anything like that.

IFP: So it sounds like you’re going to be on the road with this film for a long time. Do you have a cutoff date? Do you know if there’s a specific time when you’ll say, “Okay, that’s it. Now it’s time to move on to the next project?”

Anderson: No, because I feel like it’s not that often that you make a film that hits. And I think that’s what’s happening with My Brooklyn, and it’s really enjoyable. We all spend so much time asking people to fund our films, to help make our films, and to watch our films, and when people actually want to watch your film, to me that’s special. It feels like I’ve been pushing this rock up a hill for years, and then finally, it just started rolling on its own. And I’m just trying to keep up with it, I guess.

IFP: Has this whole experience changed the way that you’re thinking about the filmmaking process and how you’ll approach your next project?

Anderson: I guess in a certain way I’ve realized that it’s okay if your film doesn’t get sanctioned in the traditional sense. This film is not on POV, it didn’t get money from Sundance, it didn’t go to Sundance Film Festival or SXSW, and it’s not going to be on Independent Lens. I guess what I’ve realized is that despite all of that, the film is kicking ass. And I think it’s really important to realize that your film can do really well, even if it’s not one of that small handful of films that gets a huge spotlight shown on it. And I think that’s really encouraging. I know friends of mine who are filmmakers who are encouraged by what’s happening with this film. Because it used to be easier, you know? A lot of my friends have been making films for twenty years, thirty years, even longer. And it’s hard – it’s very hard now. It used to be easier to make a film and get it shown. I think that what I’m learning with My Brooklyn is, yeah – do I wish it was going to be on POV? Of course. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not a tremendous success in its own way. And I think it’s really important to not peg everything to those few names, you know?

IFP: What types of filmmakers would you recommend the reRun program to?

Anderson: I think it’s really good for people who have strong films that can’t afford to fourwall. I think if you’re really shy and you don’t like to talk about your movie, or be around when it’s showing, it might be hard. It’s not the kind of thing where I’d suggest just dropping your film off and never being there. It’s better if you can go, and I think it’s important to want to engage with other people around your film. I think if you’re comfortable doing that, it’s great. But really, I would recommend it to anybody. I just think it’s a really great way to give good films a leg up. There are so many films that are worthy of it, and it’s just so hard without a theatrical or broadcast.

It opened the door for my film to do well on a higher level. It was doing well locally, but I didn’t know how to move it out further than just Brooklyn. And this platform really did allow me to expand the visibility of the film in a huge way, and in a way that I never could have done on my own. I think I’m pretty good at talking up my movie, but there’s just something about having those reviews and that consistent screening every night that took it to a different level.

If you have a distributor who thinks you can open in Manhattan and in a bunch of other cities, great. But there are so many good films that don’t have that. So it’s just another little shot at something that will make your film successful. There’s not too many good opportunities compared to the number of great filmmakers out there. And it did feel like a door to something else to me. We were poised to take advantage of it, so it was us too, but I do think that without that opening, we wouldn’t be doing anything like we’re doing now.

Producer Kim Jackson on preparing for a festival like Sundance

Kim Jackson — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 16:00:57 +0000

I’ll be honest with you. It wasn’t until a week ago that I could see straight.

When I stumbled off of the red eye at JFK and headed to my apartment in Manhattan after attending The 29th Annual Sundance Film Festival, all I could do was run to my bed and collapse. For two days straight I barely moved. I couldn’t. I was overwhelmed.

To attend Sundance is to know you belong as a filmmaker. The caliber is so high and the work so strong, I can say without any reservation, our film, Blue Caprice, would not be the artistic success it was without the support of IFP. They helped us fine-tune the cut, develop our marketing strategy and learn what problems to anticipate before they appeared. It was a valuable experience and one every serious producer must undertake if they want to create work which is artistically and commercially successful.

Like all filmmakers, our road has been long and challenging.� Blue Caprice was lucky enough to have been selected and mentored the year prior in IFP lab. The IFP Labs are an ideal place to gain exposure for new works, navigate the industry and create new relationships, and not simply by virtue of attendance in the Lab. The process helped us realize what our story was and how best to tell it. It was indispensable.

During IFP Week we met sales agents, distributors and festival programmers, including the inspired John Cooper, Director of the Sundance Film Festival. We also met our new sales agent, Cinetic Media. Going into a festival like Sundance, you need an additional team focused on selling your film for optimum festival experience. Let me be clear: you don’t need a good sales agent, but the right sales agent. Their role is to sell the film and get the best deal possible. This is like pushing three looming boulders up a steep hill while nursing two bum knees. Hiring someone who knows the buyers and can get their attention and convince them to attend your screening is crucial. We could not have been in better hands.

You also need a great publicist who is proactive but sees the bigger picture and knows how to work with people and talk about your film. Our publicity team, Brigade Marketing, did an outstanding job and continues to take us into the future…did someone say Oscars?! Oh, yes I’m dreaming big!

I also called on the support from my company’s PR group, dominion3PR. Kim Dixon of dominion3PR is a seasoned, well-respected publicist and a Sundance veteran. I can’t image experiencing the festival without her.

As a creative producer, there are endless hours spent on various stages of a film. From idea to story development to script to casting to production to the premier, the road is long and bumpy and exhausting. With the support of IFP, we were challenged but we had the skills needed to thrive. By the time we finished the distribution labs in December, we were ready for the dance!

Once at Sundance we all knew our roles, supported each other and did our best to enjoy all that came our way. We hoped, but I don’t think any of use anticipated the level and amount of critical acclaim our film has received. After our premier screening at The Library we all left speechless. And then we waited… waited for what the critics would have to say and when the first of the reviews came out and the response was positive, we all breathed a sigh of relief and felt intense gratitude. We rode the wave and enjoyed the rest of the festival, which included interviews, photo shoots, meetings, receptions, networking and non-stop parties. It took an incredible amount of stamina, but it was all worth it.

The Sundance family is one of the most supportive, loving and dedicated
group of people any filmmaker could ever dream of working with. The
process I undertook at Sundance helped me to refine my taste as a
filmmaker. Because of them, I learned how to ascertain what was
relevant in work and how to be clear and concise when communicating new
ideas with others.

Here’s a list of essentials to survive Sundance:

- Create an itinerary before you arrive, print up a couple copies and put a PDF on your phone. Serendipity and spontaneity are regular occurrences and you want to be ready for anything that comes your way.
- Go to Fresh Market in town upon arrival and buy healthy provisions (especially for late night). Bottled Water, Fruit, Mixed Greens, Juice and Vitamin C, D3, emergency C to put in your complementary green Sundance Britta water bottle.
- Drink a lot of water all day – you are 6500 ft above sea level the altitude makes some people queasy for a couple of days.
- Light on the alcohol, it dries you out and makes you look puffy in your photos.
- Wear comfortable snow boots and versatile day to evening wear; you’ll be out from dawn till dawn meetings lots of people, so stay fresh looking and present. Main Street Park City where it all happens is a steep hill and you’ll walk up and down it more times than you can image.
- Watch at least 3 films, more of course if you stay the entire ten days. After all you are at a FILM festival and it’s good to be aware what you’re fellow filmmakers are up to. Also a great way to take a deep breath from all the hustle, and you’ll need it.
- Stay open, have fun and bring lots of business cards.

My own experience as part of IPF has come full circle. When I first moved to NYC 10 years ago, I didn’t know anyone in the city and attended my first Film Week and told people, “I’m working on being a producer”. Now I say, without any hesitation, “I am a producer”. IFP is dedicated to advancing the art of cinema. I urge new producers to attend as many panels and workshops through IFP as possible. Stay open and receptive. As a producer, you are the CEO of yourself. You are the company. Always be ready for whatever opportunities come your way. Working with IFP prepared me for the world of professional producing. I’m still humbled by the success we had with Blue Caprice, but thanks for IFP, I feel it’s deserved.

I realize I’ve just hit you with a lot of information, so to summarize here’s a practical list you could follow.

Kim Jackson’s advise for aspiring producers once the film is “in the can”:

- Align yourself with an organization like IFP.
- Be open and receptive to criticism and feedback.
- It’s not about you, it’s about the film.
- Create a festival strategy that’s realistic for the type of film you have.
- Manage expectations for yourself and your team before arriving at the festival.
- Hire a strong sales agent who is passionate about your film.
- Hire a great publicist for the film and perhaps yourself.
- Prioritize the goals for the film and your own career, they are separate.
- Enjoy the ride, and submerge yourself in what the festival is offering: screenings, panels, discussions, meetings and networking.
- Stay grounded and healthy, there’s only one you.
- Dream big, because if you don’t, someone else will be on that stage accepting the awards.
- Stay strong and keep up.

Now excuse me while I go take a small nap. I have to get ready for my next four projects. We producers need all the sleep we can get.

Kim Jackson

Producer

Blue Caprice

www.StreetwisePictures.com

Indie film distribution in a digital world: A master class w/Dylan Marcetti & Josh Braun

Justin Ferrato — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 15:00:26 +0000

Short interviews with the heads of some of the most exciting new companies such as Dylan Marchetti (Variance Films) and Josh Braun (Submarine Entertainment) working in independent film & media today. Hear about their work, and the ways they are working to make change for independent media makers. The panel is moderated by Janet Pierson producer of the South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Conference and Festival.

This discussion was part of IFP’s Independent Film Week.

Spurlock Sisters at Biennale College Cinema: Week Two

Kim Spurlock — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 21:50:27 +0000

For the Spurlock Sisters’ first blog entry, visit: http://filmmakermagazine.com/64191-spurlock-sisters-at-biennale-college-cinema-part-one/

They say that creative works are never really finished, we just let them go at some point. I guess that’s what deadlines are for. The new versions of step outline, budget and schedule for A Case of the Dismals were due a week after we arrived at San Servolo, at 2:00PM. So of course I finished at 1:55. I had also ‘finished’ a couple of hours earlier when I thought the deadline was noon. With a sigh of relief, Mai and I clicked ‘send’ and off our little package went to the Biennale. We then had about 15 minutes to savor the accomplishment before rushing off to begin our second week of intensive prep. The concentration this time around? The Pitch. We had three days until we pitched Dismals to the folks at the Biennale, so we dutifully ingested our umpteenth espresso and headed to class.

We hit the ground running with a cold pitch of our project to our mentor group and the trainer. The great thing about working on a pitch is that you begin to see where the mechanics of your script are working and where they aren’t. It forces you to distill your story and whatever it is you are trying to say with it.

I think I mentioned before that it would be interesting to compare my Biennale experience with Emerging Narratives and Emerging Visions at IFP Week last Fall, when I was there with another project The Whispering Giant. Probably the major difference is the length and the breadth of the training. While the Biennale is two weeks of story, budget, schedule, pitch and distribution intensives, EN and EV spent a day focusing on our pitch to industry folks for feedback. Emerging Narratives then follows with several days of industry meetings with producers who have expressed interest in your project. All three of these initiatives offer superb training and exposure for first and second-time filmmakers.

Photo by Tomer Bahat

The morning of our official pitch to Alberto Barbera (Director of the Film Festival) and the Biennale College, Mai and I woke up early to practice a couple more times before we headed to the cafeteria to eat breakfast and find out the running order of the teams. � A Case of the Dismals would be dead last. I guess we’re a hard act to follow!

By lunch break, we were pretty nervous. Ten teams had finished their pitches and were already celebrating over Spritzes and Prosecco. Didn’t want to end up snoring in the aisles when they called our names, so Mai and I stuck to espresso while we had a nice chat with Amy Dotson.

The Spurlock Sisters and Amy Dotson

As our moment approached, I watched the teams ahead of us with a mixture of admiration and anxiety. These producer/director duos we had gotten to know over the past couple of weeks were impressive – they’d really managed to bring their presentations together in lucid and exciting ways. Had we come as far as they had?

Finally our names were called. One of my biggest problems to date had been talking too fast and I had been working hard on enunciating each and every word – even though it sounded to me like I was speaking under water. As we were handed our mikes, I took a deep breath and scanned the crowd for a smiling face. The rest is a blur. All I remember is looking out at one point and seeing our mentor motioning to me with his hands to slow down. My sister, who is a bit more level headed when it comes to these things, says we did great.

The rest of the day was a boozy, joyful affair spent carousing with the other teams in a Venice pub before a delicious dinner back at the Biennale, and a bittersweet party back on San Servolo where we said our goodbyes. While jokes about Battle Royale and the Hunger Games had been tossed back and forth along with tongue-in-cheek murmurings of secret poisons to eliminate the competition, I had grown to truly admire these folks and knew that I would miss them when we returned to the States.

We would find out within 24 hours which three teams would be invited back to the Island, but for now we just enjoyed one another’s company.

Spurlock Sisters at Biennale College Cinema: Week One

Kim Spurlock — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 16:00:41 +0000

So I was thinking Don’t Look Now, but my sis had Scooby Doo on her mind as we drifted through the eerie fog on Venice’s Grand Canal. We were headed towards San Zaccaria, where we would catch a boat for the last leg of our journey to San Servolo island.

Mai and I met up in Frankfurt – she from LA and I from Brooklyn – to fly together into Venice for the Biennale College Cinema, where we would develop and pitch our feature film A Case of the Dismals. The fog thickened as we boarded the waterbus to the Island. Any thoughts of Nicholas Roeg and Shaggy dissolved in our minds as San Servolo emerged from the mist like a mirage. My first thought? Welcome to Shutter Island.

San Servolo was known for hundreds of years as the “Island of the Mad” because it served as Venice’s official insane asylum, so naturally I felt a bit spooked on the approach.

San Servolo

Luckily things got decidedly less creepy after some prosecco and friendly conversation with our fellow filmmakers and the Biennale team. Amongst the 14 other Director/Producer teams from Africa, South America, Europe and Asia, I met fellow Emerging Visions Director Tim Sutton, whose humor and warmth boded well for our stay. I was actually curious to see how the Biennale Program would compare to my experiences with Emerging Narratives and Emerging Visions last fall. For sure, I figured there would be more of a competitive element since only three of the teams would move forward for the second lab, as well as the 150,000 Euro to finance their microbudget project.

On day one, all the teams and mentors gathered together for a round robin introduction, where we had the first opportunity to informally pitch our projects. In hindsight, I can’t believe how far everybody came by the time we pitched to the folks at the Biennale ten days later. Really blows my mind.

From there, Mai headed off to spend the next several mornings with her producing mentor combing through our budget while I re-worked the creative side of things both in a group setting with a mentor and one-on-one with a script consultant. I loved how these sessions reinforced each other, with feedback from both mentor and consultant helping me to chisel out the essence of my story. At one point as I was reworking a sequence of our film where adolescent girls become lost in a mountain forest, mentor and consultant echoed one another with a comparison to Picnic at Hanging Rock: atmospheric, haunting, a bit ominous and subtly sexual…

View from the Island

As week one drew to a close, the attitude among the filmmakers remained supportive and friendly, though many of us were sick and all of us feeling the stress of a deadline: by the end of the week we were to submit a new and improved version of our story, budget and schedule. Luckily, evenings gave us a chance to relax and wine/dine Italian style. The Biennale treated us to lovely dinners in Venice proper. Primi platti, secondi platti, and great conversation with a diverse crowd of cinephiles… a little bit of film geek heaven. Too be continued….

In Praise of Doubt

Amy Dotson — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 16:00:28 +0000

It turned out to be incredibly prophetic that my first day in Venice, Italy as one of the leaders for the Biennale College-Cinema was spent at collector François Pinault‘s incredible Punta della Dogana. This beautiful museum opened in 2009, with its closest neighbor – the Santa Maria della Salute Church- constructed almost four hundred years prior. It was but the first example of old masters sitting side-by-side in conversation with the new I experienced during this magical and inspiring week.

Santa Maria Della Salute Church, Venice

Filmmaker and fellow IFP Lab leader Jon Reiss and I entered the exhibition. In Praise of Doubt was based upon the curatorial notion of “questioning the idea of uncertainty and our convictions about identity,” It too displayed modern art masters like Jeff Koons and Donald Judd alongside a wide-range of younger, lesser-known artists, many of whom have never been included in previous exhibitions of the Pinault Collection before. For many of them, like our filmmakers, this was their first time engaging audiences with their work on the international stage.

These themes and ideas closely mirrored what would soon be consuming the teams of emerging filmmakers on the island of San Servalo, where FILMMAKER Magazine’s Editor-in-Chief Scott Macaulay & I were privileged to work with a group of five teams at the Biennale developing feature films in Egypt, Lebanon, The Philippines, Italy and England.

In concert with other experienced mentors and their fellow artists from around the world, they were pushed again and again for two weeks to communicate their vision: to fine tune their story worlds, enrich their characters and dig deep into their own personal narratives to create something totally fresh and engaging. Above all, they were forced to revel in and embrace the uncertainty of what was to come and what they might uncover.

I have to admit, I really felt for these artists. Although it seems like yesterday, I couldn’t help but remember my own transformation in Venice eighteen years prior when I arrived on the island with little more than a pair of unfashionable overalls and the pack on my back. As an art student from a small, southern university, I was certainly wasn’t equipped with the language needed to express myself. I too was there living amongst strangers. And I was terrified of how I would survive when seemingly my only skill-set was a proclivity for welding complex structures. It was a time in my life where there was a lot to doubt on a daily basis.

All to say, my world was small before Venice.

But the art, the people, and the copious espressos fueled me. I went out and explored. I tried new things, and sometimes failed spectacularly. For every night that I reveled in the experience and appreciated the opportunities given, there were plenty where I felt like this horse sculpture by Maurizio Cattelan which aptly confronts viewers at the entrance of the Dogana.

Untitled, Maurizio Cattelan

Luckily, the many teachers, artists and friends I met eventually got me talking about my work. It all became real – not just the art I was making and the stories I was telling, but the idea that this could be my life. And while I eventually exchanged my acetylene torch for a cheap digital camera, my experiences in Venice gave me above all the courage of conviction to keep pushing forward and become comfortable with the unknown.

Thus, the most emotional and meaningful part of the Biennale College- Film for me was watching these personal transformations unfold anew, some slowly and others adapting at a shockingly quick pace. Seeing these filmmakers find their own courage to change, – in this case, overcome fears of public speaking or letting go of cherished, deeply personal storylines – was a reminder that inspiration and collaboration in Venice can truly do wonders for the creative mind.

In particular, it was a beautiful sight indeed to watch Shireen Seno’s Nervous Translation and Vatche Boulghourjain’s Tramontane develop. Quiet and evocative directors whose projects told stories of self and country, they were adept at creating unbelievable story worlds with rich characters and detailed elements that left you slackjawed and wanting, These stories seem like a distant relative of Edward Kienholz, whose large-scale installation ROXY was appropriately tucked away in a secret corner the Dogana.

ROXY, Edward Kienholz

More still were the types of projects that took cues from old dramatic structures and spun them in fresh directions. Deeply personal narratives Roland Jobson’s Into the Light & Kasem Kharsa’s I Dream of Empire and their dark, nuanced visuals have scenes that continue to play out in my mind. They mingle in my memory along with Paul McCarthy’s mutilated mask series, She/Man, all playing with time, gender and form in a way that feel simultaneously original and ancient.

Paul McCarthy’s “She/Man”

The ultimate winners of the Biennale – the three projects which will receive $150,000 Euro prizes and the opportunity to premiere at the 2013 Venice Film Festival – were all shockingly strong, conceptual pieces. Each provoked an almost visceral audience response as their stories and visuals unfolded in their pitches. Thai artist Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit’s A Year of June and IFP Alum New York-based Tim Sutton’s Memphis both wowed, and I look forward to seeing them come to life in the coming months.

Memphis’ John Baker and Tim Sutton at the Biennale di Venezia Pitch

And then there was Alessio Fava’s Yuri Esposito, a meditative and beautiful project Scott & I worked with chronicling the slowest man in the world. The project won as well and will go into production this spring. The filmmakers assure me that their protagonist may be “lentamente,” but the project will be delivered on time!

Director Alessio Fava, Producer Max Chicco and Yuri Esposito

To see it all in motion was a true joy and there’s not enough gelato or Chinotto in the world to thank Gucci, the Biennale’s Paola Baratta, Venice Film Festival head Alberto Barbera, and the amazing team of Savina Neirotti, Jane Williams, and Michel Reilhac for all they’ve done for these filmmakers. And as their sole U.S. partner, it was an honor for all of us here at IFP to have worked with everyone on this program from idea to inception. To see it all become real right before our eyes, watching these young filmmakers make work amongst the backdrop of one of Italy’s most achingly beautiful and ancient cities, was truly a sight to behold. I have no doubt we’ll be hearing quite a lot from these artists in the coming years and encourage you to discover them for yourselves at http://www.labiennale.org/en/cinema/collegecinema/.

The College’s Jane Williams, Michel Reilhac, Amy Dotson and Savina Neirotti

IFP Sends First Partner Project to DIFF

Peter Bussian — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 19:06:28 +0000

As the first IFP representative partner project to the Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF), SCARLET POPPY – a cross cultural love story set in Afghanistan between an American and a conservative Pashtun woman who is also being pursued by a local Talib – was in the company of other partner projects from the region as well as from Europe (and now the US) that were all part of their Partnership Program. Dubai is a very vibrant and ambitious city on the Persian Gulf that has transformed itself in the last ten years into one of the most important commercial and cultural centers in the Middle East – if not the world. It is an enclave of stability in a region that has been through – and continues to go through – massive war and political and social change. Like New York, its ambition can be seen by looking up at all of the magnificent skyscrapers, including the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, which I find to be one of the most beautiful buildings I have seen.

Some of the meetings for SCARLET POPPY were with the same individuals and companies I had met in previous co-production markets – Asian Project Market (Busan, Korea), Film Bazaar (Goa, India) and IFP “No Borders”. I have noticed that relationships are developing over time and people wanted to see what progress has been made since the last encounter. But there were also many meetings with new producers, sales agents, and film financing companies that were interested in the project. I learned a lot by talking to all of these people, who were very generous with their time, about where to direct our efforts in terms of attachments and where the market is for this film. Since this is my first feature as Writer/Director/Producer and none of the other members of our producing team (Executive Producer Siddiq Barmak, Producer Thomas D. Adelman) were able to join, I was on my own.

The best thing about the Partnership section of the Market as well as DIFF in general, were the compelling filmmakers and stories that are coming out of this tumultuous region at the moment – all with with strong Middle Eastern or South Asian elements. Ironically, DIFF, with many stories of war and political and social upheaval, took place in one of Dubai’s glitziest hotels (and there is no glitz like Dubai glitz) – the Mina-A -Salam Hotel. The realness of the stories could not have been in stronger contrast to the fantasyland setting. The best meetings I had were not on the schedule at all and happened by chance. Where else can you be wandering in the hotel garden, lost and looking for a restaurant and make a random acquaintance with a billionaire Emirati media mogul who is building an entire media city in Kurdistan and invites you to have a meeting about your project?

Evenings were spent having drinks and talking films at the Koubba bar in the Al Qasr hotel – the best networking place at DIFF. When I finally did meet my Emirati media mogul on the veranda of the Al Qasr, he showed up with his Iraqi Airlines pilot friend – a man in his sixties and for some reason dressed entirely in leather, including the pants – I should have gotten a picture but I was too busy telling him about my project.

Another random encounter at the Koubba bar led to my instant friendship with an Iranian filmmaker from Australia who runs a festival there and must be one of the few people to have seen Opium War, an Afghan movie I acted in a few years ago. He was quoting me lines from the movie all night – lines I didn’t necessarily want to remember.

As usual, I did not have time to go see most of the great movies at DIFF but hopefully I will see many of them soon. The ones I did see were largely in the screening room when I had a spare couple of hours.

I am now in Mumbai where I have come for some meetings. Reflecting on DIFF, this is the fourth co-production market I have participated in for SCARLET POPPY and I feel people had more substantive interest in my project there – and this probably comes down to the organic connection the project has to the region. In some of the other markets, people said they were interested in the project – and I am sure they were, but it was a bit off their radar screen. I had to do a lot of talking to explain the context of the film. Not so here. Some People were looking for exactly this type of film. Some projects fit more naturally in certain festivals and mine fit here. What this results in – who knows? But it was certainly a worthwhile experience and a place not to be missed for stories such as mine with Middle Eastern and to a lesser extent South Asian stories – whether from the region or involving the diaspora around the world.

I am very grateful to IFP NY for selecting our project to go to DIFF as well as to Jane Williams and her team at DIFF, who did such a great job in making the experience a rewarding one.

Video Stores: A Conversation

Adam Bowers — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 19:44:13 +0000

Video Rodeo, Gainesville, FL’s independent video store

There’s a lot of discussion in the independent film world right now about how filmmakers can earn a living in today’s economic climate, as well as how distributors and art house theaters can continue being profitable in the increasingly-digital landscape.

But, there’s a rarely discussed part of the film world that seems to already be the first casualty of the modern film-watching era: the video store.

For some towns, the video store can be more crucial than the movie theater. I know it was when I lived in Gainesville, FL. I worked at a local video store, which is still in business, called Video Rodeo. It’s owned by filmmaker and professor Roger Beebe. Roger runs the store like a collective: the employees are paid through profit-sharing, and decisions are made as a group, instead of by the sole voice of the owner. The store has a huge selection of foreign and art house films, and it exposed me to a ton of great films I didn’t know existed until then. Not only that, but he let me use it as a major location in my first film.

I interviewed Roger to talk about the state of the local video store, and it’s relationship with the independent film community. This blog post, if you can’t already tell, isn’t “totally sillypants” like my others have been. If you’re disappointed by that, just pretend the following interview is between these two people.

Here’s the interview:

ADAM: Why don’t you talk a little about yourself first? I know you’re a filmmaker and a professor, as well…

ROGER: Sure, yeah. I am those things. I teach film and media studies at the University of Florida in the English department. I’ve been (in Gainesville) since 2000. I’ve been making films since 1994 or ’95.

And they’re more experimental.

Yeah, exactly. And, for the last six years or so, I’ve been making mostly muli-projector films that I perform live. 16mm, some loop-based stuff, but some other stuff that’s just, you know, made for three, or six, or eight projectors.

That’s so cool. And, you also run FLEX Fest.�

I do, yeah. And so, that I started eight years ago, and we’re having the ninth festival in February. That’s dedicated to experimental short films, but we do year-round programming that’s more expansive than that. So, like, on Thursday night, we’re showing five 35mm reels from five different Disney films, and combining them into one kind of crazy, Frankenstein’s monster of a film.

Wow, that’s awesome. Where did you live before Gainesville?

I went to grad school at Duke, so I was in Durham, North Carolina for six years before that.

Okay, cool. Because, I remember seeing one of your films that you must have made when you first moved there, I assumed, because it didn’t seem like… You were kind of talking how you just moved to Gainesville, and you’re like, “There’s no tall buildings, it’s really weird.”

Oh yeah, that’s THE STRIP MALL TRILOGY. So, that was 2001, right after I moved here. But, it’s not like I moved here from some amazing city. It was more of, like, a conceit than a reality.

What do you think of Gainesville? Do you enjoy the city?

Yeah. I think, you know, it’s a good college town. It’s not Berlin, it’s not Chicago. There are places I would rather be. But, I don’t know. I’ve got my doors and windows open right now, and it’s seventy-five degrees outside. Life is pretty easy. I like it well enough here. And, you know, as long as you confine yourself to a certain part of town, you don’t have to face the disgusting reality of sprawl and strip malls and all that stuff.

VIDEO RODEO

Inside Video Rodeo

Let’s talk a little bit about the store. The background of it, how long it’s been around, why you started it, that sort of thing.

So, the transition from North Carolina to here is actually kind of appropriate in this discussion, because when I lived there, there was a video store called Visart.

It was just this model of a video store. It was this place where you’d go in, and they had everything, and stuff was arranged by the director. You know, it was just really thoughtful, and smart, and big. And, they actually had some of the dumb recent releases, too. I think that’s kind of how they sanctioned the rest of what they did. But, they were really a model for what I was thinking a video store should be like.

And, when I came here, there was just, you know, Blockbuster and Hollywood (Video). For the first few years, I was content just to use the facilities on campus. We had a media library for teaching, and then there’s the regular library. But, you know, they were no fun for browsing, and I found I was watching lots of stuff I didn’t really feel passionate about, but it was just the first thing you came upon. It was, “Okay, I’ll see that, sure.”

So, finally, I decided to quit complaining about there not being a good video store and just start one up. So, my friend Tim Massett in Jacksonville, who now runs Sun-Ray Cinema, he and I were going to start together. He had already done some market research, and was way smarter about it than I could have been at that point. I was going to bankroll it and he was going to put in this work to make it happen.

But, he ended up getting cold feet, I think, because he knew– he was right, that opening a video store in this day and age is not a way to line your retirement account. And, so he stayed on managing a theater in Jacksonville.

So, I ended up just doing it, not really entirely alone. I had a group of three really cool people at the start, who, you know, we went in there and did all the construction ourselves, we did the painting. You know, built the store from nothing. For about three or four months before then, I’d been collecting stuff, buying a bunch of used VHS to flesh out the collection. But, also, I had a targeted list where I was, like, “These are the– I can’t even remember– thousand movies I wouldn’t want to open the store without.” So, all those I just ordered myself, and fleshed out by getting used DVDs or super cheap VHS.

Again, we had so much space at first, we really needed titles to flesh out. It ended up being a curse because we were stuck with all these VHS tapes.

Films are organized by director

A COLLECTIVELY-RUN STORE

You were talking about the selection, which is kind of amazing. Is there, like, a specific standard or requirement you have for movies you carry? Because I know you also carry those, I’ll call them “not amazing movies.” Is it a personal thing? Or, is it really just, like, “Oh, people seem to want this one, so we’ll get it, because we have this back catalog.”�

So, I guess the first thing to say is that the decisions about acquisitions are still made largely collectively. It’s still run co-op style.

Yeah, it’s profit-sharing.�

But, also, each month… You remember this, right?

Yeah, totally.

Each month, I send out the list of possible titles. You know, all of the new releases or whatever. And we just weigh in. We used to do it face-to-face, now we mostly do it over email. So, anything that gets more than half of the staff voting for it, I’ll buy.

But, I’ll still look at thrift stores and pawn shops, and if I can get something that I know I’ll make a couple bucks and I only have to pay two or three, I’ll add it even if I having aesthetic objections to it. And, I think everyone is kind of guided by that, too, though. We’ve had this discussion really recently, actually, about like, “Oh, should we get this blockbuster because we think that’s what people want?” And, you know, when we look at the numbers, actually, our best-renting things are not blockbusters. As much as we try to sell-out and cater to what people want, it turns out that what people want is more, like, Wes Anderson, which is, again, a little less ambitious than some of the stuff we’d really love them to watch. But, I mean, it’s really cool that they want to watch Wes Anderson instead of, you know, Michael Bay.

Well, do you think that it’s partly because people who want to see a Michael Bay movie probably wouldn’t go to Video Rodeo? You what I mean? They wouldn’t go to a local art house video store.�

Sure. I mean, I think the landscape has changed a little bit since Blockbuster has gone away. You know, as bad as Blockbuster was, at least they had ten thousand movies. I do think for recent releases, a lot of people are just content to go the Redbox and just take whatever, to go rent WIN A DATE WITH TAD HAMILTON, or whatever.

Right. But, you guys outlasted Blockbuster. You’re the only video store in Gainesville now.�

I’ve never seen it with my own eyes, so I don’t necessarily believe it, but there’s technically another place called Go Video that exists inside of a gas station somewhere in northwest Gainesville. It’s not a thing of it’s own, it’s, like, shelves within a gas station. I actually called there once to see if they were real, and somebody answered the phone and said they were there, so…

But, still, you have that–

We outlasted the chains.

Yeah, you outlasted the chains. I remember when I was working there, I don’t know if you still have it, you had that bowl of Blockbuster cards. People would cut up their membership cards.

Yeah, we still have it. It’s actually overflowing. We stopped granting free rentals for people cutting up their Blockbuster cards, but we still like that testament to the damage we did to them.

(We laugh)

Totally. You got ‘em.

The bowl of cut-up Blockbuster membership cards that sits in the store

Now, we already mentioned that the employees work through profit-sharing, and you seem to have a very collective mindset. Why is that an important thing to you about running the business?�

Well, I never imagine it being “me being the boss-man,” and you know, writing checks… I just feel like a place like that doesn’t work if it’s just, like, minimum-wage slaves, just working there. And, I also felt like, to ensure the long-term viability of the store, it would have to have that flexibility to say, “Hey, this month was great. You guys made ten bucks an hour.” And, “Hey, this month really sucked. You guys made four bucks an hour.”

Yeah, I know that I personally cared so much more about the store, not just because of the profit-sharing thing, but because it made me feel like I wasn’t just working for this dude who would come in sometimes and didn’t care. So, it definitely helped me.

Well, that’s great. I mean, that’s always been my thinking about it. And, it seems to be the case. We all went in last month, and we had a really bad month. And, I broke the news to everybody, and they were like, “Alright. That’s fine.” You know, nobody works there as their primary job. We got, I think, seven people on staff right now, and I’m picking up shifts for free, so that boosts the overall wages, because my plan is that if I get any money out of the store, it’ll only be when the store finally shuts down. I put the money in to start it, but I just don’t take any out.

Has this sort of collective approach to it made operating the store harder, from a business standpoint?

I mean, if we had just, say, two people working there, instead of seven or eight, it’d be a lot easier to keep track of where things get fucked up. So, things like that, I think would be a little bit easier. But, I actually think having people only work there four and a half or nine hours a week, they come with a lot more energy to the store. So, maybe they’re a lot more inclined to do something cool while they’re there, like make a weird sign. And, I think having all these different people’s ideas represented is great, and I think the collection really benefits from… A couple months ago, we had a little extra money, and so I let everyone in the store take something from backfill to order. And, someone ordered 9 TO 5, which is a title I would have, you know, rolled my eyes at or whatever.

(We laugh)

But, you know, it’s been rented four or five times in the two months we’ve had it. I don’t know, I think it’s great to have that voice represented, and not have it be just, like, two people who are determining the vision of the– Because, again, if I did it, it would be all Criterion Collection or something. Like, the super nerd taste. And, you know, it’s like, this will serve certain people, but we want to serve more than just the hardcore film nerd. We kind of have to, to stay open.

A window display made by an employee

Do you guys ever have events? Like, you have birthday parties…

Oh, yeah. We started it as just kind of a one-off thing, and it was such a popular event that we realized we should do them regularly to kind of remind the community that we are here to sort of be part– you know, we’re friends with so many of them.

What are they like? I don’t think you were doing them when I was there.

Basically, it’s like, a keg party in the video store. We buy a keg and put it in the back of the store. People parade around, spill beers on everything, and hopefully, like, rent a movie or buy a t-shirt or something. We’ll always have some kind of sale, or, last time we did a drawing. We raffled off the soundtracks to HOLY MOUNTAIN and EL TOPO. So, we always have something special. This next one that’s coming up in 10 days is our eighth birthday. We’re also opening a book store inside of the video store.

Customers at Video Rodeo’s birthday keg party

Now, is that place in North Carolina still open?

No, they went out of business, I think, a year and a half ago, or something. I think they overextended themselves a little bit. They also had a newsstand, and they expanded. They opened a bunch of stores. I don’t know. I don’t know enough about their internal workings. They were actually great. Like, I put out a VHS tape of films from the film festival I was running in Chapel Hill (called Flicker), and I approached them about it, and they ended up buying, like, five copies of it. So, I mean, they were really supportive, and a really great local resource, and it’s really sad to see them go, still.

Yeah, that’s too bad…

VIDEO STORES AND THE INDIE FILM COMMUNITY

Now, okay, let’s get into some heavy stuff.

Uh-oh.

(We laugh)

Yeah, get ready. So, like, video stores… Actually, this isn’t really that heavy. But, something I wanted to talk about was that video stores aren’t something you really hear about in the independent film world. You know, there’s always talk about art house cinemas, and the struggles for them to stay open. And, there’s occasionally something about local video stores and stuff, but I feel like it’s kind of the unsung part of the indie film world. But, to me, the “Gainesville independent film community,” when I was living there, my vessel for all that, was Video Rodeo. I mean, you also had the Hippodrome (the art house theater in Gainesville), but the selection at Video Rodeo was so huge, and the price… you could get exposed to a lot of movies you otherwise wouldn’t see. Do you feel like a video store could play that role in towns that maybe don’t have a lot of options for art house films?�

Yeah, you know, I think that’s one of the things, again, that I lament about the move from Blockbuster to Redbox. Like, Blockbuster sucks, but in towns where you don’t have anything else… Blockbuster has ten thousand movies, there’s got to be some hidden Werner Herzog film in their collection, right? Like, you’ll never fucking find it. It’ll be buried in “drama,” that generic catch-all for anything you couldn’t fit anywhere else. But, at least there’s stuff there. I mean, I grew up in a town with just a Blockbuster, and I remember finding weird foreign stuff there. It wasn’t all curated, you know. They didn’t do anything systematic. It wasn’t like they were getting every good art film or whatever. But, with Redbox, you’re guaranteed not to find anything older than a couple years old. You’re guaranteed not to find anything too adventurous or too indie. And, even Netflix streaming is not much better, and I know that’s now what a lot of people are going to. And, all they watch is TV shows, and you know, that’s great for binge-watching. But, I just worry, that if you go in looking for a specific title… I’ve gone in to look for Godard, Truffaut, Herzog, whatever. It’s really depressing. They’ll have maybe one film of the fifty, sixty, whatever films these people have made.

And, it’s always, like, the minor work.

It won’t be BREATHLESS, or PIERROT LE FOU. It’ll be, like, NOTRE MUSIQUE. You know?

Yeah.

It’s sort of like staying at your friend’s house, and you’re stuck there during the day, and you look through the DVD collection, and it’s like, “Oh, there’s something I can watch.” But yeah, the less longwinded version of the answer is, you know, I definitely feel like a well-curated video store can really be the nucleus for a film scene, or a way for people to self-educate. It’s a great pedagogical resource. And, I think you can do that if you use Netflix disc delivery, which hopefully people in rural Kansas are still doing, and haven’t switched over exclusively. Because Redbox and Netflix streaming is a real impoverishment. It’s like, the future looks worse than the past.

Right, yeah.

It used to be… You know, for me, I lived in an era… Whatever, this is dinosaur talk.

(We laugh)

But, before everything was available on home video. We didn’t have a VCR until I was maybe ten, and then when we got it, how many titles were available? So, it seemed like we were moving in the direction of more and more is suddenly available. It was amazing. The whole history of cinema, and now you don’t have to wait for decades, or just read about these things. They’re no longer fabled. Suddenly, you can go down to the video store and rent a lot of these things. So, it seemed like it was moving in that direction. And, Netflix initially looked like that to, where it was like, “Holy shit. They’ve got 40,000 titles you can get.”

But now, again, because of the way they changed the pricing structure, and because they want to go to only online, and because the way the rights issues are working with that, and the dividing up of the digital marketplace with Hulu Plus, and Amazon Prime… Now it’s looking like less and less is available. That’s a real depressing trend.

Filmmaker Caveh Zahedi posing with his section in the store

VIDEO STORES AS PART OF THE LOCAL COMMUNITY

You talked about the video store being a nucleus for a film community, which I think is a cool idea, especially for smaller towns, like I mentioned. But, also, when I was living there, I always kind of felt like the store was one of the important parts of living in that neighborhood, and being connected to that neighborhood of Gainesville. Not even, like, film, but also just the people in the neighborhood. Do you get that feeling at all from people who frequent it? Do you feel like there’s support from those local people and stuff?

Yeah, I guess I feel that. You know, like, we’ve made ads talking about, you know, like, one of the reasons we hope we’re a vital institution, is that, you know, if you have a band, and you’re playing a show, and you want to put up a flier, you can put it up in our window. Or, if you have a tattoo parlor and you have business cards you want to put out, you can put that on our counter. You know, like, all that stuff, we really want to help cross-promote, and we want to be a place where they know that a certain kind of person will come in there and see their stuff. And, it’ll all feed each other. Yeah, I guess I feel like the neighborhood function– and again, as opposed to Netflix, where it’s like, you know… I don’t know where their headquarters is.

Right. It’s like in the North Pole or something.

Right. Probably.

Customers and employees hanging out at a special event

Is the store involved with other parts of the community? Like, do you do stuff at the Palomino (a pool hall in Gainesville) or anything?

Well, because of all my programming with FLEX, we technically brand any screening we do as FLEX as opposed to Video Rodeo. It’s always seemed like, in some ways, it would be better business for us if we branded it as “Video Rodeo presents”… You know, we use the Video Rodeo Facebook page, which is a lot more active than the FLEX Facebook page, for promoting those events.

Yeah, the Facebook page of Video Rodeo is pretty solid, I think. I think you guys are doing a really good job with that sort of stuff.

Well, we also frequently use the Facebook page to sort of sabotage our own business. To say, like, “Hey, here’s something awesome going on in town tonight that we have nothing to do with. Go do that instead of renting a movie.” So, like, right now HOLY MOTORS is showing at the Hippodrome, and we were really excited they took a risk on that.

Definitely. That’s cool.

We pushed it once. I’m getting ready for Thursday. I’m going to push it again, because that’s going to be the last night.

Do they return the favor?

They do. They actually run a slide for us in their slideshow before the screenings. You know, just a slide that says we exist, which, surprisingly… In a town this small, you’d think everyone would know, but it’s always shocking to find out how many who would be interested still don’t know.

Do you feel like that sort of sharing, local businesses supporting each other… Do you think that’s helped you guys?

I do. I think it could always be more. Whitney Mutch does a thing called Indie Gainesville, and she always promotes “buy local” and stuff like that. And, I think that’s as close as we get to a kind of central forum for local businesses where they’re supportive. But, I don’t quite know how to make it work where there’s even more synergy than there is now. I think there’s some, but I think there could always be more.

Well, do you think that–

I hate saying “synergy,” by the way.

(I laugh)

It’s business-speak or whatever.

Yeah, totally. You sound very professional.

Right?

The store holds fun little contests

VIDEO STORES ACROSS THE COUNTRY

Do you feel like it’s a better place for the store to be, in this smaller town, than it would be to be in a big city? Not in terms of where you’d prefer to live, but do you think the store serves a better purpose, or does better than it would if it was in a bigger city, or some other type of town?

I don’t know. I’d be interested to compare notes with stores… I don’t even know which ones are still open, but like, Le Video in San Francisco, or…

There’s no communication between other video stores, is there?

Not really. I’ve talked sort of informally, there’s a video store in Chicago that I used to go to. And, I talked a lot to the guy who owned that place about how the store worked, and how he made it work. I went out to Santa Monica to see my parents, and there’s a video store there, I’m forgetting their name now.

Vidiots?�

No, it’s the place where the guy created those Cinemetal t-shirts. The ones where it looks like Metallica but it says “Fassbinder” instead. Black Flag but it says “Bela Tarr.”

Oh, right.�

So, when I go into a place like that, I’ll mention, “Hey, I own a video store. I’m kind of curious about” you know… And, it’s always, you know, “Times are tough, we make it work, blah blah blah.” But, I think L.A. is probably a hard place to do it, just because everyone’s so dispersed. But, I think if you were in the right neighborhood in New York or Chicago or San Francisco… If you’re in the Castro, you probably have enough people within foot traffic distance to sustain you in the same way that we do in Gainesville. You might have more density, and a more stable base of people. So, I think each place comes with it’s own challenges, but I wouldn’t say we’re especially privileged here, to have this kind of situation.

Yeah, I bet it would be tough to figure out where it would thrive more.

Yeah.

The “staff picks” shelf, above selections from filmmakers who had just died

THE FUTURE�

Cool. If you could see a future for the store, where you didn’t have to worry about anything, what would you hope the store would be able to do? If it could become the thing that you would be, like, “Wow, that’d be awesome.” If you were about to do that.

I guess first, I think, there’s not an unlimited time horizon for this. You know, I don’t know how long people will have optical media players.

Oh, yeah.

There will be a day when it’s, like, “Oh, you still rent physical media? Because we just get everything streaming.” Whether it’s Netflix or whatever. But, I would love to buy a building, for the rent we pay to be flexible, like the staff salaries are, right now, flexible. And, where it would have more space, because we’ve got a bunch of sections that are… We try to put everything face-out, but stuff is starting to be spine-out a lot, in certain sections. So, it’d be nice to have more room for the store, but also, if the book store starts to work, I’d love to be able to expand what that is. And, have a screening space attached, too. I know Videology (in Brooklyn) just converted the back of their space into a small screening space. That would be wonderful, too, to have. I’ve fantasized about that for awhile.

Yeah.

That’s, you know, when the revolution comes, or when the rich benefactress comes to me to underwrite my future endeavors. That’s what we would do: buy a building and house all of those things, and make it a real destination, and have that kind of… again, I don’t want to say “synergy,” but…

(I laugh) You can say it.�

Like, really positive energy that feeds off of each other, or whatever.

What do you think the half-life of the store is, or of video stores in general?

I mean, I’m surprised we made it this far. We could have gone out of business the first year we were open. I had no idea, really, how it worked. But, I don’t know. I could imagine still doing this three years from now, five years from now. Beyond that, it’s really hard to imagine for me. I think when new computers are built, and they don’t have built-in DVD players, that would really be a tipping point. Mac has already decided they don’t want Blu-Ray. They’re not interested in ever having a Blu-Ray player in their computers. So, we’re really at the mercy of those corporations.

Yeah. Well, it sounds like a lot of cool stuff in Gainesville is kind of going away. So, hopefully, it’s a little while before it happens.

Yeah, well, if it doesn’t last forever, it doesn’t mean it didn’t do something good while it lasted.

Totally.

A customer browses DVDs

FINAL THOUGHTS

I had something, I thought, sort of smart to say, that you didn’t ask about.

Oh, okay. Please, go ahead.

You know, about indie film and the relationship between Video Rodeo and the indie film world… I think there is a way in which we’re still kind of a slave to the market. I would really love to stock a lot more films, like your film. Things that don’t have a giant theatrical release, that don’t have giant advertising budgets behind them, that cost almost nothing, that nobody’s really heard of. But, it’s proven sort of impossible. Like, when I said I have a certain disappointment about Wes Anderson being our bread and butter. It’s that disappointment, that, like… Oh, well these have TV commercials. You know, they’re indie films, but they’re underwritten by corporations.

So, there’s a way in which we’re filling a market niche that’s still very much a part of the market, and it would really be nice to be a store that was more committed to true independent filmmakers. And, I get emails from time-to-time from people who are like, “Hey, we just made this film. It played at these three festivals. We’d love for you to stock it. We’ll sell it to you for half what we normally charge for it.” It sort of breaks my heart, but I have to tell these people, “Look, ten bucks for this DVD that nobody’s ever heard of. It’s still probably more than we can afford.” If we were more flush with cash, I would do that in a second. If this were fifteen years ago, when video stores did really make money.

But, I don’t know. It’s a disappointment. I feel like this fantasy of true independence, of us being real outsiders and fighting the power and all that… I still feel like we’re beholden to those studio indies, and that kind of hipster marketing or whatever, in a way that I wish we could kind of transcend.

Yeah, that’s a hard thing to figure out how to break out of.

But, I guess that’s separate from the narrative of the video store’s continued survival, but it is about… again, our relationship to the indie film community.

Cool. Well, is there anything else you want to add?

No, I think that’s all I got the breath for now.

(I laugh) Well, thanks, Roger.�

—

Follow the links for more info about Roger, Video Rodeo, and FLEX.

Julie La’Basseire on the Importance of Trailers

Jacob Appet — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 15:59:31 +0000

[See post to watch Flash video]

Julie La’Basseire urges you to get that trailer up on Youtube already!

A Call to Producers: Innovate or Die

Mynette Louie — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 19:00:41 +0000

Summit of independent creative producers hosted by MoMA, Indiewire, and Zipline Entertainment in December 2009.

I’m very fortunate to be friends with many accomplished independent film producers–people whose films have screened at the best festivals, won significant awards, gotten picked up by major distributors, earned healthy gross receipts, and received accolades in the mainstream press. We hang out sometimes, one-on-one or in groups, to catch each other up on our projects, share recent experiences, exchange opinions on companies and people we’ve worked with, etc. But essentially, we get together for emotional support against an industry and an economy hostile to our work. At any given time, half of us will have one foot out the door, ready to escape an occupation in which the appreciation and financial rewards we get have zero correlation with the insanely hard work we do and intense emotional stress we endure.

I was recently struck by three things I read that echoed some of these sentiments: Ted Hope’s forlorn blog post in which he catches up an old friend to where he is now, Brian Newman’s post about how YouTube stars are disrupting the old indie film model, and the Huffington Post article on Jay Van Hoy and Lars Knudsen. I deduced a common theme running through all three: innovate or die.

Ted’s post lamented, “It is very frustrating watching what I love crumble away. I see many people with their fingers in the leaks, but few that want to build a new city higher up on the hill.” Brian said that filmmakers need to find innovative ways to connect to their audiences before the latter start to liken Sundance to the Metropolitan Opera, “a place you go to see a wonderful artform that you know you should respect, but that no one cares about anymore and which very few can afford to make or attend.” And the HuffPo article quoted Jay and Lars saying that too many indie producers “are too busy adapting when we should be innovating.” Film may be the new theater (or Metropolitan Opera), TV the new film, online streaming the new TV, but any way you frame it, the world of content creation, distribution, and consumption is changing–dramatically.

Independent producers are entrepreneurial by nature. Each feature film we undertake is a distinct startup, with rounds of financing to raise, a team to build, development and production phases, a launch (premiere), and an exit strategy (sale). We are, essentially, serial entrepreneurs, except–as a matter of survival–we have to run multiple businesses simultaneously, being in some combination of development, production, post, and distribution on different films, all at once. So why don’t we take our creativity, penchant for hard work, and entrepreneurial chutzpah, and put it all toward innovation?

Let’s figure out how to reconcile the artfully crafted 100-minute narrative with the public’s growing appetite for cheap and quick content. Let’s make sense of the confusing array of social media and alternative distribution tools out there. Let’s build on the examples set by folks like Louis C.K. and Ed Burns (except let’s try to remove the “be famous already” prerequisite to their success). Let’s see if we can’t operate outside Hollywood’s lottery system, outside its control, and sustain ourselves as “middle-class filmmakers” who continue to make films that speak to people.

If we don’t innovate the way we make and sell our movies, the independent film space will become further dominated by two groups: young first-time filmmakers who are willing and able to work for free (and who haven’t yet maxed out the favors they can call in), and filmmakers who are already rich and don’t need a paycheck or a return. Writers, directors, and producers who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, those who are older, those from immigrant and minority groups, and those who are trying to make their second, third, fourth features (to which they could apply the expertise gained from making their previous ones) will leave the business–and the scope of stories being told will become severely limited.

Fellow producers, I know you’re busy. I know it’s hard to tread water in a vast sea of emails, calls, contracts, scripts, screeners, budgets, schedules, financing plans, accounting statements, tax filings. I know you’re juggling so many projects, you sometimes confuse the names of your protagonists. I know you wish you were doing a better job of absorbing the continuous stream of industry news. I know there are a ton of writers, directors, composers, actors, cinematographers knocking at your door, hoping to introduce you to their work and pick your brain (and I know you’d love to meet with many of them). I know you waste a lot of time talking to “potential financiers.” I know dealing with agents, managers, and lawyers exhausts you. I know it’s maddening to hustle for paid short-term gigs in the midst of prepping, posting, or delivering your feature, or traveling to festivals and markets. I know you never get enough sleep or have enough time with your loved ones.

But, my dear producer pals, the next time we meet up to kvetch about work and life, let’s put our heads together and figure out how to sustain not only ourselves, but ultimately, the art that we love so dearly, and the diversity of artistic voices that make it. There is a better way, and we’ve got to find it soon.

Could Tugg Be For You?

filmpresence — Wed, 16 May 2012 16:53:11 +0000

By Sara Kiener

I’ve been in theatrical distribution for 5 years (a short time by some standards), and have already seen the playing field shift dramatically. 5 years ago, I interned at a reputable distribution company that no longer exists. 3 years ago, I placed trailers in art house theaters that have since changed owners multiple times or…no longer exist. Throughout, I worked on great films that wouldn’t find their way to a theater today and I worked on campaigns that were banking on ad buys and (fingers crossed) strong reviews. Those days are over, for the most part. And I’ve joined the band of noisemakers encouraging filmmakers to consider alternative means of marketing and exhibition.

But my heart still belongs to the independent theaters, so I’m a bit torn.

That’s why I was so thrilled when I first read about Tugg in indieWIRE. Their mission couldn’t be more straightforward: “Tugg brings the movies you want, to your local theater,” yet its’ approach is up to speed with cutting edge social media tactics (crowdsourcing and crowdfunding are at the heart of their model). Here’s how it works in a nutshell: a promoter or a hardcore fan can create an event at a theater, pick a date and time, and then they have to pre-sell a set number of tickets in order to lock-in the event. Everyone gets a percentage of the ticket sales (the filmmaker, the theater, Tugg and even the promoter!) so it’s win win. As an outreach gal, I was particularly interested in how this new model could lend itself to documentaries and niche issue narratives. So I put it to the test, and helped set up an event for Julie Wyman’s new film STRONG! about U.S. Olympian Cheryl Hayworth. I am thrilled with the results and can assure you that there are more screenings in the pipelines.

STRONG! Directed by Julie Wyman

So should you be thinking about TUGG? Does it make sense for your film? Here are some questions you should ask yourself before pulling the trigger:

*Does your film have a regional audience that is locatable and reachable?

*Do you feel confident that you and your team can locate regional partners and engage them?

*Do you have partners on board who want to help you spread the word but can’t support you financially (i.e., help pay for traditional theatrical distribution and/or pay rental fees)?

*Do you have your theatrical rights?

*Is your film being distributed in NYC and LA? Do you know what to do with it regionally after that?

*Do you believe there’s a home and an audience for your film outside of or in addition to the classroom and the community center setting?

If the answer to most of the questions above is yes, then you should probably start looking into Tugg! Some other films are already hip to the approach and doing rather well. Here are a few examples:

#ReGENERATION
This documentary about the Occupy Wall Street movement (narrated by Ryan Gosling) had 10 screenings across the country over the course of one evening, promoted by the filmmakers themselves and people who had read a Huffington Post article about the film and wanted to get involved. The screenings featured Q&As with the filmmakers as well as members of local communities including professors and figures of the Occupy movement.

ONE DAY ON EARTH
On Earth Day this documentary was shown throughout the US via Tugg. It was filmed in every country across the globe over the course of one day — a crowd-sourced film utilized a crowd-source platform (Tugg) to play in theaters in 11 cities, selling over 1800 tickets without spending $1 on traditional marketing.

INCENDIARY
The filmmakers of this critically-acclaimed documentary about the death penalty have utilized Tugg to arrange screenings in partnership with death penalty orgs across the country. To date, Tugg has provided theatrical showings of INCENDIARY in more than double the amount of markets it reached during its traditional theatrical run.

ECTASY OF ORDER: THE TETRIS MASTERS
There was a sold out show in Austin for a documentary called ECSTASY OF ORDER: THE TETRIS MASTERS about Tetris World Champions. The promoter, who saw the film at a festival and had to share it with his friends and community, arranged a unique screening through Tugg with an in-theater Tetris competition on the big screen following the film. He has a great recap on the event here.

And this is just the beginning, IMHO. I’m really excited to see what other filmmakers and distributors do with this platform. If enough clever filmmakers and promoters dabble with Tugg, we may be looking at the next phase of theatrical distribution…one ticket at a time.

12 Key Traits of the “Indie-Friendly” Director

Mynette Louie — Mon, 14 May 2012 19:28:42 +0000

Video Village, Indie-Style

Not every director is suited for low-budget indie filmmaking, and that’s OK if you’re Terrence Malick or David Fincher. But chances are, you’re not…or not yet, anyway. I get a fair number of calls from biggish directors and producers who are having trouble raising money for their films and want to explore how to make them on the super-cheap. I’ve entertained some of these requests, collecting funny anecdotes along the way, like the director who wanted to fly in stars from another country and rent large trailers for them, but forego unions and production insurance. Or the producer who wanted to cast an actor whose agent demanded $12,000 worth of perks, when our entire costume budget was just $4,000. As much as I want to work with these namey folks, I usually end up politely declining because I know that it will be difficult for them (and for me, especially) to make a movie on a fraction of the budgets to which they’re accustomed.

I’ve now worked with twenty different directors on mostly low-budget indie projects–some of whom I’d like to work with again and again; others, never again. By now, I can tell when a director is lying, even if he or she doesn’t realize it–”it’ll be 70% handheld,” “we can just run and gun it with a skeleton crew,” “all I need is an extra half day for second unit stuff.” Yeah, right. Most of the director foibles I’ve dealt with are due to inexperience and will likely resolve themselves with time. But sometimes, I wonder if some people just weren’t meant to direct–at least not low-budget indies.

So what are the traits that I think make a director “indie-friendly” (and more generally, “producer-friendly”)? Besides the usual traits that all directors should have–passion, confidence, focus, a high E.Q., a collaborative spirit, a sense of humor, the ability to command respect, an openness to feedback balanced with decisiveness–here are the traits that are especially important when working with limited resources:

1. Fast Writer

I’ve worked mostly with writer-directors, which offers an efficiency that’s often missing when the writer and director are different people. So much rewriting is done not just during development and prep, but also during production. Some of my directors have had to rewrite whole scenes minutes before shooting them. There is probably a lot more production-directed rewriting in the indie world since we are constantly trying to figure out how to stretch a budget. Development periods are also a lot shorter for us because they have to be–typically, no one gets paid during development; we only get paid if we’re in production. As such, it’s nice to work with speedy writers who can discuss, digest, and incorporate notes quickly to produce a shoppable draft.

2. Adaptive

Anything can happen in filmmaking, especially if you have limited resources–extras stand you up, location owners change their minds at the last minute, the G&E truck takes a wrong turn and shows up 2 hours late. So it’s critical for a director to be able to adapt to these exigent circumstances and figure out how to make lemonade from lemons. I’ve worked with directors who refused to shoot because a featured extra didn’t show up. Even after I’d come up with workable solutions, the directors still resisted, insisting that the entire film would be ruined without this extra. Really? You have a set, a camera, equipment, and a cast and crew of 50 at your fingertips, and you’re just going to cross your arms and pout? You’re a creative person…create something! If it ends up sucking, then reshoot it. But for now, use what’s right in front of you and try to make something. (By the way, I’ve never had to reshoot any scene that called for an unexpected last-minute fix like this.) Being adaptive and thinking on your feet also helps when there are happy accidents. Filmmaking is organic and unpredictable, and when the right mix of elements strikes on set, a good director will know how to capitalize on it.

3. Editing Experience

It is so valuable for a director to have editing experience because she or he will know on set what’s important and what’s not, what can be sacrificed and what can’t. Indie films are scheduled so tightly that it’s often very tough to make the day. All of my feature productions have been between 19 and 24 days, shooting between 4-7 pages and 15-35 setups per day. Sometimes, shots and even scenes have to be cut on the day of shooting. A director who also edits will have a much better sense of which shots are expendable, and how to make up for losing them.

4. Ability to Visualize

This seems obvious, doesn’t it? But you’d be surprised how many directors can’t do this. Many indie directors I’ve encountered come from writing or theater backgrounds–they can write great dialogue and work well with actors, but they have no idea how to compose a frame. Yes, this is what cinematographers are for, but it’s much more efficient when a director can actually visualize what shots will look like before crew and cast go through the trouble of setting them up.

5. Doesn’t Sweat the Small Stuff

This is probably the most controversial trait on the list. Artists are, by their nature, perfectionists–and they should be! However, the reality is that perfection is tough to achieve on a small budget. Of course, we should always work very hard to achieve it, but the obsession over minor details–like the way a curtain drapes over a windowsill in the background–should not compromise more important things like the actors’ performances or the entire shooting schedule. Except, of course, if you’re making an art film in which the position of curtains is paramount. But if you’re making a traditional narrative film where the writing, acting, and storytelling are the main events, then those are the things you should focus on. A production’s budget and schedule are a zero-sum game. It’s rare to get everything you want; it’s usually very give-and-take. So it’s important for directors to choose their battles wisely.

6. Highly Prepared

One of my favorite first assistant directors,� Nicolas D. Harvard, has a great motto: “Fix it in prep.” Indie films benefit immensely from directors who are incredibly diligent about doing research, shot lists, storyboards, and the like during prep. Some directors I’ve worked with have refused to do shot lists because they don’t want to be “locked in” to doing those particular shots on the day of shooting. This is silly because a good producer and crew understands the importance of being flexible on set and allowing for the organic nature of filmmaking to take its course, and would not pressure a director to stick strictly to his or her shot list. On the contrary, a shot list is what allows a director the freedom to improvise on the shoot day. Going into production without a shooting plan is very dangerous because it could easily throw the entire schedule (and consequently, the budget) off the rails.

7. Solid Work Ethic & High Stamina

Making a movie is hands down the hardest work I’ve ever done. That’s why I’m so picky with my projects. I cannot imagine working so hard on something I don’t care about. So when I take on a project, I expect to work very hard on it, and I expect no less of my director. Once, during late-stage prep on a film, the director kept checking into bars and restaurants on Foursquare, and tweeting about how much fun he was having hanging out with his friends. I did not like this one bit. If I and your crew are working our asses off on your film, then you should be too. Indie directors must have a very solid work ethic, and a high stamina for long hours spent doing what will likely be the most intellectually, physically, and emotionally challenging work they’ve ever done.

8. Vast Knowledge of Film

It’s important for all directors to know the language of cinema. By knowing what’s been done before and what certain shots have traditionally communicated, a director doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel. He or she can then more easily pay homage to, do variations on, or reject conventions. Being able to refer to certain films, scenes, or shots also makes it much easier and quicker for a director to articulate his vision to the crew and cast.

9. Articulate

In all productions, but especially indie ones, a director often has to defend the creative decisions that conflict with budget or schedule limitations. As such, a director should be able to clearly articulate why he needs 5 picture cars instead of 2, or 21 shoot days instead of 20, or a Steadicam instead of doing it handheld. A good producer will listen and OK the expenditures if the director provides a strong rationale for them. Of course, it’s also beneficial when directors can clearly and efficiently communicate what they want to their actors and crew, and woo financiers with a pitch. Directors should practice untangling the creative jumble in their heads to form coherent thoughts and actionable requests (that, or find a producer who can translate for them).

10. Publicity-Friendly

Being articulate also helps when a director is promoting a film. Communicating your vision to the media and the public can be a difficult thing to do, especially if you can’t afford fancy publicists to guide you. Some directors I’ve worked with are great at making movies, but can’t write loglines or synopses, pitch their own films, or conduct coherent Q&As, so I’ll have to pinch hit. But it’s really nice when they can do these things, because no one cares about the producer! Distributors also expect directors to play an active role in film promotion, especially now that the landscape is so difficult, and so much rides on the cult of personality. Bonus points for the director who is active in social media. There is no substitute for authenticity, and when a director can tweet in his or her own voice, it generates a lot more interest and engagement.

11. Technically Adept

Knowing how to use Twitter and Facebook is part and parcel of the overall technical aptitude that’s important for an indie director to have. Indie directors and producers often have to be jacks of all trades–more so than ever now that so much of marketing and distribution falls on our shoulders. When you can’t pay your Web designer, graphic artist, or assistant editor enough to be on call (or when you can’t afford these folks in the first place), you should be prepared to do the job yourself. So if you have some spare time, learn how to use video editing, photo editing, illustration, and web design programs, and of course, social media tools. You should also try to stay abreast of the latest camera and post-production technologies because in indie land, post supervision often falls to you and your producer.

12. Appreciative

Directors can be spoiled, bratty, entitled people. There is no place for that in the low-budget world, where everyone is working very long hours at very reduced rates. Directors who consistently show appreciation and respect for their cast and crew effectively motivate them, and that motivation is necessary fuel for low-budget productions. The director–not the producers or the actors–is the one who ultimately sets the tone of the production. If he or she is an unappreciative jerk, then everyone is miserable and left to wonder what all the suffering is for. An appreciative director also shares the limelight, and gives credit where it is due. And if/when Hollywood comes a-callin’, an appreciative director will remember the “little people” and “give back” by continuing to work with those who believed in his or her vision before anyone else did.

So there you have it! If you don’t possess most of these traits, please don’t call me–unless you are David Fincher or Terrence Malick. Actually…no, never mind, not even then. I will just enjoy your brilliant films from afar.

Six Golden Rules for Filmmakers on Social Media

Sean Holmquest — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 20:03:29 +0000

What’s the best way to ensure a successful a Kickstarter campaign? How do I self-distribute, or digitally distribute my film well? What should I post on my Facebook page as opposed to my Twitter feed? What if I’m not on Twitter?

For the filmmakers who attended the IFP/Film Presence/DCTV panel on social media for filmmakers on April 26, 2012 in New York City, the above questions could all be summed up with one answer that was emphasized and then re-emphasized by every member of the panel discussion: Engage your audience.

Seems simple enough, yet many people — filmmakers or not — fail to see that simply posting content relevant to your project or career will not necessarily engage an audience and get them interested. Just throwing a trailer up somewhere will not ensure that many people will watch it, especially when you are competing with a wealth of viral videos and blog posts that are crowding everyone’s Twitter and Facebook feeds.

So now that filmmakers have a focus, how should they go about achieving that engagement? There were a variety of tips and tricks coming from the panel, which featured Elisabeth Holm of Kickstarter, filmmaker Gary Hustwit (Helvetica, Objectified), Julie La’Bassiere of the Cinetic digital sales arm FilmBuff, Mike Knowlton of the interactive studio Murmur (Him, Her and Them) and the storytelling non-profit StoryCode. Film marketer Sara Kiener (Film Presence) moderated.

Here are six golden rules, culled from the panel:

1) Be a person

First and foremost. No one wants to connect with at spam bot, or with something that seems like a shameless self-promotion. Whether its on your Kickstarter page, in your tweets or on your Facebook, write in your voice and make the audience feel like they are experience a human connection. As Elisabeth Holm put it, “We are all on the Internet starving for human connection.” No one wants to back a project or engage in a conversation with a film seemingly being made by a robot without heart. Gary Hustwit and Julie La’Bassier even took this one step further in suggesting that filmmakers should not create Twitter handles for a specific film. The majority of people on Twitter follow individual people over projects anyways. So, create a Twitter handle for yourself and use hashtags to refer to individual films. This will help build an audience in one digital space which you can tap into for future films, helping the sustainability of your Twitter presence and influence.

2) Join the conversation

Documentary filmmakers are in a unique space in the digital realm in that the subjects and issues they deal with typically already have a strong community and dialogue online. Tap into those conversations, not by simply saying, “Watch my doc!” but by posting your interests and viewpoints, maybe giving some anecdotes. Engage and stay on top of the conversation because others will take notice and see that something is happening. The people you attract through this type of interaction are going to be more motivated to see your film because they feel like they know you and will be interested to see what you have to say at the end of your project.

3) Try transmedia

If you think it is suited to your project, tap into transmedia strategies and the possibility of expanding your stories over multiple platforms. Mike Knowlton provided an example of an initiative from the narrative film The Sound of My Voice, where the filmmakers released the first 12 minutes of the film with embedded buttons and social media links within the viewer window before the premiere. These links jumped off to other content on YouTube, essays, photos and more, which built excitement around the project and expanding the film’s presence online through sharing on social networks.

4)Fish where the fish are

On the subject of distribution, La’Bassier said she’s worked with too many filmmakers who want their film to be on every platform and everywhere. If you are making a film about young hip-hop artists who struggle to make it during the trials and tribulations of coming of age, why waste money marketing it on Amazon, where the demographic might be mismatched? Once you’ve garnered interest in your film by “fishing where the fish are,” you can you expand your audience on universal platforms.

5) Don’t sell something people can’t buy

Your Twitter feed should never look like this: “3 weeks till our film is on iTunes!,” “In 3 weeks you will be able to get our film on iTunes,” “Excited for our film?,” “Another week down, you will have it soon.” In other words, don’t talk at your audience. Instead give them something to do. Maybe post related content online, whether created by you or not, so that they become interested in your Twitter handle and then will be prompted to download your film once it is out. Audiences want to be prompted with an action, not with a wait.

6) Ask your audience

Filmmaker Gary Hustwit explained that many times he has tweeted or posted asking people “Hey Portland, what’s the best indie theater by you?” or “Should we have a screening at this theater, or is there some place cooler?” which then sparks dialogue about your film screening and builds an engaged audience that will be ready to go when you finally announce your screening. Also, filmmakers can ask for suggestions on where to find shooting locations, if anything related to your topic is happening in their community, and even if crew members are available if you need them. You audience will now feel like they have something invested in the success of your film and will in turn evangelize your film through their own social media outlets.

In the end, it all comes down to making your audience feel like they mean something to you, and they should. They are the ones who you are counting on for the success of your film, so show them a little love!

This post was originally published on the POV blog (pbs.org/pov/blog).

Sheri Chandler on Reaching Audiences

Cait Carvalho — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 14:00:04 +0000

[See post to watch Flash video]

Sheri Chandler discusses the importance of filmmakers creating their own style of storytelling and developing a relationship with an audience.

From the 2011 Independent Filmmaker Conference.

Lance Weiler on Audience Participation

Cait Carvalho — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 14:00:58 +0000

[See post to watch Flash video]

Lance Weiler breaks down the traditional formation of an audience and explains how they could potentially become collaborators.

From the 2011 Independent Filmmaker Conference.

Sheri Chandler on Setting Goals

Cait Carvalho — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 14:00:40 +0000

[See post to watch Flash video]

Sheri Chandler speaks realistically about the importance of understanding what you want from a project.

From the 2011 Independent Filmmaker Conference.

Four Steps Towards Crafting an Effective Television Pitch

Cindy Caponera — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 18:33:35 +0000

Let me start by saying everything is NOT a TV Show. Some things just are what they are, and should not be televised.

A Pitch is much more than just an idea you have. The idea may be the starting point but the pitch is much, much more. And the pitch is a different animal than the actual script. And the script is different than the pilot. And the pilot is different than the series.

The Pitch I’m talking about today is based on personal experience as opposed to an adaptation. They are very similar except one you were inspired to create the other you found interesting enough to want to create a pitch. I will never understand the difference between hi and low concept and premise and non-premise pilots. Here’s what’s worked for me. And I have sold 98% of my pilot ideas.

1. Inspiration

Executives love to hear how your idea affects you personally. Perhaps you were shocked at the billion dollar shoplifting industry the number of cesarean sections each year. Or maybe you’ve had a very unique personal experience. Or a character that you really admire or a story that you feel really needs to be told — The first time you fell in love. Innocently catching your parents sharing private moment together. Getting fired from a job you loved. Things that are universal

2. The World

This is very important. If the person you are pitching to doesn’t understand the world or if it’s a world we’ve seen too often you will be in trouble. In addition to the popular mash-up of two ideas — Godfather meets Laverne & Shirley. You want to describe the feel or tone of the world. Does it feel like a place Cheers that is so comfortable and everyone wants to be your friend: Or a sterile, cold, corporate culture where no one really gets to know each other. Can’t trust each other. Yet need each other.

What are the universal elements? Everyone has trust issues? We are a nation run by fear? Does the media tries to control us through fear?

3. Characters

In a half hour they usually want one character with a very strong point of view. Surrounded by funny, supporting characters — Unless it’s an absolute ensemble. Then you can tell stories about all of them. In dramas unless it’s about a particular, unique crime solver, it’s usually an ensemble of some kind like Grey’s Anatomy, or ER or Brother’s and Sisters.

Also, what are the characters relationships to each other? In half-hour; the execs are obsessed with the character’s knowing each other and how do they know each other? It’s easiest to make some related in a family way: brothers, aunts, cousins or best friends from child hood. In drama’s they usually meet on the job or Med school or the Academy.

4. Pilot story

Broad strokes –and only if they ask for it. And/or other broad stroke story ideas if you have them.

I also like to add multi-platform ideas now that those are such a part of the current television experience. For example: if you’re pitching a show where someone is a temperamental Chef – maybe one of the web ideas is to have the Chef character giving recipes on the Show’s web site.

Director Alrick Brown on Marketing Kinyarwanda

Cait Carvalho — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 14:00:57 +0000

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Alrick Brown (Director, Kinyarwanda) discusses the importance of learning how to be a marketer for your film and what it can accomplish.

From the 2011 Independent Filmmaker Conference.

Lucy Stille on Handling Success

Cait Carvalho — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 14:00:07 +0000

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Lucy Stille discusses how the more successful you become, the more the agents job is to say no.

From the 2011 Independent Filmmaker Conference.