Late last week, after more than six months in development, my firm BOND Strategy and Influence officially launched BOND360, a new initiative that provides filmmakers with strategic consultation, marketing, public relations, financing, and technical support to help connect their films and related products directly with fans.

We created BOND360 to address the fact that independent cinema is rapidly evolving, and new innovative approaches for connecting films and filmmakers with audiences is desperately needed. Our goal with BOND360 it to give filmmakers the expertise and resources to build community around their creative work. By deploying strategies previously not applied to independent films, we look to create a diverse set of revenue streams for filmmakers for years to come.

Today, change is coming not only from the disruption that’s being caused by new digital technologies. Most importantly, it’s coming from a profound shift in the mindsets of emerging filmmakers in how they approach their creative work. A young filmmaker entering the industry today views him or herself more as entrepreneur than as a “director” “producer” or “writer”. Increasingly, filmmakers want the flexibility and agility to make films as an extension of their overall creative interests, and don’t want to be labeled solely by their functional role. Because of this, filmmakers are increasingly looking for alternatives to the traditional systems that give them more control. As they see it, there’s no need to cede it.

The biggest barrier you hear from a filmmaker today as to why they didn’t “self distribute” was that they didn’t have the resources or time to do it. The phrase “self distribution” itself scares off a lot of filmmakers because it literally means doing it by yourself. But as I’ve said before, self distribution is a badge of honor that nobody wants to wear. Because of this, at BOND we prefer the term “alternative distribution” or, even better, “direct distribution.”

To fully embrace direct distribution, history tells us that if we truly want innovation in the digital space, we must first adopt an “open source” mindset.

If you followed the rise of “Web 2.0″ start-ups in the early 2000′s, you’ll remember that what fueled that fertile period of innovation was a collaborative culture where companies shared and gave away the underlining code to their software which then allowed others to build their own businesses faster, cheaper, and smarter. The result was one of the most productive times in recent history.

To survive, the independent film industry needs to adopt some of the same principles that the software industry discovered years ago: The more you give things away, the quicker you can scale and create a true digital marketplace. The real threat to industry stalwarts like iTunes, Hulu and Netflix will not come from other industry giants. Rather, competition will come from agile entrepreneurial start-ups who can offer storytellers access to more effective tools, ownership of their own data, and more transparency in their relationships with suppliers.

With BOND360, we hope to provide the community with that much needed repository and archive of available tools and case studies for filmmakers to use and iterate upon to reach their goals.

Recently, I was asked my thoughts on who where some of the most influential people in the independent film world. As I considered my answer, the first names that came to my mind weren’t the well known industry figureheads who had, in most cases, obtained their power by limiting access to what they controlled. Rather, they were people like Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky who, with Indie Game, completely gave away their knowledge, learnings, and expertise. True power comes from influence. And the best way to gain influence today is to give away your tools and your knowledge. Today, when someone asks me for advice on what they should be reading to keep up with the changes in the film industry, I tell them to read the Indie Game case study. Published in five parts, each loaded with incredible details, the Indie Game case study is the most comprehensive roadmap to understanding alternative methods to release your film but in building on top of what had been already achieved. And it was given away completely for free.

To be a truly independent film industry, we need to start collaborating as a community of storytellers, programmers, marketers, etc in an environment where we’re all willing to give away our “source code” for free so that others can develop new applications and strategies on top of them.  My hope is that BOND360 becomes a hub for that exchange.

For me, the realization of the need for a resource like BOND360 came from personal experiences on recent films that I’ve had the privilege to work on such as Exit Through The Gift Shop, SENNA, and The Imposter.

When it comes to building and nurturing community as a way to market our films, the current model is almost completely broken.

Today, if you release a film through the traditional distribution systems, the majority of the marketing budget that will be spent during the entire life of that film is spent in the week’s leading up to opening weekend. For someone like myself who believes that success or failure will come from how effectively we build community around a project, today almost the entire marketing budget for a film is spent when the community is at it’s smallest point, not it’s largest. Today people see films in lots of different ways (in theaters, on cable VOD, on iTunes, on Netflix or Hulu) and in a time frame of their own choosing.  As a marketer, I’ve learned that an active community around a film is at its highest not when the film is first released, usually in a limited amount of theaters, but rather many months – or even years – later when it its widely available on Netflix.  But by this time, all of the marketing for that film has ended, and nobody is attending to the community. Our goal with BOND360 is to continue to nurture and grow these communities throughout the entire lifecycle of the project so that the filmmaker can continue to have access to their fans and continue to update them with new content and creative work. Ultimately, the goal is to monetize the largest group of fans that we have taken years to build.

I hope that you will follow our progress and contribute to the dialogue. I encourage you to follow us on Twitter and share with us your experiences. Together we hope to shape a future for the independent film community that is vibrant, inclusive, and prosperous.