The Son of Indie Also Rises: Film Distribution Outside the Mainstream
THE SON OF INDIE ALSO RISES: FILM DISTRIBUTION OUTSIDE THE MAINSTREAM
Independent filmmaking has always been about independent attitudes as much asmaking films outside the mainstream. From tentative beginnings, indie filmmakers are more experienced, stronger and much more confident;not just at helming asfilm directors. Making movies without the backing of comfortable financial resources has turned indie directors into savvy producers. Excluded from regular professional bodies by fees they can’t afford, they’ve set up their own support systems and exclusive clubs; collaborative networks that like the industry are international.
Indie film networks like 20,000 strong Shootingpeople.org, were started in the UK in 1998 with just 60 email addresses, then blossomed via the internet and crossed the Atlantic. Indies in the Big Apple found they had more in common with indie filmmaking in London than they had with studio-based Hollywoodfilmmaking. They signed up and joined in.
“Shooters,” as they style themselves, now have branch networks reachingacross the USto touch TinselTown itself. As well as New York there is a Shooters network in LA, another in San Francisco and another close to start up in Chicago as well as a US screenwriters network. In the UK Shootingpeople.org has filmmaker and documentary networks, music and video, animation and screenwriter networks and a weekly script pitching session where producers can link up with screenwriters.
Other indie networks include Asian American Filmmakers Network, the Louisiana Independent Filmmakers Network, Queer Screen (for Australian gay and lesbian filmmakers) and the UK’sTalent Circle.
“You can’t make a film on your own,” said Jess Search, who co-founded Shooting People with fellow filmmaker Cath Le Couteur in London, then helped expand it to the US. “Film is different from photography or painting or really any other art. People come together to make a film.”
What Search and Le Couteur created are unparalleled peer-to-peer film networks, inspired by the collaborative nature of filmmaking. What fuels them are information bulletins, pleas for help, enquiries and responses. Theyfly across the internet daily, backed by discount deals, special offers, information and training opportunities.It costs just $40 a year to join Shootingpeople.com for example.
One of the few things networks can’t easily deliver is audience, but they’re working on that. There’s now a Shooting People Films distribution label and allied labels like Word of Mouth Films, which distributes the controversial Oscar-nominated documentary Unknown White Male.
These may be low budget shooters, they may be hungry for more action, but they’re being recognised by mainstream contemporaries as rising talents.
“Shootingpeople members have won awards at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, premiered at Sundance, been nominated for Oscars, screened at Cannes and have found wider audiences,” said co-founder Jess Search, but overall, it is a personal network of peers. “There’s no big corporation here,” Search said. “Each member is just a guy trying to make a film.”
Indies like these were actually created through the mainstream industry,because the industryitself frustrated indie ambition and failed to support it. Indies bypassed that gridlock by Do it Yourself methods. “You won’t support my production? OK, I’ll go elsewhere.”
They learn fast. Five years ago, if you asked an Indie for a business plan,not understanding the concept they would probably say they just plan on making movies. Now they’re more likely to produce impressive, innovative investment models with cash return projections across genres.
The other distinguishing mark of today’s Indie is that they know their market. Their demographic is largely their own peer network and they keep in touch through the internet. Websites like FilmThreat.com and Netribution.co.uk and magazines with print and on-line editions like moviemaker.com and movieScopemag.com are their favoured reading and help form opinions and attitudes. There are festivals they favour, unsurprisingly perhaps they are the festivals who favour Indies, because they like interactivity. Check that out. Interactivity. It’s the key that can open doors for Indies.
If you want to get interactive with indies,you need to think like them.
Imagine this:
You’ve finished your script. You’ve found key collaborators that can help you get it made as cheaply as possible. You’ve secured low-level investment say, $200,000. This is precisely the budget that made “London to Brighton,” the gangster thriller shot on 16mm and tipped to become the new “Trainspotting.” You’re paying nobody. Everyone who works on the movie is on deferrals; they are investing talent up front in lieu of cash.
What you need now is the backing of a good distributor, either direct or through a sales agent, prepared to back your vision with investment that will get your movie into cinemas. What you would also like is some cash up front so your existing investors, including cast and crew, can get a little something back. Unfortunately, unless Harvey Weinstein likes your film, what you are likely to be offered is nothing up front for 30% of the take, with your share covering expenses.
The confident Indie’s answer to this will almost certainly be no deal. Here’s why.
They don’t need cinemas to find an audience. Fans of indie films are happy to buy their entertainment online, as pay per view, downloads or as DVD’s. It costs very little to set-up and they get to keep most of the returns. You might think this means indies have turned their backs on traditional distribution and there’s no deal here for you, but you’d be wrong. If you can do a deal as a distributor with a switched-on indie, the bonus for you is, you could do quite well in cinemas with their film. If the filmmaker really knows their stuff, they will already have done a good job in pre-marketing the film through the internet and production blogs. If youcut a cinema distribution deal with them you already have an audience waiting to see the film, or you soon will have. The numbers may prevent launching with a large number of 35mm prints, or even ten prints, but you’ve got to get used to thinking digital, so start now by looking at lower-cost digital distribution.
D-cinema is growing more quickly in Europe than anywhere. In Britain, a digital screen network of more than 200 cinemas nationwide is slated to be fully operational this summer, with new digital projection equipment installed through a project overseen by the UK Film Council. Cinemas with these screens are pledged to use them to screen independent-type cinema as well as re-releases, restored classics and other minority interest cinema, as well as occasional mainstream films on digital prints. Britain’s cinemas outside this pioneering scheme have also seen the light. Many British commercial chains have seen the possibilities for new revenues and have started digital screen installation programmes.
In Europe a digital documentary chain has been set up, of key cinemas dedicated to bringing new work to the big screen, with films which have interesting stories to tell and need documentary-friendly audiences to deliver them to. It’s almost an echo of bygone silent days, when documentary popped up in local cinemas as often as fiction, but documentary never developed the studio structure to drive the market for the product. Better late than never perhaps, but developments like this give independent documentary filmmakers new hope and new markets to aim for.
Indie filmmakers are usually expert in their own markets. That includes creating them. New YorkindiesSusan Buice and Arin Crumley’s film ‘FourEyedMonsters’was the fifth biggest opener in New Yorkon a December weekend last year. Having met and got to know each other well, they made a film about how their own relationship grew and blossomed – a faction feature.
They filmed it with a close group of collaborators with credit card debts of about $80,000 but feel pretty confident of being able to write off that debt with this film and maybe start on the next one. FourEyedMonsters has become a cult phenomenon. It’s played in over 20 film festivals, was nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards, screened theatrically in major cities across the nation, and garnered critical acclaim across the board - all managed and distributed by its own creators, who had not even met just a couple of years before when they were at separate film schools.
The reason for all this screen success is that the film is part of a whole project that thousands have been able to buy into via the internet; a website at foureyedmonsters.com. But the loyalties these indies have created are paying off in other ways too. If you visit their website, you’ll be asked if you’d like to see the movie in your home town. Any city topping 150 requests is likely to get a screening. There are quite a fewlining up, as therequests map on the website shows.
Armed with this ready-made audience, the pair can confidently offer a deal to a local cinema. They go for a 50/50 revenue split or sometimes a low fee fourwaller, targeted on nights that are normally quiet, like Thursdays, just before the film programmes change for the weekend. Their core audience in that city will be contacted personally by email and invited along. No doubt many of them will persuade friends to come also. The website hosts a video podcast to help draw people in, with a little well-placed local publicity, backed by a marketing campaign of stickers, posters and postcards. The distributors also go interactive with their audience and throw in a free Q&A session post-screening.
It may sound slightly earnest, well-meaning and not what traditional distributors are used to, but be prepared. These guys mean business and get butts onto seats, even if it is done slowly and in unorthodox ways. Here’s what happened in New York:
“We opened on split screen with 2 other films. We weren’t playing at every slot on every day. Our box office was fairly weak. We did, however, end up the number 5 opening film in New York City that week and got reviewed in the New York Times, Village Voice as well as a slew of other press. We also led a grassroots campaign using our New York supporters and distributed 4000 stickers, 500 posters, 5000 postcards. We also held interactive discussions every night after our 7.00 PM screenings on various topics ranging from net neutrality, to life logging, to internet dating.”
And it worked. Using it as a pre-release screening, word spread. On consecutive Thursdays, box office grew. $2,707.5 the first Thursday, $5,629.75 the second,
$9,309.25 the third and $13,523.75 on the final Thursday. Total box office for all four Thursdays brought in over $30,000 on the quietest night of the week, averaging more than someHollywood movies did on the same night, but that was just a taster. On February 14th (when else?) the Foureyedmonsters.com love affair screened in 30 cities across America. To screening revenues, you can add T-shirt and DVD sales and lots of very happyfans who cannot wait for the next film to come out or buy the DVD. They often donate to the project using Paypal.
The future is definitely turning digital and far-seeing distributors should now be seeking suitable content. This means engaging with indie filmmakers, so where can they be found? The answer depends on the point at which you want to engage with them.
If you have production ambition and some investment to back it you could come away with a guaranteed theatrical deal at the end. For this you need early indications of what could be on offer. Perhaps you could take a leaf out of the indie book and join Shootingpeople.org, though advertising your intentions on one of the regular bulletins would probably result in your mailbox crashing. Instead opt to receive the Thursday pitching session and see what’s on offer. The bulletins all have a facility for private contacts, so you never actually have to announce your presence in the market place.
Another way to find interesting projects is to visit indie websites or subscribe to magazines like movieScope.com or Moviemaker.com
Finished films seeking distribution can be found in festivals, but indies favour some festivals over others, so distributors need to be choosy too. Sundance.org is the institute that runs the festival of the same name that is the Indie mecca, while across the Atlantic in London there is also Raindance.com which sponsors the British Independent Film Awards. An alternative to Sundance is Tromadance.com whilst the Victoria Independent Film Festival at vifvf.com has been promoting Canada’s indies for 13 years.
Leading the way to distribution in Philadelphia and Hollywood is firstglancefilms.com where New York distributor IndiePix offers no-cost non-exclusive deals with a profit share to all official selections. Indie-friendly companies like THINKfilm and Lionsgate make for floridafilmfestival.com while Nashville scores by association with fylmz.com where the fylmz on-line community votes the winner of a $100,000 advance and distribution deal. Rome International FilmFest, GA has drawn indies with just a four-year history, attracted by an expo that includes over 100 booths of interest to moviemakers with a range of regular needs from equipment to casting services, at riff.tv
Great dramatic performance is the essence of the Methodfest.com in Calabasas, CA, where Stanislavski’s acting technique is a precondition, and so far, more than 80 Methodfest alumni have gone on to successful distribution, kick-starting mainstream interest in many actors who chose collaboration with indies as their way forward.Hollywood’s own underdogs are not forgotten by socalfilmfest.com at Huntington Beach, CA where proximity to Hollywoodbrings invited mainstreamers flocking in, to see just what’s cooking in filmmaking’s lower echelons.
This is a new world, one of content more than conventional movies that we are entering here, although the conventional marketplace will still be with us for a long time. Indies though, think outside the box. They are willing to take chances on alternatives and are prepared to work hard to support the choices they make, a formula that deserves recognition. Some distributors have gone that way too, like Tom Swanston, who started out as an indie producer, but when his first feature, a quirky British comedy “The Ultimate Truth” garnered an American award and then through the internet got picked up for distribution by FilmThreat, he saw the marketing possibilities the internet could offer filmmakers compared with conventional marketing methods.
“It's a question of using the internet for international sales and making yourselves look really professional, making your website look interesting and professional. A lot of independent flmmakers have the idea that their originality that will sell them. Originality makes for a good film, but it is professionalism that will sell a film. They are two separate skills and not every filmmaker has both, but they really need to concentrate on them,” says Tom Swanston, who now heads distribution company Wysiwyg (wizzy-wig).
FilmThreat’s deal launched him into distribution and shortly afterwards the start up of video on-demand suppliers convinced him that the internet could become a distribution as well as a marketing tool. His company now embraces all markets from internet protocol - “IP content” – to DVD, broadcast and theatrical distribution, but his approach is to start early when possible and make sure the filmmaker remains hands-on with his product right through, including distribution.
“One of the things a filmmaker should do is leave a bit of budget for making the finished product more presentable, with 20-25% of the budget allocated for marketing,” Swanston says.
“One of the things we do is involve the filmmaker in the marketing, not just take the film off him and distribute it. Their uniqueness was what got us interested in their film, so we want their uniqueness to be available to us when it comes to marketing as well.”
“We need stills, info, any reviews: the more that is provided, the better. Extra features area key part, helpingto set our products apart from more mainstream films. Titles with a lot of extra features that are very unusual and quirky and different can really help to sell. It is about putting together a professional package that at the same time is fun and enjoyable.”
Although when he switched to distribution Swanston could see how things were shaping up, he was still surprised at just how radical things have become. The whole market place within the distribution industry has changed remarkably, even marketing itself.