The Outsider

New Site! New Blog! New...readers, I hope!

2011-04-28T09:12:00.000-07:00

So I done got me a new website, www.DeLargeFilms.com. As you'll quickly see, we have a blog section, and our inaugural post, "It's About Overhead, Stupid"can be found HERE.

Enjoy, and be sure to check in regularly as, from now on, all our posts will be there. Thanks!

Shameful - OR - Most of my family saw "Tiny Furniture" last month

2011-01-03T11:04:00.000-08:00

I don't really do New Years resolutions. I won't get into why, but the point is the following was a coincidentally-timed epiphany (rather than being precipitated by the new year) that I had when, visiting my aunt's house up in CT for Christmas dinner (despite that fact that most of my immediate and extended family would self-identify as Jewish) I discovered that pretty much everyone in my family, save for my father, uncle, and youngest present cousin (my two younger cousins were in NJ) had all seen “Tiny Furniture” in the past couple weeks.

My surprise immediately spurred action: I couldn't help but pull up the box office numbers (from The Numbers, if anyone cares about source). The newest available data at the time was from a week before, 12/17, when IFC reported a cume of $228,811.

What. The. Fuck.

I caught the movie at SXSW – It was great. Really great. But given the above figure, I couldn't make sense of this. Two of my closest friends had approached me about seeing making a trip to the IFC center in late November to see “Tiny” which was weird enough because one was a lawyer, the other works in retail jewelery, and neither tends to be aware of any indie films unless they're from a mini-major. The same can be said about the above mentioned family—I'm the only one in my family who works in the film industry and, although my mom is a pretty serious film buff, she probably only hits art-house theaters 1-2 times a month.

So why, then, did I find myself standing around in my aunt's living room, stupefied, surrounded by lively conversations about the movie itself as well as Lena's upcoming HBO series with Judd Apatow? I had seen “127 Hours” far more recently (SXSW is in March, after all) and was totally knocked off my ass by it—and like any movie that has a powerful effect on you, I really wanted to discuss it with someone. Of course no one in the house had seen it. For those of you counting, at 38 days out (the same length of time from the opening of “Tiny Furniture” to 12/17) “127 Hours” had a reported B.O. Cume of $8,250,856. By my math (which, admittedly, sucks—I stopped taking math when I was 16) that means that “127 Hours” had sold roughly 36 times more tickets within the same time frame. And yet here I was, surrounded by people who had seen “Tiny” rather than having watched James Franco cut his arm off in what was arguably a career-defining performance.

As I mulled this over, the reality of the situation hit me like a brick to the face as the ghost of my ex-girlfriend (no, she's not dead, she's still in Cali where we parted ways) murmured into my ear: “Are there any women in it?”

I couldn't tell you how many times I heard this question. I'm a cinephile to a fault and like to see anything that even looks palatable while it's still in theaters. I curse Landmark, AMC, Regal, Cinemark and every NYC art-house theater every time I do the math and realize I probably drop $3,000 a year on tickets and Coke (and to the multiplex chains, I have only this to say to you – a $6, half-gallon soda is inappropriate for any situation. Before you begin offering soda I.V.s and feed troughs full of candy and popcorn, I think I can safely say you're already heading in the wrong direction). So, naturally, I tried to drag my ex to the theater pretty much every single weekend when we were still dating—even if, as she pointed out, most of the time there wasn't an available, decent-looking movie with a SINGLE FUCKING MAIN CHARACTER that she could relate to. About as often as I'd try to pull a bait-and-switch (“Look, this actress is definitely playing one of the main characters”) she'd point out that, most of the time, the stock female served as either an object rather than a character, or, worse yet, a character so male in her persona, so idealized as the “perfect girl” that you quickly realize she's not an actual woman but rather a version of a male best friend who happens to have lady-parts.

And before anyone skewers me for that last bit, I'm hardly suggesting that what society accepts as gender roles are more valid than the alternative, but rather that these characters are 1-dimensional and fall closer to an exception than the rule. I consider myself open-minded and a feminist so if you think I'm being sexist, please give me the benefit of the doubt that this is a shortcoming of my writing rather than my ethics.

On that note--I'm not going to turn this into an ethical argument – I do think that the industry (yes, that includes “truly” independent film) is inherently sexist AND racist – but frankly I think the ethics behind these issues are a bit too nuanced to be argued one-sided in a blog post—and if you think there's no argument against trying to rectify these matters, I'd point out that when you start dictating what kind of art people should be making, you step onto a very slippery slope. So why bother mentioning this at all, then?

I'll make it simple—in particular for all of you with a marketing/business background: There are major demographics being completely under-served.

For all the talk of emerging digital markets, DIWO and DIY media distribution, freemium and tiered pricing, release windows, etc., I'm a little aghast that no one seems to be discussing the fact that a vast majority of film, both independent and studio backed, caters primarily to men—in particular, white men—and worse yet, independent film seems to trend even one step further and skew towards white, educated, upper-middle class men. There are exceptions abound—but so long as they're getting credit for being exceptions, there's something wholly amiss with the landscape.

So much of the discussion on Twitter, on festival panels and in the trades has been about changing models, paradigm shifts in the way people consume media, and finding new ways to engage audiences – when really, there's I think we might be in an unlikely situation where acquiring brand new audiences (read: women and minorities in particular) might be more energy (and cost) effective than engaging an already exhausted and, dare I say, cynical audience that has been saturated by a glut of content aimed at them that has been growing at near exponential levels for a few years now.

If you're reading the above as a causal argument using “Tiny Furniture” as a case study, don't. The fact

is, "Tiny" got an unusually high amount of media attention (in particular in the type of media likely consumed by the females in my family and aforementioned friends, who fall into the same demo) and that, without question, contributed in part to so many people close to me having made the trip to their nearest art-house theater to check it out. And frankly, most case studies are a little dubious when you don't have a really significant group to work off of (and my two friends and 6 relatives don't count.) At the end of the day, though, reviews, feature profiles and the like only draw attention to a piece media (whether it's a book, film, whatever) and there has to be inherent interest in the subject to actually turn this attention into something actionable like slapping down $12.50 + concession costs to see a movie—and that's the issue at hand.

So filmmakers, take heed—if you make it, they will come—so long as “they” isn't the same tried and true audiences that are worn out by having so much content that speaks directly to them.

And to all the marketeers, media distribution theorists, fellow consultants, self-proclaimed experts and businesspeople: Please consider, for a moment, whether your friends, family, and everyone else in your life are really being properly served by the content you study and expound on. If you think they are, I highly suggest the following:

Get your head out of your ass.

Why I (kinda) turned my back on social media

2010-12-14T14:48:00.000-08:00

(Cue sad walking-away music from "The Incredible Hulk" TV show)

I've ignored this for a little too long but I feel like, without addressing it, it's not something I can really move past in any meaningful way:

I've taken a serious step back from engaging in social media (Twitter, most notably) as well as blogging and, in short, it's not for nothing. I've always valued honesty and, to that end, I think it would serve me best to take off the gloves and explain the reasons why with as much disclosure as I can muster. Without further ado:

1.) I feel like, as far as film distribution/marketing/etc. goes, there's little being said that's new and really worth discussing in any sort of meaningful way. There are some people out there whose work I continue to admire and appreciate and when they decide to enter the conversation, I have every reason to listen.

That said, there's a lot of people out there who lack either the context, the experience, or even the topical understanding of media distribution to contribute anything worthwhile—and yet they're still talking and people are still listening. The most pointed example to me is that someone (no, I won't be giving any hints to whom—it's not relevant) who appeared on Ted Hope's list of Brave Thinkers of Indie Film who, as recently as 9 months ago posted a piece of writing (in public) that made it clear he/she had no understanding whatsoever of either the first-use doctrine nor even the most BASIC intellectual property laws. The moment we stop holding people accountable for their “expertise,” I'm not entirely sure the discussion is worth having. I'm by no means suggesting that Ted, or anyone else, has been swindled or lead to believe something that isn't true but what I would say is that there's a serious lack of accountability in the industry and, while that's probably been true for as long as the film business has been around, it's a bit disappointing given the level of access everyone has to information these days. In short—things COULD be a lot more transparent if transparency and accountability were a priority to us—and I think that this problem is compounded exponentially on Twitter because of it's open and accessible nature.

2.) I'm working on something that necessitates a level of secrecy that reminded me that, as much as it's helpful to engage and build audiences, an air of mystery, hope, and movie-magic hold value in their own way(s). It's hard for me to remember a time before I paid attention to the studios, production companies, distribution companies, etc. attached to different movies—I remember being about 13 years old and telling my mother that I wanted to work for Viacom because of their media holdings at the time—but since that time, I appreciate movies in a different way and yes, I believe some of the magic has been lost as a result. I'm not saying that people should be more hush-hush about their projects, their films, their businesses, etc.—I just think people should be thinking a little bit more clearly about what, when and, most importantly why—they chose to share. I'm big about putting my money where my mouth is—so rather than re-hash the same things over and over and over and looking for new people to listen, I've tried to keep my mouth shut on industry issues unless I have something actually worth saying.

3.) I'm just plain busy. I said at the beginning of this post that I was going to disclose as much as I could and I stand by that: 4 months ago (August) I moved back from California to New York and about a month ago (early November) my long term girlfriend (still in California) and I broke up. The resulting fallout included a re-assessment of where I was in my life and career and where I was going. Based on this assessment I decided to move (to Queens—it's more quiet and less distracting than the East Village, my old hood) and to open my doors to taking on projects in development and helping to usher them through development, production, post production and post-completion (i.e. film fests, markets, distribution/sales and, in the right circumstances, a DIY/DIWO release) rather than finished films—the idea being that my skill set would be more helpful to projects at earlier stages. I've been quietly discussing a couple of projects with past clients as well as filmmakers whose past work I admire but this is pretty much as close to an “announcement” as I'm going to get – While I'll continue to seek and work on finished films that would benefit from my consulting and representation services, this has been pulled back to only make up roughly half of my time/energy since I'm getting into producing. Reading scripts, meeting with other producers and filmmakers and pulling together pitch packages for investors is time-consuming work and, between my recent move and other life changes and my increased work schedule, Twitter has fallen by the wayside. The above reasons (1 & 2) are the reason why Twitter hasn't been a priority as I've taken on more work.

So—I realize this was a bit of an awkward, strangely personal post but, at the same time, I'd hate missing a chance to explain myself, particularly since I really do believe that Twitter and other social networks can be powerful tools in business (and life) that shouldn't be ignored....but then again...it's OK to neglect them sometimes, too.

YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG! A friendly rant about E&O Insurance

2010-09-07T10:26:00.000-07:00

So I recently took a pseudo break from Twitter and Blogspot and had planned to write a post mostly dedicated to the cost vs. value of social media....but Brian Newman beat me to it.

Instead, I decided to keep things short and sweet and focus on something else that's been nipping at my thoughts recently.

While all the talk of alternative distribution strategies, unique and resource-cheap marketing efforts, grassroots campaigns sprinkled with the help of influencers, etc. is all well and good, none of the aforementioned means a damn thing if you can't really, legitimately, get your film in the can.

I know it's a saying that's been beaten to death (yes, even before social media*) but there's more than a modicum of truth in suggesting to a filmmaker that the film only really starts being made when the last shot is finished. While others have focused on finding distribution, festival strategy, etc., I'd like to point out something that's been frustratingly absent from filmmakers and producer's I've spoken to in recent months: deliverables.

You need to get your goddamn ducks in a row if you want your film distributed to theaters and/or home video retailers and/or cable & VOD operators and/or digital retailers and subscription services.

There were three “/” symbols in that last sentence. THAT is how important this is.

Given that, I've decided to focus on an issue that too many filmmakers ignore until it's far too late to do anything about (or expensive enough to deal with late that any one of these issues can make some or all of your distribution agreements financially unfeasible).

E & O Insurance. The top of my forehead-slapping list of shit I wish a potential client didn't say is: “What's that?” when I ask if they've got their E & O squared away. A few of my current clients might even be thinking I wrote this about them—nope. That's just how often I hear something along those lines.

Errors and Omissions Insurance (or E&O for short) is, in layman's terms, insurance for screwing up. As it pertains to motion pictures, an example might be that you tried to get all your music cleared for your film—and think you did. It turns out, though, that one of the songs was based off of another song by another artist and the ownership of the new song isn't terribly clear—so the musician behind the original work wants to sue your pants off. If you've got E&O insurance, you've got a financial powerhouse in your corner helping you with your legal defense. If you don't have E&O, prepare to lose those pants (and maybe everything else you own).

I know there are people out there thinking that they do everything very, very thoroughly and they don't need E&O. While it's all well and great that you and your ego are infallible, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that few film distributors—regardless of whether they operate in one right (i.e. a DVD distrib) or cover all-rights—are willing to sign films without an E&O policy in place. Most distributors have contracts that double up protection – in the form of an indemnity clause (which basically says if we get sued for anything having to do with your film, it's your responsibility) and a clause require E&O, more frequently with protection including and up to $3 million. While it's sometimes feasible to quell the paranoia of a small-ish distributor and bank on them accepting the indemnity clause as their only protection from litigation, it's not even worth trying with a larger distributor who, like that ex-girlfriend you're not quite over yet, is likely to be overly paranoid but appropriately litigious.

Now I referred to “deliverables” in the beginning of this post but spent the bulk of it thusfar on E&O insurance. E&O is a bit strange in that it's not a proper deliverable in that it's something that can—and should—be done during pre-production or production. While I could digress and get into the psychological reasons for why this is appropriate, I'd just as well leave that to someone else and point out the more obvious—it's usually more expensive if you sign onto an E&O policy after your film is made and, perhaps more common, it's a big expense (usually in excess of $5,000) that you don't count on having so late in the game – so it has a nasty habit of bringing distribution negotiations on small films to a screeching halt when someone at the distro company's illusions of you as an actual, real-life filmmaking professional are shattered upon learning that you didn't ~~wear~~ secure protection.

DVD Disaster, made to order

2010-05-19T10:53:00.000-07:00

Filmmakers: for the love of god, use extreme caution when considering DIY DVD distribution platforms like Createspace, Indieflix, FreshMintVideo***, et al.

The pitch for Createspace and other made-to-order DVD platforms is tempting: "cut out the middleman, take control of the distribution of your movie, start making money off your film TODAY!"

Granted, this method of distribution is most definitely appropriate for some filmmakers; I have, indeed, spoken to a filmmaker-at-large (and prolific Tweeter) who has had a lot of success with Createspace and eagerly recommends it to other creatives. While I appreciate his point of view and laud his success, I disagree with him in that I consider Createspace to do far more harm than good for MOST filmmakers. Ultimately, I think DIY DVD options are only potentially successful for a small slice of all filmmakers; but yes, I will concede that some filmmakers will find this particular rant of no use to them, as they have--or will--find out that made-to-order single pressing DVDs are the best route for them to physically distribute their film(s).

This is particularly true if you have a hyper-niche film that you can sell at events like trade-shows: i.e. if you've got a "babes with guns" movie, a torture-porn horror film, a new-age health documentary, etc. and you can stomach the high cost-per-disc fees that CreateSpace and others charge then, by all means, you should seriously consider it. Hyper-niche films don't have to be particularly good (not that being hyper-niche precludes a film from being good) since they have a built-in audience which will buy the films so long as they can PHYSICALLY bring them in front of the films themselves—which is why trade shows, conventions, retreats and other gatherings of specific interests are such great venues for these films—and low-cost small-run replication ala Createspace can be lucrative for filmmakers with such titles.

That said....

Baring a few very select examples, Createspace, or any other made-to-order DVD service is a terrible alternative (to almost anything) for any film that would fall into broader categories—art house drama, indie horror, indie rom-coms, and just about any other "wide" audience genre. Why?

-It kills your chances at future retail: If you're film has previously been available through Createspace or, really, any other DIY platform that distributes physical copies of the film, you will never, ever, ever find it in brick-and-mortar retail stores like Best Buy, Target, Wal-Mart, etc. or even specialty retailers like Barnes & Noble and any others that may start to carry films soon (O'scope has brilliantly partnered up with Urban Outfitters in a strategic partnership) regardless of the critical acclaim or buzz you might garner for the film.

-There's a quality issue: There's a reason services like Indieflix, Createspace, FreshMintVideo***, etc. have such a low-cost barrier to entry—the quality of the mastering and duplicating process isn't nearly as high as that of "true" DVD and the result is relatively high failure rates (discs that don't work) as well as incompatibility with some players, flaws in the copying process— the DVDs aren't mastered in a clean room—and other headaches. Most importantly though...they're not considered "retail" quality--which means in most cases you can pretty much forget selling through physical stores or services like Netflix. Remember when you're parents told you "If it's too good to be true, it is?" Yeah....

-Bonus features? You bet...kind of. MOST of these services offer "standard" bonus features like bonus footage. That's all well and good if you've got a really really unique film with a die-hard audience, a hyper-niche film like I mentioned above. If not--"standard" features will do little to impress consumers who are more and more used to getting serious value out of their content (like director's commentary, cast commentary, mini-games, high-res art, etc. on their DVDs) purchases—and demanding it.

-It helps foster the illusion that people will actually want to buy your film. Yes, most films require marketing of some kind—even good ones—if only to jump-start their organic growth. The truth is, though, that many (good) distribution companies offer their real value in distribution strategy and smart, effective marketing by way of understanding the likely audience for your film —and that's why they're able to profit off of it. A DVD distributor that invests thousands of dollars in getting your DVD properly mastered will have the financial incentive to market and promote your film--and they have knowledge and resources at their disposal that you don't. It's worth noting, though, that you have knowledge and resources at your disposal that THEY don't--so while I would be remiss if I suggested that getting a home video distributor involved would mean you can just sit back and collect checks, I can say, whole-heartedly, that with any service not involved in the sharing of your revenue--there's no "skin in the game" and, thusly, no need to advocate on your film's behalf in a very, very, very crowded market place. Point of note--thousands and thousands of Amazon's Createspace DVDs have sold under 5 copies in the totality of their availability.

If you don't know the audience for your film well enough, don't know how to market your film, and don't have a built-in audience...then you don't stand a chance. And even if you do, some filmmakers don't have the resources to effectively market their film. In that case, having your film available through made-to-order DVD services is about as helpful to your distribution efforts as giving a flashlight to a blind person is to helping them see.

-Lastly—If you ARE in the position where it's advantageous to sell DVDs directly to customers...if you DO know your audience, have no plans of going to established national retailers and rental chains (or already have negotiated those deals and carved out the rights for you to go direct) and know where and how your audience consumes media and are in the position to sell directly to them at events, screenings, etc....

...then you should just get your DVDs replicated in bigger numbers (at a much, much lower cost-per-disc) rather than the one-offs offered by DVD made-to-order services. Period.

A lot of filmmakers know all of the above—which is why very few films that aren't bottom-of-the-barrel bad—or very, very niche—are available through services like CreateSpace, FreshMintVideo***.

Surely, though, digital distribution is much different—in the end it's the same files going to iTunes, Amazon Streaming, Netflix, etc. and by that virtue, I'm totally safe going the DIY route with digital distribution, right?

Not so fast....

(Post coming soon where we look at DIY digital distribution solutions)

***Brian Newman suggested that I be careful not to lump FreshMintVideo in with these other services, as their business model reflects that their DVD replication services are suited for filmmakers making personal copies for varied use (potentially sending out to festivals, reviewers, etc. I imagine).

Sidenote: upon editing this post, I discovered that a Googling of "hyper niche film" reveals an Amazon Createspace for filmmakers page as the first link. I did not know this until well after writing the above...

YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG! A friendly rant about digital film distribution and you.

2010-05-03T15:02:00.000-07:00

Digital distribution, what some consider to be the saving grace for film distribution, requires strategy.

What digital distribution should not mean: putting your movie for everyone to see on the internets.

It's more complicated than that. In fact, it's more complicated than getting it up on iTunes, Netflix Streaming, Amazon Streaming, a proprietary streaming widget on your own website, or arranging Youtube Rentals.

I can already hear the cynics reading this tapping away at their keyboards getting ready to hit me up on Twitter with something along the lines of “well what should digital distribution for my film be, genius?”

The answer: I don't know. It's your goddamn film.

The fact is, there should be a strategy to your digital release, just as there would be for a theatrical or home video release. To that end, let me throw some not-fun-to hear information at your face.

The cost outlay for digital distribution is fairly minor. For a distribution company with a digital output deal to an aggregator, it's negligible or, in many cases, nothing at all. For a single filmmaker it can run as high as a $1500+. It is, perhaps, because digital distribution is “easy” and “cheap” that filmmakers and distributors alike see it as a virtually costless value-add and, as such, requiring very little thinking, planning and, lastly, that terrible s-word: strategy.

This couldn't be further from the truth. While distributors and DIY/DIWO distributed filmmakers alike have found, time and time again, that there's no cross-platform cannibalization of content consumption (i.e. having your film on day-and-date on VOD probably won't fuck up your theatrical returns, having digital available day-and-date with DVD retail probably won't fuck up your DVD release) what we have seen, time and time again, is that there IS inter-platform cannibalization. And yet few filmmakers and minor distributors are acting accordingly.

If you were an indie distributor or self-distributed filmmaker arranging a roll-out to a small market (say Princeton, NJ perhaps?) would you book your film at the same time at two different art-house theaters less than 5 miles from each other? Probably not save for a few exceptional circumstances. Why? Well—the theatrical experience is unique--so while people willing to sit at home and watch your film on Cable VOD might stay home, those who can't help but love the theatrical experience will flock to a theater—but if you fractionalize that relatively small audience of theater go-ers, both of the independent theaters you've booked will have worse numbers than if you had booked either one of them. The result? They don't hold-over your film and it ends it's run far earlier at either theater than you had hoped. Potential audiences--who are just now getting word of your great indie--now have no theater to watch it in. They forget they ever heard about your movie or, worse yet, pirate it. The theater owners are out the unrealized income from booking a different film, you've lost potential ticket sales and would-be fans forgot who you are. Congratulations, everyone does worse because of your lack of strategy. FAIL.

The consequences might be different but fractionalizing your digital audience has much the same result—lost revenue and a nice hot steaming side dish of FAIL.

But how can this be? It doesn't cost nearly anything to release a movie digitally, and I can maintain it in perpetuity? How could I possibly fail? Crunch some numbers and it's easy to see how:

So you have a small theatrical release. You 4-wall a couple screens and promote the hell out of your movie and, for all your hard work, you get a $50k theatrical take and some publicity for your film. Unless you've executed the theatrical brilliantly, you've probably broken even or lost a bit of money. If you've turned a profit, congratulate yourself for doing something difficult (but not impossible) and move on. And don't use the experience of releasing your one film to bilk other filmmakers out of thousands of dollars with shitty topical advice because that would make you a douche-bag.

So you've had a small but successful theatrical release and you're ready to start making money from ancillary sales. Here's where the fun begins, right? I can sell my film off to a home video distributor and they'll take care of everything.

Wrong. They'll take care of themselves, and then you'll reap a little benefit.

Why? Here's how it goes:

Let's say that your film was successful enough that the home video distributor wants to glass-master a disc so that they can go to brick-and-mortar retail. It costs thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars to do this. Even if they don't, there's still pricey marketing costs, advertising costs (to run ads in industry trades) and over-head costs that they incur by just by existing during the time they're distributing your film to the home video market.

They've spent a lot of money and they want a lot back. While DVD sales may cover this, the DVD retail market is sinking like a stone and, as a result, distributors want to hedge their bets by holding on to digital rights. Well that's all well and good except that the list of distributors that can distribute directly to digital retailers is a very, very short list—so instead most will sub-license out these agreements and the end result will be a total of three middle-men between retail and your royalty take. And since distributors want to hedge their bets from an expensive outlay platform (DVD) with a cheap-cost outlay platform (digital) their take is going to be pretty big—despite them having to sub-license out these rights.

The result? Expect somewhere in the vicinity of 15-20 CENTS per dollar of income at the retail level. Here's where you slap your forehead and think to yourself “how dare they?!” and then I promptly tell you to get your hand off of your face because you look stupid—plus there's more bad news to come.

Surely if you're only getting 15%-20% of your digital retail price it's worth it. SOMEONE must be actively marketing the film, right? SOMEONE must be taking on significant costs to justify such a huge take. Not so much.

Few digital aggregators actively market and promote their films. And the distribution company maintaining your rights likely doesn't have the knowledge or capabilities to actively and properly market the film to digital audiences.

And it still gets worse because...

...few digital aggregators have their encoding and delivery in house. So they pass along these expenses to the rights-holders (the distro companies that took your rights) and in addition to that small percentage, the first say, $800 (a rough average between the $0 and $1500 various aggregators expense their rights holders) is given directly to the aggregator to cover encoding and delivery.

The final kick in the groin comes from the aforementioned lack of strategy. The Pièce de résistance of this crap-tastic meal is that most distributors will want to take the currently (relatively) small digital revenues and blast out to every retail outlet in an effort to get as much cash as possible as quickly as possible. Why? Well—why incur additional costs by spending time and resources planning and marketing to a market that's relatively small when you can take cash up front and move on to distributing another film? How does this manifest itself?

Well...

Take that $50k theatrical run you had. You drummed up a lot of interest in the film and on hearing about the DVD release, a lot of people put your title in their Netflix queues. Meanwhile, your nefarious home-video distributor (I'm not really trying to demonize distributors here but given the rest of the post, I might as well keep going with the same theme) calls up Netflix to negotiate a digital rights deal. Why? Because Netflix is easy to deal with and pays a pretty fat lump sum based on prior interest in the movie. So Netflix offers to cut the distributor a check—let's call it $5k—and and the distributor happily accepts, then proceeds to cash the check and spend your royalties on blow and hookers. OK, that last bit isn't true but they'll take the check and add it to the books. You'll get a small cut as per your deal.

Meanwhile, the distributor distributes to paid digital retail markets (iTunes, Amazon Streaming) through the digital aggregator--but far fewer people care since it's already available on Netflix, which has an already huge and quickly growing subscriber base (whom, I might add, are watching more and more content digitally). The result is another $1k in digital retail sales. The total that the distributor receives is maybe $6k and of that you get $1k.

This sucks for a bunch of reasons.

1.) You (or your sales agent, producer's rep, distribution producer, consultant, whomever) could have gone directly to Netflix. They have a history of dealing directly with filmmaking teams and frankly, I'd trust them with my first born.

2.) Even if your DVD contract required that they maintain digital rights, the distributor is taking a huge cut without adding any value. They're not marketing your film to audiences in the digital realm and they're not outlaying any large expenses. You are, in essence, giving them money for nothing. Or, if you believe the fallacy that these companies need this income to cover their own asses due to downward trend in DVD revenue, then you're in effect giving them a bonus for not doing their jobs correctly. If they can't turn a profit distributing your DVD, they shouldn't be distributing your DVD. Period.

3.) Even though they're exploiting your digital rights, they're not planning accordingly and are losing you (and themselves) money. In the above example, I outlined one way it COULD go. The other way would be that they go exclusive to a digital retail store (and make it an iTunes exclusive or an Amazon Streaming exclusive) or even keep it exclusive to all transactable digital retail. They turn Netflix down (or never contact them in the first place) and allow your film to perform organically, sale-by-sale, instead of blasting it out to a wide audience with overall streaming deal. In the above example the second scenario ends up making $10k in digital retail sales and, after say, a year still gets sold to Netflix Streaming for $500 (it's worth a lot less now that it's been exploited and has been out for a while). The end result is total digital sales of $10.5k rather than $6k.

Why do many distributors do the former, though? They're a goddamn company—they have different wants and needs than you do. They have over-head. They have other films to distribute. They have fixed, recurring costs. In short, it's more financially beneficial to them to take a $6k check now rather than slow-play a release over the course of a year and bank $10.5k—because during that year they have to pay salaries, pay for office space, etc. so it makes sense to make a quick money grab.

Before anyone starts ranting and raving about other option, please note that I will be covering single-pay digital distribution models as well as proprietary digital distribution and streaming in the near future.

So that's my long-ass digital distribution spiel. There's a lot more to it than the above but I only have limited time and attention spans. There's also consideration for each individual film and, frankly, some films ARE going to perform better by blasting it out to every digital space at the same time—which is why any ass-hat that sells their new models of film distribution and marketing is doing a major disservice to filmmakers who fail to realize that every film is different and that no expert's distribution or marketing efforts distilled into a book or speaking engagement are worth the paper they're printed on and stinky breath wasted on them, respectively. But that's a whoooole nother conversation.

And with that, I'm going home to watch Herbie Goes to Cancun on Netflix.

Bullish: Netflix is ready for rounds 3, 4, and beyond

2010-04-23T14:37:00.000-07:00

Netflix's first challenge was navigating the difficult waters of organically building a start-up. The Los Gatos based company was started as a small operation and managed to take on established brick-and-mortar rental houses like Blockbuster and Hollywood Video (now both virtually dead in the water) to establish itself as a player in the rental game. Their begins were so humble that rather than dealing with distributors and studios directly, their initial model began with a small-scale rental service making use of the first-sale doctrine and buying discs at retail—a huge risk.

Needless to say, they dodged these barriers swimmingly and even came out of their first major growth spurt with an in-house traditional distribution arm, Red Envelope, which helped usher landmark indies like “The Puffy Chair” to audiences under the direction of Liesl Copeland, now at William Morris Endeavor’s Global Finance & Distribution Group.

Though Red Envelope shuttered after 2+ years and failed to make the impact toppers at Netflix likely hoped for, the big N quickly moved on to it's current bread-and-butter: streaming. With help from Roku, Microsoft and eventually Nintendo, Sony and the television hardware industry, Netflix quickly grew the value-add feature which was a companion to their mail-rental DVD service to the spotlight, most recently finding that a majority of their subscribers have streamed content.

Now that streaming is available through many (if not most) home-entertainment devices ranging from computers to televisions to Blu-ray players to video-game consoles, analysts are worried that Netflix stock prices had no where to go but down—suggesting that the share values are inflated since their continued growth has (extremely) limited potential.

What fools.

Though the competition may have already had it's swan song, Netflix still has plenty of room to grow.

Round 3:

It's obvious but I'm going to say it anyway: Mobile. Yes, the “M” word rears it's ugly head as we collectively realize the enormous (relatively - Obv. I know Netflix is available on the iPad) untapped potential of a mobile market for streaming content. Granted, the infrastructure isn't there yet—but it will be. And when our phones and carriers are capable of streaming full-length content, Netflix will be right there making money off of it. Whether they figure out some pay-per mobile stream system or an extended subscription fee is up to them, but make no mistake that streaming to smart phones is coming and Netflix will be there with our beloved TV shows and feature length films—despite David Lynch's wishes.
Round 4:

Analytics. It's a magical word that is too often wedged in with a bunch of other useless words during some marketing pitch when, in reality, all we're really talking about is elegant organization of data. It doesn't take much day-dreaming for one to realize that the immense possibilities are behind Netflix organizing the data they collect—times, locations, numbers of streams for each bit of content. What's even more promising, though, is that Netflix already pours a great deal of money into improving their suggestion algorithms and finding unique and dynamic ways to categorize their content. I once applied for a job there as a manager of “micro-tagging.” Despite not landing the position (obviously) I couldn't help but take away something of value by seeing the requirements in the job posting—I took away the knowledge that Netflix is as about ahead of the curve as a company can be. Their growth, it seems, has done nothing to make the digital-delivery giant any less agile.

Imagine for a moment if you could log into an analytics account and see what movies were hot in your neighborhood in that very moment? Well, that's only of limited interest and, really, only to a limited number of people. But what if you could tell what genre was hot in your neighborhood? Too broad? What if you could find out that a certain area of the country was collectively watching down-ending post-apocalyptic sci-fi? Features focusing on a strong female who bucks at convention? Documentaries on health policy and advances in medicine and nutrition?

How much can we learn about a group of people by figure out what kind of entertainment they're taking in? A lot. And how specific can this information get? Very. Though I'm not suggesting that Netflix has any plans to do so, the capability exists for location-based data to be broken-down and heat-mapped by zip-code and, given their comprehensive content tagging efforts and increasing number of streams, one can see very quickly how, in theory, Netflix can provide extremely specific, comprehensive data on all of their users (all anonymously, natch) that could be enormous value to everyone from the obvious—say, film distributors looking which markets to target for the marketing of their next release—to the less obvious: the retail industry (camping and pre-packaged food companies could market heavily to areas whose taste bend to zombie and apocalypse movies) to political campaigns (I'm sure it wouldn't be too difficult to tag documentaries as “red-leaning” or “blue-leaning” and everything in between. The possibilities are endless, hopeful, and, granted, a bit frightening.

But I don't fear Netflix (at least not any more than I do our benevolent overlords over at Google) because I haven't yet--and don't expect to--see Netflix doing anything that would go against the wishes of their loyal subscribers. What I do fear is passing up the opportunity to invest in a company that brings people joy, continues to look far ahead of trends in content distribution and as corny (and, perhaps, weird) as this sounds, does some real good in the world.

Social Media Myopia OR Your movie should stay on the shelf

2010-04-16T13:09:00.000-07:00

I recently took a break from Twitter. Not a long break, and not that thorough – I still looked over incoming Tweets once or twice a day and occasionally responded – but enough of a break to try and get perspective over how much I really value Twitter, and how much it really values me. Though the latter is elusive, I feel like I clinched and qualified the former over the course of the last week.

But that's not what this post is about. It is, in fact, about a realization that came as a result of this little “backing off.” And that's this—there is a reckless, and, dare I say, dangerous, form of social networking myopia sweeping the arts industries at large—not just film. Given that film is my realm of expertise, though, that's where I'll be focusing.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that my little experiment was birthed from a bout of frustration. In short, I noticed that two of my clients, one a (critically) successful independent filmmaker, the other a (financially) successful film distributor, each had a problem. Their respective problems appeared, at least at first, to be steeped in the same inexorable issue:

Independent film is a terrible business.

I could go into theories about the why and how this is true, but I can't imagine that would be terribly helpful. And frankly, as to the “how,” I could simply point to someone who explains this better than myself, Brian Newman, or simply ask filmmakers and industry people to examine their entire Rolodex and count the number of filmmakers they know who make their living from filmmaking—not professorship, not curation, not consulting, founding a distribution company or doing commercial work—but actual filmmaking. From what I've gathered over the past several years working alongside filmmakers and distributors alike, is that this number is exceedingly small.

Most independent filmmakers who have found success through DIY releases are in the same boat as most independent filmmakers who have found success via selling their films off to distributors; both tend to take other work—ranging from teaching to speaking to commercial work and even entrepreneurship in film-industry related capacities.

Independent film is subsidized by tangentially related industries. In short: it cannot support itself.

This was never really a mystery to me. My very job at a (financially responsible and ethical) film distribution company lead me to start following the bread crumbs to finally ask the head of distribution: “If my math is right, there's almost no way that these filmmakers can actually pay back their production budget and take home a profit large enough for their share to cover their living expenses over the time it takes before, during, and after the making of their film(s)--so how do these filmmakers actually pay rent and buy groceries and stuff?”

I'm sure I got the same reaction then that I'd get out of most people working in any part of film distribution: A shrug. Granted, this shrug was usually followed with some vague answers about other streams of income – speaking engagements, professorships, for-hire commercial work, etc. But it almost always starts with a shrug.

There are exceptions. There are run-away successes that make enough money to cover all of the expenses tied to both producing the film as well as distributing it which, regardless of how you do it, is going to cost money and time (which is it's own form of currency but, for the sake of argument, we can simply consider money in its own right).

The fact that these are exceptions rather than case-studies for a business plan seems to be lost on most filmmakers. I don't blame Twitter specifically, but I do think it's a pointed example of a run-away phenomenon where filmmakers point to exceptions and use them as examples when, in fact, exceptions make terrible examples if only because there success is not just unique, but by the very virtue of it's uniqueness, contingent on factors that either cannot be repeated or are outside of anyone's control. I hate to be a buzz-kill, but all of us holding-hands, singing Cumbia and talking about the democratization of media distribution and taking the power back and (fill in some hippie-esque semi-philosophical tripe about cutting out big business here) isn't worth the electronic space it takes up if it can't be replicated. Maybe that's what this is all working towards—albeit with an inefficiency that groups only egocentric creatives can—but maybe not. Maybe we're just treading water and applauding people for trying regardless of the outcome. And that's OK—as long as we recognize it for what it is.

Whether it's market conditions, the quality of the film itself (which, granted, is arguably in some peoples' control—but this is a non-issue since filmmakers can't replicate the quality of other filmmakers' projects) or some other X-factor (mass-media support, or the seal of approval from major tastemaker like Oprah, perhaps?) an exception, a success in a market full of failures, should never be an example of what you intend to do with your project. Trying to replicate such success is akin to trying to create one snowflake that looks like another. They're all unique, so it's a fools errand. And this all feels obvious – so why aren't more people talking about it?

This is where I think social networking myopia rears its ugly head. Well, at least, as it's a tool that helps foster a pair of cognitive biases: survivorship bias and availability cascade in film-industry discussion.

Wikipedia defines survivor ship bias as: “...the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that "survived" some process and ignoring those that didn't.”

Can you guess what the process is? Film distribution. Most films never turn a profit. That is easily just as true of DIY releases as it is from films sold of to distributors. Anecdotal evidence would suggest it's far more accurate to say of DIY releases. When filmmakers, marketeers, single-platform distributors, film journalists and everyone else involved in the conversation ignore this, we are, as a group, creating a fallacious narrative of the DIY/Digital revolution and, really, eliminating any chance of a worthwhile discussion of the changing specialty film market.

I recently spoke to a group of filmmakers in the Bay Area about the current market conditions in independent film. They seemed fairly upset when I was at the halfway point of my lecture during a break they asked, in earnest, who WAS making a profit in independent film. The truth cuts across genres, platforms, distribution models and even film quality. The answer? A very small minority of any and all entities trying to make a profit in independent film. Distributors, filmmakers, promoters, film festivals and so on and so forth—a vast majority of all either find themselves going bust or seeking supplemental funds to stay afloat.

Of the larger film specialty/indie distribution companies, many don't stick around for terribly long. Off the top of my head: Thinkfilm, New Line, Paramount Vantage, New Yorker Films, Picturehouse & Warner Independent have all recently faltered. Many small distributors are supported by their principals taking side gigs in consultancy, professorship, or, in a couple cases I've seen (with more sure to pop-up in coming years) the distribution company itself is a side-gig. Film fests go belly up all the time—many that don't are supported by donations as per their non-profit status. Some enterprising individuals (ahem) have even made a job out of helping filmmakers and distributors figure this whole mess out. Some are knowledgeable and effective, others are expensive dilettantes who have a limited, superficial knowledge of the industry at best (I won't call them out publicly, but if you're reading this, feel free to contact me for a short list of exploitive low-lifes). As for filmmakers? Well it's no secret that most of them aren't filmmaking as their primary source of income.

Wikipedia (yes, I love Wikipedia—and you should too, it's awesome) defines an “availability cascade” as: “a self-reinforcing cycle that explains the development of certain kinds of collective belief. A novel idea or insight, usually one that seems to explain a complex process in a simple or straightforward manner, gains rapid currency in the popular discourse by its very simplicity and by its apparent insightfulness. Its rising popularity triggers a chain reaction within the social network: Individuals adopt the new insight because other people within the network have adopted it, and on its face it seems plausible.”

Sound familiar? I'm not saying Peter Broderick was wrong that things are changing in independent film—far from it, in fact--but I am suggesting that the DIY/New Distribution movement that it would spawn was based on notions that were illusory—the primary notion that it's in the best interest of the filmmaker eschew well-worn models of distribution through established “all-rights” distribution companies. In short--somehow, this message got hijacked and twisted to mean something it wasn't.

I wouldn't make such an audacious (or at least seemingly audacious) claim without examining some of my reasoning. Without assuming anything, then, let's examine some of the fundamental issues surrounding DIY/DIWO distribution models:

1.Distributing a film costs money – though this is likely “implied” in any meaningful discussion regarding new distribution models, it's rarely explicitly covered. The simple fact is regardless of how you intend to release your film, someone has to pay. DIY has some great advantages--but if someone else isn't controlling the rights, they likely aren't paying for it to be released.

If you're taking your film on a screening tour, expect to pay some kind of shipping fees for your deliverables—even if they're HDV tapes, Betas, HDCam or DVDs, it's still a cost worth mentioning because these charges add up. Beyond that, you can expect some travel will be involved if you plan on touring with the film or even at select dates, which has become an increasingly popular practice. Although it may be fun to do post-screening Q&A's and interact with the audience of your film, it's still a cost. Beyond that? Merchandise, encoding fees, deliverables, mastering fees, etc. all put you deeper and deeper into the hole.

Want to have your film available on a retail-ready (better than Amazon Create Space's replication quality) DVDs? Expect to shell out thousands—if not tens of thousands—of dollars glass-mastering the discs. Want to circumvent digital aggregators and sell direct to digital retail? You can expect to drop around $1,000-$1,500 on encoding and delivery to digital retail outlets; since there's no buying prefered placement in the digital retail space, expect to do your own marketing--lots and lots of it--if you want to sell digital copies. Planning on hiring a consultant (ahem) or someone to take care of your marketing? That can get pretty expensive in its own right—and if they're not effective and/or knowledgable it can be a massive waste of money.

Only after incurring massive costs (and taking massive losses) do some filmmakers understand why many niche and independent distribution companies aren't often able to provide advances these days – believe me when I tell you that, for the most part, film distribution is a REALLY tough industry with razor-thin margins.

2. Releasing a film might not be in your best interest as a filmmaker – One of the most difficult things I've ever had to tell a filmmaker was that it was not in her best interest to release a film. It simply wasn't up to snuff—which is more and more the case in a bloated market. Beyond the financial loss of releasing a sub-par film is the very real (though not easily quantifiable) career cost. We're in the Internet age, and if social-networking horror stories have taught us anything, it's that what happens on the internet STAYS on the internet – and a bad film can hurt everyone involved by haunting them for the rest of their careers.

The biggest threat of both of the above is another cognative biase--Post-purchase rationalization. It basically says that, all things equal, many people make emotional (read: often poor) decisions once they're already deeply invested in something. Think of it like this – if you spent tens, or hundreds of thousands of dollars making a feature, wouldn't you feel like you NEEDED to distribute it hell or high water? That's one of the nefarious bits about filmmaking—it has a way of eating up your resources like a bad drug habit. And, like the various enablers we see on “Intervention” the filmmaking community is partially at fault – start-up film festivals that accept bad movies, marketeers, DIY distribution professionals, other optimistic and hopeful filmmakers—all help shape the false notion that, just because a film has been completed, it should be distributed. Sometimes, I'm afraid, we lose sight of why.

*If you happen to be a psychologist or finance professional, please bare in mind that the above cognitive biases have been used to spark discussion. I realize that one might find the above to be obtuse examples of said biases. Please bare in mind their purpose is to illustrate a concept intended to create discussion, and, as such, not really worth subjecting to minute scrutiny. Also, get back to your work in psychology or finance and stop reading a media-distribution blog.

In defense of middlemen (kind of)

2010-03-26T12:59:00.000-07:00

I get the DIY movement. When I say I “get” it, what I really mean is that I understand the need for it. I worked in traditional film distribution companies prior to starting my own outfit and now that I'm under my own banner I work with distributors of all shapes and sizes in various capacities.

I've seen first hand why many independent filmmakers believe that “traditional” film distribution companies are at best bloated and inefficient and at worst, wholly ineffective and unethical—though the latter tends to be rare. Regardless of your position in the film industry—whether your a filmmaker or film distro professional of some kind—you can probably point to at least one company you know of that fits this profile. I'm not saying that this is true of traditional film distributors, mind you, but I understand that many distributors have taken on films that for one reason or another they probably shouldn't have and the filmmakers suffer greatly in these situations.

So given that, I can completely understand the aims of the DIY movement and, ultimately, the backlash against an industry that many see as in the final steps of a wending path leading to obsoleteness. The knee-jerk reaction to “cut out the middle-man” though, is misguided—at least in part.

I'll mention once again, for transparencies sake, that one of my clients is a digital distributor for whom I consult on acquisitions—so feel free to keep that in mind. But this isn't about them and, despite the growth of digital distribution, what I'm driving at concerns all facets—film festivals all the way down to non-transactable platforms like Hulu—of distribution.

Why the criticism of DIY? Well...I'm not criticizing DIY film distribution. I'm criticizing elements of it. I'm criticizing first and foremost the notion that just because a film is complete, it should be distributed.

I've seen films as a lowly screener for a large distribution company, a manager for a small theatrical distributor and, most recently, as acquisitions consultant for a huge distro company—but whenever I see films, I see them first and foremost as a cinephile—a fan of film. Growing up I spent more time with HBO and Cinemax than I did with my parents; I probably logged more hours in the Hamilton, NJ AMC Megaplex and in Princeton, NJ's own art-house theater, The Garden, than in my high school classrooms. And growing up, my allowance usually ended up in the pockets of Premier Video in Princeton or Four-Star Video in Lawrenceville where I rented whatever I couldn't find in theaters or premium TV.

What have I gleaned from watching 3500+ films as both a fan and film professional? Plenty of professionally distributed movies suck. MOST un-distributed movies are downright terrible—save for some at (great) film fests that are still on the festival circuit and being shopped around.

Does this say anything about films that aren't able—or aren't interested—in a distribution deal, traditional or otherwise? Not at all.

But it does speak to a larger issue: of all the proponents of DIY—particularly those focusing on marketing—none seem to raise the question or consider the ever important issues: is the film any good? Do people want to see it? Ultimately the single challenge facing the DIY film distribution movement—and the single greatest advantage that good indie distribution companies have over filmmakers who want to self-distribute content—is objectivity and curation. Simply put, a filmmaker can't see the forest through the trees. High-profile film festivals, trusted and quality indie film distributors and the like all serve an important function as gatekeepers. I'm by NO means suggesting that they don't make mistakes—by either promoting/curating/distributing films that are bad or NOT promoting/curating/distributing films that are good—but fest programmers and acquisitions people see tons and tons of movies—and usually they're better poised than laymen to find the cream (not necessarily quality of film—but definitely distributability of a film) in the very, very large crop. Perhaps more importantly, quality fests, distributors and the likes are trusted by exhibitors—theaters, DVD retailers, digital retail outlets—to bring in quality content.

Plenty of brilliant, beautiful, entertaining films will be self/DIY or hybrid/DIWO-distributed in the coming years—certainly plenty have in the past few—but I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that the least qualified to judge content are the content creators themselves. The same can be said about enterprising individuals who will market or sell your film for a fee—they're not exactly dis-interested parties.

The challenge I propose to filmmakers then, is to do something very difficult—before you hire a marketing specialist, before you print up 1,000 DVDs for your e-store, before you start a social media campaign—try to find out if your film sucks. If it does, you'll be doing your career—and your wallet—significant harm by distributing it yourself.

"Help me, help you"

2010-03-19T13:08:00.000-07:00

I wanted to write a SXSW-wrap post to reflect on my few days in Austin and what, if anything, I was able to glean about the future (and present) of independent film distribution.

But I try not to be “that guy” who beats the dead horse in an effort get my two cents of opinion out in public and, by proxy, draw attention to myself as an expert. So, to that end, this is the anti-SXSW-wrap post.

Instead, I'm going to keep this post brief and say only that a few experiences in the past few weeks—and yes, that includes some of the murmuring I heard at Southby—have enlightened me about an under-served issue in independent film (and music, writing, all art--really) distribution and monetization.

In the coming weeks, I'll be doggedly forging a (partial) solution to this issue that, although modest, will hopefully shed some light on some of the difficulties facing content/media monetization for independent artists.

To that end, the purpose of this post is to mark the start of my fact finding mission.

Filmmakers, Writers, Musicians, Trans-media Artists, etc.:

What are the biggest expenses you have associated with self-distributing or monetizing your art?

Is it getting a designer for your website? Paying for physical copies of your media? Promotional expenses? Travel?

Contact me (danny@delargefilms.com or Twitter.com/Costanoble) and let me know.

This isn't a joke and there's no ulterior motive here—I'm just looking for information in an effort to help address this problem in a real, tangible way. The better a problem is understood, the more likely it can be properly addressed.

We Live in Public – The madness and genius of living in public.

2010-03-02T13:18:00.000-08:00

Arin Crumley, the filmmaker – entrepreneur - indie-film-advocate best known for “Four Eyed Monsters” and the unique DIY distribution for FEM that later spawned the newly launched OpenIndie, lives in public—at least in part.

In fact, this very post is a result of my following Arin's twitter feed and responding to a solicitation for bloggers to write a post on the “We Live in Public” multi-city live-tweeted and web-capped premier event.

Get all that? Like most artist-entrepreneurs, Arin, WLIP filmmaker Ondi Timoner and the film's subject, internet-video pioneer Josh Harris live their lives at the speed of 140 characters per-minute. This trend, however, is merely the apex of a movement Josh saw developing over a decade ago—and that Ondi willingly helped incubate with her participation in Josh's maniacal experiment “Quiet,” a human “terrarium” that served as a host for voyeuristic mayhem. Depending on how you look at it, “Quiet” was either an utter failure or smashing success. In my mind, though, the culmination of the experiment—a police raid on the underground bunker (filled with oft naked, gun-totting artists and crazies) shouldn't be measured in failure or success but rather in just how seriously we should heed the potential societal pitfalls it revealed.

Josh's follow-up experiment, “We Live in Public,” which shares the titular title with Ondi's feature documentary on Josh, made living in public much more personal. Josh cut away the door locks, took away the guns, the funky bunker, and all the artists. All that was left from “Quiet” was continually broadcasting cameras that magnified Josh and then-girlfriend Tanya Corrin's relationship to a level unknown by even the most celebrity of celebrity couples. The end result, a seemingly happy courtship de-railed by catastrophic and wholly public arguments, drove Harris to leave his house (after being voted-out, Big Brother style, by their web audience) and stay in a hotel. And then disappear, completely falling off of the face of the earth (for a while).

Now Ondi's documentary, a pitch-perfect examination of a man who was so far ahead of the curve it very nearly drove him to insanity, has come full circle. Last night the film premiered in 5 cities, with audience members tweeting full-time with commentary using #WLIP as a rally-cry before the post-film interview—a line-up of publicly-pulled questions answered by Ondi and Josh while the pair were holed-up in some sort of webcam-broadcasted pod. In addition to the candid (and not *always* laudatory) commentary from audience members, the film is notable for hitting VOD, digital and physical (DVD) distribution platforms simultaneously. Although this is by no means a first, it's certainly no (yet) the norm for a high-profile picture and Sundance award-winning film. Last night's premier also helps mark the beta launch of OpenIndie, a project that, through the help of internet transparency, allows filmmakers to take a quantifiable measure as to the interest in their films in an effort to prove to exhibitors that certain films, despite a lack of distribution deals and festival accolades, might be worth booking for local fans.

It's not without irony, then, that I can't help but notice that Arin's project, OpenIndie, gives sometimes cynical film-distribution professionals (me) a glimmer of hope that the so-called democratized revolution of film distribution may actually take shape—at least in part—in a way that benefits both filmmakers and audience members alike. This is in strong juxtaposition to my feelings on “We Live in Public” which as brilliant as it was, I considered to be a truly depressing—perhaps even horrifying—film. Upon screening WLIP at last year's SXSW I was the first person to run out of the ACC theater as the credits began to roll. Why? My knee-jerk reaction to seeing the film was to take myself off of Facebook, my then newly-minted Twitter account, and to abolish any ideas I had about blogging for either professional or personal reasons.

When I got back to my hotel room, though, I logged into my Facebook account and found that an old friend I haven't seen since childhood—and who seemed to be headed down a very troubled path—had gotten his life together after a short military career and started a family. He had two beaming daughters whose pictures I saw when his wife decided to photo-document (and post) a dinner celebrating his most recent promotion at work. I then logged into my Twitter account and found a note from another somewhat forgotten friend linking me to beautiful photograph that she sent because even though we haven't talked in a while, she saw it and “knew it would make you smile.”

I packed up my laptop and headed to Austin-Bergstrom Airport without wiping my public identity from the internet. If Josh's experiments typified the worst of living in public, perhaps, then Arin's experiment shows us what I could argue is among the best—sharing art, sharing experience and—might I even be so audacious as to suggest—sharing love—with others. Maybe living in public isn't always so bad.

On (shady) Producer's Reps and Sales Agents

2010-02-23T16:05:00.000-08:00

A recent heart-breaking encounter with a filmmaker brought new attention to a subject I have yet to comment on, so I figured now is a good a time as any to use my little soap-box in an effort to offer some insight and advice to filmmakers about sales agents and producer's reps. With the landscape of film distribution changing so drastically over the past few years, a number of companies and single-person businesses have taken advantage of changing market conditions by highlighting their film representation offerings.

That's all well and good, but I would be remiss in not mentioning there are sharks that swim these waters--and that's what this post is about.

Producer's representatives & sales agents often have over-lapping and/or identical functions. Essentially though, either represents films to various buyers across various platforms and, sometimes, in various territories. It's not uncommon to have different representatives for your film across different locations (territories) or just two—one that handles all foreign, one that handles all domestic.

Like any other agent or representative, their worth is based solely on the assumption that through their experience and access, they can offer a service which, ultimately, gets their client terms (be it quantifiable, like a larger advance, or unquantifiable, like more control over a film's marketing strategy) that are enough of an improvement over the terms the client would be able to procure themselves—at least enough so to merit the rep's fee.

Most often, reputable representatives will take a percentage of a film's advance or income (or both). Occasionally, a reputable representative will ask for either a retainer or a flat fee for their services. Although this in-and-of-itself does not a scam artist make, it should raise an eyebrow and should certainly warrant even greater scrutiny before making any commitments.

Christopher Holland has previously posted a pretty damning guest-post on his website which includes some examples of the kind of of due-diligence you can do before signing up with a rep. That said, sometimes it's exceedingly difficult to find out a rep is shady. This past weekend at NWFF3, I met a filmmaker who had been screwed by a notorious Beverly-Hills sales agency that bilked her out of $12,500 – which is their standard retainer. I know this because I've spoken to about a half-dozen other filmmakers who have been scammed by this same company, and I've even laid my very own eyes on one of their ridiculous contracts.

How do I know this firm is a scam? Well...

1.) A number of distributors have black-balled them. When I worked at the now-defunct THINKfilm the acquisitions people wouldn't speak to reps from this agency. When I worked at The Cinema Guild, I can say with some confidence that this firm was never taken seriously--by anyone at the company. When I've spoken to people at other reputable film distributors--both theatrical and ancillary--none had anything positive to say about this firm. Why? They send everything out to anyone; it doesn't matter if your company only distributes socially conscious documentaries—they'll send over a horror film that they rep. How on earth does this happen? Well, it's easy when...

2.) Many of their “reps” are Craigslist-hired recent grads with no experience...and who work on commission. That's right—their expert services, for which clients pay a $12,500 retainer and $500/mo. in expenses, gives you access to a recent film grad who probably couldn't land a paying McJob anywhere else.

Does he know the festival circuit? Nope. Does she know the various distribution companies, and how to draw out the shady ones from legitimate distributors? Nope. Does he know, or care, that most distributors tend to acquire content of a certain scope and flavor? Nope. Does she know that hounding a distributor with several calls a week and occasionally sending an e-mail confirming that they tried to send you material because their client is suing them make the rep look shady as hell? NOPE! What the reps do know...is how to cold-call. And that's all they know.

3.) They have a legitimate front...and many dissatisfied clients. Including at least 1 of whom sued and no less than 3 who filed complaints with the Better Business Bureau.

The principal of the agency I'm using for this example has had some notable success on a handfull of sales she was able to secure of the years. The firm has an office in a posh neighborhood of Los Angeles. The firm occasionally takes on a legitimate film and secures a legitimate deal for it. The firm attend big markets and big festivals. And many of their clients feel completely ripped-off by them. How do I know this? I've spoken to more than a couple and I've even been BCC'ed once on an e-mail chain that had them asking a distributor to confirm they reached out to said distributor about a client's film—since that client was suing them.

Further inspection of their reputation has shown numerous positive reviews on the web. It's worth noting, though, that in every single case the reviewers had a record of only 1 review on whatever site they were reviewing on--which is highly unusual to see once, and impossible to see multiple times--unless, of course, representatives of the company have been going out and writing positive reviews for themselves on the web.

Granted, I'm pointing out a single entity. As the film distribution market grows more and more complex, surely a number of professionals will continue to try and capitalize on both the fear and the hope that comes with great change. Be wary.

To that end, I'd suggest the following to supplement the advice posted Chris Holland's site:

-Check not only with past clients, but with as many reputable distribution companies you can get a hold of. At the end of the day, it's the agent's reputation with distributors that's going to matter—since that's who they're trying to sell to.

-See what kind of movies they rep. Are a lot of their movies shit you've never heard of? Films that have only been third-tier festivals or small local fests that no one cares about? I'm not saying that small fests don't play quality films sometimes, but if a film has never hit a notable festival—but has played a number of obscure, tiny fests—that's usually a really bad sign. If that's the caliber of films they represent, that's what distributors are going to associate with that rep. If that's what distributors are going to associate with that rep, you can draw your own conclusions as to what acquisitions execs will assume about your film when it lands on their desks c/o a rep that only tends to handle terrible films.

-Do a background check—and dig DEEP. As I mentioned, one of the worst offenders in the industry has a pretty good reputation. I'm confident this is due, in no small part, to their internal efforts to manage their reputation. That said, there's still traces of evidence if you look hard enough—Twitter messages from disillusioned filmmakers, the complaints on the BBB and, perhaps most importantly, their website—which looks like a direct-marketing company and lacks any elegance and subtly and reads more like the pitch from some shady huckster rather than a legitimate film professional.

Point of note— being trust-worthy and reputable in the film industry is like being pretty. If you have to tell people that you are...then you aren't.

The DIY elephant in the room...

2010-02-16T14:12:00.000-08:00

I'll start off by saying that part of my business is working as a freelance consultant for both filmmakers and film/media companies—with a particular focus on film distribution; so there's my full disclosure. I'll also say that this post is one in a series that will include a number of contrasting positions on DIY film distribution—ranging from the ability of filmmakers to reach their audience to the ability for filmmakers to earn a living doing so—and everything related (and tangentially related) in between.

In distributing a film through non-traditional means, filmmakers will find themselves marketing their films, marketing their brands, building their audiences, researching different platforms, approaching companies that can deliver content to said platforms and so on and so forth.

What's the one thing they're not doing?

Making films.

OR

Being JUST filmmakers.

This is too often glossed over in the litany of articles, blog posts, panels lectures and everything in between that concerns the coming revolution of DIY film distribution. And it's a complex issue that, I think, is worth exploring a bit.

I'll be covering a couple—4 actually—issues related to this by using some well-known filmmakers as examples. Two issues will be covered in this post, two more will be covered in a follow-up.

They'll be far from perfect and I'm sure I'll have some contrasting view-points brought to my attention; that's all well in good, though in reading you should keep in mind that the point of this post was to shed some light, not to make a case—so for cynics looking to poke some holes in all this, be aware that the below is not constructed as an argument and is likely not worth deconstructing as such.

Without further ado...

1. Not all filmmakers can DIY...er...DIT (do it themselves).

-Gary Hustwit (Helvetica, Objectified)

I'll first focus on Mr. Hustwit, as he's an outspoken proponent of challenging traditional distribution models. I saw Gary speak at a SXSW '09 digital distribution panel where he declared, in no uncertain terms, that filmmakers nowadays have to be both filmmakers AND businesspeople to be successful. In short—his championing of the DIY ethos can be summed up with his pointed question to the audience: "Why are we building other people's businesses when we could build our own businesses?"

Gary's success would certainly speak to experience circumventing the system: He distributed HELVETICA and OBJECTIFIED with a great deal of personal attention. He got the films—and their brands—out there in every way possible. If memory serves, there was an excellent merch page set up during the distribution of HELVETICA which was used to peddle shirts, DVDs, totes, and various other wares associated with the typographically oriented doc—and most of the high-quality merchandise was at least tangentially related to the topic of the film.

Needless to say, Gary has the goods—the success—to back up whatever observation or assertion he might make about what filmmakers need to do and be to be successful.

But when Gary made his announcement, some unknown from the audience shouted out something along the lines of “but some of us just want to make movies.” Though I may not be able to remember the exact words, I can say whole-heartedly that it was a poignant moment which speaks very much to the growing commercialization of indies as well as the changing landscape of independent film distribution: Not all filmmakers are capable of being good businesspeople. Or marketers. In fact, that's probably true of most talented creative professionals across all media.

Will talented filmmakers who can't fit both roles suffer because they don't have the necessary qualities to market, brand, and represent their film to various outlets and niche distributors across multiple platforms and territories?

Perhaps—but ultimately, I believe history has shown, time and time again, that a great movie is going to be seen. Great obscure content doesn't stay hidden forever—even if it takes the exploitation of a businessperson to get the film out in front of eyeballs.

Ultimately, what I'm driving at is two related points which I'll expand upon greatly in future posts:

1.) Great films will get out there one way or another—through a distributor, middle-man or yes, even the filmmaker himself. The filmmaker might not profit as much as they could had he exploited the film himself, but in all likelihood, he'll get a jump-start to their career, some money, or both in the process—regardless of how many middle-men get involved and how much the film is exploited.

2.) Filmmakers still have to make great films to find real ANY kind of success—no matter how you define it. This is important and for some reason, no one talking about “The New World of Distribution” (You can thank—or send your hate mail to—Peter Broderick for naming this little would-be revolution) has really harped on this. Shitty movies will not be successful, less they more-or-less scam the audiences that see the film. Period. The opposite is true of great movies.

2.) There's usually more than meets the eye (or, in some cases, more than meets the press release).

-Lance Hammer (Ballast)

Sundance-award-winning Lance Hammer famously brought heaps of (perhaps unwarranted) attention to the DIY distribution movement (or, ugh, “New World of Distribution”) when he back-tracked on a distribution deal with IFC films and decided to go the DIY route with his “pitch perfect” first feature, BALLAST.

I might be the first to say this and perhaps I might get a lot of confounded and even angry responses to this, but I'm just going to come out and say it: This did not mark any kind of major sea change. In fact, going the "DIY route" probably didn't result in a significantly different output (save for a larger back-end) for "Ballast" Lance than what he would have had should he had stuck with his IFC deal.

Why? Well....

“Ballast” was accepted to play at Film Forum. For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past 20 years, The Film Forum is a landmark theater in New York—a premier independent palace of exhibition that, operating as a non-profit, finds itself in a peculiar niche that includes promoting the films it accepts for screening with their in-house resources and personnel. Getting a film to play at The Film Forum is like getting it into a niche-festival that every art-house theater owner in America pays attention to. In short—if your film does well there, any indie theater owner worth his or her salt will be paying close attention to said film.

"Ballast" also had a leg up from the beginning--a Sundance "best director" win.

Granted, IFC films (which is owned by media conglomerate Rainbow Media) has a lot of resources at their disposal—among them their own (fucking awesome) VOD channel, a rich history of releasing both big and small indies, their own theater (right around the corner from The Film Forum, mind you) and, given that they're owned by a publicly-traded company, they likely have honest and transparent accounting; anyone whose ever had a film distributed by a small shop knows how important this is.

Given the importance of The Film Forum in the theatrical runs on independent films--coupled with the in-house resources they allocate to films accepted to play there--and the importance of theatrical runs on ancillary offers, it's not like Lance was acting all Palin-esque and going “maverick.” Ultimately, DIY distribution isn't always 2+2=4. Sometimes, the work required to go DIY is a change in strategy--and allocating yourself to work with a small handful of entities which, granted, is a bit more work, rather than going with a single independent distributor. And sometimes, DIY is hardly "yourself," but rather with the help of a few organizations or individuals that offer a non-exclusive working relationship rather than a more limiting exclusive relationship held by a single entity. That sometimes, though, is limited to films that have interest from said organizations and/or individuals--films that are, more often than not, amazing—like BALLAST.

For all of you out there shaking your heads at the admitted presumptions I'm making about both Lance and Gary's experience, please keep in mind that these examples are, ultimately, a means to an end—that end being that, as optimistic as I am, I am all-too-confident that the “DIY revolution” is not coming—at least not as fast and furious as some pants-less emperors are suggesting it is.

Issues 3 & 4 to be posted in a follow up.

The (potential) role of DIY streaming video in independent film distribution

2010-02-11T09:58:00.000-08:00

Flumotion, a streaming-video software company based out of Barcelona, was kind enough to offer me a guest post (see below) on their in-house blog. And this, mind you, was offered after I suggested that a previous post on their blog (which declared that indie filmmakers would do well to self-stream their films) was misguided.

Since I disagreed wholly with their post, they offered me a soapbox to clarify my case. I snooped around the Flumotion website a bit and thought critically about the implications of streaming your content (probably a bad idea) versus using streaming media as a marketing and promotion tool which, if executed correctly, can be a helpful to a film's release.

In any event--it was a good excuse to do some research on the subject, and I can't help but be impressed that Flumotion stands behind their product enough to give me a forum where I (strongly) suggest that they were misdirected in touting the software for film distribution rather than a knee-jerk defensive reaction; if nothing else, it shows both confidence and class.

Without further ado:

Flumotion: The (potential) role of streaming video in independent film distribution

Why SXSW might be the most important film festival (part 2).

2010-02-05T12:34:00.000-08:00

An extension of my first post ever, I'm going to continue to focus on what sets SXSW apart from other prominent film festivals--and why it might be the most important film festival as a result.

4.) SXSW is honest and reputable.

Sundance NEXT section? Kind of a joke. Not to discourage the filmmakers who played in this section nor the specific films they chose, the idea that Sundance was going to "go back to its roots" by dedicating a section to micro-budget films is outright ridiculous. Why? Well--if Sundance intended to go back to its roots, then they wouldn't need a whole new programming section--they'd just put great features, regardless of their star appeal, mini-major production values, or attachments from veteran indie producers, into competition.

I'm not suggesting that the films in competition weren't great--but a quick look at the '10 narrative competition slate reveals that almost all of the titles in competition have bankable indie stars, veteran above-the-line attachments or both.

You can look at the SXSW and see...very little of that. SXSW takes chances on small films--sometimes really small films. Keep in mind, this is the festival that launched Joe Swanberg's career. Beyond small films, SXSW takes chances on material that's risky in other ways.

Case in point: New Orleans, Mon Amour which was a spotlight premier in 2008. If you can't tell from the Youtube video, this film had more than its fair share of aesthetic...issues. It was shot on DV, without 35mm attachments--and not that expertly; often sunlight was blown out, and dark scenes range from difficult to--in a particular bar scene where the camera operator actually uses GAIN (for those who don't know too much about digital video cameras, let it suffice to say that anything shot with gain looks grainy, slightly red and generally horrible) almost unwatchable. Despite all that, the movie is amazing. The acting (including that of a not-yet-famous Lizzie Moss) is pitch perfect, the writing is nuanced and holds just enough back, and, perhaps most importantly, the post-Katrina New Orleans setting is painfully authentic--since it was really shot in New Orleans shortly after Katrina. I actually saw this film before SXSW '08 when I was doing coverage for THINKfilm and it was one of 3 films I recommended (out of almost 100 I screened) to David Laub and Ben Stambler, the acquisitions guys at THINK before it collapsed.

Granted, "New Orleans, Mon Amour" had a well known director and some well known actors, but it still doesn't scream success in the festival world--and it's worth mentioning that it likely found its widest audience on VOD--thanks in no small part to Matt Dentler's continued support of the film.

This is just one case--but if you take the time to scan the current or back-catalog of SXSW films, you'll find many other examples of films that are either tiny or somehow controversial (Grimm Love, anyone?)--yet still got attention thanks to SXSW throwing their support behind wonderful films--even if they're difficult to market. SXSW has grown without ever having left it's roots--so it'll never have to "go back" like Sundance tried to do.

5.) SXSW doesn't shit where it sleeps.

"Lone Star States." That's the title of the Texas-centric mini-slate that Southby holds each year. Many Austinites (cabbies, especially) will actually argue that Austin isn't a part of Texas--but that's another issue altogether. SXSW, more than any other festival, continues to support their home in a big, big way. In addition to featuring films with connections to Texas, everything from panels to events are Texas and Austin themed. Southby also makes an important point of making sure their hometown heroes are well represented--and they return the favor. I've heard Harry Knowles' witty banter in person and have spent more than a few panels either hearing Chris Hyams espouse some film distribution genius or had his shaved head partially block my view in the audience of a panel only tangentially related to distributing films.

No other high-profile film festival supports its local community as much as SXSW does--at least not that I know of. And it shows: despite the town getting descended on by thousands of film and interactive folk at the same time, the entire town of Austin continues to show the love--from the gracious staff of the Omni Hotel, who have shown themselves to go above and beyond for me time and time again (including the head concierge once loaning me his personal umbrella when it was pouring) to the friendly waiters at Stubbs and The Alamo Drafthouse who seem to never get unnerved, rude, or otherwise put-off by the extreme traffic of people coming in during mid-March to order delicious BBQ and delicious...everything, respectively.

6.) It's a working vacation.

Going to SXSW has never felt like work. I've gone as a rep for a web startup--twice, for the now-defunct wis.dm and e-commerce rental tool Rentility, respectively--as well attending as a private film professional and every time, it's fun.

Why?

-The parties aren't schmooze-fests--they're fun.

-There's greater accesibility to just about every type of professional--from high-profile filmmakers to top-level distribution execs to press, celebrities, tech tycoons (partying at a bar with the facebook guy? Not at Cannes!)

-There's a lot of fun, accessible films that aren't artsy-fartsy. See: Artois the Goat, Skills Like This, the entire Midnight Film Selection.

-The food is great--and not just the BBQ.

-You can learn a lot in a laid back environment. For any filmmakers who are considering attending--the panels alone are worth the price. Call it film school 2.0

So...

All of this concludes SOME of the reasons I see SXSW as a fest for others to strive for. Some of these issues may not really be related to other film festivals--but that's not really the point. With growing importance in the actually film business (note: business, not industry--film festivals have always been important, their importance is just growing in a new direction) it's all the more imperative that film festivals take advantage of their captive audience, their local surroundings, their resources and yes, even their programming staff, to ensure that they're doing their part to keep film (both independent and not-so-independent) alive--as both a business, a form of artistic expression and, less we forget, as a really joyful, fun form of entertainment.

See you in Austin, folks.

Why SXSW might be the most important film festival (part 1).

2010-02-04T12:30:00.000-08:00

Fresh off the heals of reading the full line-up of features set to screen at SXSW '10, I felt an overwhelming need to take my little soapbox (@costanoble) and point out to filmmakers and indie industry people alike how important it was to be paying attention to what SXSW is doing. Feeling the restriction of 140 characters, I've set up this blog as a place where I can rant with fewer restrictions. Yes, this is the first post--I don't expect a ton of response, a ton of interest or a ton of followers. There are some things I just feel like I need to put "out there" and this is going to be my space to do it.

To that end...

I humbly submit that SXSW may be the most important film festival today--for filmmakers and industry people alike. This isn't an epiphany, I've more-or-less felt this way for a while, but this morning, reading over the line-up and re-reading press from the Youtube/Sundance failure (more on that later) I felt like I could finally make a concrete arguement to defend this stance:

1.) It doesn't take itself too seriously.

SXSW is fun. Hell, it's a blast. I've been going for the past several years and, despite all the work I do at each fest, all the research, all the critical thinking, all of the schmoozing, screenings, panels, etc., I always have fun. This is important, if only to remind ourselves what film is really about--entertainment, shared experience, connecting with other people. A lot of sales tend to happen AFTER SXSW rather than at the fest itself; Audience members are mixed with acqusitions execs, the press, etc. at each screening -- there aren't any industry or press screenings to speak of -- and the whole environment offers more accessibility than other fests. Case in point--filmmakers can meet with high-level distribution/acquisitions/fest execs in mini-meetings, audience members can pose questions to heavy-hitters like Robert Rodriguez during panels and, on a good day, Seth Rogan can even call me an asshole in front of 400+ people during the post-premier Q&A of "Observe and Report."

2.) SXSW and stays ahead of the curve in both film and interactive.

Twitter won the 2007 SXSW Web award a full two years before it really "blew up." At the time the geeks of the interactive fest were basically using it to follow each other to panels and parties, but the genius behind public-texting, micro-blogging--whatever you want to call it--was clear to the Southby crowd.

I mention this because the interactive fest--and to a larger degree, technology--is a huge part of the film festival. RED cameras were highlighted at SXSW well before they became ubiquitious in the indie film community. Lost Zombies, a crowd-created film, won 2 SXSW web awards (Best Community Site and People's Choice Award) well before Kickstarter, Indie Gogo, or The Biracy Project were ever launched. Though the aforementioned crowd-funding/source sites may not have the same model as LZ, the spirit is the same.

I can point to several more examples of both technology and film trends that were at SXSW before they were on your screens but frankly I don't have the patience to write, nor do you have the patience to read, if I were to continue with this lengthy list. Point made, methinks.

3.) BRANDS.

I'm not talking about the sponsors, though it's great to get some free Miller Lite and the bags of schwag handed out to festival attendants always has some really cool stuff (Crumpler Camera Bags? Awesome).

What I'm really referring to is SXSW's brand-name filmmakers. The house that Dentler built, and that Janet Pierson lovingly and expertly continues to expand and develop, has premiered a huge slew of brand-name filmmakers, their films and their side projects. Since I began attending SXSW, there has not been a single year in which two or more of the following filmmakers didn't have projects represented in some capacity:

-Aaron Katz (Dance Party USA premiered SXSW '06, Quiet City premiered SXSW '07, Cold Weather will premier SXSW '10)

-Andrew Bujalski (Beeswax premiered SXSW '09, Mutual Appreciation premiered SXSW '05 -- Andrew has also acted in: RSO - premiered SXSW '08, Sorry, Thanks - premiered SXSW '09, Goliath - SXSW '08, and Hannah Takes the Stairs - SXSW '07)

-Joe Swanberg (Kissing on the Mouth premiered SXSW '05, LOL premiered SXSW '06, Hannah Takes the Stairs premiered SXSW '07, Nights and Weekends premiered SXSW '08, Alexander the Last premiered SXSW '09 -- Joe also acted in Quiet City - SXSW '07 -- Hell, he practically LIVES there)

-Jay Duplass & Mark Duplass - (The Puffy Chair premiered SXSW '05, Baghead played SXSW '08. Mark also acted in Hannah Takes the Stairs - SXSW '07, Humpday - SXSW '09)

If you want a PARTIAL picture of this ridiculous incestuous filmmaker community--all centered around SXSW, mind you, you can check out the Cinepheliac Mumblecore Chart.

The above is only a tiny smattering of the filmmakers regularly associated with SXSW. The above movies (and others) also have in common producers, actors and actresses (Including Greta Gerwig, whose now moving on to Studio projects--see: "Greenberg") that have helped each other create great work to be enjoyed by a loving and supportive fan base.

I mention all of the above for one important reason: SXSW has helped create, and has certainly fostered, a BRAND. This is really an extension of #2, but this little trend in filmmaking may grow to become a big part of how filmmakers create, and audiences enjoy, films of the future.

All the time filmmakers, distribution professionals, fans, etc. are met with both hope and dread when considering the future of film distribution--questions ranging from how will audiences find films to how will filmmakers make money. Well that's a really complex question with a number of possible answers to explore, but I think SXSW can point you in the direction of one sure bet--branded filmmakers and films. The above filmmakers may not be widely rich (yet...?) but they're certainly doing pretty well for themselves professionally--and I believe that it has been, in no small part, with the help of SXSW. Together they've created a community, a fanbase, an entire fucking film movement, all grown out of a single festival--SXSW--and that, my fellow film lovers, is bankable any way you cut it.