No Single Mold for Indie Films

The sabbatical has kicked in and I've hit the ground running. The University Film and Video Conference I referenced in my previous post was a great place to toss out some ideas about our audience engagement and audience building strategies and it was a terrific venue in which to hear others talk about these topics.

I want to review some notes from a workshop given by filmmaker, author, entrepreneur, Jon Reiss whose film Bomb It has been a great laboratory for gaining critical information about independent film distribution, audience engagement, marketing and outreach. I'd also recommend his book, Think outside the box office. The ultimate guide to film distribution and marketing for the digital era.


Here are a few things that I found most important.

1. The old Hollywood studio model for releasing films never worked for indie films. A new model has arisen and the good and the bad of that is that each film requires its own blueprint. While we may draw principles from each other, we need to understand our film and our audience(s) and figure out how to get to them.
2. This new model requires indie filmmakers to redefine film rights. We need to focus on a split rights strategy. For instance, we can parse out live event rights, festival, theatrical, merchandise, digital, foreign, and mobile rights to different folks to maximize revenue and to work with specialists who know these areas intimately. This replaces the one stop shopping of handing over all rights to one distributor who may not have expertise in one or more area and will not be working in your best interest.
3. Live events are becoming more and more popular as we create a value added experience for film goers. [As a side note, I see this happening more and more here in Denver. Thursday I'm heading to the new D.A. Pennebaker, Chris Hegedus film, Kings of Pastry that will include a pastry after party. Another film that recently came through Denver, Ready, Set, Bag donated $1 of every ticket to a food bank. Another film, The Parking Lot movie, holds screenings in...you guessed it, parking lots.]
4. Reiss talked briefly about pitching and offered this advice on what a pitch to investors should accomplish: "Inspire greed. Alleviate fear." I suppose the agent of social change in me has a little trouble with the first, but if we're talking about serious investors it makes sense to talk to their pocket books. They haven't come to the pitch to see my outfit.
5. In this day and age of apps, it's not a bad idea to have your short turned into a widget. Adding to that, why not serialize your longer film, doc or narrative?
6. Integrate your audience into the filmmaking process. This can begin at a place like Kickstarter where people are directly funding your project. You can also offer a pre-sale of the DVD. Of course you can build this audience through social media like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and through a blog (like what you're reading here). 
7. Develop partnerships early on in the process of making your film. These partnerships can offer many different things like access to similar audiences, endorsements, cash, co-promotions etc. In corresponding with Gita Pullapillyfrom the film The Way We Get By, she mentioned how Bangor Savings Bank in Maine where the film is set sponsored film openings all over the state. Calling on an  extensive network of customers like the bank had would have been impossible for the filmmakers. [I would highly recommend this five-part series where Gita blogs about their DIY distribution plan. It is truly thoughtful and innovative.]

In my next installment I want to toss out some ideas that have been simmering and see if I can get some discussion going. In the meantime, we're about t-minus three weeks for the launch of our website, www.woodstockwestthemovie.com. In the meantime, check in on our Facebook page.

The Cart Before the Horse Distribution and Outreach Strategy

I'm at the University Film and Video Conference for the next few days, and I'm looking forward to learning a ton from the talented teacher/filmmakers who attend this extravaganza.
Along with two colleagues I met last year, Casey Hayward and Claire Darby, I'll be presenting on my developing strategy to distribute my film. I call this "The Cart Before the Horse Distribution and Outreach Strategy" but it seems there is no longer a horse or a cart when it comes to building momentum for independent films these days. Let me explain.

With previous films I completed, my "strategy," if you want to call it that, to get my films seen was to write checks to festivals, fill out the paperwork and create a sweatshop in my office comprised of mailers, festival paperwork, return labels and DVDs (or VHS tapes in the early years). Then I would hope to get in a festival. And wait. There was a lot of waiting involved.

But that was so 10 years ago. Now I'm working on a real strategy, one that has me thinking now, in preproduction, about my target and secondary audiences. Has me thinking about my goals in preproduction regarding how I might reach those audiences and pull them into the film, build interest in the story, the subjects and the process. I'm closely examining things like Working Film's ELEMENTS OF AN AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT CAMPAIGN. (As a side note, this is one of the most valuable websites I've found for Indie filmmakers like myself.) I'm also considering how the concept and practice of TransMedia is useful to me as a documentary filmmaker. Check out this video featuring Henry Jenkins one of the seminal voices on TransMedia strategy from Youtube. Basically, TransMedia is, according to Jeff Gomez of www.starlightrunner.com "the art of conveying messages themes or storylines to mass audiences through the artful and well planned use of multiple media platforms.”

So, how am I using these things to assemble my strategy? Stay tuned...I'll be working on this at the conference and will report back next week as I do my own thinking about this and pick the brains of the brilliant minds around me here in Vermont.

Welcome!

No doubt you're asking yourself, "What is Woodstock West: Build Not Burn?" The simple answer is that it's a feature length documentary. The more complex answer is still evolving.

As a documentary filmmaker with five completed films behind me, I've rarely known in the beginning stages of a project just how a film would turn out, what exactly it would be about, what themes would be important and who would be central to the storytelling. Such is the case with my latest project. Early on in my filmmaking career, this kind of ambiguity or unknown path was disconcerting, but now I know it's as much a part of my process of documentary filmmaking as pulling my camera out of the bag.

     In future blog posts I want to discuss
the symbolism in and significance of
this iconic Woodstock West image.

Here's what we're saying about the film now: What do a shanty village, bulldozers, the draft and the National Guard all have in common? Woodstock West: Build Not Burn tells the story of a 1970 University of Denver protest and explores the impact this "fight the power" moment had on the lives of young people who tried to change the world.

What I hope to chronicle in this blog is my process of making the film. You'll come with me as I dig through the archives. You'll look over my shoulder as we fire up the camera and turn on the lights to do an interview with a student leader during Woodstock West or a professor or a police officer or a national guardsman. You'll see inside the process of acquiring music, images and film footage. You'll travel with us to different parts of the country and hopefully different parts of the world as we track down some of the key players from Woodstock West and try to find out how this moment in 1970 did or did not influence their life choices after they left Denver.

As work feverishly takes place on the Woodstock West: Build Not Burn website by the programmers and designers of Open Media Foundation here in Denver, I'm working on several other elements of our on-line strategy. I'll be talking about this work at the upcoming University Film and Video Association's national conference in Burlington, VT and will also share the process here on the blog.

So, I you're interested in how a documentary film comes together, stay tuned! We'll discover Woodstock West: Build Not Burn together!