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!