What I learned from the festival circuit

After more than a year and almost 40 festival screenings, Enter the Dark's World Tour 2010 - 2011 is finally at an end.  It's been a great experience and I've learned quite a few things that will help me as I move forward with new projects.  I figured I might as well pass along some of these hard-earned nuggets to anyone who dares venture forth into the world of indie filmmaking.

First, in order to keep track of all the festivals I submitted to, I created a big-ole spreadsheet, including festival name, date of upcoming deadline, cost of entry, dates of the festival, location of festival, date when they would notify filmmakers of their decisions, whether I got in or not, and if we won any awards.

From these magic columns I can extrude the following data:

TOTAL SUBMISSIONS:  88
YES:  40
NO:    42
TO BE DETERMINED:  6

Almost a 50% batting average - not too bad.  I can tell you this - in the future I would not submit to as many festivals.  Since this was my first time, my main goal was getting as much exposure as possible and finding out which festivals were worth the entry fee.  Having submitted to that many festivals, I now have a pretty good idea which are the good ones, and which are the shady ones.

Everything is Possible but Nothing is Real

So I was in Vegas recently, and while I was there I was stopped not once, but twice by strangers who wanted to comment on the shirt I was wearing.  I happened to be sporting my Black Country Communion t-shirt.

Who are Black Country Communion you say?

Shame... Shame on you for not knowing.  Well, actually it's not that surprising.

Black Country Communion are a super-group of sorts, fronted by Joe Bonamassa, who just happens to be the best blues-rock guitarist on the planet.  It also includes industry stalwarts Jason Bonham (yes, son of the GREAT John Bonham, Glenn Hughes (Deep Purple, Black Sabbath), and Derek Sherinian (Dream Theater).  Not that you should actually care or anything, but they happen to be making the best true rock sounds since Bad Company and Led Zeppelin.

But that's not the point.

The point is that while talking with one of the folks who felt the need to comment on my shirt (a drummer who supposedly knew Joe B. when he was just a wee lad), he made the comment, "Man, it's too bad he can't make it in the music scene today..."  I said, "What do you mean - he HAS made it."

The rules of success in the music industry have just radically changed from where they were twenty years ago or so.

Joe Bonamassa has a loyal following who buy all his records.  He tours all over the world.  He even got to play with Eric Clapton at the Royal Albert Hall. That's success in today's music biz.  Is he a household name?  No, but he's not a 15-year old pop star kid either.  The music biz is now even more divided between the 5 or 6 mega stars who are heavily marketed (Lady Gaga, Black Eyed Peas, Justin Bieber, etc.), and everyone else.  It used to be you made money off sales of your CDs, but that's long gone.  Now the CD (er... digital download I mean) is a loss-leader just to get people excited about your live shows.  Cashflow is based mostly on ticket sales and merchandising revenue.

The time when an artist could make a living off the intellectual property of their art may be coming to an end.  And it's all your fault.


Yep, it's your dang fault for having an insatiable need to consume music and movies and not want to pay anything for them.  Once something can be digitized and transmitted as zeroes and ones on the net, it inevitably spirals down to a value of zero.  Folks just don't wanna pay if they don't have to.

And this is the sad future for filmmakers as well.


Thanks to Netflix, the assumption is that at any time I can click on a box and instantly watch great entertainment in the comfort of my home.  For free.  Or nearly free. As a consumer, this is amazing.  As a film buff I can now watch all sorts of titles I never would have been exposed to before.  I know so many more directors and their visions.  But are those filmmakers, really being compensated for all this?

Not really.

The indie film I edited and co-produced, The Commune, was offered a deal by Netflix for their Watch Instantly streaming service.  Do you know what they offered us?

$7500.

And that was before the distributor took their 30% cut.

So, let's see, our meager budget was under $100,000.  Hardly anyone got paid.  And now, Netflix wants to own it and allow anyone in the world to watch it for free in the comfort of their own home.  And for all that, we'll be compensated around $5000.

Now I'm not knocking 5 grand.  Hey, that's better than nothing.  Many filmmakers would love to be offered a Netflix deal.

But, do the math.  It's not rocket science.  There is no sustainable business model there.

Now, musicians have a way to get around this dilemma.  They no longer expect to make money off their art.  They can make money off their live performances.  And so now they are always on the road - like a hamster on a treadmill - keeping the machine running.

Live to rock and rock to live!

But filmmakers don't have this revenue stream.  We don't get paid for live performances.  Our films are our live performances.  Unless you're Kevin Smith, no one really gives a s#!+ about hearing or seeing the director - they just wanna see the movie.

So how will the indie filmmaker survive in this climate?

I don't know.  I really can't see it.


The only business model I can see working is to crowd-source the funding of your film.  Spread the risk.  Let your true fans feel like they are part of the process. Set up a kickstarter campaign and raise just enough money to hopefully cover costs.  Maybe pad it a little so you can actually pay your rent while making the film.  Then at least any scraps of revenue that are generated will be profit.

Do not go into debt and take out a mortgage on your home to make your next indie feature film kiddos.  It ain't worth it.

Welcome to the future.  Everything is possible but nothing is real.*



*(Living Colour - Type)

Red State: Kevin Smith Discovers 21st Century Indie Filmmaking

As many of you may know, Kevin Smith recently completed his latest film, Red State, which he made for a reported $4 million outside of the studio system.  The film premiered at Sundance, after which Smith made a big to-do about auctioning off the distribution rights for his home-made horror flick right there - right then to the highest bidder.

If you are interested, check out the clips of Smith's often funny (and of course expletive drenched) rant from Sundance here:

and part 2 here:

Of course, the whole thing was really a big setup for Smith to proclaim a big F_You to the current distribution model and announce that he was going maintain ownership of his movie and self-distribute through a road-show style series of bookings at various venues throughout the country.  In filmmaking terminology, this is known as "four-walling" - traditionally a last-option tactic for a desperate filmmaker looking to get some exposure, or at best a way for an unsigned movie to try to find an audience.

The funniest thing to me is that Smith has basically come to the same conclusions that most indie filmmakers have today:  own your content, build your fanbase and self-distribute.  Welcome to 21st  century indie filmmaking, Kevin.

The problem is that someone like Smith has a tremendous advantage over someone just starting out in that he already is a known name brand and has a huge fan base that ironically was generated my the same marketing machine that he rails out against in his diatribe.  So, when he says things like, "We're going to distribute without any advertising costs.", he can get away with that because he already has 1.7 million rabid followers on Twitter.  And where did they come from?  From all the films he's made over the past 20 years.  And how did folks come to see those films?  From the same bloated, unimaginative marketing machine he now says is unneccessary.  And you know what?  He's right.

For him he's right.  Or say, Eli Roth.  Or the Cohen Brothers. Or any other writer/director who already has a fan-base he/she can sell to directly.  For the rest of us poor scrubs looking to work our way up - good luck.

So, the model for any indie filmmaker trying to make it today seems to be something like this:

- Build your skills.  Write and direct a number of shorts.  Figure out what works and what doesn't on a small-scale that won't wipe out your life savings.  If you're good enough to get into some festivals and have some favorable reviews, keep going.  If not, hey you can always make videos of kittens and boobies for YouTube.

- Build your fanbase.  Utilize Facebook, blogs, twitter, YouTube, etc to find and engage folks who seem to like your work.

- Develop your brand.  This is kinda huge in the long-run.  When I hear Kevin Smith is making a new film - I already know what I'm in for.  That doesn't mean all his films are the same, but that he has a certain worldview, a certain style that shows through in all his movies.  If you are all over the map in the type of movies you make (especially in the beginning) it will be harder to grow and maintain a fanbase.  After you're established, you can branch out more.

- Take your big shot.  Now it's time to step up and make a feature.  If you can, find financial backing through traditional investors, or crowd-sourcing sites like IndieGoGo and Kickstarter. Keep production costs low by leveraging digital technology - shoot on HDSLRs, or Red. You know your craft, you've built your fanbase and established your brand - now, put everything together into a great script THAT SOMEONE CAN ACTUALLY MARKET.  This is not the time for introspective, experimental filmmaking - unless you already have a fortune and can afford to live off a trust fund.  This is a project that will make or break you, so it better be something your existing fanbase as well as others will want to see.

- Make your deal.  Here is where I disagree with Kevin.  For someone just coming up in the ranks, if you are lucky enough to have a distributor approach you and actually want to drop $20 million to promote your film - EFF YEAH, you should take that deal.  Sure, you will sign your film away and will probably never see any profits, but the trade-off is well worth it because now that bloated, unimaginative marketing machine will spread your name (and brand) far and wide in ways that you could never do yourself.

Now, what happens if no distributor ever offers you a big deal (which will be the case for most everyone)?  Well, in that case, you will need to self-distribute through IndieFlix, Netflix, etc. and scrape by, hoping that you can slowly build your brand and fanbase to a point where you can eventually make money doing this.

- Make your next film.   Hopefully, that first feature was successful and since your name brand has hit the big stage, you can now maintain ownership of your movies and their distribution.  Utilize your fanbase as evangelists to market your next film for you.  EFF the traditional marketing and distribution models.  Keep costs low, own everything and develop a one-to-one or one-to-many model to get your movies directly to your fans.  You are now Kevin Smith.  Go and buy a hockey stick.

The Commune - a Netflix Success Story... sort of

Welcome to the exciting new world of indie film distribution - where everything is possible but nothing is real.  Where millions of people worldwide can view your cinematic vision, but very few will actually pay for it.  You can get lots of attention, your name splattered all over google search results, your efforts discussed on multiple websites - a sort of psuedo-celebrity, while you continually struggle to pay your bills and figure out how you can possibly justify the expense of making your next movie.

And that's if you're lucky...

The Commune, a fearless, original, and thought-provoking film made by my friend, Elisabeth Fies, and one that I edited and helped to produce was recently fortunate to be picked up by Netflix.  This, in and of itself is a huge accomplishment.  Most indie movies will never get this far. It took over a year of herculean effort by Lis and many others to get this done.  We first had to sign on with IndieFlix to act as our digital distributor.  They posted a page on their website that offers our movie as a DVD or a digital stream.  They also act as a liaison between us and Netflix, iTunes, Amazon and others.  If you submit your award-winning indie film to Netflix directly, too bad, they will just ignore it.  You have to go through a distributor - Netflix doesn't want to have to deal with hoards of indie filmmakers and their (mostly unmarketable) pet projects.  I can't say that I blame them.

So, IndieFlix makes their pitch to Netflix on your behalf and hopefully, if you're lucky, Netflix will say yes - well... sort of.  What happens is, if you're lucky enough to get chosen, Netflix sets up a dummy page on their site for your movie.  It lists the name, director, artwork, synopsis, etc - just like any other movie.  The only difference is that is will say "Availability Date Unknown".  You'll see this a lot on Netflix.

This is a kind of distribution purgatory.  You're in - but you're not.   You see, Netflix wants you to prove that there are enough interested folks out there just dying to see your movie before they will actually buy it from you.  You have to write-up your marketing strategy.  You have to show all your great reviews and how many people have "liked" you on your facebook page.  Most importantly you have to urge, plead and beg everyone you know (and everyone they know) to go to that Netflix page and put your movie in their queue.  And it would also be really cool if they could rate it (at least 3 stars - 4 is better).  And oh yeah, could you post a review as well.  And while you're there, please mark other people's reviews as "helpful".  Sounds like a lot of hoops to jump through?  It is.

And how many people must put your film in their queue before Netflix will buy it?

Beats me...

I never actually knew.  They would never give us a clear figure.  I can tell you that we were in the hundreds for months and nothing happened.  Until about a month ago when we hit some milestone, or we just came up on their list of available movies to purchase - I don't know, but we got that magic email that WE WERE IN!!!  They were going to buy from us, not their usual request of 50 DVDs, but an almost unheard of (for a little-known indie flick) 200 DVDs!  This was incredible.  This meant that all of our friends and fans had done a tremendous job of mercilessly banging on that Netflix page like a raving mob of fans rushing the gates at a Led Zeppelin concert.  A huge win for all of us.  This meant that anyone who wanted to see our film could now easily bop on over to Netflix, put that baby in their queue, and wait for the mailman to deliver our little bundle of cult-thriller joy right into their mailbox.

What a world we live in!

What is that you say?  How much money did we actually make in our Netflix deal?  Well...  that's where reality kinda smacks you in the face.  Let's just say that after IndieFlix gets their cut (they are acting as our distributor, so of course they get their take), Elisabeth was paid back just about enough to cover the costs of her original order of 1000 DVDs that she had replicated, printed and shrink-wrapped -  200 of which eventually found their way to Netflix.  So you could say that she got 800 DVDs for free.

As for return on investment of her production costs of actually making the movie...  Uh...

Here's where you can actually help.  Yes, you can go over to Netflix and put The Commune in your queue.  Eventually we will get some money from the amount of people who actually rent or stream it.  If you are even more interested in the movie however, an even better way to support indie filmmaking would be to go to our site www.thecommunemovie.com and buy a DVD from Lis directly. That s%@! is pure profit for her at this point and would start to make a dent in her considerable debt.

And that would mean that she could actually go out and make her next movie, providing even more though-provoking entertainment for us all.

And what a world that would be!

The Story of Ink

If you are into visionary fantasy films, you owe it to yourself to check out indie cult favorite Ink.

From their website:
An 8-year-old becomes a pawn in a metaphysical war being fought between the forces of light and darkness in this visually outrageous indie thriller.

Kidnapped by a large, strange creature known as Ink, the girl is taken through a labyrinthine world of dream states while those who love her fight to bring her back into the real world and bring salvation to her desperate father.

Ink is one of the most ambitious indie films I have seen.  With a budget of around $250,000 filmmakers Jamin and Kiowa Winans have squeezed every penny of that mini-budget and put it up on the screen.

watch trailer 1  |  watch trailer 2	visit website

It completely sidesteps the usual hallmarks of low-budget filmmaking by including a large cast, many locations, superb fight scenes and amazing art direction.

You're just not supposed to bite off that much with so little budget and no studio backing - but thank goodness they did.

I especially loved the look of the Incubus (or is that Incubi??) with their ever-sneering projected faces:

(do I sense a little Dave McKean perhaps?)

Amazing as it is, the film is not perfect - the first act is somewhat confusing, the dialogue is a bit stilted at times and the editing unnecessarily frenetic in places.  Sounds like a typical Hollywood film. The micro-budget does inevitably show through in some scenes, but that is only because Jamin stubbornly refuses to be held back by commonsense notions of low-budget filmmaking.  Big kudos for pushing the envelope of what can be done!

As is so often the case these days, Ink is also a story about the trevails of independent filmmaking.  I particularly enjoyed reading their blog as they journey through the ever-changing sands of today's indie film world, while traditional distribution models crumble around them.  Ink had a film festival premiere, garnered great reviews (including Aint it Cool News, LA Times and Fangoria), amazing word of mouth, was theatrically released (by Jamin and Kiowa themselves) in Denver, New York and LA, their trailer was viewed hundreds of thousands of times, the movie itself ripped and dowloaded on bit torrent more than 500,000 times, was ranked as high as #16 on imdb, and had army of dedicated and passionate fans who clamored to see the film.

It also never was picked up by a distributor.

Refusing to sign with a distributor who at best might offer a small advance and retain all rights to their baby, and who at worst might just shelve the film, never to pay back a dime, Jamin and Kiowa made the inevitable decision to distribute the movie themselves.  In today's market that meant a combination of continuing to try to find independent theater owners who would screen it for them as well as the usual DVD and digital outlets - Netflix, iTunes, Blockbuster, and Amazon.

(For a more in-depth examination of the nuts-and-bolts aspects of indie filmmaking and distribution, take a listen to their Film Courage radio interview.)

Jamin and Kiowa make the case that the festival circuit of today is no longer a place to sell a film but an opportunity to launch a media blitz that may hopefully ultimately lead to paying back one's investors through self-distribution and a ton of hard work.  If these guys can't make it work, with their incredible film, dedicated fans and tireless work ethic, then the whole model of indie filmmaking is surely broken.

Please check out their work and if you enjoy it, support them by buying directly from their store where they will receive most of the profits.  Indie filmmakers like them can only survive by the continued support of people who actually buy their art and allow the artists the financial freedom to actually do their work for you, the viewer (more on this in a future post.)