Self Distribution Not All By Yourself @ SXSW, March 15, 2009

Self-Distribution Not All By Yourself
Sunday March 15, 2009 at 1:00pm
Austin Convention Center, Austin, TX.

Moderator:
Scott Macaulay, Editor, Filmmaker Magazine

Panelists:
Richard Abramowitz, Abramorama
Caitlin Boyle, Paradigm Consulting/Semi-Theatrical Distribution Consultant
Chris Hyams, Founder & CEO, B-Side Entertainment
Jon Reiss, Hybrid Cinema, Filmmaker & Consultant

As specialty film subsidiaries dry up and smaller distributors close up shop, self-distribution has become a much more viable option for the filmmaker. "Self-Distribution Not All By Yourself", moderated by Filmmaker Magazine editor Scott Macaulay, explored the many avenues and options for the filmmaker to self-distribute. Macaulay was inspired to give the panel its title following a conversation with Peter Broderick, in which Broderick said that no one truly distributes their movie by themselves.

The panel took a look at the expanding venues by which a filmmaker can self-distribute their film, and the panelists represented a diversity of venues by a which a filmmaker could exhibit their film: Jon Reiss is a documentarian who self-distributed his last movie, Bomb It; Richard Abramowitz has worked as a distribution consultant for over twenty years; Caitlin Boyle also works as a Semi-Theatrical Distribution consultant, working with filmmakers on finding the best venue for their work, whether it be a public library or an art house.

Macaulay began the panel by refuting a common assumption about the distribution process that filmmakers and the general public seem to have:

"The old way was that you'd take your film to a film festival, it gets picked up, the company that distributes your film buys all the rights, and they would provide for theatrical, DVD, etc., etc....The models we are talking about today are very different from the old model that used to exist for filmmakers. Filmmakers need to realize that it never really existed in the first place--that maybe it existed for about five percent of the people."

Caitlin Boyle reassures filmmakers that just because your film doesn't get picked up for distribution, that doesn't necessarily mean your film is a failure. "Doing it yourself and alternative models of distribution shouldn't be considered to be a failure, or what you do when you're groveling up from being knocked down. I think a lot of people are releasing their films theatrically by themselves, melding traditional distribution schemes with alternative distribution schemes, trying a little but of everything and making sort of a comprehensive plan, and exercising more control."

If anything, both Hyams and Abramowitz see filmmakers bypassing more traditional distributors and either releasing films themselves, or through a company like Hyams' B-Side. Self-Distribution gives the filmmaker more control of the outcome. Hyams points to the success of Super High Me, a non-fiction parody of Supersize Me starring Doug Benson which premiered at the 2008 SXSW. Between the premiere and April 20th, B-Side and the filmmakers managed to book 1,100 screenings in 820 cities with their "Roll Your Own Screening" distribution plan. They have since sold 65,000 units on DVD, and $1.4 million in DVD sales. The total spent on marketing? $8,000.

Macaulay suggested that filmmakers consider thinking about their distribution strategy early on. "I really recommend thinking about that while you're writing your script. Especially narrative--there's so much stuff now that you can do on the web to develop an audience, and also with documentaries. It will really help to figure out who your markets are. 'Where am I going to sell this? Who am I going to sell this to?' I know this sounds like a Hollywood way of thinking, but it's not. It's a smart way of thinking about your audience."

Theatrical self-distribution can be cumbersome, but there's still a payoff. Says Reiss: "I don't regret what I did. It was a lot of work, but my DVD company is very happy that I did what I did."

Q: How much does the P&A (Prints & Advertising) cost to the value of releasing films?

Hyams: We'll be releasing 15 films this year. Part of that is when you lower the risk, you can take on a fuller slate. If we had to put up $250,000 or $500,000 for every film, it would be a lot harder to take something on. One of things we try to have is aligned expectations. If for whatever reason that doesn't work, and those films don't do [the business] people hoped for, at least you don't go too far into the hole in the process. Frankly, we are in a position to take more chances on movies we think there's an audience out there for.

Erin: One book aimed at would-be filmmakers titled From Reel to Deal advises against self-distribution. While the author acknowledges that filmmakers often get low and sometimes unfair deals, he says, "attempt self distribution and you'll spend your entire life in small claims court trying to collect from each and every theater owner." Have you ever had a problem collecting money from theater owners?

Reiss: I'm the smallest fish, so I should probably talk. I was actually shocked everyone paid within two weeks. There was one guy I had to nudge--he had the biggest check. That came about a month after the screening. I was shocked I got paid. I think partially because he was working with a chain, and I've had films distributed by bigger chains who didn't pay. I dealt with the small independent cinemas, and I got paid.

Abramowitz: I can speak on the other end. I've rarely had trouble getting paid from the chains. They just put the money into the system, and they pay you. You may not get the amount you want, and it may not be as quickly as you want it to be. It's an honest count--the chains check themselves to make sure their local managers are honest.

Boyle: I've worked with everyone from tiny public libraries to large universities to art houses, and I have the same story: no one has ever been more than a few weeks. Everyone has been eager to pay.

Abramowitz: And you can get these people to pay in advance.

Boyle: They all pay in advance. They even pay without having seen the film.

Abramowitz: It's important to get counsel from someone who's done it before. John just said that he's remarkably lucky--he was incredibly persistent. Knowing which theaters to play, and which not to. There are people I have not done business with in 20 years because they don't pay. Ask around, ask other filmmakers. Check the theater's website, and which theaters play those types of movies. Check three films that are similar to yours, and you'll see 80% of the same theaters there. You'll get a sense that they're regularly playing these kinds of films, and that they're treating the filmmakers with some degree of honor.

Hyams: Another question that might be a better one is, "What do home video distributors pay?" Without naming names, there are those that do, and those that are notorious for not paying. I would encourage you that if you haven't done a home video deal, talk to other filmmakers who have and find out if they've paid, and how prompt they are. That's going to be the bigger bulk of the money coming in. Some of them make a business of sitting on their money as long as possible.

Q: How do you manage expectations for you and the filmmaker? You look at 65,000 units for Super High Me, which is great. But have you ever though, "I could've done 100,000!", or, "Why didn't I do 100,000?"

Hyams: Netflix's original estimates were around 20,000. Docs don't sell--we beat expectations pretty dramatically on that one. We have had cases where filmmakers' expectations are so out of wack that I concluded that it wouldn't be a good idea to work with them. I think it's really important to have aligned expectations up front, and to be happily surprised if it succeeds that. Docs on home video is a tough business, but 5,000 units is doing pretty well. 10,000 is doing better.

Boyle: My personal philosophy is that your film has value. Don't give your film away for free all the time. I see it as being a matter of raising expectations, but staying realistic about it. I think that a lot of filmmakers sort of undercut themselves. I meet people whose expectations are very low, very modest. They often give their movie away for free, or formulate it without a plan. I'm constantly saying to people, "You should be charging for that!" People will not bat an eye having to pay admission. I work in a different way [than the other panelists]. I often struggle with too low expectations, not too high. I'm constantly being a cheerleader.

IFP's Script to Screen Conference - Conversation with James Schamus - March 7, 2009

IFP’s Script to Screen Conference

Conversation with Keynote James Schamus – CEO, Focus Features
March 7, 2009
New York, NY

(Scott Macaulay & James Schamus. Photo by Brian Geldin.)

Focus Features CEO James Schamus makes his second appearance here at The Film Panel Notetaker (his first being at the Woodstock Film Festival last fall) with my notes taken in a packed hall at the New York Film Academy Saturday morning during IFP's Script to Screen Conference, which was created to help aspiring and working screenwriters explore new opportunities. Filmmaker Magazine Editor-in-Chief Scott Macaulay moderated Saturday’s conversation with Schamus. The discussion moved a bit beyond the script writing process, so here I will focus (bah dump bump) on the elements of the conversation that may be most helpful for the screenwriters reading this blog.

Macaulay’s first question was, how do you know what a screenplay is, to which Schamus replied, “It’s completely a business plan…American screenplays are essentially 124 pages begging for money…The scripts are moving into predetermined generic modules…On the other side, the fantasy side, there is the writer/director mode…all of us live somewhere between the two ends of that spectrum…On that spectrum, you are doing something that serves as an object…The problem of getting too far on the (writer/director side) of the spectrum…a screenplay in the production context is 123 pages of advice and if the advice is a little hazy or if someone stops taking the advice…once you stop taking your own advice, everybody stops, too…The key to making a movie well…is that everybody on the set is making the same movie.”

To elaborate on the writer/director paradigm, Macaulay noticed that fewer directors seem to be going down this path. Macaulay asked Schamus if he’s noticed this, too, and if so, why does he think so? Using Ang Lee as an example, Shamus said, “Ang was never a writer/director. He was always a filmmaker. That definition seemed in and of itself sort of liberating a couple of years ago, became actually quite constraining…That said, writer/directors are still clearly the DNA that will never rinse down American independent cinema…You can be a non-writer/director and still be an auteur…(that) came out of (France’s) Cahier du Cinema writers who were not writing about themselves…they weren’t filmmakers yet. They were writing about filmmakers who had household name recognition…What they were doing was using auteur theories to excavate the idea of the director as the central signator…inside the Hollywood system and use that wedge open a completely different appreciation of cinema.”

With Focus’s upcoming release of Cary Fukunaga’s Sin Nombre, Macaulay asked Schamus how Focus got involved with working with a first-time feature filmmaker. Schamus said, “We continue to adapt our business to audiences. In this case…an audience that’s open to a first-time filmmaker…To me what’s exciting about Sin Nombre besides how masterful and amazing the movie is…how do we create a Latino audience in the United States? We saw his short, which he was developing at the Sundance Lab [More about screenwriting labs, contests & worshops in a near future post here]…We’re really an internationally oriented company…80% of my day is spent on movies that are circulating across the globe.”

And what about Schamus as a screenwriter himself, mostly working on adaptations with Lee, Macaulay asked. “With Ang, it’s literally whatever I can find that will scare the shit out of him,” Schamus revealed. “I actually really like Hollywood movies. I like the system. It’s an incredibly interesting cultural machine.”

Opening the conversation to the audience, one person asked the perennial question, how does one submit a project to the company? Schamus recognized that the answer is a “Catch 22” saying “you need representation…If I accepted an unsolicited manuscript; my own lawyers will now sue me.” Later someone asked if it’s best to come to Focus with the complete package of a producer, director and a star, to which Schamus replied, it varies. “It usually means someone we believe internationally, in a territory other than the United States, somebody who has a bit of a profile that we can leverage.” And for people looking to work as spec script writers, Schamus said, “Spec scripts are for people who want jobs. That genre only functions in the Hollywood context …There’s no spec feature market (for example) for European art films…It’s basically the Energizer Bunny approach.” And finally, does age bias really exists for screenwriters? “For whatever reason, there is a bias against older writers, except there are a handful of A-listers. Part of it is, if you actually establish yourself as a writer-for-hire let’s say by your 30s, that business is fairly lucrative…and then, after 10 years…that’s it.”

Filmmaker Magazine's 2008 25 New Faces of Independent Film

Congratulations to all of the lucky filmmakers who were bestowed with Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces of Independent Film for 2008. The Film Panel Notetaker has been very fortunate to have met many of these talented filmmakers in the past year. Below is the list of all 25 of the filmmakers highlighted in the magazine. I've embedded links into the ones that The Film Panel Notetaker has covered either in the form of panel or Q&A notes or One-on-One Q&As. For those that have no links, hope to meet you around the circuit.

Jesse Epstein
Andrew Okpeaha MacLean
Tariq Tapa
Joshua Safdie
Ryan Bilsborrow-Koo & Zachary Lieberman
Christina Voros
Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt
Jennifer Phang
Barry Jenkins
Shana Feste
Daniel Robin
Tom Quinn
John Magary
Oren Peli
Matt Wolf
Myna Joseph
Encyclopedia Pictura
Mark Russell
E.E. Cassidy
Dee Rees
Aasif Mandvi
David & Nathan Zellner
Eric Latek
Julia Leigh
Benh Zeitlin

Where Internet and Film Collide - "Watch" - June 5, 2008

IndieGoGo along with IFP and Filmmaker Magazine co-presented Where Internet and Film Collide, a program held in conjunction with Internet Week NY. The modus operandi of this presentation was “watch” and “learn.” The “watch” portion came in the form of a series of short films created for viewing on the Internet or mobile devices, at IFC Center on Thursday evening. And coming this Sunday will be the “learn” part when a panel discussion at Apple Store SoHo will explore online media's future trends and actions to take now.

(L to R: "The West Side" directors Ryan Bilsborrow-Koo & Zachary Leiberman, Filmmaker Magazine's Scott Macauley, "Drawn by Pain" director Jesse Cowal and IndieGoGo's Slava Rubin)

Slava Rubin, IndieGoGo founder, introduced Scott Macauley, Filmmaker Magazine editor-in-chief, who moderated the discussions with the filmmakers after each film, which started with Green Porno, a series of shorts that can be seen on SundanceChannel.com about the sexual behavior of insects directed by and starring Isabella Rossellini. The episodes shown were “Snail” and “Praying Mantis.” Sundance Channel’s Christopher Barry said Green Porno was conceived about a year ago when Sundance Channel was doing a series of 10 shorts called “The Art of Seduction.” He approached Rossellini about making a series of shorts for small devices with thee conditions—1) Keep them short; 2) Keep them green; 3) Make them stand out. Did they conceptualize these shorts to guarantee huge traffic because of the word “porno,” Macauley asked. Barry said Rossellini has always been a maverick and she wasn’t thinking of search engines. For her, sex was a natural element to explore, but she didn’t want it to be ridiculous, just funny. Within the first two weeks, there were approximately two million page views. Were there any unexpected avenues for distribution that came up, Macauley asked. Barry said the whole process has been an experiment, but their main strategy was to start on SundanceChannel.com, then syndicate out to other sites like YouTube. They even got a call from the Mobile World Congress to present the films to mobile operators in Barcelona. The challenge has been figuring out how to monetize and aggregate the films and attract dollars to make your next projects.

Next on the agenda was Ryan Bilsborrow-Koo’s and Zachary Leiberman’s Webby Award-winning The West Side, as an online episodic urban western. They saw an opportunity to make something on the Internet without spending a lot of money. Lieberman said they are big believers in keeping the serial on their own website and drawing traffic to it. They’ve seen a spike in viewership because of the Webby award, but they didn’t do any PR. It’s all been word of mouth. Bilsborrow-Koo said if you make something of quality, people will watch it.

A trailer for Jesse Cowal’s Drawn By Pain, another Webby winner, followed. Drawn By Pain is described as “a dramatic action packed 12-part series in a sea of comedic web content…(that) engages its audience by leading them through an episodic spiral into one woman’s search for salvation as her animated madness fights for her sanity in the real world.” Cowal said that for his first web series in 2003, YouTube didn’t exist, but since then technology has caught up. His goal is to make Drawn By Pain a branded entity on multiple viewing platforms. “You have to whore yourself out,” he said. “It’s a brutal universe, but what’s wonderful about it is that it’s very honest.” What are some steps or tactics to building audiences online, Rubin asked. Cowal offered this advice, “Just keep telling people till you’re blue in the face. Be passionate, be nice and establish partnerships.” By partnering with other websites, there’s a greater opportunity to be seen by their viewership.

The next filmmakers showcased were Jamie Stuart with NYFF45: Part Two (featuring Nicole Kidman from the Margot at the Wedding press conference) and 12.5 Second Later (shot in my neighborhood of Astoria, Queens), and Ari Kuschnir and Scott Thrift of M ss ng P eces (yes, that’s right, but in case you’re wondering, it sounds like “missing pieces”) who presented TED, and eight-minute short about TED, an “idea” conference in Monterey, Calif., and Reset, a series of shorts in development with Sundance Channel. Macauley asked Stuart what his creative process was for NYFF45: Part Two. Stuart said there really isn’t any preproduction done on his film festival videos. They are a combination of improvisation and editing. How did M ss ng P eces come about, Macauley asked Kuschnir and Thrift, who said they got together in film school in 1999. Around 2005, they found that traditional filmmaking didn’t make much sense anymore. They’ve since then made about 200 short films. Rubin pointed out that the three fellas’ films seemed to be grounded in reality and asked them if that was a conscious decision on their parts. Stuart said he has no interest in reality. His goal is to pervert reality in one way or another. Surrealism has been on his head a lot lately, but no intentionally. He never trusts people who tell him he’s developing a film language; it’s the form he’s messing with. Thrift noted that TED encompasses everything he and Kuschnir want to say in a film. The idea is to get that kind of commentary and weave a story from it.

Finally, Lance Weiler, director of the DIY cult phenomena The Last Broadcast and Head Trauma, presented an episode of Beyond the Rave, an online series from Britain’s well-loved Hammer Films, for which Weiler developed a an extensive game world. How was this developed for Myspace, Macauley asked. Weiler said the shorts were released episodically on Myspace by Hammer, and after they had seen his “Hope is Missing” alternate reality game (based on Head Trauma), brought him in to develop something similar for Beyond the Rave. He created a game world around the films. Each episode is layered with subliminal frames that contain clues to the game. Viewers, often in teams, play and pause the films to find the clues. The game created very high levels of engagement where people would spend anywhere from six to 20 hours a week playing. How do you know if your film is right for an engaged viewing experience, Rubin asked. Weiler replied that some of the best things that are happening right now come from the independent game world such as World Without Oil funded by ITVS. It all depends on the kind of conversation you want to have. Viewers want the ability to touch something and be a part of it. The film is one thing and all the stuff around it something to drive in revenue.

The conversation continues on Sunday at Apple Store SoHo, followed by a party later in the evening at Chinatown Brasserie.