Join us at DCTV on Monday 22nd and learn how to build an audience for your film and your career!

Filmmakers today must think about audience engagement from day one.

What are the best strategies for building an audience both online and off? What’s a fair offer, and what are some of the myths around distribution? What are possibilities for self-distribution? What’s all this talk about transmedia and participatory audiences?

Brian Newman will help you think about a range of plans for your film and workshop distribution plans for some films in the audience – as a group, because the audience is also the expert.

Regardless of your approach to distribution, knowing your audience and the best strategies to engage them is crucial. After all, you aren’t just building an audience for your film, you’re building a fan base for your future.

Brian Newman is the founder of sub-genre consulting, helping filmmakers and organizations to distribute content and connect with audiences through innovative uses of new technology. Brian was most recently CEO of the Tribeca Film Institute, and has been the executive director of Renew Media and IMAGE Film & Video Center. He speaks regularly on new media, audience development and the future of the industry, and contributes to a blog on these subjects at Springboardmedia.

Presented by Shooting People & DCTV

Mon, 02/22/2010 – 7:30pm

DCTV, 87 Lafayette Street, NYC

$8 DCTV & Shooting People Members

Get tickets in advance as the masterclasses tend to sell out.

Shooting People and DCTV bring you a great new event to kick off 2010. You don’t want to miss this!

Are you confused about all the different digital options when it comes to distribution for your film? You are not alone! The web has given us many more opportunities for getting our films in front of audiences but it can be a minefield for filmmakers trying to navigate the new terrain.

Join us for a masterclass with Matt Dentler, head of programming and marketing for Cinetic Rights Management (CRM). Dentler will explain the latest in digital distribution and what he looks for when seeking films to distribute. He’ll also gaze into his crystal ball and tell us what to expect in the future. If you are currently making or distributing a film you can’t afford to miss this. It’s the perfect start to a new year of savvy filmmaking!

About Matt Dentler & Cinetic Rights Management:

Matt Dentler is the head of programming and marketing for Cinetic Rights Management, a New York-based company that releases independent films into the digital marketplace on broadband and cable VOD worldwide. Prior to that, he spent five years producing the SXSW Film Conference & Festival in Austin.

Through its label “FilmBuff,” CRM brings audiences the latest, greatest and classic festival favorites from around the globe. FilmBuff delivers the festival and arthouse experience to audiences via portals such as iTunes, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, SnagFilms, Time Warner Cable, Comcast, and more.

Monday, January 11th, 7:30pm
DCTV, 87 Lafayette Street, NYC

Tickets available via Brown Paper Tickets – just $8 for Shooting People members!

If you haven’t picked up a copy of Jon Reiss’ Think Outside the Box Office do yourself a favor and grab one now. Whatever kind of distribution and marketing strategy you are pursuing for your film (and if you haven’t got a strategy yet this book will help you develop one!), there are loads of good tips and ideas in here for you. This is a time when we all need to be sharing as many resources as possible to make the long, hard road of getting a film made and seen feel just a little bit less like venturing forth into complete Terra Incognita. There are lots of great folk out there helping to clear a path through the wilderness, like Ted Hope with Truly Free Film for example, but we all need to share what we are learning as we re-invent the future. So read this book and pass it on!

The Think Tank was the culmination of 2009’s Cross-Media Film Forum, “bringing together Power to the Pixel’s participating experts for a day of discussion and debate with a view to defining practical steps in developing cross-media film practices in the film industry.”

Download it free here.

We’re pretty excited to let you know that we’ve up to a strategic partnership with VODO (short for voluntary donations), an experiment in new distribution from Shooter Jamie King. What’s the idea? Well, Jamie is also one of the directors of Steal This Film, a film that he achieved over 5 million downloads for by working with Pirate Bay to promote and distribute the film for him. He also received more voluntary donations for the film than he would have earned from sharing advertising revenue on those views with Youtube or any of the other revenue sharing online distributors.

Since then he has created a distribution union of many leading p2p sites ( The Pirate Bay, Mininova, Miro, TorrentFreak, Isohunt, Plube, OneDDL, Vuze, Frostwire and others) whose accumulative daily users top 40 million. They have agreed to promote one VODO film a month on their front pages. This means that free complete copies of the films will be released to all these site and VODO, which is short for voluntary donation, will collect all and any donations which are given as a result.

The project went live with Ivo Gormley’s documentary “Us Now” as the first test. The film achieved 100,000 downloads in the first four days and a bunch of attention, which ain’t bad at all. VODO is backed by the Arts Council, The Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation, Emerald Fund and Goldsmith’s College. Shooting People is coming on board as a strategic partner, offering engagement and support for a number of reasons:

We applaud these kinds of distribution experiments which are driven by a love of independent content and a desire to make the work of independent filmmakers (rather than mega bucks for corporate entertainment conglomerates) sustainable in the digital era. We wanted to give Jamie our public support.
VODO needs quirky, smart and adventurous filmmakers to consider using this approach. Shooting People has loads of those.
We wanted to stay close to the results, lessons and new ideas that will come out of this experiment and be able to share that with the community. Can P2P sites drive large audiences to new work, not just famous titles? Can a donation culture be developed amongst those who are no longer paying for content up front? How many downloads are needed to trigger one donation? Is it possible to build a fan base for filmmakers this way? Can you sell content to TV stations after they have been a pirate hit? There are many important questions here that can only be answered by sucking and seeing.

So please go to VODO.net to find out more: www.vodo.net

Check out Arin Crumley’s latest project to bring audiences to films and films to audiences, OpenIndie. Using the site users will be able to request screenings in their area – much like Arin and co. did with the famous Four Eyed Monsters heart map – and organize their own screenings. He still needs to raise more money for the project on Kickstarter so if you think this is a good idea lay some money down to help him on his way!

This is from DIY Days in Philly.

Nina Paley gave a great and very transparent talk at DIY Days in Philadelphia about her distribution strategy for Sita Sings the Blues and why she believes that giving away things for free can make good business sense. On the film’s website Paley says: “I hereby give Sita Sings the Blues to you. Like all culture, it belongs to you already, but I am making it explicit with a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License. Please distribute, copy, share, archive, and show Sita Sings the Blues. From the shared culture it came, and back into the shared culture it goes.”

Watch her talk here:

New American Vision have created a guide to various digital distribution platforms. It looks like they have some good resources, definitely worth perusing to make sure you’re aware of all of your options. Any they’ve missed?

Check out their top 10 digital distribution tips too.