The catch is you have to contribute some of this info! But check out the DocAgora Webplex website. There’s already a lot of great resources on there for documentary filmmakers and this is the sort of site that will only get stronger as more people use it and contribute to it (it’s early days yet so don’t expect a complete database at this stage). I was talking to a filmmaker at Hot Docs who said that he wished that there was one place to go for all these resources. Well now there is! Or at least there will be.

So create an account and get stuck in. I’m very excited to see this build and I’ll be reporting back further as I try it out and encourage filmmakers to do the same.

Scottish Screen have provided a very handy downloadable guide to the world of short film distribution. It covers all the bases from festivals to sales agents to digital distribution. If you are even considering making a short film you should read this guide. One of the things I am learning is that thinking about distribution AFTER your film is made is usually way too late. You should be thinking about the goals you have for your film from day 1 of pre-production. It saves a lot of headaches in the long run and it actually makes the whole distribution process more empowering and creative for you, the filmmaker. So get reading!

The incredibly useful Workbook Project recently added another weapon to its creative arsenal. NEW BREED consists of first person accounts of the filmmaking process – you can read through all the posts or go straight to the filmmakers or projects that you’re particularly interested in. The site outlines some NEW BREED goals for 2009:

With the dawn of 2009 comes some new additions to the site. NEW BREED: CRITICAL FOCUS will introduce a new series of interviews, special topics addressed by site regulars and more articles from guest contributers. Look for upcoming conversations with filmmakers Hunter Weeks, Ondi Timoner, Barry Jenkins, Lynn Shelton and Joe Swanberg, as well as a new series of articles by site regulars sharing insight into lessons learned… the hard way. And in a few days we will introduce a prolific filmmaker of short films, Jack Daniel Stanley, who takes his southern gothic horror film, A Little Mouth To Feed, to Slamdance 09 and offers insight into his preparations, planning and experience at the festival.

If you’d prefer not to learn ALL your lessons the hard way, read NEW BREED and hear from filmmakers who learned them for you!

I have been spending the last few days catching up on presentations and panels from the Power to the Pixel conference that took place in London last month – they are now online and free to wach. There’s some great info and ideas here, from Christy Dena on cross-media production, to Arin Crumley on collaborative filmmaking to Jamie King on distribution. If you are feeling worried about how the credit crunch is going to affect independent filmmaking (and let’s face it, who of us isn’t!) then watch some of these videos and get inspired about all the possibilities out there (many of them low cost, using free tools that are already available).

Here’s Jamie King, creator of Steal This Film, which has been viewed millions of times after being given away for free via BitTorrent.

Scott Kirsner of CinemaTech was commissioned by ITVS to investigate how indepedent filmmakers are working with new technologies and to answer the following questions:

Opening Up Production to Participation
During pre-production and production, how are filmmakers communicating with audiences, widely dispersed teams, funders and prospective subjects in new ways? What new opportunities for involvement and participation are they exploring?

Finding New Audiences
Once a project is completed and ready for release/broadcast, how are filmmakers using blogs, social networks, games and other technologies to reach audiences that will care about their project?

New Distribution Opportunities
How are filmmakers presenting their work on websites, cell phones, iPods and the new generation of Internet-connected TVs and set-top boxes? Do these distribution avenues create conflict with more traditional outlets? Are there substantial economic benefits or simply promotional positives?

You should check out the suggested strategies for connection-creating, marketing and promotion and distribution.

Case studies include:

Byron Hurt:HIP-HOP: Beyond Beats and Rhymes
Katy Chevigny: ELECTION DAY
Curt Ellis: KING CORN
David Iverson: STILL LIFE
Hunter Weeks and Josh Caldwell: 10 MPH
Tiffany Shlain: The Tribe

Hi everyone,

I’m Patrick and this is my first time posting on Shooting People. Two weeks ago I was approached by James Mullighan to blog about a self-distribution project I’m running at Met Film. Some of you might know the Met Film School, it turns out we’re actually a group of three companies, Met Film Post, Met Film Production and the Met Film School and we develop, produce and post-produce a variety of feature films and television programs… Bet you didn’t know that!

Well, it just so happens that Met Film Production made a film called Heavy Load - a great documentary about a punk band of the same name. It was funded by the IFC and ITVS in the US and the BBC here in the UK. With TV rights out (UK and US resting with the BBC and IFC respectively) and our international sales with the girls at TVF we found ourselves still sitting on UK and US DVD and theatrical rights. Around the same time a couple of people at Met had also become very interested in self-distribution, especially after hearing about all the neat ways to find niche audiences and aggregate them for effective DVD and theatrical distribution.

Well, it didn’t take us long to figure out what we were going to do with those rights we had laying around the office – we’ll try this self-distribution-thing ourselves! That was back in June. In August we hired Dnyan to help me put everything together and together with Al, who produced Heavy Load, we started our journey in to self-distribution

The idea behind all this is that we believe self-distribution is coming of age and there are some unique films with identifiable core audiences which can be reached much cheaper and more efficiently through social networks, direct online marketing and PR than the traditional posters-on-the-tube approach and with Heavy Load we’re looking to prove this assumption right.

To date we feel we’ve been doing pretty well. We’ve engaged a PR agency and a cinema booker and we’re in talks with DVD wholesalers about stocking our titles on high street shelves. Our website has been updated and will include an online shop to buy directly from us. We’re date mining left right and center and are updating our groups and blogs on Facebook, Myspace and Bebo daily.

Early on we decided that Heavy Load should play in cinemas – even though we’d most likely loose money overall, the press won’t review a straight to DVD film like they do a theatrical one and running the numbers our losses would be minimal considering we’d screen through the digital cinema network at £78 a cinema as opposed to £4,000 per print. As of writing we have a pretty good theatrical run: 2 weeks at the ICA, 1 week at the Empire Leicester Square and another 2 weeks dotted across the country – the full list plus more info and goodies can be found at: www.heavyloadthemovie.com

This theatrical run has resulted in some great PR, two-page spreads in the Guardian, reviews in Total Film, Empire, Little White Lies, a section on BBC Radio 4 and the promise of MTV at our Premiere at the ICA this week.

So for this week its all hands on deck to make sure we maximise the PR from our premiere – luckily it sold out straight away and the gigs we’ve organised for afterwards are also at capacity. Now we’ve just got to entice the press down… free beer anyone?

I’ll be back in a few days and let you know how the premiere went – at the moment we’re looking for volunteers to help out on the day and photographers and filmamkers to take as many pictures and videos as they can and post them online – if you’ve got your own photo or film blog, let me know!

Best,

P

I wasn’t able to attend the Shooting People/BAFTA Short Sighted event in London earlier this month due to the very inconvenient fact that I was in New York! But all the feedback has been excellent and it sounds like filmmakers really benefited from the day’s panels and case studies. I particularly like this comment:

“The event was motivating due to the knowledge of panel members as well as the clever filmmakers attending. Shooting People is ‘as yellow as the generosity of a pineapple’.” (Tontxi Vazquez, Writer/Producer)

I think Shooting People is as yellow as the generosity of a pineapple should be our new tagline!

Whether you attended or not make sure you download the book of useful contacts (sales agents, festivals, websites etc.) and some tips from yours truly on filmmaking in a web 2.0 world. There’s lots of good stuff in there for all filmmakers although the focus is on short films.

If you think we have left out any ueful contacts or websites please leave a comment here so we can build our database and continue to provide useful information to y’all. Plus if you agree/disagree with any of my tips please leave comments too. It’s always good to hear from filmmakers who are actually going through it because I know it’s much easier to talk the talk than to walk the walk.

Been meaning to blog this since it came out last week during Independent Film Week. Some of you may already be familiar with the new distribution strategy that Peter Broderick advocates but he lays it out very clearly in this two part article for indieWIRE.

Part 1

Part 2

This chart illustrates the differences between what Broderick calls the old and new worlds of distribution.

And he finishes with some solid tips:

Be strategic – In the Old World, most filmmakers have reactions not strategies. They chose the best offer from those they receive. It is essential to be proactive in the New World. You need a strategy to navigate it successfully.

Think long term – Be clear about your goals. Are you creating a business around a group of films with common content? Are you building a career as an artist with a core personal audience?

Stay flexible – Implement your strategy stage by stage and modify it as you go. You learn valuable information in every stage that will enable you to improve your plan for the next stage.

Split rights – Retain overall control of your distribution. Take a hybrid approach, dividing certain rights among distributors and retaining the right to do direct sales.

Target audiences – Research, test, and refine your approach to core audiences. Understand who is most responsive to your films, and how to reach them most effectively.

Find partners - Look for national nonprofits, websites, sponsors, and distributors to team up with to bring your film to their members, subscribers, and customers.

Build a team – Find teammates who can help with the website, outreach, fulfillment, theatrical, domestic sales, and foreign sales.

Harness the internet – Use your website to build awareness, develop a mailing list, attract user-contributed content, and make direct sales. Design a compelling site that will have a life of its own.

Be Creative - Avoid formulaic distribution ruts. Apply the same creativity to distribution as production. It is often harder to bring a movie into the world than to produce it. An innovative approach to distribution can make all the difference.

Make distribution happen - Design a distribution strategy and find the distributors, partners, and teammates to help you implement it.

MovieMobz is a Brazilian iniative that allows film fans from the Moviemobz social network to choose the films they want to see by clicking an “I Want To See It” button. If enough people select a certain film (both classics and new releases are on offer) then it is programmed and they are emailed about the screening. About 2.5 people attend for every member who’s voted.

As Arin Crumley remarks, this is similar to the Four Eyed Monsters heart map. Except this is being masterminded by MovieMobz’s owner, Rain Network, Latin America’s biggest digital cinema operator – rather than by the filmmakers (which is refreshing as it can sometimes feel rather irksome when EVERY new truly-independent distribution strategy seems to fall on the filmmakers’ broke and exhausted shoulders). As we debate how theatrical release strategies for independent films need to change in today’s glutted marketplace this is a model we should all be paying close attention to.

Another piece from Anne Thompson at Variety about the changing distribution strategies indie producers/distributors are pursuing:

[F]ilmmakers with an easily defined niche and some marketing flair can still assemble a distribution plan. After doc “Beautiful Losers” debuted at SXSW in March, the filmmakers considered traditional offers from distribs but decided to release the doc on their own. Sidetrack Films partnered with Nike Sportswear to sponsor art workshops, and a shoe and apparel company helped pay for its Aug. 8 launch at New York’s IFC Center and subsequent rollout to four more markets.

Longtime fest film seller John Sloss‘ Cinetic Media also entered the fray this year with the Digital Rights Management group, led by former SXSW film fest director Matt Dentler, who is taking on some of the thousands of titles that are undervalued and haven’t sold after playing the fest circuit. Cinetic will take rights exclusively as a distributor does, and share all revenues 50/50, with no advance.

Filmmakers don’t have to give away the store with DVD deals anymore, but can pursue online distribution via Amazon and a host of rival online indie distribs, from iArthouse and iTunes to IndiePix, Jaman, Hulu, Vudu, Cinequest, Spout and GreenCine.

Laure Parsons at Infinicine points out that holding on to digital rights is not necessarily the path to riches when most people are still watching DVDs:

It may seem like a coup to retain digital rights if you do a DVD deal but you may be shooting yourself in the foot.  A good distributor will manage your digital rights in concert with the DVD to make sure you see the maximum revenue on the balance sheet.

The film business has always been a high-risk venture, but now at the onset of a deal, the willingness to give is at an all-time low. Filmmakers want to hold on to whatever they can, in hopes they can parcel off rights for some benefit in case one or another distribution partner fails.  Distributors want every right, so that they can consolidate their campaigns and also have different avenues to fall back on if one strategy fails.  The only protection you have as a filmmaker ultimately is to know who you’re getting in bed with and their track record- or to do it yourself, but armed with a lot of knowledge and some good consultants.