Shooting People: Tools » distribution

Jon Reiss Shows You How to Think Outside the Box Office

Ingrid — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 12:09:31 +0000

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!

Digital Bootcamp Wiki – Help It Grow!

Ingrid — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 20:33:21 +0000

We’re really proud of the growing Digital Bootcamp Wiki. It started off as a companion to the workshops we have been conducting but it has now become a standalone resource on funding, distribution, marketing and so much more in the digital age. Wiki comes from the Hawaiian word for “fast” – and if you all collaborate to this wiki by adding to it we can help it grow even faster!

Shooting People supports VODO

Ingrid — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 20:08:40 +0000

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

Digital Bootcamp Wiki

Ingrid — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:57:33 +0000

I created a wiki – digitalbootcamp.wikispaces.com – for the Shooting People Digital Bootcamp workshop conducted on July 4th 2009 at the Frontline Club – taught by James Mullighan, Harriet Fleuriot and myself. Like the workshop itself, most of these resources are aimed at documentary filmmakers but narrative filmmakers can find lots of good ideas here too. Please add to the wiki if you have additional links, tips and tricks to share – we want plenty of collaboration in the spirit of the wiki!

DocAgora Webplex – funding, festival and distribution info all in one place!

Ingrid — Mon, 11 May 2009 21:08:59 +0000

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.

You’ve Got It Made – Scottish Screen Short Film Distribution Guide

Ingrid — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 02:07:07 +0000

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!

NEW BREED – A new addition to Workbook Project

Ingrid — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 21:28:30 +0000

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!

Power to the Pixel videos online

Ingrid — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:38:20 +0000

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.

ITVS Digital Initiative: Strategies and Case Studies

Ingrid — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 20:27:06 +0000

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