Monetizing festivals, part two

Festivals are all about love. I've never seen audiences show more affection for movies than they do at festivals. I think it's about the discovery. It's easy to like something knowing that you've discovered it. Now you can tell your friends about this rare gem that only you know about. It's exciting and empowering. For the filmmaker it's wonderful, but also dangerous. I know many a filmmaker who buy into the festival audience's love, and when their film is released theatrically they wonder... what happened? People are much more critical at the multiplex. The whole experience is very different, and much harder.
 
For our movie White on Rice we started to self-distribute theatrically while we were still playing in festivals. A lot of people think this sounds counterproductive. If the movie is in theaters, why would you still show it at festivals? But since we were self distributing, and of course broke, we couldn't turn down the opportunity for great publicity (paid for by the festival) and the buzz generated by the loving festival audiences. I give full credit to our amazing team: director Dave Boyle, and Nguyen Tran of Wave Releasing and Dylan Marchetti of Variance Films.

To make the festival work to our advantage we tried always to release theatrically in the festival city the week following the festival screening. That way the festival had a great promotional hook (a sneak peak screening, just before it arrives in theater), and we got all the buzz from the audience who went home and told all their friends about this great movie they just saw AND that they should see it because it would be in the theater the following week! Normally that buzz fizzes out and by the time you return to theaters, nobody cares. This strategy overcomes that dilemma.

The two cities where we pulled this off most successfully (and it's not easy to be able to pull off, mind you) were San Diego, where we won an audience award at the San Diego Asian Film Festival, and Honolulu, where we had a great screening at the Hawaii International Film Festival. In both cities we had our longest runs.

In these tricky economic times it's important to constantly think outside of the box in this way, and potentially dangerous to simply assume a traditional release, or even a "traditional" DIY release (whatever that could be) will work for you.

WHITE ON RICE-THEATRICAL TRAILER from Dave Boyle on Vimeo.

Monetizing festivals, part one

Film Festivals do many things for filmmakers. Mostly they give them a much needed platform to launch their projects. They also provide a forum for films that may be more "Challenging" than most films that have a better chance at finding an audience in regular theaters or straight to DVD. They provide filmmakers the invaluable opportunity to network with other filmmakers. For the independent filmmaker, film festivals are as important as breathing is to normal humans. However, there is one thing that festivals normally are not... and that is an opportunity to make money.
     It's amazing really. My first film, Big Dreams Little Tokyo, premiered at the AFI festival in Los Angeles, which is a wonderful festival. As filmmakers we worked very hard to raise interest for our film. We hired a very competent publicist (who helped us get into the festival) and went to work making sure the seats were full for each of our screenings. Our film had a sumo-wrestling subplot, so we hired a bunch of local sumo wrestlers to walk around outside the Arclight and pass out information about the film. It was a great bit of promotion and we were proud that our film got more better photo coverage than the Penelope Cruz tribute that was going on at the same time.

Director Dave Boyle, actress Rachel Morihiro and friends on the AFI Fest red carpet.

     The end result of our efforts? More people came to see our film -- which is great. At a festival, however, all ticket sales go to the festival (and venues, etc), but not to the filmmaker. So by spending thousands of dollars on publicity, all we did is line the pocket of the festival a bit. Well, everyone who sees your film is good of course, but there's got to be some way to monetize this thing. Is it worth breaking your bank and back, just so a few more people can see the movie? I would suggest it depends on who they are. If they're industry types, critics, festival programmers, then absolutely. If not, it might be wise to let the festival's publicity team do their job. I've started to concern myself mostly with "Industry-targeted-publicity" for festivals, saving broad marketing for when the dollars come back to me.
     We also discovered that your film never gets more love and attention than it does at festivals. At almost every festival everyone goes in wanting to love it. They're cheering for you because they feel somehow connected to you. They are discovering this new film that no one else has seen. But we found that when you finally release in that same city (six months to a year later), all of that love, as well as any promotion you may have done, is long gone.
     I'll return to this subject in a bit to talk about what can be done.

Celebrating our freedoms on July 4th

I just realized that the last three DVDs I watched the few days before the 4th of July were:

Fair Game (with Naomi Watts as Valerie Plame and Sean Penn as Joe Wilson), ...

All The President's Men (with Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein and Robert Redford as Bob Woodward)...

Good Night Good Luck (with George Clooney as Fred Friendly and David Strathairn as Edward R. Murrow.

All are movies where citizens expose the dastardly deeds of those in power. All are true stories. All make me angry and also happy to be an American. Freedom of Press and Freedom of Speech are two of the greatest things worth celebrating today. The freedom to make movies that our government might not want made is another thing to celebrate.

By the way. I like Fair Game, but it's not the greatest movie. Cinematically it does nothing outrageously new or memorable. It's worth watching though, for it's good direction, solid performances and a story that's will hopefully remain the most historically significant aspect of the Bush presidency (that and the economic crash). 

All the President's Men, on the other hand, is one of the best movies ever made. Amazing acting, great subtle direction, brilliant screenwriting, mind blowing cinematography. Look for the amazing double focus shots using lenses that are able to find their focus in two places at once. Also look for what I consider one of the most amazing moments of film acting of all time: at one point there is a shot of Redford on the phone, the camera goes from a medium wide to a medium tight. As you watch you are caught up in the drama and suspense of the scene and you don't realize that the scene is seven minutes long. Seven minutes! Very few scenes in film that long even work, and here's a seven minute single shot of Redford. Definitely an under appreciated film actor. The film is worth watching over and over for many reasons... not the least of which is for its legitimately incredible and important story.

Good Night and Good Luck is also a very good movie. Shot in beautiful black and white it has a great ensemble cast, lead by the always outstanding Strathairn. The music is great. My seventeen year old son was the one who pulled it out to watch it. About halfway through I sat down with him and he asked, "Is this an independent film?" I said yes, and he said, "You can always tell because they never have any music." GNGL does have very good music, but it's used like source music. It's based on a story I've known about for years and have wanted to make a movie about for years, but Clooney beat me to it. That's a good name for my autobiography: Clooney Beat Me To It.

Help me out here, what are some other great Power to the People movies we could watch around the 4th?

Ten steps plus one for indie film producer survival

I found this list at Truly Free Film and agree with it for the most part. Not everything on this list have I been able to do, but it's good advice (followed or not).

Ten Steps (Plus One) For How To Survive The Current Indie Producer Hell

indie film, producing

I was talking to a comrade in the field a bit back, and mapped out this survival strategy for the exceedingly tough times that producing indie film is these days. See it’s simple, right? Just do these ten things (and then a little more) and you got it made (if you don’t have to actually earn a living that is!):

1) Cut all your budgets by 60% — but recognize your fee is going down by an even greater percentage;

2) Meet all the marketing, distribution, publicity, social network, widget & app designers, web strategy, & transmedia story world builders you can possibly meet, because “producing the marketing and distribution” of all your films under $4M has become part of the producer’s job description — but recognize that is going to be a major time-suck on your schedule;

3)Aggregate viable projects under $500K to build a new media distribution apparatus, recognizing the lack of fees and time suck involved — but that the low budget is required to experiment with new platforms with unproven financial models and a multitude is necessary to learn;

4)Continue to try to get one of 10 or so available slots for prestige specialized film budget over $10M so you can actually earn a fee, but recognize the odds are really really low that yours will be the one out of 500 or so that are competing with you;

5)Do everything you can to get a studio picture and/or television series since they are the only ways to legitimize yourself in the industry’s eyes, the quickest ways to promote your brand to potential new fans, and the most likely ways to earn enough money to sustain yourself;

6)Spend some time every day building your own audience and deepen their level of commitment to you by you giving back to them regularly — so that ultimately they will follow you and help promote your work, because you aren’t going to be doing it alone;

7) Find some other way to earn money on a regular basis since the film industry will remain unstable for a very long time and we all need to pay the bills;

 Fight for affordable health care and education because if you have to go into substantial debt to pay for what should be available to all then you will never be able to consider a career in the arts to begin with or ever again;

9) Try to give back to a younger generation who are much different than you (other than their interest in film) because if things don’t make some substantial changes soon, their won’t be a film industry for you to work in either (i.e. we’ve all done the same things for too long and the system is broken and we don’t seem to know how to fix it) and besides, maybe you will learn something;

10) Keep your overhead as low as possible forever and ever and ever, as you will need to remain very flexible in the days and months to come.

Did I get the list right? What did I leave out? I mean, other than the obvious one of having a large fortune to squander. You do know that this is a quiz, right? I mean, I did leave some things off the list just because the internet likes top ten lists best. And of course because I want to test you. But really there was one, that I thought was obvious and is really why I have an energy to do any blogging or social networking whatsoever. It’s the most crucial if Indie Film will live:

If Indie Film is going to truly survive — and once again flourish –we all have to do everything we can to organize our community, to encourage participation, to share information.

Choose the culture you want.

Get on the bus. Please.

Thank you.

Ultra Low in LA: JUST PRETEND wrapped

Our project Just Pretend has wrapped. We had very few bumps along the road and I am hoping our efforts will turn out a very good movie. We had an amazingly hard working crew that was cheerful and happy (for the most part), and it was a pleasure to work with Eric Levy, Juan Cardarelli, Abby Miller, Brian Dietzen and the rest of the creative team. What's next?

A film investor's insight and thoughts on business plans

Gary Chou was the principal financier of my movie Surrogate Valentine. The most common thing people ask me about is how to raise money for films. In his insightful blog Gary mentions the reasons he invested in Surrogate Valentine:

• He was already a fan of the principal participant, Goh Nakamura.
• He felt the team of Goh and director Dave Boyle seemed like the foundation of a tech startup, something he was familiar with.
• Both Dave and Goh had a track record that proved they would find a way to succeed.
• They were going to find a way to make the movie with or without his investment (they didn't come off desperate, but were presenting him an opportunity to be involved).
• They both wore multiple hats (meaning that both Dave and Goh have skills and knowledge that enable them to propel their project toward success, without relying on others to solve problems for them).
• And finally: "There was a clear energy between them where you knew the level of awesome was more than the sum of the parts."

Gary's post is good to read as you seek investment because it's helpful to consider how you appear to your potential investor. One of the important aspects of Surrogate Valentine was the business model that Gary alludes to. By keeping our budget low we proposed a way to make Return on Investment through our own grassroots efforts. It is important that your proposed business plan actually includes a plan. I recently read a book that stated that any business plan that relies on someone coming in and buying the product (and making "all our dreams come true") is NOT an acceptable business model. Almost all business plans for film projects rely entirely on exactly this. The business plan is essentially making the movie and hoping that someone buys it. HOPE IS NOT A STRATEGY. Of course, when you're making a film for hundreds of thousands of dollars, you'd better hope that something global is going to happen (and if you're expecting someone to give you that kind of money you had better be in a position to implement global activity)... if you're making it for significantly less than $100,000 then you can develop non-traditional strategies that make economic sense.

Surrogate Valentine presented a plan that we are currently implementing. At no point did we intend to offer the film up for sales. We didn't have a sales agent going into SXSW. We knew that ours was not the kind of film that companies look for. We also knew that anyone who did show interest would probably not do any better at getting it out there than we could do ourselves. If someone came with a big offer, that would be great, but our business plan never relied on it. Instead our strategy includes DVD sales at festival screenings, a small theatrical release, followed by VOD. The theatrical and VOD release were all coordinated by ourselves (Dave really) based on contacts established during our previous projects.

For his part Gary Chou has been a dream-come-true-Executive-Producer who has gone out of his way to support and promote the project. As a social networking tech VC guy he's done his share to get the word out. It's great to be able to work with so many amazing folks with such an array of skills.

You can support our efforts by buying it from Amazon, or putting it in your Netflix cue.

Surrogate Valentine: Behind the Scenes from goh nakamura on Vimeo.

A report on unwanted sound in Los Angeles

I have continually said that if you want to shoot low budget you should try and shoot as much Day Exterior as possible. This is generally good advice, but some exteriors are louder than others. Here in Los Angeles, winding down on production for JUST PRETEND, there are extensive unwanted noises. While most neighbors are genuinely amiable and willing to turn of mowers, blowers, music, etc, some sound is just beyond your control. Here is a list of sounds that we've had to hold for:

• Helicopters (they're everywhere here in LA, but today shooting in North Hollywood there is a helicopter that has been making a wide circle around us all afternoon).
• Mowers and blowers. When filming in upscale neighborhoods this is a very common issue. Fortunately the gardeners are super fast and generally willing to wait a few minutes while you're rolling (being able to speak Spanish is extra helpful in negotiating this).
• Masonry (we had a house with a major masonry, plumbing project going on while we were filming nearby. This one we just had to accept. The house had broken its water line so the owner wasn't particularly happy to have his workers wait around for us).
• Airplanes (Here in North Hollywood, we're right by the Burbank Airport, but fortunately the house is pretty sound proof. In Pasadena we were on a super quiet street, but there was a constant parade of small aircraft flying over us. We were filming outside on Memorial Day and had to deal with Jet Flyovers and WWII era aircraft flying over us in formation).
• Music (neighbors stereos, etc)
• Party (last night a major party with a DJ and everything started a few houses behind us, just as we were getting close to finishing).
• A dude parking his boat (these guys took forever to park this massive boat, right where we were shooting).
• Street cleaners, dump trucks (fortunately they come and go).
• Parrots (that's right, parrots. In Pasadena a flock of green parrots landed in the trees above us. Apparently they are decsendents of escapees from a long since shuttered zoo in the area).
• Peacocks (don't know where they came from, but one day they showed up).
• Dogs barking (we had a neighbor trying to blow leaves off his roof, he kindly would turn off his blower while we were rolling, but then he'd just stand on his roof overlooking his neighbors house where his neighbor's dogs would bark nonstop at him. Some people just don't get it).
• Lula the dog (in our Pasadena home Lula the dog was with us for the nine days at the location. She was a very sweet, old Shepherd who would occasionally walk into the set while we were rolling, her long nails clicking on the hard wood floor).

Lula the Dog, set mascot

• A birthday party, complete with piñata (the party itself was no big deal, but when they started whacking on the piñata...)
• A house on fire complete with three fire trucks, two ambulances and a police car (the fire was apparently minimal but they opened up hydrants and everything. The amazing thing is that once they all arrived, they were extremely quiet, and even though they were running around doing their thing, we could do our shot without hearing them.
• Trains, yes in North Hollywood, when the air clears of airplanes, that's when you hear the trains.
• Perhaps strangest of all: A Submarine. Turned out to be an ice cream truck that instead of playing music plays a single sonar pulse like a submarine.
• Finally Kansas' CARRY ON MY WAYWARD SON, which happens to be my ringtone. Hold for the producer's phone. Very embarrassing.

I still think that for the super low budget filmmaker shooting exterior day is a lot better than anything where you have to wrangle a bunch of lights, but be prepared for sound issues. I find shooting in busy urban areas are even better than quiet suburban ones, because at least the sound is constant. One trick is that if you're filming near an airport, mention that you're near the airport (or train, freeway, turkey farm, whatever), so that the noise has a purpose. Make it a part of your story. The other good way to work around it is to make your scenes very short. That way you're not dealing with long scenes and takes that might get messed up.

WWII era planes interrupt our film shoot from Duane Andersen on Vimeo.