tfc_blog

by Jeffrey Winter
2021_festivals
I am just going to say what every professional involved in the film festival business already knows but may have been heretofore afraid to utter in public. The first six months of the 2021 Film Festival Circuit are going to be WAY weirder—and even more chaotic—and ultimately, probably even more difficult, than the first half of 2020.

Just think about that for a second: by comparison, 2020 was the normal year.

Consider: 2020 started normally, with the traditional launchpads of Sundance and the Berlinale and smaller showcases like Rotterdam, Palm Springs International, True/False etc. happening undisturbed…which resulted in a bevy of buzzed-about films, a relatively normal acquisitions pool, a business climate most of us were used to, and gave us something to work with. When the Pandemic crashed our parties…hard…in early March, everything just stopped, ceased to exist, and, really, there wasn’t anything we could do about that. Then the engines of innovation kicked quickly in to place, and around early May, we had moved into the new phase, the emergence of the “virtual festivals,” where we sought to replicate everything we had done in the old world…just online. By the end of the first half of 2020, we had even started to enjoy the relative freedom of drive-in screenings and created a new nostalgic norm we’ve been calling “hybrid” ever since.

But here at the top of 2021, they are even cancelling the drive-ins now…thats how bad the Pandemic is right now (in many places). By comparison to 2020, what we have staring us in the face for 2021 looks like chaotic re-invention, essentially as if all the chips have been thrown in the air and we are waiting to see where they land.

A number of festivals have thrown in the towel and just Canceled, with many more not yet ready to re-occupy their traditional Spring dates because they only just finished their postponed 2020 festivals a couple of months ago in Fall! Nearly all festivals have significantly changed dates, most are virtual or hybrid, most are shorter in duration, nearly all have fewer films, and a large percentage are spread out across MONTHS of time and more closely resemble screening series or “off-calendar” bookings than traditional festivals. Many are now in the VOD-like “virtual cinema” business, directly competing with VOD release windows. Even the product needs are different, there’s less competition for premieres at certain festivals (no choice given the expansion of streaming platforms snatching up films), and there’s a lot of gnashing of teeth about what sells in a virtual environment versus a physical one (whether films should be more or less experimental to compete, whether to rev share or offer flat fees, etc.).

To snapshot the wide variety of changes afoot—just consider the following few festivals who relayed new information to me just today:

PLEASE NOTE: all of this is tentative only…things are changing daily these days and no festival should be expected to hold to what they say now, as there are obviously Pandemic factors outside their control.

Thessaloniki Docs: (normally in March) Likely to be spread out over several months, with the largest part of the Festival probably in early Summer.

Seattle International: (normally mid-May to early June) Canceled in 2020, 2021 dates (April 8 – 18) are more than a month earlier than the usual, all screenings virtual, significantly less films (although still a lot…it’s a huge festival).

RiverRun: (normally mid-April) Now nearly a month later than usual (May 6 – 16), hybrid format planned (some virtual, some physical).

Phoenix International: (normally early March) No firm plans yet for 2021 yet due to just having wrapped the 2020 festival in November, considering screening series in April/May, with possible full festival in June…all plans for physical screenings pending vaccination status of the population.

Of all the changes afoot in 2021, perhaps the most difficult one to fathom right now (particularly as I personally write this from Plague-choked Southern California) are the massive efforts well underway to postpone major festivals to the late Spring/early Summer 2021 weeks (sometime in June), presumably to take advantage of the ameliorating effects of the vaccinations, and also warmer weather to accommodate outdoor venues. This is the most important change we are looking at right now, with the bulk of programming for major festivals like Berlin, Tribeca, Rotterdam, and Full Frame being planned for some time during that late Spring/early Summer period.

Obviously, this wholesale shift of major 2021 festivals all into June will have dramatic impact on the rest of the festivals that usually feed off these film premieres, as well as dramatic impact on the release of films into the marketplace. But of course it also begs the most important question…do we REALLY think we will be free of the specter of COVID-19 by then? Do we really think we can just keep postponing with the hope that someday—not very long from now—we will see a return to something we once called normal?

At least from here today in L.A., where we are setting deadly new records for caseloads every day, I cannot imagine that will be the case, although of course I deeply hope I am wrong. And yet, we cannot just do nothing, as we did for a brief while in 2020…as our year of experience shows that the calendar still turns, release schedules still roll on (although in dramatically revised ways), films still become dated the longer they sit on the shelf, new films come along, and we must continue to do business to survive. And so, we have no choice to continue to try and adapt.

Below is a partial list of 2021 Festivals that we at The Film Collaborative regularly book with, in normal times and now in COVID times, and some of the key ways they are different than 2020, and of course, from pre-COVID days. These Festivals are listed below in what we can call a “traditional chronological order,” meaning based on their 2019 dates…to give you a feel for how much they have already changed.

Amidst the shakeup lies a deeper question, however, whose answer will not be known for several months. Beneath the surface awareness of these well-known festivals lies hundreds, even thousands, of smaller “local” film festivals with business plans and models that may have not survived this transition at all. At this point we know some of them will never reappear, and we can only imagine we will see glimmers of them as they attempt to resurface as conditions change, with varying degrees of success.

If you are a filmmaker or a professional wondering how to adapt to releasing a film onto the Festival circuit in 2021, I can only offer one over-arching piece of advice….do your research from a number of up-to-the-minute sources, ask other people in the field, and try to get in direct touch with the Festival to ask your questions. You will NOT be able to rely on their websites and on FilmFreeway as in the past…many if not most festivals don’t actually know well enough themselves to make the information fully public. Abandon the notion that looking at how it’s “normally” done will be a reliable guide for how it will be done for now. Remember that the chaos brought about by this Pandemic is not over, not by a long shot.

NOTE: Festival Chronology below is in traditional (pre-COVID) date order. The dramatic effect of COVID on this year’s schedule should be evident by comparison below.

NOTE: Anything that RED and BOLD represent schedule changes that have arisen after this article was originally published.

Palm Springs International
2019 Jan 3 – 14
2020 Jan 3 – 12
2021 Canceled
International Film Festival Rotterdam
2019 Jan 23 – Feb 3
2020 Jan 22 – Feb 2
2021 Feb 1 – 7 Virtual Part 1
June 2 – 6 Physical Part 2
Sundance
2019 Jan 24 – Feb 3
2020 Jan 23 – Feb 2
2021 Jan 28 – Feb 3 Virtual. Shorter in duration and fewer films.
Slamdance
2019 Jan 25 – 31
2020 Jan 24 – 30
2021 Feb 12 – 25 Virtual. Additional small hybrid program planned.
Berlinale
2019 Feb 7 – 17
2020 Feb 20 – Mar 1
2021 Mar 1 – 5 Industry-only Online
Pushed to June Physical
True/False
2019 Feb 28 – Mar 3
2020 Mar 5 – 8
2021 May 5 – 9 Format not yet announced
Boulder International
2019 Feb 28 – Mar 3
2020 Mar 5 – 8
2021 Jun 24 – 27 Format not yet announced
Thessaloniki
2019 Mar 1 – 10
2020 May 19 – 28
2021 Mar 4 – 14 Online “best of” showcase
Jun 24 – Jul 4 Hybrid Format Planned
SXSW
2019 Mar 8 – 17
2020 Apr 27 – May 6 Main festival/conference canceled. Special online showcase presented by Amazon.
2021 Mar 16 – 20 Virtual. Shorter in duration and fewer films.
Hong Kong International
2019 Mar 18 – Apr 1
2020 Canceled
2021 Apr 1 – 12 Physical format planned
CPH DOX
2019 Mar 20 – 31
2020 April Reduced virtual program
2021 Mar 17 – 28 Pushed to Apr 21 – May 2 Virtual
BFI Flare 
2019 Mar 21 – 31
2020 Canceled
2021 Dates not yet announced but likely March Virtual
Movies That Matter Netherlands
2019 Mar 22 – 30
2020 Mar 20 – 22 Virtual
2021 Apr 16 – 25 Format not yet announced
Cleveland International
2019 Mar 27 – Apr 7
2020 Apr 15 – 28 Virtual
2021 Apr 7 – 20 Virtual format planned
New Directors/New Films
2019 Mar 27 – Apr 7
2020 Dec 9 – 20 Virtual
2021 Dates not yet announced
Wicked Queer: Boston LGBT
2019 March 28 – Apr 7
2020 Jul 24 – Aug 2 Virtual
2021 Apr 9 – 18 Virtual
Full Frame    
2019 Apr 4 – 7
2020 Canceled
2021 Jun 2 – 6 Format not yet announced
Visions Du Reel
2019 Apr 5 – 13
2020 Apr 17 – May 5 Virtual
2021 Dates not yet announced
Sarasota Film Festival
2019 Apr 5 – 14
2020 Apr 27 – May 3 Virtual
2021 Apr 30 – May 9 Format not yet announced
San Francisco International
2019 Apr 10 – 23
2020 Canceled
2021 Apr 9 – 18 Hybrid format planned
Doc 10 Chicago
2019 Apr 11 – Apr 14
2020 Postponed
2021 Dates not yet announced
Dallas International
2019 Apr 11 – 18
2020 Postponed
2021 Jun 25 – Jul 2
Ashland Independent
2019 Apr 11 – 18
2020 Apr 16 – 23 Virtual
2021 Apr 15 – 29 Hybrid format planned
Tribeca
2019 Apr 24 – May 5
2020 Canceled
2021 Jun 9 – 20 Format not yet announced. Likely hybrid.
Torino LGBT
2019 Apr 24 – 28
2020 Oct 22 – 25 Virtual
2021 Dates not yet determined
Hot Docs
2019 Apr 26 – May 6
2020 May 28 – Jun 6 Virtual
2021 Apr 29 – May 9 Hybrid Format Planned
Off Camera Poland
2019 Apr 26 – May 5
2020 Sep 11 – 25 Virtual
2021 Dates not yet announced
Bentonville
2019 May 7 – May 11
2020 Aug 10 – 16 Hybrid
2021 Dates not yet announced
Against Gravity Poland
2019 May 10 – 26
2020 Sep 4 – 13 Physical
Sep 19 – Oct 4 Virtual
2021 May 14 – 23 Physical
May 27 – Jun 13 Virtual
Cannes
2019 May 14 – 25
2020 Canceled
2021 May 11 – 22 July 6 – 17 No format yet announced
Seattle International
2019 May 16 – Jun 9
2020 Canceled
2021 Apr 8 – 18 Virtual
DocAviv
2019 May 23 – Jun 1
2020 Sep 3 – 12
2021 May 20 – 29 No format yet announced
Telluride Mountainfilm
2019 May 24 – 27
2020 May 15 – 25 Virtual
2021 May 28 – 31 Physical
May 31 – Jun 6 Virtual
Doc Edge New Zealand
2019 May 30 – Jun 9 Auckland
2019 Jun 13 – 23 Wellington
2020 Jun 12 – Jul 5 Virtual
2021 May 27 – Jun 27 Hybrid format planned
Provincetown International
2019 Jun 12 – 16
2020 Jul 16 – 19 Drive – in
2021 Jun 16 – 25 Physical format planned
Frameline: San Francisco LGBT
2019 Jun 20 – 30
2020 Jul 6 – Jul 15 Virtual
2021 Jun 17 – 27 Virtual
New Zealand International
2019 Jul 26 – Aug 14
2020 Jul 24 – Aug 9 Virtual
2021 Dates not yet announced
Milwaukee International
2019 Oct 17 – 31
2020 Oct 15 – 9 Virtual
2021 May 6 – 20 Virtual

January 9th, 2021

Posted In: Uncategorized


By Jeffrey Winter

Part Six: Our Virtual Vicissitudes: A Pivotal Journey Ahead
(May 28, 2020)

Tech Note: There are three pop-up videos in this installment. If you are seeing large white spaces in between paragraphs, may we suggest that you clear the cache on your browser? Instructions for: SafariFirefoxGoogle ChromeMicrosoft Internet ExplorerMicrosoft Edge.

Six feet of social distance, 25% of venue capacity, navigating conversations through glitchy FaceTime and muffled Face Masks… it’s clear to me that we are now squarely in the “Bargaining” Phase of the classic Kubler-Ross model of the five stages of Pandemic Grief. This is as true in life as it is in business, where independent filmmakers are now being forced to make choices that would have been unthinkable—indeed unacceptable—just three months ago. We’re bargaining because our survival depends on it.

For many of us contemplating our distribution choices, this bargain is indeed approaching Faustian. If physical exhibition is existentially compromised, how, when, and why do we make the leap to virtual space? And if the choice is actually Faustian, who plays the Devil, or is the devil just in the details?

To ponder such heady topics, I am thrilled to invite five of the savviest indie distribution professionals I know (Brian Newman of Sub-Genre, Annie Roney and Cristine Platt Dewey of ro*co, Tim Horsburgh of Kartemquin, and Orly Ravid of The Film Collaborative) to our WAY OF LIFE IN PERIL “Zoom Room,” both to kibitz about the controversial topic of online film festivals and share their insight on their personal journeys towards the final stage of Pandemic recovery…..which is, of course, acceptance.

Note: as always, this blog is heavily weighted to the humanizing aspect of indie film distribution, so if it’s the nitty gritty business stuff you want to get right down to, you might want to skip the first few questions! But we’re giving you time and space here to get to know your panelists first…

panel_blog

Annie Roney (ro*co), Brian Newman (Sub-Genre), Cristine Dewey Platt (ro*co), Jeffrey Winter (The Film Collaborative), Tim Horsburgh (Kartemquin), and Orly Ravid (The Film Collaborative)

Welcome everyone! I’ve started each of my Zoom Blogs by asking the interviewee(s) to tell us about the “hats” that they wear in the film world. Not only your various job titles, but also opening up to the many ways we each approach indie film—as artists, creators, advocates, entrepreneurs, thinkers, educators, activists, and also avid consumers of media. So, let’s start by going around the “Zoom Room” and describing our hats! How about you first, Brian?

Brian Newman: I started my career working at a film festival, and worked at several. So contrary to some rumors, I love film festivals, and I think about them a lot. I met my wife at a film festival. Then I worked at a lot of non-profits that supported filmmakers, so, I’ve always considered myself an advocate for independent filmmakers.

Right now I’m wearing two hats. First, I’m producer of a narrative fiction film that was supposed to premiere at Tribeca. We’re figuring out what we’re going to do in all this, just like a lot of other producers. I also help brands that are funding and making films, and I help them with their distribution and marketing, which often includes premiering at film festivals.

So I’m coming at it from a couple different angles. But when I think about film festivals right now, it’s mostly as a producer with a film that would normally be playing tons of festivals right now.

I love that you met your wife at a festival, because it reminds me of what you and I were talking about yesterday, Cristine, which is that this isn’t just our business, this is our culture, this is our lives. So, with that, how about we hear from the folks at ro*co?

Annie Roney: OK I’ll start. I am founder and CEO of ro*co films. We just celebrated our 20th anniversary. We are primarily thought of as distributors globally and in the educational market. Recently, we’ve also been taking on films domestically as the markets have changed and it’s become more necessary to oversee all rights.

So now we work more closely than we ever have with films and their decisions around film festivals. As head of a small but mighty company, my hats change from day to day, but I think we are ultimately problem-solvers, filmmaker advocates, and nimble and elastic advocates for documentaries that we feel really can make a difference in the world. I’ll stop there.

Cristine Platt Dewey: I joined ro*co in 2006 after working in local politics as an activist. I was feeling jaded about the effectiveness of political activism and had begun to see documentaries as a far more effective tool. My role has evolved over the years, I’m now focusing on international sales and also supporting the North American sales work as well. I’m tracking sales trends and watching the market shift as buyers are adjusting to this new world without festival releases to focus their attention.

OK great, sales is a big part of where we’re headed with this conversation, but let’s go back towards production first. Tim, tell us about your role with Kartemquin Films.

Tim Horsburgh: I think my hats have continued to evolve as Kartemquin has. I’ve been there 10 years, and this year my title changed to Director of Film Strategy, which means that I’m the central hub for all our filmmakers to come to with questions. But my experience at Kartemquin is I started as the Office and Communications Manager and so I was managing the interns and buying the toilet paper and things like that, and I was terrible at that.

The other thing we were developing at that time, which is now really the core of who we are, were filmmaker development programs. So I ran a lot of those programs as well as doing the marketing. As we got bigger, I chose to move away from the program side and into distribution. That was about five years ago. So I still help with distribution strategy, but now I’m moving more into production. I think that’s a reflection of where my skill set is needed, due to the way documentaries are being financed and funded now; people are making production decisions that are actually distribution decisions.

The other thing I do is teach on the side, most recently teaching marketing and distribution for documentary at Northwestern. So those are some of the hats.

Lovely hat rack there Tim! In working with you during this Pandemic, I have found that you’re very quick to adapt and understand the way that the world has changed, and I think that’s the big challenge for all of us right now.

OK finally, my colleague Orly Ravid, who actually wears more hats than I can keep track of!

Orly Ravid: First I want to know whether Tim used to hoard toilet paper. I also started out as an office manager doing international sales, and if it weren’t for that, 20 years ago, I don’t think I would have founded The Film Collaborative because it was at my first two markets that I was like, “What is happening with this business that is like everyone’s making money except for the people who made the movie?”

So, the hats are a few, but I founded The Film Collaborative and we are 10 years old plus and going strong, and Jeffrey and I co-run it together. Other than overseeing our educational initiatives, I focus on distribution, mentoring, and implementation, and specifically with VOD, and sales, and I’m definitely very boutique in the sales practice now and recommend ro*co more often take on sales. And I also am an entertainment attorney and I’m a law professor at Southwestern Law School, and I run their media law Institute. And I have a two-year-old.

Ok, well, I’m going to run with that mom thing for a second because I’m noticing as I’m having conversations with people, that having children in the middle of this Pandemic makes folks think even more deeply about the future of the world and how it’s changing. Like, we have to find hope in this! So I do want to take a couple of minutes to hear how y’all are feeling and doing. Beyond just the bottom line in your business, how are you feeling these days?

Tim Horsburgh: I think it’s the most exhausting period of my life. That’s been the constant, a day of Zoom calls and tag team parenting and home schooling and putting the kids to bed and then going back to work for another couple of hours. But we’re grateful to have jobs, we’re grateful to live in a very nice community north of Chicago.

There’s a feeling you’re at capacity and feeling you might be letting people down.

And I magnify that across Kartemquin’s filmmaker community of 500 people and recognize that they are the most underrepresented, emerging artists, with the least power, and I’m terrified they are going to leave the field because, what future is there? So we are pouring as much energy as we can to address that for our community.

Trying to do all of that while also navigating a slate of seven films that were supposed to to be on the festival circuit this year, and that’s a lot for us.

Brian Newman: I, like everyone else, have been up and down, and today is a little bit more up because I had a new client come through… but I’ve got a lot of others that have dropped because budgets are getting slashed left and right for everyone. I’m happy because I’ve got some semblance of a job and a house, but I’m really worried about what it’s gonna do for our field. And while I’m worried about all sectors, I would agree with Tim that I think a lot of the voices that we don’t hear from as often are the ones most in danger.

I’m in Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan in New York, so in the epicenter of the disease, but of course most of us are in our homes so I think by and large we are all experiencing the same issues.

We at TFC are a little lucky because unlike Hell’s Kitchen we’re in perennially socially-distanced L.A. But how about the ladies in beautiful Sausalito by the Bay, ro*co?

Annie Roney: Alright, well, you asked us to be real. The two weeks before this all hit and everyone was sheltering in place, I was with spending a week with my father, as he was dying. He lived a good long life, and he was ready, but still all of that was emotionally exhausting. The following week, I was getting my daughter home from Italy, she was among the first of college students to be sent home, so that we could get back to have a funeral for my dad who probably had the last actual funeral that we’ve seen in a while.

And then within three days, the shelter-in-place started, and we all had to, both personally and professionally, figure out how to make all of this work. We were able to transition to working from home pretty quickly. And the good news is we had someone immediately focus on successfully securing a PPP Loan, to give us flexibility.

But I will say that I have never had this many—I mean in our field a lot of it is holding the hands of filmmakers—but I’ve never had this much correspondence. And I’m really feeling their nerves and their concern and they’re legitimate and they’re real. Like Tim, our fear is disappointing (filmmakers) but the reality is, the market is what it is, and we’re doing everything we can for our films.

Yeah, anybody else feel like they’re a trauma therapist now? It feels like my job has become dealing with with filmmaker trauma, and I’m not trained for that! But grief and loss are real now, and one of the major ways we in the film world are dealing with it is to try and recreate what we had in the “Real World” in digital/online space. As such, we have a historically unprecedented and controversial explosion of Virtual Film Festivals…which I think most of us find simultaneously very exciting and deeply problematic.

So, here’s the question… are you personally “pro” or “anti” Virtual Film Festivals? Let’s discuss!

Orly Ravid: Look, festivals are a critical component of independent film distribution, and sometimes, in fact often, the most important and the biggest part of it, and the most successful part of it. So yeah, I’m all for it… there’s just some issues.

Annie Roney: I am “pro,” provided that there’s some thoughtfulness around getting press. Press is the component that’s really important.

Cristine Platt Dewey: I am pro and I’m starting to really become impressed with the way festivals are responding to individual films and their circumstances, and their willingness to work with films, that’s really critical and important.

I just wanna say that I am both pro and terrified, because I also see that it robs us of our culture in many ways, it robs us of our ability to be together. Obviously, filmmakers need to be trying to recreate festivals for revenue and exposure and press, etc. But I’m also terrified of the fact that we’re crossing all kinds of previously understood rights classes, and that it’s making everything five times the amount of work for 25% of the money, right? And then, of course, there are distributors that just won’t allow it.

Tim Horsburgh: And even if the distributors don’t say anything, you know the exposure may be diminishing the product, all in service of something that is in fact not even close to what existed.

So here’s where we go to Brian. There’s no reason to hide the fact, Brian, that you made a splash with a recent article that created a sort of dramatic wave of terror among our filmmakers, and was interpreted as an anti-online festival screed. But I don’t think that’s really where you were coming from…I think it was more nuanced that that, but with an unfortunate “click-bait” title.

Brian Newman: Yeah, the very first thing I said in the first paragraph, was that for a lot of films (online film festivals) make sense, and I actually think that it’s a case-by-case basis for the films and the filmmakers. If I were to add up all the films in the world, I would bet 90% of them or more it works for… and there’s a subset that I don’t think it works for, and that’s what I was focused on that everyone missed: that first disclaimer.

I will say, I’m all for experimentation and I think that there’s going be good things about virtual parts of festivals in the future that, whenever we go back to regular festivals, that should stay. But the things that I love most about festivals don’t exist online—being on the big screen and having that audience in front of you and meeting people. In fact, I met Tim and Orly and Annie at film festivals, and those things just don’t happen in the same way and so I do miss that part and don’t think can be completely recreated.

And I also think that in our rush to save what we have of film festivals, which I completely understand, it’s not truly a reinvention either. I mean it if you think about it, in an online world, we shouldn’t be bound by geography and geoblocking, we should be bound by interest, and a lot of other things. So if anything, I would say I would want a more radical reshaping of festivals.

And I think we also have to acknowledge that there are a subset of films that online film festival just do not work for, and that’s the problem.

I should note that it was only just like six weeks ago that we at TFC and most of filmmakers we work with were like, “No way we’re doing online film festivals, we need to wait this out!” Tim, you and I have worked on a film that was supposed to physical premiere near the start of all this, and at first we were adamant against online. At this point, we have been on ALL sides of this fence in just a couple of months….what’s changed?

Tim Horsburgh: Well, that was March thinking! And I think we were reasonable then, but now we’re reflecting the evolution of all of our thinking. We too had nervous filmmakers who sent us Brian’s article and said, “Is he right?” And I think, Brian, you were making a position that was “pro”…IF festivals meet certain requirements. I think we’ve just been trying to see would festivals get to that level. There was not evidence of that necessarily in March.

Two of the festivals that we’ve elected to do so far, Hot Docs and AFI DOCS, have stepped up differently than earlier festivals. And I see that with other trends that have been happening, I’m realizing that actually the film ecosystem that I care about needs these festivals more than ever, and so I don’t want to buy into a year where they all just disappear, or are even more cut off at the legs and just limp through the year. I would actually like to support them because I understand they provide a really important curatorial function that the rest of the industry, at its top levels, just doesn’t care about.

OK so this brings us into what I consider the meat of the conversation, and my biggest fear. I think we NEED to preserve physical exhibition because I’m afraid that the entirety of our culture is being subsumed by big Corporate Streaming content in our living rooms. It’s not that I don’t see marvelous things on the major streaming platforms, I just think they are big Corporations and they’re running the Industry including independent film now. And virtual film festivals are putting us into direct conflict with Corporate Streamers and their own perceived control of the internet. Do you think online film festivals can co-exist with Corporate Streaming and how?

Orly, I know you have strong feelings and a unique strategy around this. How do you think we navigate this?

Orly Ravid: I think I’m actually aligned with Brian, because while we’re super boutique in the sales practices, we had a film that we were handling world sales for that had its premiere at SXSW. And it was extremely stressful to be thrilled about that premiere, and then of course it was canceled, and then, “Oh, but now it can be on Amazon.” And that was the issue, and it had to be resolved within days, not even five business days.

My resolution for handling that (and this is where I think it is a case by case, because I agree that for 90% of the filmmakers, they’re not even in this position) and this is very important because in this case it was an A-level festival premiere, and it was a film that, at least on paper, had potential to sell to a Streamer. And I do think that is a critical analysis, a threshold question that filmmakers are not often clear about how to answer and it’s to their detriment. But in this case, what I simply did was, I turned to all the big Streamers and said, “I need to know: are you in or are you out? Because otherwise we’re doing this thing”…and that’s what happened.

We knew they (the Streamers) were going to be against this, not only against virtual festival distribution, but certainly if Amazon was the Streamer. But everyone should know that Amazon barely buys independent film anymore, so they weren’t likely to be the buyer. So it was a way to clear the deck, look at the offers that were on the table, and see that they were simply worth risking. And therefore, by having a whole vision and a plan such that if we lose all our distribution potential through these companies, we have a very clear roadmap of exactly what to do across all rights, provided that we could really maximize the shit out of publicity, which we did. And it was the best decision we made. The filmmakers are thrilled, and now we’re going to do a virtual theatrical and do everything else, either with partners or without.

I just think that that’s a difficult thing for people to do on their own. So that’s a question of the filmmaker dialoguing with their sales agent if they have one, and of course not all sales agents want to have that analysis because they can’t stand losing the deal of any kind. I’m happy to lose it if it’s not a good enough deal.

But I also just need to say, I think the Streamers need to be more transparently honest and say, “You know what, we buy like 10-20 independent movies a year, and if you’re not at Sundance then your odds are like slim to none, and that way liberate people. I think the damage that is being done is that filmmakers are trapped, they’re desperate to be on Netflix. And I love Netflix, it’s just not buying that many independent films. And these filmmakers trapped by this are now going to lose everything…the festival distribution, the audience, the PR and THEN not get the SVOD deal, and it’s a tragedy.

Orly Ravid • The Film Collaborative

play

Yeah, we had a film that was supposed to premiere back at Tribeca and I got on a conference call with the sales agents who said, “HBO will not even talk to us if you put it on any online film festivals.” So the sales agent in this case just capitulated and caved. He was like, “So we’re just not doing anything online,” and I was like, “You don’t even have an offer!” But the truth is, the Streamers have all the power. It’s scary.

Brian Newman: I think it’s case by case. I think I’m left of Marx and I’m not into big corporations, but right now we have to realize that it’s not just HBO and Netflix, we’re talking Amazon and Disney and Apple… all these different places that do reach a large number of people. And by the way, I think Netflix has done a better job at promoting diversity than almost any film festival I know of, so I don’t think it’s all bad either.

I think if you have a film that you can determine has a shot at ending up with one of companies, I think it’s simple math. If you had add up the number of people who are going to potentially see you if you go to 50 or 100 film festivals that are virtual, versus who’s going to see you if you through one of these bigger distribution platforms—then until the big companies say otherwise, I think for that subset of films, you have to say no to those other opportunities.

I feel really strongly about that. I do not think that fits for every movie. Just last night, I had two different films get accepted to a festival that I love. One of them has distribution and the distributor is fine with doing the festivals as long they’re geo-blocked and some other restrictions, and so we said yes. The other film is still being considered by some of the major buyers. and it actually has a shot. We may get turned down and regret it, but right now we can’t shoot yourself in the foot when they won’t give us an answer.

And it’s a shitty situation, I totally agree, but I also think that the film festivals can exist by programming a lot of movies, without having to program those particular movies.

Brian Newman • Sub-Genre

play

Ro*co?

Annie Roney: I love what Orly said about liberating filmmakers. Frankly, I’m very cynical in the documentary space. The big Streamers are just…they’re just not buying.

We can all go back three or four years ago when they were buying quite a lot and saying documentaries are really rating well, but the fact of the matter is now they’re looking at their internal data and we’re not… and they know what’s working for their viewers. So now they’re just sort of commissioning to feed the beast. And I think in the documentary space—at least with the kind of films we tend to want to work with, that we feel actually make a difference in people’s lives and in the world—my advice is okay, we can try them, but in parallel let’s be really looking at lots of other options because the reality is you’re not going to get a big global deal. And I think we give them too much power when we continue to wait for that answer while were also trying to decide about a film festival.

And to switch gears, because we do have an educational division, we’re having similar kinds of conversations, not around virtual film festivals, but about virtual screenings, campus screenings, and so we’re getting up to speed on how to execute those and do those well, because for so many of these films, let’s get it directly to the audience. Why are we waiting? The chances are so slim. Let’s move forward. This film needs to be seen, it’s wanted.

Annie Roney • ro*co

play

In that educational space, we’re particularly thrilled that our EVOD Platform, which is Film Platform, allows students and professors to access films remotely as well as assign them. We partner with the biggest library information system in the world, so these films are being discovered. And in this age of distance learning, suddenly, this is where we are all at, and we’re already seeing really exciting results. And these are the kind of results that you don’t get if you are on one of the big Streaming giants.

So my feeling is we, collectively together in the industry, have to start thinking beyond the Streamers—not that we don’t want to pursue them and I enjoy them as well, and love making a sale to them—but if we’re holding back on a documentary that has the power to make a difference in people’s lives because what some company might think is impinging on their rights, it’s a real loss for all of us.

Cristine Platt Dewey: In addition to not acquiring as many documentaries, what the Streamers are acquiring is very different than what they used to acquire. Both the Streamers and international broadcast world have told us they’re looking for “light and entertaining,” and in this time of COVID viewers are gravitating toward “comfort content,” films that make people feel good.

So there is a particularly vital component that the Festival world plays for social issue documentaries. (Festivals) can lift up these important films that we love and give them enough profile that the Streamers then feel like there is reason to take them. And so I think that’s a real loss right now in the festival world, and that these social issue documentaries in particular are suffering right now.

Annie Roney: I do need to have a shout out to the various PBS strands: in the past twomonths, they are the ones showing up in brave ways and just trying to make everything work.

If only PBS could pay as much as Netflix, right? Ha ha.

Orly Ravid: And then you could do a PBS deal and a Netflix deal after, if they want it. But I just want to say about the reach of the Streamers, yes it’s obviously massive as Brian says, but if they don’t market your film….then nobody might see it, or at least very few.

netflix

It seems to me that if we’re trying to get creative, and traditional physical infrastructure (festivals, etc.) is on pause, then that makes this a DIY time, an exciting time. Is there an eco-system you see developing outside of the current SVOD streaming/bingeing status quo? Can we add Virtual Theatricals and Digital Exhibition to the mix here? What is your vision for the future?

Tim, you advocate for a lot of “outsider” filmmakers, what do you see?

Tim Horsburgh: It’s very hard to say—are we ready for August thinking yet? In my head I am going DIY. I am remembering earlier films at Kartemquin that got nothing at all from the Industry, but got out very profitably and very happily and had wonderful lives, connecting with core audience using digital screenings and events and really innovative distribution and I’m like, “Maybe that’s what I need to be telling my filmmakers to do.” That IS what I’m telling my filmmakers to do. Just using the online availability that we can, that can be scaled up in ways that we couldn’t imagine 10 years ago.

I think there’s a need to just be balanced in our thinking. I think we just need to get real. The consolidation of the media platforms, what’s happening is akin to something like the 1980s when there were only 5 channels, and you need to realize if you’re not making content that’s in that stream early, crossing over is almost impossible. But there are people within those platforms that get that the larger ecosystem needs to survive to find exciting new films…so I have optimism there. We have an accelerator program supported by Hulu where they are funding development on two projects that would otherwise be very unlikely to get a look at Hulu.

The thing I am very interested in preserving, from festivals and educational and social impact, is the discussion that happens after the movie. We need to preserve discussion and making the kind of films that foster dissent and different points of view and change, and I think those are the kind of films that larger corporations are just not going pick up because they scare them. That’s why we need festivals, live and online, because festivals can really amplify a film and make executives realize, “Oh, that film seemed scary to us, but actually an audience is going to it. Maybe we should pay attention to it.” And so I’m really thinking that we need to try and figure out how to bring that back.

Orly, as I’ve said, you’re a big thinker. How do you think the world can change?

Orly Ravid: I love that there’s a happy impact on climate change from this Pandemic in parts of this country, India and China, and other happy by-products—less traffic in L.A., which dramatically improves people’s lifestyles and enjoyment of the city, for example. The fact that telecommuting has been globally shown to be viable is likely to positively impact certain workers for good (adding to their free time and reducing costs). And also the ill that even inspired me to found The Film Collaborative in the first place, which is the nonsense of the business-to-business layers of bullshit in the traditional big markets, is going to dissipate, it’s going to be collapsed a bit, and there will be a lot of virtual markets that make it much more streamlined. There’s a beauty to that.

A lot of companies are going out of business. There’s a glut in the business and this will be a course correction in that direction. I know that’s brutal; obviously a lot of great work and great creators will be impacted negatively, but there is also just from a pure market perspective an insane amount of supply.

I think that there has to be a more careful curation of one’s lifestyle and to understanding what it means to be a creator; you can’t just assume that you’ll have these big deals. There are a ton of distributors and platforms and places for cinema to be seen that are not the big American-based global conglomerates. And the other happy thing that I think is already been occurring is there’s a lot more philanthropy, towards the cinema that I care about anyway (I’m not really concerned about the horror movies). I think there has been an elevation of documentaries and impact-oriented films in recent years and I think that will continue, though money and support whether from NGOs or non-profits or corporations, and I think in that financing model it may even be possible to make those films available for free, which is exciting.

As long as the community experience and dialogue around cinema and ideas continues to thrive in public—I mean we HAVE to get away from our screens or there’s going to be illnesses just from that—as long as we can force ourselves to stay public, I do think there are going to be interesting results from this crisis that will probably be healthy in the long run.

Now, in virtual space, films can just craft their own release. The barriers to showing films are so much lower, there’s no four-wall fees, etc…

Orly Ravid: The costs are so much less! And we should remember that the A-level festivals were also problematic gatekeepers in their own right, and now they can find ways to audiences without any of that! And they do, they just need to know their communities.

Cristine Platt Dewey: For me, the future is in aggregating audiences. When I think about the films that are positioned to do well in this DIY world, it’s the films where the teams have connections to organizations and they have access to their audience, and they don’t need the platforms to deliver the audience. We’re working on building ongoing databases of fans, of certain kind of documentaries, that you can turn to. Instead of just doing this film by film, can you create a structure based on audience that can be used for multiple films?

OK folks…I think we’re reaching a great place to wrap up here, unless someone has a burning last thing to say. I know for one I have a burning bladder now after all this talk,but Brian, with all the flames that have been coming your way since your article, how would you like to wrap us up?

Brian Newman: What I’d like to see is bigger thinking about collaboration amongst the festivals that are looking at virtual. I think what Christine mentioned about aggregation… I think there’s a big opportunity for more festivals to band together at the same time, and be able to get network effects, wherein if I’m posting on Facebook, my friend in Seattle could watch it at the same time. And if it could go to the respective festivals, I think there’s a lot of data sharing, where if the film is a science fiction film, or a science doc, that would play in one town or another…that stuff is not being collaborated on enough.

To my knowledge, festival people are just thinking about putting their existing business model online. I think it needs to be expanded, and much more innovative. That’s what I’d like to see, because then, a lot of the films I work with, whether they are brands or independents, could actually see a system whey could get revenue and audiences that would be worthwhile, and they would bypass the Netflix’s of the world, for that kind of system. So, I hope there will be much more conversation in the future about that much larger sense of collaboration.

Tim Horsburgh: And then why just festivals, and why just theaters? I think we’re already seeing the innovation that it can be restaurants, bookshops, conferences, whatever you want. And then you are really running an entrepreneurial business around each film.

OK, awesome. That sounds like the next blog in the series. Stay tuned people…watch this space.

NOTE: This blog was recorded in real time on May 19th, and subsequently heavily edited down for length.


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Jeffrey Winter and Roya Rastegar

Part Five: It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And We Feel Fine?)
(May 5, 2020)

Presented in collaboration with Roya Rastegar
Until today, this blog series has been focused on the immediate problems imposed by the COVID catastrophe on the daily machinations of quotidian film festivals, and the immediate ramifications for our film culture and our livelihoods. Last week, we peered into the not-too-distant Fall 2020, under the guidance of Festival power-broker Thom Powers, asking the pressing practical question, “What is the next step?”

But today, we dare to peer even further into the future…to loosen the reins and question the larger cultural ramifications of this moment, for us both as fallible humans and as members of an Industry that will never look quite the same again.

In journalistic parlance, I believe this is what we call an existential “think piece.”

For big ideas, honest introspection, diverse perspectives, and professional experience and wisdom beyond her years, I can think of no one better in my life to invite to the Zoom interface than programmer/professor/indie producer Roya Rastegar, whom I originally met when we worked together at Sundance in 2006 and beyond. In the years following, she and I have tangled in many professional scenarios stemming across much of the indie film spectrum. Roya has a way of helping me to remember what it is essential and important about the work we do, and helping me take my head out of my ass when I am drowning in the mundane.

Since we are trusted friends and colleagues, we conducted this “think piece” as a freeform Zoom share of private fears and public proclamations, riffing off a classic 80s post-punk alt-rock theme song that has NEVER been more relevant than it is today. But before we get to that…let’s introduce Roya to this digital stage!

[Jeffrey Winter] Hi Roya…thanks so much for doing this! As is becoming a tradition in this blog series, I’d like to start by asking you to describe the many fabulous hats that you wear in our field.

[Roya Rastegar] I was trained as a professor and historian, but I’ve been programming for almost 2 decades. I started at the Santa Cruz Women of Color Film Festival, and a few years later got involved with Sundance, where I have been part of the programming team in some way since 2006. I also programmed Tribeca Film Festival, and headed programming at the LA Film Festival. I also worked for Imagine Entertainment, running content for a division called Marginal MediaWorks, focused on under-represented voices.

Right now, I’m finishing a book on American indie film culture and film festivals—I think about them a LOT. And when I’m not writing, I’m producing films.

I also want to add that when I met you Jeffrey I was 26, and I felt like I didn’t know anything, but even when I really did know nothing, you always made me feel like I knew so much. Which for a brown queer girl from the south, who felt like she had no business to even think about film in any kind of professional way, it gave me confidence to move forward.

[JW] OK, well thanks but your mind spoke for itself…and I heard you and I knew.

I’ll start this by jumping in by saying I am feeling particularly gloomy today…about the exploding state of the independent film world. I’m worried about the ability for filmmakers and nonprofits and small distributors and screening venues to economically survive this storm. Public exhibition has been the cornerstone of launching, experiencing, sharing, selling, and monetizing films…and now it’s gone…probably for a long time.

And today feels even more dire because of how the disastrous PPP programs and other lifelines are getting caught in chaos and co-opted by the usual commercial entities that have always benefited the most. It inflames my already keen sense of injustice over the usual way business is done in America. And it is directly affecting us at The Film Collaborative, and provoking worries of unemployment, and who knows what next.

And then also, I’m a very social person. And this is just an unthinkable, unprecedented level of social isolation I’m experiencing quarantined at home, where I live alone.

And so I was just wondering how YOU are feeling today ha ha?

[RR] A lot of my friends didn’t get it (the PPP), and its really devastating because that means a lot of important and progressive start ups and small companies will have to close shop.

I’m sheltering in place with my wife and kid, so there’s a constant contagion of feelings. When one of us feels good, the other one is feeling bad, and vice versa. Someone is always upset. I try to remember that as long as we have our health, we’re okay.

[JW] A few days ago, a young filmmaker of ours sent me a panicked text because he realized that a Big Premiere he was counting on was almost certainly going to be cancelled based on a statement by the L.A. mayor saying there would likely be no concerts or sports in L.A. until 2021…and that would of course likely include film festivals even if those are too small to be mentioned by the mayor, even in L.A.

The only appropriate reply I could think to send to him was just an audio file of the classic 1987 R.E.M. song It’s the End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine), which was released before he was born. That song is a spot-on assessment of where we are now because it certainly IS the end of the world…at least as we have known it.

When I first heard that song back in 1987, I was 18 and coming out of the closet as gay. It felt like the world was certainly ending, everything was collapsing, and I felt suicidal in my 80s-emo vibe. I had no idea if anybody would be friends with me anymore. I had no idea if I would ever get a job. In those days, that meant I would never get married, have children. I would never be normal. And for me, at the time, that logically meant I’d have to kill myself so… And I felt fine about that.

It’s intense for me that this song feels relevant again, even if it’s for completely different reasons. But you are younger than me, so I was wondering, what did that song mean to you then, and how do you feel about it now?

[RR] I connected with R.E.M. years after it came out, when I was probably around 12. I changed schools and was bullied a lot because of how I looked, brown and hairy. People called me towelhead and did really messed up things to me. I realized I was gay but didn’t even understand what that meant. Thinking about ending it all was real. I hated myself, I hated my situation.

[JW] And that feeling of suicide or the death of something is usually part of that sentiment…

[RR] Totally. It’s about change, and facing a paradigm-shifting change that is completely out of your control.

[JW] Oh, change! Great point.

[RR] It’s the End of the World As We Know It—and actually all my favorite songs—are all about change. Tom Petty’s songs Time To Move On, To Find A Friend and Fleetwood Mac’s Landslide have been on repeat for me.

It’s very hard, especially if you’re dealing with economic insecurity, or insecurity around your identity in terms of being queer or trans. So many of my former queer students would come to my office hours and share suicidal thoughts, nothing specific, just a complete inability to see their future. Because when you don’t have a model for what your life can look like, how do you envision what your life looks like? And without models for the future…it always feels like the end of the world as you know it. Because you’re constantly re-making the world, as you know it.

[JW] Exactly…“as you know it.”

[RR] Yes! Those are the operative words in that song. It’s not, “It’s the end of the world.” PERIOD. It is—“as we know it.” That’s why we feel fine. Because we have to just accept the fact that there are things we do not know.

That’s why the song meant so much for me. It signaled that there was something outside this bubble of demanding immigrant parents, mean white kids, and teachers who thought I was not worth their time.

[JW] A lot of filmmakers are worried about the end of the indie film world…as we know it. What are the things we might not know right now but can hope to see in the future?

[RR] It is for sure the end of the film world—as we know it. No going back to “normal.” For 2020, there are no more film festivals or film premieres, and there will be much less film productions. There is such a calendar and temporal regularity to film festivals, acquisition and distribution schedules, and film releases. So this is really unsettling.

But this is a chance to really rethink film culture at large.

This isn’t just happening to some filmmakers or some festivals. It’s happening to everyone. No one is falling “behind” because of this. Sundance gets 11,000 submissions a year; I sincerely doubt they will be getting even half of that this year. And that’s if Sundance 2021 happens in January.

In a way, it will be a huge PAUSE for everyone and everything. And when the goddess lifts her finger on that PAUSE button, life will resume, but it will look totally different. This is an epic, global SMASH CUT.

[JW] And what about the “And I feel fine” part? I’m not sure if I feel fine. How do you feel?

[RR] Three days ago, I was in a really depressed state. Two days ago, I was a little bit better. Today, I just feel numb. No matter what, every day for an hour, I feel like I have COVID. Haha. People in general seem to be feeling down. I think even aesthetically, everyone having to wear a mask in public is doing something to us psychically, culturally. I see people in the store or even across the street—and sometimes people say hi, but sometimes they just look down and shuffle away. The mask has definitely changed something, making us less human to each other. And even the Zooms—I mean, I’m barely looking at you as we have this convo, it’s hard, to really make that one-to-one connection digitally.

jeffrey_winter_roya_rastegar

Jeffrey Winter and Roya Rastegar

[JW] Oh my God, the first time I got on a 1:1 Zoom—this is only my fourth one—I was so shy. This right now is the most intimate thing I’ve done in more than a month. I’ve been struggling with loneliness for longer than most everybody else because I had to quarantine early. I likely got COVID in early March… although I was unable to get a test. I was pretty sick for three weeks, but still working, writing blogs, but I wasn’t seeing people. I still relapse a little bit, but I’m feeling better now. I just haven’t seen a physical human whose name I know in 44 days.

I never imagined in my life that I would ever go into complete isolation. That in and of itself is the end of the world as I know it. I’ve had a lot of painful loneliness.

So I wonder about that—what is “fine”?

Back in 1987, I would hear that song and I felt fine. Because like, yeah, I’m going to kill myself and it’s just fine. Like, it’s not great. It’s fine.

[RR] It’s definitely not great. It’s “fine” to me means—it just is exactly what it is, not great, not good, it’s just—FINE. Like a numb acceptance. It just is what it fucking is. It’s so big you can’t even say it any other way.

[JW] And it’s important to say that in those days, there was another viral pandemic going on. It felt like the world was ending because so many of our cultural role models and friends were dying from AIDS, and the crack epidemic, and Reagan was president. Maybe it’s obvious to make the comparison to today…

[RR] It is so important to remember these parallels! We have this psychopathic narcissist reality TV star in the office, and he’s turned this whole country into a reality TV show. No one is really sure if this is even a democracy anymore. The poor and working class, the essential workers on the frontlines—they are the ones who are most vulnerable. And I’m especially thinking about queer youth that are closeted or in dangerous situations at home, or are homeless. And that’s just all awful.

I think everyone is struggling with loneliness right now, even if you’re partnered and have a baby climbing on top of you. Everyone is being held captive to the choices they’ve made in their lives. It’s hard. Everyone is mad, everyone is having to deal with their own mental health right now. I certainly am. I think it’s time we’re all just super vulnerable and real.

[JW] When I wrote my last blog—about the difficulties of how to premiere a film right now, online film festivals, rights issues, etc.—I got a lot of responses about what a “privileged, first-world problem” the entire film topic is. Which, I’m not offended by. I get it. But I’ve thought about it and really disagree. It’s just not a first world problem. Filmmakers and distributors, and festival programmers—we also need to be ok financially. We need to pay rent, and eat. That’s real. And for some of us, it is life and death, because it’s our livelihood.

[RR] Solid point.

[JW] To me it’s about essential problems. A bad haircut is not an essential problem. But being able to monetize your film, and pay your rent and eat—that’s an essential problem. And then there are people who are dying and people who are losing loved ones—and so that’s a whole existential level.

[RR] But then, we can’t all actively operate day-to-day worrying if we’re going to live or die. That might happen, we might have to worry for ourselves or our loved ones, but it’s no way to actually live. Especially for storytellers. And storytellers are essential.

[JW] How do you think the independent film world is going to change? Do you think it will be…fine?

[RR] I think it was already changing. This pandemic is going to accelerate those changes. All the players will still be there—but their roles will be different, and we’ll all have to innovate how we think about film production, distribution, and audiences. And skill sets that have been developed in one context will need to be applied and reinvented for another context.

Independent filmmakers, and the people who know how to connect filmmakers and audiences—they will be essential. Essential to us as human beings. Even if an Apocalypse happens—and maybe this is the Apocalypse we’ve been waiting for—and we lose all internet and lose access to everything—we are still human, and we will still be telling stories. That’s what filmmakers do.

[JW] But do you fear that that will move entirely into our living rooms, i.e. via streaming? Because that’s what I fear.

[RR] I think the social distancing we’ve all been doing might actually kick-start the backlash to streaming as a primary way of watching stories. Streaming movies from the privacy of your living room might have been appealing as an alternative to the conventional theatrical experience…but now that we’ve been isolated from each other, I think this might cure us of whatever fantasy we have of watching things from the comfort and privacy of our homes. Now that we risk losing that movie experience, I think we will think very differently about streaming. Maybe I don’t want comfort and privacy, I want to go out and sit on the pavement, I want human connection and togetherness.

Younger generations—those who grew up with smart phones—were already starting to push back against digital everything. Netflix and Facebook aren’t cool for them. They are just a way of life, one that is negatively impacting how they see and relate to each other, even on the most intimate levels. Getting together and watching a movie is going be a really fun and exciting and cool thing to do again. Drive-Ins will be huge.

[JW] I love that. And of course that’s why I picked this song that says “I feel fine.” Because I knew you would help me with that…with the possibility of feeling OK in all this.

And as we share the collectiveness of the realization of what this means in our society, and if we’re nicer to each other because of it, then I’m actually more than ok. Then, I’m really fine. I’m an enormous, nerdy post-apocalyptic movie fan, I love disaster movies, I love The Walking Dead and 28 Days Later. I love that shit. I would love to live in a world where it all collapsed and we had to hunt together. I don’t like any of this capitalist shit.

[RR] It is definitely going to be harder to monetize live events and film screenings. People can’t be packed in the way they were before. But that means it will become a more rare experience, and people will pay a premium for that in a way they weren’t before. And curators will become even more essential because we create contexts and gather communities. We will need to create really imaginative ways of watching movies.

The song…and this time…it’s about feeling fine about knowing the limits of your own knowledge. It’s not the end of the world they feel fine about. It’s about it being the end of the world as we know it. It’s about having the humility to understand that we don’t know what’s about to come…but that it will be OK.

Maybe it won’t be better than what it was…but it will be OK.


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Jeffrey Winter and Thom Powers

Part Four: What Does Thom Powers Have Hiding Under His Hats? (April 19, 2020)

This is the fourth installment of a series on the fate of film festivals and non-theatrical exhibition in the age of COVID-19. Please email comments and questions to festivals@thefilmcollaborative.org. (Also, please scroll down for the previous three installments in this series, which contain a list of canceled/postponed festivals with TFC films)

Perhaps unscientifically, I routinely name Thom Powers as the most important individual documentary programmer in the world. Given his roles at TIFF, DOC NYC, CPH:DOX, Miami, etc., he plays a prominent role in pre-determining the path that many documentaries take to the marketplace. Now that Spring festivals are shuttered and the fate of a few remaining Summer festivals hang in the balance, the eyes are of the film world are inevitably turning to the Fall, or what I like to call “Thom Powers territory.”

So, it is with great pleasure that this week we bring you words and wisdom from the man himself, as he joins us here for an interview in this fourth part of our series.

NOTE: While I sincerely hope you read this whole interview for substance, I have also placed Thom’s most important filmmaker takeaways in dark pink and italics, so you can skim if you absolutely must. And before I get any hate mail, let me say that I know there are many honorable mentions and runner-ups for the role of “most important documentary programmer,” so hopefully we’ll get to interview some of you too for upcoming blogs….

Jeffrey Winter: Good morning Thom. You wear a lot of very fabulous hats. Would you outline/describe them for us?

Thom Powers: Yes. So, I’ve been the documentary programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival since 2006. This is my 15th year doing that job.

I am a co-founder and the artistic director at DOC NYC, which started in 2010, so we just had our 10th anniversary last November. And for readers who have never been to DOC NYC, I should explain that we are the country’s largest documentary film festival, where we show over a hundred new feature films. We also have a section called Short Lists, where we spotlight what we think of as the year’s leading awards contenders for both features and short films, that has a strong track record of being predictive of future Oscar winners and nominees. We have an eight-day seminar of panels and conferences called DOC NYC Pro, and we have a section called Only in New York for works in progress to match filmmakers with industry leaders, distributors, funders, sales agents, and other mentors. So that’s some of the stuff that happens in November.

A few other hats I wear… I’m a programmer at the Miami Film Festival, which happened in March and was cut short right in the middle of the festival due to health concerns and ended up shutting down. I’m a consultant for CPH:DOX. And then, on the podcast level, I host the podcast called Pure Nonfiction that’s been going for four years now, and for the last five years I’ve hosted with my wife, Raphaela Neihausen, a segment for New York’s public radio station called Documentary of The Week, which has been running for 260 weeks, which you can also get as a podcast.

Wow…that’s prolific. I think that’s more hats than I could fit in my closet. I actually don’t know where you live. Where are you sheltering in place?

Yeah, so Raphaela, who is also the executive director of DOC NYC, and I live with our son in Montclair, New Jersey.

And you started the Montclair Film Festival as well, right?

Raphaela and I started the Montclair Film Festival and ran it for its first three years. And now it’s in the good hands of Tom Hall as the executive director.

I have to say that from my perspective, DOC NYC has made a big leap forward in the last two years, and I can feel a lot of the result of your energy there as we move towards Fall 2020. So, congrats on that. Given the condition of the world, a lot of the film community is looking to Fall festivals such as TIFF and DOC NYC to relaunch some sense of normalcy. You stand to play a large role in all that. Short of trying to predict the future how do you feel about Fall Festivals?

Well, you know, like everyone, I and my colleagues are responding week by week to the news. What I can say for both Toronto and DOC NYC is that both those festivals are committed to happening in the best version that we can make.

We will be adapting to whatever conditions exist of people being able to come together.

I think in both the cases of Toronto and DOC NYC, we are very rigorously exploring the possibilities to supplement or replace the theatrical experience with online versions. We hope that there will be an in-person version of Toronto and DOC NYC. But it would be foolish to take that for granted at this point. And it is too early to say what an online version of either of those festivals would look like. But we’re trying to learn from everything that’s being tried this Spring and bring the most innovative techniques to making that a robust experience.

I have a burning question…If festivals like TIFF and DOC NYC happen this Fall, how do you think they should treat the films that lost their World Premiere opportunities in the Spring (SXSW, Tribeca, Hot Docs, Cannes, etc.)? Should they be considered World Premieres in the eyes of TIFF and DOC NYC? How are you guys going to treat this crazy situation we have where we’re talking about festivals that usually have strict premiere status requirements…. North American premiere, New York premiere, etc. For example, most Tribeca films are still saying they are Tribeca films. Will you consider that a New York premiere, if it has Tribeca laurels? Or if it has SXSW laurels, will you consider it a North American premiere?

I think we’re still figuring this out as we go. I think the one thing I can say is, both TIFF and DOC NYC are trying to be collaborative with our friends at Spring festivals that had to postpone or shift online. And you know, we’re very sympathetic to the filmmakers who lost their opportunities for theatrical premieres. I think we want to be more relaxed in the normal guidelines that apply.

I think part of your question is very specific, a question about status and naming. Like, what do you call a film if DOC NYC was the first time a film could be shown in a theater, but it had previously been curated online – what do you call that? And I think we’re just going to have to kind of figure that out as we go along. I mean, I feel like one distinction that I pay attention to is there are some films that are taking opportunities to participate in some online version of festivals. Whether it’s Tribeca or another festival and they’re going to stay in competition and get whatever online exposure that festival is giving them, I feel like, in terms naming something a premiere, it’d be weird for us to show that same film at DOC NYC and call it a world premiere if it’s already been viewed by the competition and another festival. I also think it’d be a kind of slight to that festival that took the time to curate it.

So I think in terms of naming it, we would probably call it something else. But I can say at DOC NYC, if there’s a film that was curated by Tribeca and was in their competition, but by November it’s never had the chance to have a theatrical screening and if we’re lucky enough to be able to give it that chance, then we would be open just showing that kind of film, if it excites our programmers, in a way that we normally wouldn’t show a Tribeca film.

OK, that’s the fundamental question. So you think you can relax some of the stricter parts of the core requirements, along with obviously not wanting to also offend other festivals. But part of what I worry about is how you Fall programmers could manage the avalanche of additional films from the canceled/postponed festivals that you would have to consider/watch? I mean, part of the reason you guys have premiere requirements, in addition to keeping your own status up and at a high level, is also to protect you from the amount of work that you would have to do. I mean, the amount of hours in a day hasn’t changed, right?

Well in the case of the Toronto film festival, our submissions are already up this year. So whether that is related to other festival cancellations or not, I haven’t been able to do that analysis yet, but, yes, we are going to have a bigger load of films to watch. In fact is, anyone who curates a fall festival is going to have extra layers of work. They are going to have more films to watch. They’re going to have to be spending more time on backup plans. They’re going to have to worry about serious economic challenges, reduced sponsorship, and probably reduced paid attendance.

There’s the possibility that even if theaters are open in the fall, maybe there’s some social distancing that is going to have to be involved, so you can’t sell the full capacity of a theater. All of these are unknowns as we’re speaking in April and, they take up, I can tell you, a lot of time, that we would normally spend just planning our festivals, which is normally a big enough job in itself.

So, I’m not asking for extra sympathy because everyone has extra stress right now, but I’m trying to give a clear picture from the festival side of what that really looks like.

I really appreciate everything you’re saying and I know I am grilling you on things that are difficult to answer. So let me ask you something a little bit more fun. How do you think all this will impact people’s desire to watch documentaries? Do you think that this will change what kind of documentaries get to the marketplace because people want to see them now? Basically, how do you think this Pandemic and the multi-layered issues will affect what people want to watch? Will other topics seem dated and frivolous? Will everyone want escapist fluff? Will we look to other crises of the past? Perhaps none of the above?

Well, I think you know the general public always has a bigger appetite for escapism than they do for, you know, hard realities. So, I think that’s just built into the business of making documentaries that if you’re making a documentary that’s taking on a tough subject, you’re already fighting an uphill battle, but a very worthy one in my opinion.

I think that these days people have an extra layer of worry. They’re worried about their health. They’re worried about the economy. It is harder to take on additional serious topics. So I think undoubtedly we’re seeing a greater appetite for escapist topics, whether that’s food or music or a kind of crazy, true crime.

You mean like TIGER KING.

Yes, for example. So, you know, that is a reality that I don’t think we can get around.

Ugh, yes. So, doing what you do, a large amount of your social circle and the most important people in your life must be filmmakers. How do you feel for your friends and your family in all this, in this world right now? How do you see people responding to each other and what are they going through right now?

At DOC NYC we’ve done a series of free webinars. We’ve done two of them so far, and I have another couple coming up. And it’s been a great experience to see familiar names pop up in those webinars, and new names. People from all over the world.

I think that it’s hard to generalize about people’s experiences. The experiences that I’m hearing the most about are those filmmakers who were hoping to launch a film this spring, whether it’s SXSW, Hot Docs, CPH, Tribeca, Full Frame or another festival, and have had those plans disrupted. And, you know, I feel for them because each one of those projects represents years of experience. A few months ago, they felt like they were at a pivot point and had gotten an acceptance into one of these festivals that are hard to get into in the first place. And, now they’ve had the rug pulled out from under them.

It is a very difficult situation. Often when you’re at that point, you’ve got financial debt behind you. So those are very real issues. I don’t think anyone has an easy solution for them. What we’ve been trying to provide in our DOC NYC webinars is any insights that we can give behind the scenes, and what’s happening in the distribution marketplace. The last webinar we did was about different forms of cash flow, whether it’s emergency relief funds or an initiative that Kickstarter did to try to encourage small scale crowdfunding projects called Inside Voices), and I wanted to highlight that for that filmmakers who are staying at home and not seeing any of the normal opportunities to make money. I don’t have a quick-fix solution for them, but I wanted to be able to offer any ideas I could give.

Our next webinar is about film promotion and PR during these times, trying to illuminate what some of the challenges and opportunities are for filmmakers right now to get the word out about their films.

How do people find out more and keep up with the DOC NYC stuff you’re doing? Oh and, and by the way, thank you for doing it! We want people to follow you.

The best thing to do is at our website docnyc.net, you can sign up for our free Monday memo, and that’s an email newsletter that shows up around noon every Monday. The person who writes it is Jordan Smith, who has been doing a tremendous job for the last several years. It encapsulates all the week’s news, not just DOC NYC news, but documentary news from all over the world—film releases, film funds, festivals, etc. So signing up for the Monday memo is a great way not only to keep up on what DOC NYC is doing, but what’s happening in the documentary world in general.

Let me ask you a broader think question before we wrap up. Obviously in our lifetimes, we’ve never seen anything like this level of disruption and we’ve never seen this kind of change to the independent filmmaking and documentary world. Do you have any feelings about how you think this will change our lives moving forward in terms of independent and documentary filmmaking and the ways we’ve been doing business thus far?

There’s a couple things that I think we should pay attention to. One is the distribution structure for documentaries, which I think in the last 10 years has a lot of positives about it. There’s no question that the rise of streamers, and Netflix especially, has made documentary viewing a much more common and easy to try experience for many, many more people. You know, I would say 10 or 15 years ago, if I was at a dinner party and brought up a documentary with a bunch of non-film people, it was unlikely that a lot of people would have seen that film, or would even have the means to see that film. These days, when you talk to people outside the film world, it’s likely that that documentary is going to be a common touch point for conversation, whether it’s a theatrical documentary like RBG or FREE SOLO, or online projects, like WILD WILD COUNTRY or these days TIGER KING. So that’s been a tremendous boon for documentary making and documentary consumption.

I do think that even without COVID-19, we were reaching a tipping point in these distribution networks, with the introduction of a lot more streamers coming on to the market where, I don’t think, in the long run, the general public can sustain this many streamer subscriptions. If you’ve got Netflix and Amazon and Apple and Hulu and HBO and Disney and Quibi, or if you’ve got some of the more niche platforms like Criterion or MUBI or IFC Films—that’s more than you can watch in any month. So there was bound to be some shakeout there. I don’t know what that shake out is going to be or how quickly, but it’s going to come, and I think it’s important for documentary filmmakers to kind of be aware of those larger trends and ask themselves where they’re going to fit in.

I think that what’s interesting about this moment of everyone being at home and needing to rethink their business is that I think it is forcing filmmakers to be a little bit more self-reliant. It reminds me that 10 or 15 years ago there was greater talk in the documentary community about trying out these new digital distribution tools to be more self-reliant. I think of a filmmaker like Gary (Hustwit), who we featured in our last webinar, who was very successful at controlling his own content with films like HELVETICA, making a direct relationship with his audience and not being dependent on larger distribution channels.

I think that there was a DIY movement not so long ago, and consultants like Peter Broderick who was featured on our first webinar had a lot to say about that. I think what happened in the last 10 years is filmmakers moved away from that self-reliant mode, partly because it was hard and partly because business was booming so much amongst streamers that it really seemed foolish, and probably was foolish, not to be trying to take your business to those streamers because there were so many lucrative contracts to be producing films there. That really seemed like the way to go, and it may still be the way to go, for the next several years.

But you and I know that of the hundreds or more films that had their Spring festival launches disrupted between CPH:DOX, SXSW, Hot Docs, Tribeca, Cannes etc., there was only going to be a small percentage of those films—I don’t have a scientific statistic, but I would guess 10 -15% at most of those titles – were actually going to find a distribution deal at one of these larger streamers. It is still 85% of documentary films being made today that need to figure out another avenue of reaching an audience. So I think that these kind of hard months of being at home and thinking about how to use tools to reach audiences are going to, in the long run, be worthwhile for filmmakers, because for a lot of people making documentaries, those are the tools they need to survive.

Wow, that was so awesome the thing that you did for me just there, to help me remember the DIY spirit in this time and remember that in a certain way, the DIY climate has never been better because we can all access larger audiences than ever if everybody’s going to be online anyway. I’m just really afraid that in the age of the streamers, that the large, vibrant public exhibition/film festival culture that we’ve all created (and in many ways has never been bigger than it was just before COVID), will take such a massive hit that it will never recover.

I think that there are new opportunities I see for both film festivals and filmmakers that I find very encouraging. With DOC NYC and these free webinars that we’ve been doing, the first one had more than 3,000 people enrolled, and more than half of those people told us they’d never been to DOC NYC before.

So I have to say that for many years, DOC NYC has been trying to imagine ways in which we could take the special things that we do in theaters in New York City and share them with the rest of the world, but it had not been a high priority for us to figure out the technology to do that. Now it’s moved to our number one priority, to figure out how to do that. And I think that there’s real potential there. I look at what CPH:DOX did, which was incredible, turning their festival into an online event in just two days, and in doing so, they reached more people than they ever had before. It was geoblocked within Denmark and from the point of view of the United States, Denmark seems like a small country, but they were reaching people who normally would not go to Copenhagen to watch a film.

They did an in-person conversation with Edward Snowden that I think they were originally going to hold in a 2,000 seat theater, but now it’s been moved online and it’s been seen by more than 60,000 people, so I think that this experience is forcing us into new ways of thinking about connecting with people.

I mean, I am definitely not ready to give up, nor do I think we need to give up the in-person experience. And I can’t wait to be back at IFC center or the SVA theater, where we hold DOC NYC events and look out at an audience of hundreds of people. That’s special, but this experience has forced us to try some new things. And I think that’s a positive.


Part Three: Virtual Survival (April 2, 2020)

This is the third installment of a series on the fate of film festivals and non-theatrical exhibition in the age of COVID-19. Please email comments and questions to festivals@thefilmcollaborative.org. (Also, please scroll down for a running list of canceled/postponed festivals with TFC films, as well as the previous two installments in this series.)

If ever a blog post would be diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (previously known as multiple personality disorder), this might be the one.

For the last two blog posts, I have been fighting to remind us why public exhibition of independent film is important in an increasingly online world. Heck, I’ve been saying this to whoever would listen for the last couple of years. Trying to remind us that seeing films together is how we most effectively share our stories and social messages, and experience a sense of community.

And then, poof!…in the space of a mere three weeks…it’s all gone. Every place we gathered to share breath, is shuttered. Solidarity replaced by social distancing.

So it makes sense that I feel like a man experiencing multiple personalities, one of which believes that this too shall pass, and another which wants to accept the way things are. In film distribution terms, this manifests as an urgent question as to whether to wait this out until public exhibition returns (if/when it ever does), or to cut ties with physical reality now…and move quickly to stream our films online.

Over the course of the last week, online screenings have become the trending topic in independent film. On March 25th, The New York Times ran an article entitled “Select Film Festivals and Indie Movies Figure Out Online Access,” highlighting several online festival efforts that The Film Collaborative is contributing to including ReelAbilities NYC and Greenwich International, as well as virtual initiatives by such boutique distributors as Kino Lorber, Film Movement, Music Box Films, Oscilloscope, and others. Several large festivals in Europe launched last-minute online efforts to salvage significant portions of the festival, including “virtual screening rooms” at BFI Flare and CPH:DOX (the latter even streamed a live award show last weekend). Several other large fests have launched digital initiatives to save the Press & Industry-focused programs of the festival, including Tribeca, Hot Docs, and Visions Du Réel. Innumerable others are now streaming shorts and archive films to engage their membership, or simply suggesting curated programs of SVOD titles as a way to stay relevant and in-virtual-touch.

Stranger still is the language that many festivals are now using to describe their COVID-disrupted events. Organizers are rarely calling their Festivals canceled anymore, they are instead “postponed” into an uncertain future, hopefully this Fall. In the last few days, Festivals have started adopting a far cheerier tone, announcing that their festivals are “turning digital” and “now taking place online” and “offering audiences privileged access,” as if the transition will be seamless and nothing will be lost.

Indeed, one well-known Festival Director I deeply respect wrote me the following, as an intro email to send to our filmmakers to coach them into embracing the virtual screening space…

This is the time to realize that responsible streaming of films is important for our culture and for the filmmakers. People are home and bored and scared and Indie film can connect with people in powerful ways. By making film festivals something you go online at a specific time as opposed to those films that will be up all week, drives people and actually gives them something to look forward to at this time. Better to connect, serve the audience and the makers and get the work out there. Be a mensch!”

This is the kind of language that drives my multiple personalities into high gear…

Be careful…This is where Pandora’s Box starts to open.

Personally, I fully understand the drive to embrace the NOW and move forward and seize opportunities where they avail themselves in uncertain times. In fact, as mentioned before, The Film Collaborative is moving forward with quite a few online screenings especially of our 2019 films right now, under select and secure conditions. These include such wonderful TFC titles as OUR TIME MACHINE, SELL BY, THE EUPHORIA OF BEING, MR. TOILET: THE WORLD’S #2 MAN, SONG LANG, and others – all of whom had their World Premieres at major Festivals last year and have been on the market for a significant period of time.

There are logistics and intellectual property concerns, of course. What kind of file format are online ventures requiring? And if you don’t have that file at home …where are you going to go in a Plague to get it made?! (It’s maddening to think that one through… film labs aren’t exactly essential businesses.) What security measures and what platforms are festivals using to keep the film safe from piracy and downloads? These may seem like solvable problems, but at least one of our top 2019 films has made it clear to us that they do not consider the risk of piracy to be a risk worth taking, and has restricted us from including it in any online efforts, despite a number of festivals requesting it.

There are also profound financial questions of course, lest we forget that revenue is a pressing question for so many (most?) of us right now. Certainly, filmmakers are more likely to be tempted into the virtual space by monetary compensation, and thankfully, we are finding that most festivals ARE open to paying online screening fees, although at a somewhat reduced rate than they offer for physical events. This formula makes some sense, as they don’t have experience selling tickets to virtual screenings, nor physical seat counts to work with. Some nimble distributors are in fact getting out in front of the screening fee math, proposing models such as this (redacted) formula we’ve seen one distributor using in their online festival negotiations….

XXXX Films is offering XXXXX film with the following structure—“We would set up our own virtual screening room for your festival. You would send the link around to your list. Tickets are $12 and good for 48 hours. We’d need to take $2 off the top to cover admin expenses, and we split the rest 50-50.”

Relevant issues raised here are the platform control (this distributor is offering their own), audience access to the screening (what’s to stop someone from forwarding the link outside of the festival membership?), the time limit of the screening window, the price (a barrier to many in these time when films on the SVOD channels feel free), and the admin fee. These are logistics beyond the scope that most individual filmmakers can control or hope to profit significantly from, so the onus rests on the festivals to create new models that can protect and benefit the filmmaker, as well as create new audiences for event-driven independent film.

The highest hurdle to online festival participation is the one faced by films that have not yet had a “real world” premiere…especially the ones we called the “unicorn films” in prior posts and were scheduled to launch at COVID-casualty festivals like SXSW, Tribeca, Cannes, Hot Docs, Full Frame, New Directors/New Films, Sheffield Doc/Fest, etc. As yet, there have been no online ventures that I am aware of that have tempted significant numbers of these wounded films into virtual world premieres. Fearing insurmountable losses in terms of sales exposure, marketing visibility, press attention, and premiere status, nearly all remain on the sidelines and out of reach for the time being, nervously waiting for Fall festivals, and/or (most importantly) those few active buyers (particularly the Streaming platforms and Broadcasters) to make their decisions about purchases.

(NOTE: SXSW and Amazon have recently announced a new online initiative to feature Official Selections of canceled 2020 SXSW. This is a major development that has many SX film considering the offer—although most of the films we have heard from thus far are hesitant. We will continue on this topic in future blogs!)

Above all, it is this question of how the splintered Festival circuit and its newly-conceived online efforts will affect the leading Streaming services that seems to be driving most of the indie market right now…and for good reason. Of all the Orwellian issues in this dangerous new world, the most perplexing facing virtual film exhibition are the rights issues. And warning, this is where my mental health issues kick back into gear.

By merging virtual space with physical exhibition space, films are now entering into the realm we’ve classified as internet and broadcasting rights in a way we’ve never done before. These are the domain of the all-powerful—the Amazons, the HBOs, Netflix, Hulu—all the sprawling apps on my AppleTV.

Long before COVID co-opted our lives, these had become the primary way we as a society were consuming the vast majority of our filmed entertainment content—at least those of us with homes, smart devices, and WiFi. They were already the reason that gathering for public exhibition was so threatened, and paradoxically so valuable.

And yet for now, for this moment in which public gathering is non-existent, streaming entertainment is all we have. On one hand, streaming entertainment bandwidth is virtually unlimited, but the commercial streamers don’t seem to see it that way. To date, we are not seeing a welcoming reaction by the Streamers to the perceived encroachment of the online Festival ventures. Before the current crisis, there was a general agreement that the Streamers had first dibs on the internet, and for now, it seems the Streamers want to keep it that way.

In fact, in just the last couple of days, we at TFC have been several key online festival ventures come into direct conflict with potential Streaming deals. For right now, there is no doubt that jumping online without carefully consulting with sales agents and potential buyers CAN conflict with pending sales deals.

I personally find this to be a frustrating situation at even the best of times, now obviously magnified by the current crisis in public exhibition. In these extremely difficult times, this leaves filmmakers, and by extension, the many in the Industry looking for dramatic new solutions during the plague, in a very precarious place, principally driven by a clash over rights.

In consulting about this clash of rights with my colleague and TFC founder Orly Ravid (who also counts here as a third aspect of my multiple personalities: a bolder, no-bullshit approach), we at TFC are taking this opportunity to recommend and call for the following:

  1. That festivals and filmmakers liberate themselves from distribution rights terminology and jargon because there are not universally consistent rights definitions. We doubt that people would all agree to adopt a set of definitions, and any effort to do resolve rights definitions will likely be cumbersome, create delay, and may backfire.
  2. Instead, get clear in basic terms about what is allowed:  how can audiences watch the film that is ideally most consistent with an in-person public venue film festival experience which is limited by time and location and comes with a financial cost to the audience member / viewer (either ticket sale, pass, or underwritten by commercial sponsor with sponsor messaging / branding — i.e. either transactional, subscription, or ad-supported). Allowing downloads and not protecting films territorially makes no sense and may negatively impact TV and SVOD licensing and other distribution.
  3. Broadcast / SVOD and All Rights buyers/distributors should be lenient during the COVID-19 crisis regarding their policies for licensing/ buying films that screen in digital/online versions of film festivals, provided the festivals reasonably imitate real festival events (per #2).
  4. Any film festival doing more than offering online/digital distribution not reasonably imitating the traditional public event in-person film screening environment should (1) properly warn filmmakers about potential negative impact on distribution and (2) remunerate for screening the films.

These are times of emergency, and they call for emergency measures if independent film is to survive.

I personally love to “Netflix and chill” as much as anyone, and the emergence of peak TV has brought us countless hours of great filmed entertainment….indeed more than I personally ever could have dreamed of a decade ago. It plays a crucial role in today’s world, especially as we social distance and shelter at home, but it cannot be the onlyway we share our culture. Streaming culture may in fact be strengthened by this crisis, and so it does not need to use this time to crush all else. We can all be bigger than that, multiple personalities and all.

Here’s to hoping we all rise again, strengthened both in physical AND in virtual form. But don’t hold your breath…this is going to be a long and bumpy ride.

As a shout-out to my LGBTQ+ film community comrades, I’d like to take a moment to pay homage to one particular postponement this week, the venerable Frameline San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival, originally scheduled for June 18 – 28 over Gay Pride weekend, as it has been since the heady movement days of the mid-to-late-1970s. You gotta be formidable to quash the queer spirit this way, but COVID-19 is, at least so far. Here’s hoping Frameline can raise from her ashes in the Fall, along with everyone else!

For a lengthier list of disrupted festivals TFC has been tracking see below.

Festivals with TFC Films canceled prior to 3/11/2020
Thessaloniki Docs
SXSW

Canceled or Postponed: 3/11/2020
CPH Dox (switching to online only)
Full Frame
ZagrebDox
Cleveland International Film Festival (switching to online only)
Princeton Environmental Film Festival
Philadelphia Environmental Film Festival
Torino LGBT Film Festival
Bentonville Film Festival
Salem Film Festival
Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival
Thin Line Film Festival (switching to online only)

Canceled Or Postponed: 3/12/2020
Tribeca Film Festival
IFF Boston
Wicked Queer: Boston LGBT Film Festival
FilmOut San Diego LGBT Film Festival
CinHomo Vallodolid Spain
Philadelphia QFlix
Greater Farmington Film Festival
Montclair Film Festival
San Diego Latino Film Festival
ACT Human Rights Film Festival
Sun Valley Film Festival
Sebastopol Documentary Festival
Luxembourg City Film Festival
Ashland Independent
New Directors/New Films

Canceled Or Postponed: 3/13 – 14/2020
Hot Docs (switching to online only)
San Francisco Film Festival
Sarasota Film Festival
Greenwich International (switching to online only)
Reel Abilities NYC (switching to online only)
Garden State Film Festival
Gasparilla Film Festival
OUTShine Miami LGBT (switching to online only)
Columbus Documentary Week at Gateway Film Center
Annapolis Film Festival (switching to online only)
RiverRun
Geelong Pride
One World Brussels
Fargo Film Festival
Coronado Film Festival
Queergestreift Festival
International Festival of Films on Art Montreal
Maine Jewish Film Festival
Frameline (special off-calendar screening)
New Jersey Jewish Film Festival
San Luis Obispo Film Festival
Minneapolis St. Paul International
Milwaukee Film Society screenings through end of April

Canceled Or Postponed: 3/15 – 18/2020
BFI Flare LGBT FF (switching to online only)
Millennial Docs Against Gravity
Calgary Underground
QDoc Portland
Illawarra Film Society Wollongong
Reel Affirmations (switching to online only)
Lost Weekend
Island House Film Festival
ARTA Cinema Romania
University of the Arts
Jacob Burns Film Center
One Take Film Festival
Viewscreen Festival Birmingham
Kashish Mumbai Queer FF
AKS International Minorities Festival Pakistan
Northwest Fest
Woodstock Film Festival (special screening)
World Bank (private screening)
NewportFILM
Denver Women + Film
Cinema St. Louis/Qfest
Riverfest Saginaw Film Festival
Queerzzine Bilbao
CINE-Brations
Sydney Film Festival
Seattle International Film Festival
MountainFilm Telluride
TLV Fest
CAAM Fest
Gay Film Festival Freiburg
Arizona State University Human Rights Film Festival
Zinentiendo
Atlanta Film Festival
Doc(k) Day Ontario
Niemeyer Center in Spain
Doxa Documentary Film Festival

Canceled or postponed 3/19/2020
Cannes Film Festival
Edinburgh Film Festival
DocAviv
Dallas International Film Festival
Dallas VideoFest (switching to online only)
Phoenix Film Festival
Virginia Film Festival
Sonoma International Film Festival
Pink Apple LGBT Film Festival
Berkshire Film Festival
CineLas Americas
Deep Focus Film Festival
Camden International
Malmö Queer Film Festival
Translations Seattle Transgender Film Festival

Canceled or postponed: 3/20/2020 – 3/24/2020
Visions du Réel (switching to online only)
Doclands / California Film Institute
BAMCinefest
Provincetown International Film Festival
Mendocino Film Festival
Capitol Theater Cleveland (special screenings)
Qara Film Festival Kazakhstan
The Art Theatre Long Beach
ECOCUP Green Documentary Film Festival (Russia)
Port Jefferson Documentary Series
NewFest (special off-calendar screening)
eTown
Roze Filmdagen
Washington Jewish Film + Music Festival
Toronto Inside Out LGBT Film Festival
Austin Film Society (special screenings)

Cancelled or postponed: 3/26 – 4/1/2020

Sheffield Doc/Fest
Frameline: San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival
Cinestudio
Monadnock Film Festival
Mama Film Microcinema
Parkway Theater
Movies That Matter (Netherlands)
Epos International Art Film Festival (Israel)
Spectrum Film Festival Martha’s Vineyard
London Lesbian Film Festival
Kansas City Out Here Now LGBT Film Festival
Fairy Tales Calgary LGBT Film Festival
Seoul Human Rights Film Festival
Moscow International Film Festival
Nordic International Film Festival


Part Two: Perspectives (March 26, 2020)
image credit: The Euphoria of Being

This is the second installment of a series on the fate of film festivals and non-theatrical exhibition in the age of COVID-19. Please email comments and questions to festivals@thefilmcollaborative.org. (Also, please scroll down for a running list of canceled/postponed festivals with TFC films, as well as previous installments in this series.)

Recent days have lanced our hearts again, what with the postponements, cancellations and disruptions of such Industry stalwarts as Visions Du Réel (April 17 – May 2), BAMcinemaFest (mid-June), Provincetown International (June 17-21), and the 30th anniversary of Toronto’s Inside Out LGBT Festival (May 21-31). There are still some optimistic hold-outs in the schedule (especially special screenings), but for the most part, we know what’s up now…we’re looking at a near-total cessation of regularly scheduled public programming stretching until at least the 2020 summer solstice…and hoping that the longer days to follow will shed further light on the situation.

But let’s put this in perspective. There are very real lives at stake here. Two weeks ago, as this was just all getting started, I was furiously messaging back and forth with a small LGBT festival in the Basque region of Spain, feeling desperate to get a few films booked before their print deadline. And then, silence. A few days ago I finally heard back from the head programmer, and he wrote:

“Sorry we haven’t sent you news before. We are overrun here in Spain. Because of COVID we are all in quarantine in our houses. Actually, my husband is very ill and we are very scared. All cinemas and theatres are closed, so we have cancelled our Festival. Please, I beg you to give us a little time to see how things develop, and we’ll let u know something asap.”

Ok, right. We are humans first. It is painful that he had to beg me to remember that.

We in the film community create (and transact business in) stories about people’s lives, their struggles, their triumphs, their heartbreaks. And, despite what some in the general public think, we are real people too. It behooves us to remember that at this time, lest our drive to make a buck make us monsters.

Now, I am not suggesting those of us who are healthy and housed at the moment should be feeling lucky—far from it. For many of us, especially the filmmakers and those in the Industry based around their work output, our ability to stay healthy and housed means we must find our way through this, and to continue to bring our films to a viewing public that probably needs them more than ever.

So let’s look squarely at what we are dealing with. In this morass, everyone brings very different perspectives and agendas to the table. Many of us have films that were fortunate enough to have A-level premieres in Fall 2019 and at Sundance/Berlin 2020, and this is a serious disruption in the normal distribution flow that would bring their films to market in the next few months. The Film Collaborative represents a number of these, such as the 2019 Locarno/IDFA prize-winning THE EUPHORIA OF BEING, the 2019 AFIFEST/Doc NYC portrait HE DREAMS OF GIANTS, and groundbreaking Sundance 2020 social impact docs DISCLOSURE, WELCOME TO CHECHNYA, and ON THE RECORD, among others, each of whom were scheduled to play many Spring festivals that will never take place as intended.

Then there are those of course who are the most impacted of all, the hundreds of “unicorn” films now facing a situation never-before-seen in my lifetime: those films who had their Spring 2020 World Premiere and subsequent launches canceled by COVID-19. I think we are all the most concerned for them right now, including such beautiful TFC films as THE DILEMMA OF DESIRE (SXSW 2020*), MY DARLING VIVIAN (SXSW 2020*), CICADA (BFI Flare 2020*), P.S. BURN THIS LETTER PLEASE (Tribeca 2020*), AKICITA: THE BATTLE OF STANDING ROCK (Hot Docs 2020*), and many others.

So now what? Pause and take a breath…

First, let’s face the fact that nothing much is likely to happen for a couple of months now, other than “social distancing,” various stop-gap online measures, and the voracious streaming platforms continuing to buy up and spit out films for home consumption. So we can afford at least a few moments to reflect.

I suggest we start by re-considering and remembering why we do Festivals in the first place, and to reconfigure our diverse agendas accordingly.

We must recall that, even in the age of binging, we show independent films in public gatherings to 1) expose the film to the Industry including buyers, sellers, agents, etc; 2) to build word-of-mouth and marketing buzz; 3) to generate press/reviews; and 4) to generate a revenue stream based on screening fees, educational licenses, non-theatrical fees, box office shares, etc. In the immediate future, that isn’t going away or being replaced, it is on PAUSE.

For most, the World Premiere of a film is just as much an emotional inflection point as it is a business necessity. And that’s OK…remember I am trying to remind us that we are human beings first. As director Maria Finitzo of the SXSW 2020* Official Selection THE DILEMMA OF DESIRE wrote me today:

“Launching a film at an A level festival matters so deeply for filmmakers not only because of the buzz and potential marketing opportunities for the film that come as a result but also because the moment a film is seen for the first time with an audience is a celebration of all of the hard work that was done by all of the artists who worked on the film. It is a moment we all long for and need. Many of us have spent years making our films and way too much of our own money keeping them going. We do that because we believe deeply in the mission of the film and know that the best way to ignite the conversation at the heart of the film is with a Festival run. Seeing a film with a Festival audience that loves filmmaking is one of the greatest rewards filmmakers can receive.”

I firmly believe that even though THE DILEMMA OF DESIRE’s SXSW physical premiere was canceled, nobody can or will ever try to take away the fact that it was an Official Selection of the elite Festival. From a pure business POV, that should remain extremely valuable, as it still marks the film as having been vetted and chosen amongst the best. SXSW in turn chose to give out its awards online as selected by virtual juries, and SXSW films were still offered to the press to review. But the emotional inflection point did not happen, and to be frank, there have not been anywhere close to the usual flood of reviews that this excellent doc would normally attract. At least, not yet.

And so, THE DILEMMA OF DESIRE and so many others face the hard choice…to soldier on and accept any and all Festival invitations once the circuit resumes, or to refocus and attempt another A-level premiere at a later date? If SXSW were the only major festival to have been canceled, I would strongly lean towards the former, believing as I said that the original premiere laurel will never be taken away. But THE DILEMMA OF DESIRE and so many others have now had numerous Festival invites cancel, and the summer months are generally lacking in top-level Festival launches (except for a few notables in Europe and various niche opportunities, especially LGBT pride festivals).

But is re-focusing now for a Fall re-launch even a viable option? In many ways, this will fall to the major A-level festivals like Toronto, Locarno, Venice, San Sebastian, IDFA, and, yes, 2021 Sundance/SXSW/Berlin and beyond to grapple with and decide. Will they allow a film with 2020 SXSW (or Tribeca, Cannes, Hot Docs, etc.) laurels to circumvent their normally strict Premiere guidelines? I am guessing they will, to some limited degree, although what that will look like I can only guess (special sidebars and sections perhaps?). I cannot imagine they will relax those premiere restrictions entirely, even if some will claim they are, if only because there won’t be enough hours in the months and days for their programmers to watch all of those. Even in normal times, those Festivals are extremely difficult to get into, and now they are certain to be exceedingly so, as the competition for limited slots will likely be overwhelming.

I know that there will be some films that are either so well made or on particularly hot-button topics (does anyone have a film on how to survive a pandemic, perhaps?), that the choice to wait for Fall (or later) will be simple. Most likely those Festivals will get word of your film soon and start telling you that, behind closed doors, anyway (truly great films don’t tend to stay secret for very long).

For the rest of contemplating our paths forward though, I would ask filmmakers to consider the following questions:

  • How much does your film need to build word of mouth to find its audience? Is it a specialized film for specialized taste that requires critical attention to break through?
  • What is your financial situation and how much do you need to maximize return-on-investment to get whole? Can you afford to short sell the film without the traditional premiere and critical and WOM attention a festival run can create? Is it even possible for you to sell the film now? Will you survive if you wait for a more opportune moment?
  • How much do you really personally want the experience and the attention of the Festival circuit? Is showing the film in front of live audiences one of the main reasons you made the film in the first place? Are you ready to give up on that yet?
  • Does your film fall into a subject matter, genre, niche, or celebrity-driven mold that may fit the existing appetite of commercial buyers and find their audiences via broadcast and streaming alone?
  • Does your film already have a distribution deal in place, with a hard stop to a Festival run already dictated by other release windows?

I think that once a filmmaker has taken a soul-searching look at their priorities and survival strategies based on the questions above, the answers will likely be obvious to them, based on their own perspective.

Of course, a number of these questions will best be answered in consultation with a sales agent. Most sales agents are finely attuned to what a Festival run can do for your film, as Festivals are the primary launch pads for their efforts as well. I am hearing from some sales agents that the streaming platforms are already getting hungry for new content now, in light of the upsurge in subscriptions and the drying up of new productions that are also a casualty of this plague. I spoke to one producer today who has a slate of films with varying levels of financing in place, and she was honest with me about a sacrifice she is already willing to make. She explained that given the difficult landscape of what the Fall festivals will likely look like, she is indeed ready to sell a particularly commercial doc in late post now to an interested streamer, instead of treating it with the normal Festival premiere and run it would usually merit, given the difficult road we face ahead.

For those films fortunate to already have distribution deals in place, these decisions about next steps forward are of course easier. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t painful. Such TFC films as WELCOME TO CHECHNYA and ON THE RECORD, both Sundance 2020 premieres, were gearing up for productive Spring festival runs that would have helped bolster the issues raised in the films, and been important in garnering critical claim and awards. But both those films have HBO broadcasts just a few months from now, so those windows have largely closed. And still many more films were counting on festival runs to build momentum and press to Fall theatrical releases, such as the Venice 2019 premiere HOUSE OF CARDIN, which informed me today that they had 14 festivals canceled in the last few days, and that they were now reconsidering when the theatrical run would take place, assuming they could restart the momentum when the world returns to “normal” (whatever or whenever that may be).

I personally think the most important question of all is, How will we treat each other in the wake of such disruption, if and when the world returns?

How will we as an Industry react to the very real crisis of so many hundreds of worthy films left without a traditional launchpad? Can we even imagine communal responses to support each other? While we are sparked by adversity to dream of new solutions to health care, housing, and unemployment, can we envision ways to rise from these ashes to become a better vocation? Will we be humans, or will we be monsters?

NOTE: It is with great sadness that we learned yesterday of the death due to coronavirus of one of the greatest playwrights of our era, Terrence McNally, who was also the subject of the 2018 Film Collaborative documentary EVERY ACT OF LIFE by Jeff Kaufman and Marcia Ross. He was a legend among legends, and the lights of the American theater will never burn as bright without him.

Festivals with TFC Films canceled prior to 3/11/2020
Thessaloniki Docs
SXSW

Canceled or Postponed: 3/11/2020
CPH Dox (switching to online only)
Full Frame
ZagrebDox
Cleveland International Film Festival (switching to online only)
Princeton Environmental Film Festival
Philadelphia Environmental Film Festival
Torino LGBT Film Festival
Bentonville Film Festival
Salem Film Festival
Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival
Thin Line Film Festival (switching to online only)

Canceled Or Postponed: 3/12/2020
Tribeca Film Festival
IFF Boston
Wicked Queer: Boston LGBT Film Festival
FilmOut San Diego LGBT Film Festival
CinHomo Vallodolid Spain
Philadelphia QFlix
Greater Farmington Film Festival
Montclair Film Festival
San Diego Latino Film Festival
ACT Human Rights Film Festival
Sun Valley Film Festival
Sebastopol Documentary Festival
Luxembourg City Film Festival
Ashland Independent
New Directors/New Films

Canceled Or Postponed: 3/13 – 14/2020
Hot Docs (switching to online only)
San Francisco Film Festival
Sarasota Film Festival
Greenwich International (switching to online only)
Reel Abilities NYC (switching to online only)
Garden State Film Festival
Gasparilla Film Festival
OUTShine Miami LGBT (switching to online only)
Columbus Documentary Week at Gateway Film Center
Annapolis Film Festival (switching to online only)
RiverRun
Geelong Pride
One World Brussels
Fargo Film Festival
Coronado Film Festival
Queergestreift Festival
International Festival of Films on Art Montreal
Maine Jewish Film Festival
Frameline (special off-calendar screening)
New Jersey Jewish Film Festival
San Luis Obispo Film Festival
Minneapolis St. Paul International
Milwaukee Film Society screenings through end of April

Canceled Or Postponed: 3/15 – 18/2020
BFI Flare LGBT FF (switching to online only)
Millennial Docs Against Gravity
Calgary Underground
QDoc Portland
Illawarra Film Society Wollongong
Reel Affirmations (switching to online only)
Lost Weekend
Island House Film Festival
ARTA Cinema Romania
University of the Arts
Jacob Burns Film Center
One Take Film Festival
Viewscreen Festival Birmingham
Kashish Mumbai Queer FF
AKS International Minorities Festival Pakistan
Northwest Fest
Woodstock Film Festival (special screening)
World Bank (private screening)
NewportFILM
Denver Women + Film
Cinema St. Louis/Qfest
Riverfest Saginaw Film Festival
Queerzzine Bilbao
CINE-Brations
Sydney Film Festival
Seattle International Film Festival
MountainFilm Telluride
TLV Fest
CAAM Fest
Gay Film Festival Freiburg
Arizona State University Human Rights Film Festival
Zinentiendo
Atlanta Film Festival
Doc(k) Day Ontario
Niemeyer Center in Spain
Doxa Documentary Film Festival

Canceled or postponed 3/19/2020
Cannes Film Festival
Edinburgh Film Festival
DocAviv
Dallas International Film Festival
Dallas VideoFest (switching to online only)
Phoenix Film Festival
Virginia Film Festival
Sonoma International Film Festival
Pink Apple LGBT Film Festival
Berkshire Film Festival
CineLas Americas
Deep Focus Film Festival
Camden International
Malmö Queer Film Festival
Translations Seattle Transgender Film Festival

Canceled or postponed: 3/20/2020 – 3/24/2020
Visions du Réel (switching to online only)
Doclands / California Film Institute
BAMCinefest
Provincetown International Film Festival
Mendocino Film Festival
Capitol Theater Cleveland (special screenings)
Qara Film Festival Kazakhstan
The Art Theatre Long Beach
ECOCUP Green Documentary Film Festival (Russia)
Port Jefferson Documentary Series
NewFest (special off-calendar screening)
eTown
Roze Filmdagen
Washington Jewish Film + Music Festival
Toronto Inside Out LGBT Film Festival
Austin Film Society (special screenings)


Part One: And so it begins… (March 20, 2020)

This is first of a new series of blog posts on the fate of film festivals and non-theatrical exhibition in the age of COVID-19. Please email comments and questions to festivals@thefilmcollaborative.org. (Also, please scroll down for a running list of canceled/postponed festivals.)

If you know The Film Collaborative, it’s likely you know that we are an Industry leader in distributing films across the global Film Festival circuit. We do this for a variety of sound business reasons relating to sales, marketing, and revenue…but we also do it because we believe it is important. Film Festivals are an elegant and intimate form of public gathering, and they are where we in the indie film world go to pay homage to our life’s work, to share our stories, our important social messages, and to achieve a sense of community.

If ever you doubted why public gatherings are important, now you know. Recently in California (where The Film Collaborative is based), a state-wide order was issued to “shelter-in-place,” meaning, of course, we are to stay at home unless absolutely necessary. This same thing is almost certainly happening in your town, your city, or wherever you are reading this. And so today, as you know, we are glimpsing a world where public gatherings are no longer possible—including film festivals, screening series, art house theatre bookings, university screenings, museum presentations, community screenings, NGO & human rights conferences, scientific/environmental/academic conferences, and all the many other kinds of public assembly venues that The Film Collaborative regularly services.

A quick reminder of how we got here. On March 6, the annual tech, music, education, and film meet up collectively known as SXSW collapsed under the weight of growing health concerns around the spiking number of COVID-19 cases in Washington State, major sponsor withdrawals, and fierce public outcry. At the time, to me at least, it seemed more like a hugely significant blip on the radar—and as much a public relations gambit as a serious effort to safeguard the public—than the sounding of the death knell it would prove to be.

Only five days later, on March 11, the drip-drip of worldwide festival cancellations began to cascade into a torrent, at which point we at The Film Collaborative began to track the number of festivals with TFC Films that were being canceled as they happened, and reporting them to our filmmakers nearly every day. Here is the tally that has followed…

Festivals with TFC Films canceled prior to 3/11/2020
Thessaloniki Docs
SXSW

Canceled or Postponed: 3/11/2020
CPH Dox (switching to online only)
Full Frame
ZagrebDox
Cleveland International Film Festival (switching to online only)
Princeton Environmental Film Festival
Philadelphia Environmental Film Festival
Torino LGBT Film Festival
Bentonville Film Festival
Salem Film Festival
Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival
Thin Line Film Festival (switching to online only)

Canceled Or Postponed: 3/12/2020
Tribeca Film Festival
IFF Boston
Wicked Queer: Boston LGBT Film Festival
FilmOut San Diego LGBT Film Festival
CinHomo Vallodolid Spain
Philadelphia QFlix
Greater Farmington Film Festival
Montclair Film Festival
San Diego Latino Film Festival
ACT Human Rights Film Festival
Sun Valley Film Festival
Sebastopol Documentary Festival
Luxembourg City Film Festival
Ashland Independent
New Directors/New Films

Canceled Or Postponed: 3/13 – 14/2020
Hot Docs (switching to online only)
San Francisco Film Festival
Sarasota Film Festival
Greenwich International (switching to online only)
Reel Abilities NYC (switching to online only)
Garden State Film Festival
Gasparilla Film Festival
OUTShine Miami LGBT (switching to online only)
Columbus Documentary Week at Gateway Film Center
Annapolis Film Festival (switching to online only)
RiverRun
Geelong Pride
One World Brussels
Fargo Film Festival
Coronado Film Festival
Queergestreift Festival
International Festival of Films on Art Montreal
Maine Jewish Film Festival
Frameline (special off-calendar screening)
New Jersey Jewish Film Festival
San Luis Obispo Film Festival
Minneapolis St. Paul International
Milwaukee Film Society screenings through end of April

Canceled Or Postponed: 3/15 – 18/2020
BFI Flare LGBT FF (switching to online only)
Millennial Docs Against Gravity
Calgary Underground
QDoc Portland
Illawarra Film Society Wollongong
Reel Affirmations (switching to online only)
Lost Weekend
Island House Film Festival
ARTA Cinema Romania
University of the Arts
Jacob Burns Film Center
One Take Film Festival
Viewscreen Festival Birmingham
Kashish Mumbai Queer FF
AKS International Minorities Festival Pakistan
Northwest Fest
Woodstock Film Festival (special screening)
World Bank (private screening)
NewportFILM
Denver Women + Film
Cinema St. Louis/Qfest
Riverfest Saginaw Film Festival
Queerzzine Bilbao
CINE-Brations
Sydney Film Festival
Seattle International Film Festival
MountainFilm Telluride
TLV Fest
CAAM Fest
Gay Film Festival Freiburg
Arizona State University Human Rights Film Festival
Zinentiendo
Atlanta Film Festival
Doc(k) Day Ontario
Niemeyer Center in Spain
Doxa Documentary Film Festival

Canceled or postponed 3/19/2020
Cannes Film Festival
Edinburgh Film Festival
DocAviv
Dallas International Film Festival
Dallas VideoFest (switching to online only)
Phoenix Film Festival
Virginia Film Festival
Sonoma International Film Festival
Pink Apple LGBGT Film Festival
Berkshire Film Festival
CineLas Americas
Deep Focus Film Festival
Camden International
Malmo Queer FF
Translations Seattle Transgender Film Festival

Even a quick glimpse reveals the horrific situation. Nearly every continent represented. Nearly every festival between now and early June, canceled, so far. Some of the greatest totems of contemporary film culture…Cannes, Tribeca, Hot Docs, San Francisco Film Festival, etc. No end in sight. No adequate words to summarize or quantify any of it.

We at TFC alone have canceled more than 250 bookings of our films scheduled for this Spring. These are not just bookings, these are the expressions of our filmmakers’ lives, their art, their craft, their commerce. The loss is, well, incalculable.

And yet, it must be noted, perhaps it is all also NOTHING compared to the devastating loss of life, health, and economic activity being experienced now by nearly everyone, everywhere.

So what comes next?

As we move into uncharted territory, what are the marching orders for today’s filmmakers as they attempt to navigate a new virus-laden terrain? Are there proactive strategies for surviving and even thriving on this new front, or do we bide our time and temporarily concede to powerlessness in the face of a shadow combatant we cannot yet control?

How do we get through this?

I’ll conclude here today by saying that obviously nobody actually knows, whether they are so-called “Industry experts” or laypeople. Nothing I can write here should be construed as “fact,” only best guesses and informed opinion.

What I do know, is that these are perilous waters and if we are to explore them, we must come together as a community to do so. And I also know…

This. Is. Important.

We would LOVE to hear from you as this Blog Series movies forward. Please email us with any comments or questions at festivals@thefilmcollaborative.org, or respond to the original social media posts on Facebook and Twitter. We will gather responses and plan to post a new blog on this topic every few days in the coming days and weeks.

May 28th, 2020

Posted In: Uncategorized


I read once, years ago, that the circular nature of the experience at the Berlin International Film Festival…plodding from meetings at the European Film Market (EFM) at the Martin-Gropius-Bau (MGB), to meetings at the EFM offices at the Marriot Hotel, to festival screenings at the Cinestar Sony Center, to market screenings at the CinemaxX, and back to meetings at the MGB tend to remind Industry professionals of the cyclical nature of their lives…stretched across years and years of travelling from market to market all over the world. It’s a plodding cycle that’s compounded by the relentless gray and cold of Berlin in February, and a reminder that as “glamorous” as this Industry seems to some…it is also quite a difficult and often bewildering business filled with precipitous highs and even lower lows.

As I negotiate these circles myself, I have the visceral audio/visual experience that Berlin is the most “international” of all festivals (Sundance being distinctly American, Cannes being dominated by the French). The Berlinale is a dizzying array of languages and cultures from everywhere, which makes particular sense since if you imagine the world as a traditional flat map, Berlin is roughly in the center of it. It makes a lot more sense for film business folks from many countries to travel to the Berlinale rather than say, the snowy mountains in Utah for Sundance (and a lot less expensive). As a result of this glorious diversity, I often find it a lot more difficult in Berlin to figure out the overall climate of what is going on business wise, as folks are chatting around you in a myriad of languages I can’t understand, and it is a lot harder than most places to gauge what they are talking about and experiencing.

It is precisely the uber-international nature of the Berlinale that also seems to contribute, year after year, to the uneven nature of the programming, i.e. the quality of the films. As the name of the most independent section of the festival implies, the Berlin Panorama, it is a wide-angle view of world cinema from far-flung countries not often known for the strength of their film industries. Although no-one would ever say so in public, one has the distinct feeling that some of the best films from countries that produce the majority of films (especially English and French languages), are not being selected in favor of films from countries not often represented on the international stage…especially those from Eastern Europe and the like. As a result, programming at the Berlinale is notoriously hit and miss.

There are certainly gems to be found, often from the unexpected corners of the world. Take for example, Una mujer fantasica (A Fantastic Woman), a Chilean transgender narrative bought by Sony for North America, Australia, and New Zealand. Or the Teddy special jury award Karera ga honki de amu toki wa (Close Knit), another trans-themed film from Japan. Prolific and world-famous director Agnieska Holland dropped her latest Spoor, a murder mystery deemed as a sort of Polish Fargo. Or happily for us at TFC, the Teddy Award winner for Best Documentary which went to Ri chang dui hua (Small Talk), a slow burn gem from Taiwan that is happily a Film Collaborative film. Or Chavela, a luminous bio-doc from director Catherine Gund about legendary Mexican singer Chavela Vargas (also happily a Film Collaborative film). These are all films that pushed the boundaries in ways that are typically Berlin….so called “exotic” stories from locales usually outside of the international spotlight.

Disappointingly this year, it seemed at least to me and those who I spoke to, that the most talked about films at the Berlinale had already premiered a few weeks ago at Sundance. Without going into names, it seemed that the festival lacked a great number of distinct break-out hits world premiering in Berlinale as a whole. There was a heavier reliance of Sundance hits than usual, and as someone who had attended Sundance just a couple of weeks before, this was underwhelming.

Of course, as most of us know by now, the 2017 Sundance Festival was distinguished by a flood of sales mostly buoyed by the tremendous influx of new money from digital platforms and the bizarrely strong U.S. Dollar. While not nearly as profoundly buoyant, the 2017 Berlinale was still marked by the same trends. From what I could tell, the Hollywood majors drove the market, with MGM setting a new Berlin market record with a $17.5 million pick-up for a Dwayne Johnson wresting pic called Fighting With My Family and U.S. mini-majors like Sony Classics and Lionsgate being unusually active. All in all, the business seemed to continually improve over recent years for the market in general.

However, at least it seems to me, that conditions are getting harder and harder for small independents…and by that I mean both the small indie films and the small indie distributors in particular. As price pressure rises from the incredibly deep pocketed digital platforms like Netflix and Amazon, it seems that there is more uncertainty than ever. Price pressure is rising for small distributors…who can no longer afford to bid with big guys on the block (I heard tell that Amazon now stands to be the most deep pocketed film buyer in the history of the world…which makes sense as they can draw from all their other revenue to fuel their film buying).

Films that once might have been safely projected in terms of revenue potential are now more confusing as a product than ever….as they might sell for some astronomical fee backed by a worldwide deal, or maybe not at all…depending on market whims that seem hard to predict. And the strong dollar is making international buyers increasingly conservative…as the price in euros and all other currencies just seems to be more and more prohibitive for the international players. I heard one Turkish buyer say to a U.S. seller that if they offered USD $10,000 for a film…the buyer needed to understand that that was the equivalent of the Turkish buyer offering $40,000 in their own currency….as the exchange rate is that bad. And as a result, although the buyer planned to make offers to said U.S. seller, they would need to be much lower than in recent years.

As such, from high to low, I submit that the Berlin 2017 experience lived in shades of gray. From the weather, to the programming, to the business, to the overall experience…it goes up and down…and exists mostly in between.

February 22nd, 2017

Posted In: Film Festivals


This post is part 4 of an ongoing series of posts chronicling how rapid technological change is impacting the exhibition side of independent film, and how this affects filmmakers and their post-production and delivery choices. The prior three can be found at the following links: January 2013August 2013October 2014

DCPs can be proprietary hard drives. Alternatively (not shown), then can look virtually identical to external hard drives

When I started this series back in 2013, a fairly new exhibition format called DCP was starting to significantly impact independent exhibition and distribution, and I was very afraid. I was sure that the higher costs associated with production, the higher encryption threshold, and the higher cost of shipping would significantly impact the independents, and heavily favor the studios.

Flash forward to today, and of course DCP has taken over the world. And thankfully we independents are still here. Don’t get me wrong…I still kinda hate DCP…especially for the increased shipping price and their often bulky complicated cases and how they are so easily confused with other kinds of hard drives…but they are a fact of life that we can adapt to. Prices for initial DCP creation have dropped to more manageable rates in the last two years, and creating additional DCPs off the master are downright cheap. And most importantly, they don’t fail nearly as often as they used to…apparently the technology and our understanding of it has improved to the point where the DCP fail rate is relatively similar to every other format we’ve ever used.

While DCPs rule on the elite level….at all top festivals and all major theatrical chains…filmmakers still need to recognize that a wide array of other formats are being requested by venues and distributors every day. Those include BluRays, ProRes Files on Portable Hard Drives, and, most significantly, more and more requests for downloadable files from the cloud.

To track the evolution of formats over the last two years, please refer to the booking charts of Film Collaborative films below. Of the many things that The Film Collaborative does, one of our core services is booking our clients’ films in public venues all over the world – including everything from film festivals, traditional theatrical venues, universities, art galleries, etc. October is always the busiest month of the year…as it is the month of the year with the most film festivals. By comparing the last three Octobers, we can see quite clearly how venue deliverables have changed over the last two years.

Quick observations of the above include:

  • Bluray use for exhibition has remained relatively constant over the last three years in terms of total Blurays used, although its percentage rate has declined by about 23% from last year.
  • DCP use for exhibition has increased from 6.1 percent in 2013 to 31% in 2014 to 39% in 2015. It should be noted that the vast majority of high-end bookings such as top festivals or top theatrical chains require DCP now, and the vast majority of Bluray bookings are at the smaller venues.
  • Digital tape formats, such as HDCAM and Digibeta, have entirely disappeared to 0. As we said in our last post to this effect….stop making these entirely!
  • Requests for Quicktime files on hard drive format are on the rise…and the only reason their numbers above seem so low is because we resist booking them whenever we can—because they are an additional cost. So the 8 listed for October 2015 means in those cases we determined we had no other choice. We should discuss this further in this post.
  • For the first year ever, our company is now offering downloadable vimeo links to festivals to show the film from electronic files delivered over the internet. This is a radical direction that has much to be discussed, and we shall do so later in this post. To date we are only offering these in extraordinary situations….mostly for emergency purposes.

While DCP is certainly the dominant format at major venues for now and the foreseeable future, I still maintain my caution in advising filmmakers to make them before they are needed. Nowadays, I hear filmmakers talk about making their DCP master as part of their post process, well before they actually know how their film will be received by programmers and venue bookers. Lets face it, a lot of films, even a lot of TFC member films, never play major festivals or theatrical venues, and their real life is on digital platforms. Remember that DCP is a theatrical format, so if your film is never going to have life in theatrical venues, you do not need to spend the money on a DCP.

If and when you do make your DCP(s), know that DCPs still do on occasion fail. Sometimes you send it and the drive gets inexplicably wiped in transit. Sometimes there is a problem with the ingest equipment in the venue, which you can’t control. Film festivals in particular know this the hard way….even just a year ago DCP failure was happening all the time. A lot (most) festivals got spooked, so now they ask for a DCP plus a Bluray backup. That can be a significant problem for distributors such as TFC, since it can mean multiple shipments per booking which is expensive and time-consuming. However for individual filmmakers this should be quite do-able….just make a Bluray and a DVD for each DCP and stick them in the DCP case so they travel with the drive (yes I know they will probably eventually get separated…sigh). And the Golden Rule remains….that is never ever ever travel to a festival without at least a Bluray and a DVD backup on your person. It never ceases to amaze me how many (most) filmmakers will fly to a foreign country for a big screening of their film and simply trust that their film safely arrived and has been tech checked and ready to go. If your DCP fails at a screening that you are not at…well that sucks but you’ll live. If you travel to present your film at a festival and you are standing in a crowded theater and your film doesn’t play and everyone has to go home disappointed, that, in fact, is a disaster.

As mentioned previously, more and more venues that cannot afford to upgrade to DCP projection are choosing to ask for films to be delivered as an Apple ProRes 422 HQ on a hard drive. Since this is not a traditional exhibition format, a lot of filmmakers do not think they need to have this ready and are caught unawares when a venue cannot or will not accept anything else. At The Film Collaborative, we keep a hard drive of each of our films ready to go at our lab…as mentioned we do not prefer to use them because of the extra shipping cost (DCPs are trafficked from festival to festival so at no shipping cost to us, while hard drives are not used often enough to keep them moving like this). However we do find we often need them in a pinch. So do keep one handy and ready to go out. This should not be a big deal for filmmakers, since the Apple ProRes 422 HQ spec is the most important format you’ll need for nearly all types of distribution deliveries, whether it be to distributors or digital aggregators or direct to digital platforms. So, if you plan to have any kind of distribution at all, this is a format you are almost certainly going to need. Make a couple to be safe.

Is the Future in the Cloud?

As I have touched on before, the Holy Grail of independent film distribution would seem to live in the cloud, wherein we could leave physical distribution formats behind and simply make our films available electronically via the internet anywhere in the world. This would change the economics of independent film radically, if we could take the P out of Prints & Advertising and save dramatically on both format creation and format shipping. Unfortunately today’s reality is far more complicated, and is not certain to change any time soon.

I can’t begin to tell you how often…nearly every day…small festivals looking to save on time and shipping will ask me if I can send them the film via Dropbox or WeTransfer or the like. The simple answer is no, not really. So every time they ask me, I ask them back…exactly how do you think I can do that? What spec do you need? What is the exact way you think this can work? And they invariably answer back…“We don’t know…we just hoped you’d be able to.” It is utterly maddening.

Here’s the tech-heavy problem. Anyone can get a professional-sized Dropbox these days…ours is over 5,100 gigs (short for Gigabytes, or GB) and an average 90 minute Apple ProRes 422 HQ is around 150 gigs…so that doesn’t seem like a problem. Clearly our Dropbox can fit multiple films.

The current problem is in the upload/download speed. At current upload speeds, a Apple ProRes 422 HQ is going to take several days to upload, with the computer processing the upload uninterrupted all the time (running day and night). Even this upload time doesn’t seem too daunting, after all you could just upload a film once and then it would be available to download by sending your Dropbox info. However, the real problem is the download…that will also take more than a day on the download side (running day and night) and I have yet to ever come across a festival or venue even close to sophisticated enough to handle this. Not even close. Think of the computing power at current speeds that one would need to handle the many films at each festival that this would require. And to be clear, I am told that WeTransfer is even slower.

To make this (hopefully) a little clearer…I would point out four major specs that one might consider for digital delivery for exhibition.

  1. Uncompressed Quicktime File (90 mins). This would be approx. 500 gigs. Given the upload/download math I’ve given you above, you can see why 500 gigs is a non-starter.
  2. Apple ProRes 422 HQ (90 mins). Approx 150 gigs. Problematic uploaded/download math given above. Doesn’t seem currently viable with today’s technology.
  3. HD Vimeo File made available to download (90 mins). Approx 1.5 – 3 gigs. This format is entirely doable—and we now make all our films available this way if needed. This format looks essentially the same as Bluray on an HD TV, but not as good when projected onto a large screen. This can be instantaneously emailed to venues and they can quickly download and play from a laptop or thumb-drive or even make a disc-based format relatively inexpensively. However, there are two major problems…a) most professional venues that value excellent presentation values and have large screens find this to be sub-par projection quality and b) this is a file that is incredibly easy to pirate and make available online. For these reasons, we currently use these only for emergency purposes…when we get last minute word that a package hasn’t arrived or an exhibition format has failed. It is quite a shame…because this is incredibly easy to do, so if we could find the right balance of quality and security…we would be on this in a heart-beat.
  4. Blu-Ray-Quality File (Made available via Dropbox)(90 mins). This spec would be just around the same quality as a Bluray (which is quality-wise good enough for nearly all venues) and made available via Dropbox or the like. It is estimated that this file would be around 22 – 25 gigs. This would be slow, but potentially doable according to our current upload/download calculations. This is the spec we at TFC are currently looking at…but to be clear we have NOT ever done this yet. Right now it is our pipe dream…and our plan to implement in 2016. I will follow up on this in further posts!

To conclude, where we stand now, we have yet to find a spec that is reasonably made available to venues via the internet, both in terms of quality and safety protocols…but a girl can dream.

It is critical to note that the folks I am talking to recently are saying this may NOT change in the foreseeable future…because internet speeds worldwide might need to quintuple (or so) in speed to make this a more feasible proposition. Nobody that I know is necessarily projecting this right now. And that’s a sobering prospect that might leave us with physical deliverables for quite a while now. And for now, that would be the DCP with Bluray back-up. If this changes, you can be sure we will write about it here.

But hey, maybe that Quantum Computer I’ve heard about will sudden manifest itself? Gosh, that would be cool. In the meantime…how about a long-range battery that runs an affordable electric car and is easy to recharge? That would be super cool too. We can save the world and independent film at the same time.

In the meantime…if you think I am missing the point on any of the nerdy details included in this post, or you know anything about how digital delivery of exhibition materials that I might have missed, please email me. Trust me….we want to hear from you!

November 24th, 2015

Posted In: Digital Distribution, Distribution, Film Festivals, Theatrical, Uncategorized

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,


In two prior posts, I chronicled how rapid technological change was impacting the exhibition side of independent film, and how this was affecting filmmakers and their post-production and delivery choices. In January 2013, in a post called “The Independent’s Guide to Film Exhibition and Delivery” I discussed the rise of the DCP in independent exhibition, and the potential dangers it posed to filmmakers on a budget. And later that year, I posted “Digital Tape is Dead” in which I gave further evidence that it was possible to resist the rise of DCP…at least for the time being… and the reasons for doing so.

photo credit: Bradley Fortner via photopin cc

photo credit: Bradley Fortner via photopin cc

It’s a little over a year later, so I am returning to the topic to take stock of what a difference another year makes. And as always, the main goal of this exercise is to help you, as filmmakers, to make the best post and delivery choices in finishing and exhibiting your films.

Of the many things that The Film Collaborative does, one of our core services is booking our clients’ and members’ films in public venues all over the world – including everything from film festivals, traditional theatrical venues, universities, art galleries, etc.  Every year, this work hits a peak frenzy in October, which is unquestionably THE month of the year with the largest number of film festivals. By simply comparing our booking format totals from October 2013 to October 2014, I can see that once again the landscape of booking has evolved substantially in the last 12 months.

BOOKINGS IN OCTOBER 2013 (total 195 booking engagements):

BLURAY: 144

DVD: 25

DCP: 12

HDCAM: 10

Digibeta: 2

Quicktime File:  2

BOOKINGS IN OCTOBER 2014 (total 268 booking engagements)

BLURAY: 162

DCP: 84

DVD: 12

HDCAM: 6

Quicktime File: 4

Other than the fact that we are obviously a busy company (!), the main takeaway here is that the DCP’s slow and seemingly inevitable rise to the top is continuing, although the actual majority of venues (especially in the U.S.) are still trying to cut costs by the use of BluRay. In Europe, the DCP has already overtaken all other formats, and is nearly impossible to resist if you want to play in any reputable festivals or venues. And after DCP and BluRay, all other formats are now nearly dead worldwide, at least for now.

There are many reasons why this isn’t good news for independent filmmakers (which we’ll go into)…but the first and most obvious problem is that all of the filmmakers we work with are still making multiple HDCAMs! From the data above it is clear, STOP MAKING HDCAMS PEOPLE! I know many companies that have stopped producing them entirely, and are providing only on DCP, BluRay, and DVD.

Usually, an independent filmmaker’s first worry about DCPs is the initial price – indeed it is the most expensive exhibition format to make since the 35mm print. However, the good news is that it has already dropped in price quite a bit from 2013…now if you look around you are sure to be able to get an initial one made for $1,000 – $1,500 (compared to around $2,500 a year ago).

Now there is the really weird situation with the subsequent DCPs…and what you should pay to make additional copies. If you’ve seen DCPs, you’ll know that they often come in these elaborate and heavy “Pelican Cases” with a “Sled” hard drive with USB adaptors and power supplies. That’s the kind the studios use, and they will usually run you around $400 per additional DCP…which is expensive.

The strange thing is that every tech-savvy person I know tells me that this is all window-dressing, and that a regular “Office Depot style drive” USB 3 Drive for $100 serves exactly the same purpose and is actually a bit more reliable since it has less moving parts. Add to this the simple charge for copying the DCP (for which our lab charges only $50), and you’ve got subsequent DCPs at only $150 each…which of course is even cheaper than old tape-based formats like HDCAM and Digibeta.

If someone out there knows why one SHOULDN’T go with the more inexpensive option, I’m all ears. Call me, tweet us @filmcollab, leave a comment on our Facebook page! ‘Cause I haven’t heard it yet.

Of course, its still not a super-cheap $10 BluRay, but the truly annoying thing about the DCP and all its solid state technology and its fancy cases is that it is HEAVY, surpassing everything except old 35mm prints in weight. As a result, the cost of SHIPPING becomes a major issue for independents, and more than $100 every time you send since you obviously aren’t going to put your pristine file in regular mail.  If you’ve been booking and playing films for a long time, you’ll know that $100 in shipping is often the difference between a profitable screening a not-so-profitable one…and so the cost adds up quickly.

It’s truly the cost of shipping that makes me sad that the BluRay is doomed as a major exhibition format. At one point, when filmmakers and distributors made “P&A” assessments for their films, the biggest cost in the “P” analysis was the cost of shipping heavy prints. For a brief and shining moment….from like mid 2013 to mid 2014… the lightweight BluRays took that part of the “P” out of the equation entirely…and that sure was nice.

But the (dirty and secret) truth is that COST isn’t the main problem with DCP. It is the RELIABILITY of the format. The horrible fact is that DCP is the most unreliable format in terms of playability that we have ever had….bar none that I can think of. BluRays used to have the reputation for failing often, but they were easy to include a back-up copy with, and they have drastically improved in the last two years such that they almost never fail. DCPs, however, now fail ALL THE TIME, at an alarming rate, and for an alarming number of reasons.

Rather than go into the deep tech-geek reason for DCP failures in venues all over the world…I am going to copy a few recent emails from labs, festivals, and venues I have been communicating with in the last couple of weeks. I promise you…all of this is just in the last two weeks! And all of these are all different films and different DCPs!

[EXAMPLE] On September 16th, XXXX wrote:

So, bad news guys, we couldn’t access the hard drive on this DCP, so it’s our thoughts that it is dead.

[EXAMPLE} On September 18th, XXXX wrote:

Nothing over here is recognizing this DCP. The drive appears to be EXT3 formatted and I think this may be why it’s not recognizing as a usable hard drive. Generally, we use NTFS and EXT2 formatted drives. This one does have a bluray backup, but if you can try to get us another DCP, that’d be cool.

[EXAMPLE} On September 17th, XXX wrote

We just got the DCP and the sled was loose and the final screw holding it came off. It’s the plastic thing that pops out. Just now I noticed that most of the screws on it are loose. It won’t play because I think we need to replace the screws?

[EXAMPLE} On September 22,, XXXX wrote

We are facing difficulties with the DCP as our Server does not seem to recognize the drive. We have spoken to your lab and we think it’s because our server cannot recognize Linux Files. We have about 100 DCPs in our festival, and this is happening to about 10 of our films. Can you offer any advice?

It is this last example that really cracks me up….if you happen to know anything about DCP you know that Linux was chosen as the best format for DCI-complaint files. So the fact that a festival could not read Linux, but could still read 90 out of 100 of their DCPs is absolutely mid-boggling, as I thought Linux was in fact the common denominator.

But I digress.

As filmmakers, is any of this what you want to be doing with your time? Do you really want to know about EXT3 and EXT2, and do you seriously want to worry about replacing loose screws on a drive? Do you want to reduce your whole filmmaking experience as to whether a venue can read Linux or not? Do you have time for this?

Just this weekend, we had a screening in North Hollywood where the sound on the DCP went out for the last 5 minutes of the film, all the way through the credits. Is  this acceptable? I thought not.

It was better before. We don’t like to think that evolution is like this….getting worse rather than better….but in truth it often is. And this is one of those times.

The truth is, I will never trust this format.  The DCP was created by a 7-member consortium of the major multinational studios called the Digital Cinema Initiative (DCI). It represented only the major studios…and created a format best suited to their needs. They have since adapted all the major venues to their needs. Is it any wonder that these needs do not represent the needs of independent filmmakers? Do we have any doubt that that any “consortium” would actively seek to suppress the needs of its competition? It created encryption codes only they can functionally work with. It put all the rest of us in danger, in my opinion. Let’s just talk about their unworkable encryption technology if we want to start somewhere. KDMs on independent films are a joke….leaving us more vulnerable to piracy than ever.

So, here is why the “P” matters more than ever. And why there is still GREAT reasons to hope. Just when you thought I was writing a depressing post, I am going to flip this b*itch. And I mean “b*itch” in the best manner possible.

The truth is…the age of cloud based computing, the no shipping, the no P in “P&A” reality is finally nearly upon us.

The truth is…it will not be long before we can use cloud-based services to deliver our films to venues all over the world. Of course, it is happening now….but it is not a mature system yet. But my guess is that it WILL be very soon. Definitely less than 5 years.

With all the new services like Google Drive, WeTransfer, DropBox, Vimeo, etc all rapidly evolving…..we are only months (if not years) from really delivering our films without help from middle men like Technicolor and FED EX. And that will be a good thing. A great thing really. I believe it will increase our indie profits many fold.

Already, every single day, I have numerous festivals asking me to DropBox them the films we are working with. In truth, I haven’t figured out really how to do that yet in quality levels I am comfortable with that also make financial sense. I am in constant dialogue with our lab and our tech people as to how to make this work in terms of uploading time, server space, and quality of presentation.

But it is clear to me that it IS happening over time….if anyone knows the secrets…again, I am ALL ears!  Please call me! Because I truly believe that when we can remove the P from the P&A equation….and I mean truly remove it such that any number of prints and all shipping can be eliminated as easily as sending someone a link to an FTP or whatever…..we will re-enter an age where independent film distribution will make real financial sense. Imagine that, for a moment.

And the weirdest thing is I think it is truly happening… any day now.

NOTE: Step 4 in this blog series will be an analysis of how to deliver your film digitally and via The Cloud. We aren’t there yet….BUT that is what I will cover in the next post of this series. Hopefully new updates will happen by the end of the year!

 

 

October 1st, 2014

Posted In: Digital Distribution, Distribution, DIY, Film Festivals, Theatrical

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,


photo credit: Kevin H. via photopin cc

photo credit: Kevin H. via photopin cc

I was speaking with a producer friend of mine this week, and she told me a disturbing (if familiar) story, with a surprisingly inspiring conclusion.

She recently exec produced one of 2014’s “bigger” independent films…which is set for theatrical release soon. They did just about everything right. The film is written and directed by a well known, highly respected auteur on the indie scene, with a  long career. It stars two very well-known character actors, who are just about household names if not quite “movie stars.” The budget was modest. It premiered at one of the pinnacle A-level film festivals. There it was bought by one of the biggest mini-majors in the business, and has since sold 18 territories worldwide. Even before theatrical release, the investors have all made a significant percentage of their money back…albeit not all of it (and certainly no profit).

She was lunching with one of the films other producers recently and she asked him… “If the film grosses 1 million dollars theatrically, do you think we’ll see any more money?” He said, “probably not.” So she said, “Ok what if it grosses 3 million?” And he said “probably not.” “10 million?” “Probably not.”

She said that’s when it dawned on her…. producing and selling an independent film the traditional way (i.e. selling all rights out of a festival premiere) is simply not a business. (BOOM…head exploding). In any other business, making back a percentage of your investment is not a success story. In indie film, we shrug our shoulders and say, “Well, that’s the way it goes” and move on to the next one.

The lack of a sound business model in independent film is what we at TFC have been trying to address all along. The “old way” of producing and selling indie films is actually a shell game at best, a way of moving money from one spot to the next that is equal part a gambling game and equal part a con-job. Sure, there are a few unmitigated success stories every year…just enough to create a delusional atmosphere that casts a spell over thousands of filmmakers who think they can just make their movie and walk away as it magically finds its way into the world and fills their pockets with cash.

Anyway, it just so happens that my producer friend is currently working on a new film, and with the production schedule being the way it is, she knows for sure it won’t be done for at least another year. And after that, of course the inevitable wait for the right Festival premiere, which can take several additional months. As such, she figures that this time she has plenty of time to re-imagine the traditional model, and approach the film as an actual business. My producer friend comes from an entrepreneurial background, where she created and sold tech companies.

This time, this film, she vows, she is going to approach the distribution and marketing of the film the way she did with her tech companies in the past, and build it like an actual business. Not wait around for some other company to come in later and supposedly do it for her.

My producer friend and I plan to sit down in the next few months and have detailed conversations about what that actually looks like, but for now, I am going to use this post to outline some of the basics….and (hopefully) create the beginnings of a road map that others can follow.

NOTE: I am aware that I have been vague with the particulars of the first film mentioned in this post…which may annoy some readers. This was intentional of course, A) I don’t have permission to reveal the details, and B) the basic principals and outcomes are transferable to most every film that has received distribution offers out of a major festival in recent years.

In any case, here we go…some of my basic guidelines to approaching an independent film like the building of any other business.

1) Break down and list every source of potential revenue for the film – and plan how to capitalize on them all. This may seem self-evident, but I’ll wager this is the most overlooked of all independent distribution strategies. That’s because most filmmakers want to sell their film outright, and count on the distribution company to do all the right things. But most distribution companies only do a few things well (if any), and they will inevitably leave numerous stones unturned.

Start with a comprehensive list of every way you can see your film making money, i.e festival screening fees, domestic sales, international sales, theatrical-on-demand (i.e. GATHr or TUGG), community screenings, traditional theatrical, DVD sales at live events, other merchandising, digital downloads etc. Then figure out how many of these you can do yourself, and where you’ll need help from others.

2) Know from the beginning who your audience is – and have a strategy for how to reach them. I know, I know, this is dismaying to most filmmakers. Most filmmakers see themselves as artists first, motivated by self-expression, and actually hope that their film is for everyone, not just a select target group. But remember, just by making an independent film, you are de facto not making a film for everyone (unless you have movie stars)…since the vast majority of the global population doesn’t consume independent film on any kind of regular basis.

In independent film, niche is king AND queen, and you need to think of your target audience as your core customer base. Approach them like any business would…who am I selling to and how do I reach them? And if your core customers love your product, then they’ll tell others about it too. Think long and hard and soul search on this question…if you don’t know who your film is for, you run the risk that it will be for no-one at all.

3) Smart marketing is everything. Hollywood studios find their audiences by essentially buying them, spending vulgar multi-millions on TV ads, billboards, publicity firms to access late night TV talk shows etc….basically putting their product in front of everyone who doesn’t live in a cave. But chances are you can’t do that.

Smart marketing actually stems from question 2…who is your core audience and how do you reach them? And here’s where the important question comes…where do those people congregate such that you can actually speak to them? If you determine that your audience is “women between the age of 30 and 40,” that isn’t particularly useful because that’s too disparate to reach. Not ALL of them congregate in the same place. But if you determine there is a certain set of bloggers and websites that your audience reads and by obtaining coverage or placing ads, you can reach them there, well that’s something you can wrap your head around.

I usually advise that filmmakers start well in advance and build a big excel grid of every organization, every website, every blogger, every tastemaker, every everything they can think of and methodically reach out to them with news about their film. You usually can’t do this until you’ve actually starting shooting..so you can at least share images and teasers etc…but please don’t wait until you are finished with the film. This process takes too long… often by then it is too late.

I shouldn’t have to mention that this is of course where social media comes in as well. You want your social media strategy to start on Day One of shooting if possible. And, as always, you’ll want your social media strategy to be as interactive and engaging as possible…not just a platform for naked self-promotion.

4) Have a rigorous and vigorous approach to crowdfunding. Independent filmmaking can seem downright depressing at times…but it’s times like this we should thank our lucky stars for the relatively recent phenomenon of crowdfunding. What a miracle it is….and the best part of all….you don’t have to give the money back. Plus you are building up an audience that is motivated to see your film succeed.

These days it seems reasonable…for the right project…to launch crowdfunding campaigns in pre-production, for finishing funds, and to jumpstart your distribution, as long as you have a compelling message to impart to the world. And a great video of course… it all comes down to the video (and to a lesser extent the perks). Remember, however, that a crowdfunding campaign is hard work…its like a whole other job, which can certainly seem daunting during production. But if you don’t work hard at it…it won’t work. The good news is, if you DO work hard at it, the success rate is amazing!

5) Explore the granting world. Like crowfunding money, grant money is money you won’t have to pay back (meaning the best kind). Grant money is usually a better fit for documentaries of course, but we’ve also worked on plenty of narrative features with a theme or message that attracted grantees. Also, don’t forget that there are also (some) grants for outreach/distribution, for films with an important social message. To pursue grants, you’ll probably also need a fiscal sponsoring organization to back you, which can be The Film Collaborative or a number of other independent film non-profits. To read more about TFC’s fiscal sponsorship progam, go HERE.

6) Pre-sell as little as possible. This is a quandary for many filmmakers. You need the money to finish the film, but then when it’s finished, those rights are tied up and you can’t exploit them in a way that you’d like to. And, again, unless you have bona fide movie stars, your film will be infinitely less valuable before you finish it than when it is premiering at a major festival like Sundance etc. Time and time again I hear filmmakers say, “I pre-sold my film to x territory (usually broadcast) because I needed the money, now I wish I could just give them the money back.”

7) Parcel off your rights in as many pieces as possible. This is something that TFC’s founder Orly Ravid has specialized in….i.e. engaging as many different companies as possible to handle as many different rights categories as possible. This goes back to what I said earlier, different companies are better at different things. This “parceling” is particularly important because many all-rights holders are using many middle-men companies to get to various platforms etc. You want to be as DIRECT AS POSSIBLE with your various points of sale, cutting out as many middle-men as possible.

8) Explore Transmedia. This is admittedly difficult for the vast majority of independent, character-driven narrative features…although there are some notable exceptions. But for genre/sci-fi features this is an area rich with possibility, through games, contests, spin-off stories etc. And most often overlooked is the potential for documentaries to explore transmedia, especially since most documentaries have countless hours of footage they aren’t using in the finished film itself. And for issue-oriented docs, there is usually a wealth of other sources, both scholarly and journalistic, that can be folded into your website. For documentaries, your website should be an equal “entry-point” into the issues raised by the documentary, and should ultimately lead to more viewers/consumers of the film. That is the very essence of transmedia…multiple entry points into the larger experience.

9) Have a well-thought out strategy for digital distribution. My aforementioned producer friend was in the tech business, so her focus is on possibly creating her own portal where her target audience can download the film directly, thereby cutting out all middle-men entirely.

Nonetheless, in today’s world you have to expect (hope) that the most viewers for your film will be paying customers in the digital realm. And thankfully, just getting your film onto a few big digital platforms these days isn’t particularly difficult (to read more about the digital distribution offered by The Film Collaborative, go HERE. But here is where #2 (target audience) and #3 (smart marketing) come in most importantly….if you just throw your film onto iTunes, how is anyone going to know it’s there?

Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of great companies you can hire that work for very little money to assist you with the marketing part. So this may be yet another job you and your team might have to do for yourselves.

10) Keep the budget as low as possible. This may seem like the most obvious point of all, and yet it is incredibly subjective. I can’t tell you how many times I cringe when hear filmmakers say “we kept our costs down…it only cost 1 million dollars!” Well, a million dollars isn’t what it used to be….and I mean that in the reverse way it is traditionally meant. With the plethora of cheap digital cameras and desktop editing leading to an explosion in independent film, supply WAY outstrips demand… and a million dollars is quite an expensive indie movie these days. Most importantly, at a million dollars chances are there is probably no amount of DIY distribution techniques that will recoup your investment, and you’ll be back in the initial quandary, meaning you will NEED a significant traditional sale from a distributor to have any chance of making most of your money back.

So, when I say keep your budget low…to be honest I am talking more like $100,000. And I know that’s not always possible. So if you can’t do it for something in the low six-figures, you’re back to that place where you need to start thinking about movie stars.

11) Put a minimum of 10 – 15% of your budget aside for marketing and distribution costs. This is a VERY small percentage of your budget that really will only enable you to start building a core audience, but a core audience can grow wider if word of mouth is active.

Again, I know this is easier said than done. Even if you line-item that with the best intentions, many filmmakers will pilfer along the way for a few extra days of shooting, etc. But chances are you’ll find yourself with a finished film with no more money to get it out into the world….no money for festival trips, no money for smart marketing, no money to hire a publicist, etc. Recognizing that even the initial stages of marketing and distribution require capital, we at TFC implore you not to fall into the trap of being cash-strapped right at the time you need it most.

Most of all of what I have outlined above fall under the producer’s responsibilities, and are sometimes referred to the work of what might be called the PMD or “Producer of Marketing and Distribution.,” and are crucial to development of a producer business model for indie film.

Interestingly, sometimes I think there is a clearer business model for directors of independent film. Directors have a clearer path to a business model that makes sense…direct an indie gem, premiere it at Sundance to great acclaim, and then get hired by Hollywood to direct commercial TV and film (think Christopher Nolan, who seemingly went directly from Memento to Batman). But producers seem to start at step 1 with every script.

It is my hope that by following the guidelines listed in this post, at least some of the groundwork to planning a profitable business model for an independent film can be laid out in advance.

 

August 19th, 2014

Posted In: crowdfunding, Digital Distribution, Distribution, DIY, Long Tail & Glut of Content, Marketing, transmedia

Tags: , , , , ,


Filmmakers often ask me how long they should keep their films on the festival circuit. For years now, I’ve been saying that for any film that is performing well on the circuit (meaning getting accepted into a significant number of festivals on a more or less regular basis), there is a general rule you can follow.

Most films will see their festival bookings continue robustly for 1 year from the date of the world premiere, and then significantly drop off (but still trickle in) in months 12 – 18. After 18 months, festival bookings will nearly cease worldwide, except for those films that have a perennial hook (i.e. a film about black history during the annual Black History Month, a film about the AIDS crisis on World AIDS day, etc).

Given that general rule, I am going to go ahead and call that 18 months the Festival “window.” Now, of course, most Hollywood companies don’t consider the festival circuit as a window akin to the “traditional” windows of theatrical, broadcast, DVD, VOD etc. For studios and mini-majors, a long festival run isn’t always necessary…they have the money and staff to market the film in other ways, and any potential revenue the film can make on the festival circuit is relatively meaningless given the scale of the budgets they work with. In many cases, larger distributors see festivals as really just giving away free tickets to their movie, and therefore limit any festival participation to only the largest, most prestigious and best publicized festivals in the world, and simply ignore all the rest.

But for individual filmmakers without the benefit of studio/mini-major release, and also for many small distribution companies, the festival window is invaluable and irreplaceable in terms of the marketing/publicity value it can afford, and the modest revenue that can be generated. For many films of course, the festival window IS the theatrical release of the film – meaning it’s the way the largest number of people can actually see the film in a theater. Even those indie films that do get a traditional theatrical release are usually limited to a few big cities, meaning festivals are the only way the films are ever going to be screened beyond New York, L.A., and few other cities. Since most individual filmmakers and small distributors work on a modest budget, any and all revenue the film can bring in is significant. Additionally, the free marketing/publicity that a festival offers is just about the only kind of marketing the film may ever get.

So – and this is back to the original question – when filmmakers ask me how long they should keep their film on the festival circuit if it is doing well, my initial answer is always “at least one year.” Given that you only have 12 – 18 months for your film to be seen this way, why not take advantage of it?

Filmmakers have a lot of fears around this; often they feel in a rush to get their movie available for theatrical or home purchase as soon as possible. Often they fear that people are going to “forget” about their film if they don’t release it as soon as possible after the premiere. Often they regard the festival circuit as a lot of work, and they just want their film released so they can move onto their next thing. Even more often, they are in great financial need following all the money invested into the film, so they feel the need to get it out quickly so they can start making money from it. I can say with great confidence that all of these fears are bad reasons to release a film – and many of the worst release failures I have ever seen comes from exactly these fears (both on the studio/mini-major level AND individual filmmaker level).

Festival VOD

First of all, unless you’ve been extremely successful in attracting people to your social media, very few people actually know about your film when it first premieres…so rather than fear those people will forget about your film, your job is to get the film out as wide as possible so you can grow your audience awareness – both through repeated festival marketing and social media. Secondly – yes, it is true that the Festival circuit is a lot of work, but independent filmmakers need to understand that distribution is a business, and you need to commit yourself to it the way you would to any other business endeavor you would undertake and expect to be successful.  A business takes time to grow.

The most vexing reason for rushing a film into release – needing to make your money back as quickly as possible – is a perfectly understandable human need and a situation many filmmakers find themselves in. I can just all but guarantee you that if you haven’t taken the time to grow your audience in all the ways possible, your release won’t succeed, and you won’t be making back your money anyway.

Despite all this – despite everything I have laid out in this post thus far – in 2014 I find more and more films going into release and off the festival circuit faster and faster than ever before. The reason for this trend is simple, technological, and perhaps inexorable – and of course it is the continuing rise of Video On Demand (VOD).

Think about how it worked in the (not so) old days. Until very recently, if your film was lucky enough to get a theatrical release offer, it would take the distributor many months to get their marketing/publicity ducks in a row, book theaters, and release the film into theaters. All this time, the film could play festivals. Then, upon theatrical release, a few cities would be lost to festivals…just the usual NY, LA, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle etc. of a traditional indie release. But for the many months between the theatrical release and the DVD release, the film could continue to play all festivals outside of the major cities…because DVD release is a physically demanding process of authoring, dubbing, shipping, shelf space, store stocking, etc. As such, it was completely normal for DVD release to be at least a year after the premiere…just because it all took time. Once the DVD was released, the overwhelming majority of festival programmers would no longer consider the film, so the festival window was all but shut at that point.

But in 2014, day-and-date VOD release with the theatrical release is commonplace, and becoming even more so. So, its not that distributors are any faster in getting the film into theaters (they’re not), but once New York and L.A. open (or shortly after), chances are that the film is also available on various VOD platforms, meaning it becomes available all at once in most North American homes (via cable VOD, application like Apple TV, or various internet platforms). And once that happens, the majority of festival programmers no longer will consider the film, believing (perhaps incorrectly) that the VOD release will cannibalize their audiences and they will no longer be able to fill their theaters with patrons willing to go to see a film at a festival when they can just watch it at home.

In addition, there is a rise in the number of cable TV channels seeking exclusive content for their VOD platforms (i.e. CNN, DirectTV, Starz, etc.) who are acquiring films with or without theatrical releases, and are in a haste to get those films out to their audiences. Exclusive content is the currency of premium platforms these days (there is no better evidence of this than the incredible success of HBO exclusive content of course), and so more and more of these companies are making offers to indie films, largely driven by the VOD.

I am not sure there is a lot independent filmmakers can do to change this trend. Filmmakers are going to continue to want distribution deals and this just may be what distribution deals look like moving forward. Of course, filmmakers can ASK that distributors put off the release as long as possible (as discussed, approx. a year after world premiere), but many distributors may not have reason to agree to that. Keep in mind that the distributor may not have complete control over that release date, in many cases the biggest VOD companies (esp. the big cable providers like Comcast, Time Warner etc.) will also tell the distributors when THEY think the film should be released, and resist the pushback…especially as they tend to want the VOD release to be closely timed with the theatrical.

That doesn’t mean I think filmmakers should cave easily….by all means try to make the distributor understand why you want to control your own festival “window.” Personally, I am consistently impressed with how much the various arms of Public Television (ITVS, Independent Lens, etc.) seem to get this, and basically allow filmmakers to set their own broadcast window relatively far into the future.

So despite my musings to this point, some of you may still be asking, “Why does all this matter? Isn’t being released into the majority of North American homes a good thing?” The biggest problem is that we simply don’t know….because VOD numbers are very rarely publicly reported, in fact almost never.

My strong suspicion is films that are rushed into VOD release perform far less on VOD than they would if they were given the time to find their audience via organic word-of-mouth methods (including festivals). I have certainly seen that with other windows, especially theatrical. As we all know now, a digital release is not enough…a film that is released into the digital marketplace without adequate marketing is just a tree falling in the forest. But ultimately I cannot support that argument with figures because so few companies (nearly none), will tell us what kind of numbers they do on VOD with their films.

Until we get real numbers that allow us to see what VOD numbers really look like for festival-driven independent films….and we can truly assess the marketing impact on those VOD numbers…we will all remain in the dark on this topic to the detriment of independent filmmakers trying to make distribution decisions. I can say for sure that films performing well on the festival circuit are forfeiting their festival revenue by going onto VOD….but until I can compare it with the VOD numbers I cannot determine whether losing that festival revenue is worth it or not.

So, is VOD collapsing the Festival window? Yes, that part is for sure, and we at The Film Collaborative have handled festival distribution on films in the last two years that bear this fact out. Is that a net negative for independent filmmakers? That part I cannot answer yet….although I suspect I already know the answer.

Let this be one more call to our Industry to release the VOD numbers. I would absolutely love to be proven wrong on this.

 

 

 

 

 

June 26th, 2014

Posted In: Distribution, DIY, Film Festivals, Marketing

Tags: , , , , , , ,


Written by Keo Woolford, edited by Jeffrey Winter

EDITORS NOTE: Anyone who has read the TFC blog or heard us speak in public knows that strategies for monetizing independent film through audience engagement, focused niche marketing, grassroots outreach and DIY/hybrid release techniques are the tenets of what we teach and preach. Too many filmmakers get lost in the dream that their film should be seen by everyone, so they forget to identify and target (or they willfully ignore) the core demographic for their film. 

Every once in a while, however, a film comes along that grows organically from a community, and through careful nurturing by the filmmakers, manages to excite true buzz in its core audience. TFC member film THE HAUMANA, a 2013 film about a high school boy’s hula troupe by filmmaker/actor/hula dancer Keo Woolford, is a perfect model for this kind of niche DIY strategy, born from genuine community spirit.

This month on the blog, we have been advising those headed into the Winter and Spring festivals. If you still haven’t identified the core audience of your film, this post should give you something to think about.

As an actor, I’ve lived and worked in London, New York and Los Angeles. Wherever I go, I take my culture and home with me. I am a proud hula dancer and I would get a little defensive when people would flap their hands at me or ask me, “Where’s your hoop?” It was amazing to me how little people knew about hula and that men even danced hula. This perspective was coming from intelligent and esteemed circles of people, including educators at the University level.

I was blessed to have been commissioned to write and perform a one-man show, directed by Roberta Uno and supported by other sympathetic people and organizations in New York that would expose the struggle of holding on to tradition in post-modern Hawai`i, far from the misconception and misrepresentation of our culture in the global mass media. The show toured for about three years across the United States and also to Manila. Inevitably, audience members would ask if I was going to make a movie about this.

Seed planted.

Cut to a few years later, in between acting gigs, and the conception of the screenplay was born. I originally wrote the lead role for myself. But as time for production crept up, I knew it was my responsibility to oversee the project to keep my vision intact.

The screenplay and film were created for the culture I feel so proud to be a part of; the hula community, both in Hawai`i and outside of Hawai`i. It was also for the local Hawai`i population and the diaspora of Hawaiians and former residents of Hawai`i who still maintain a strong connection to their home and for the people who want to know a little bit more about our culture. It was a goal of mine to show this side of our culture from an insider’s perspective versus someone’s “idea” of what our culture is about. At the same time, I wanted to entertain the audience and not be didactic or documentary about the approach.

Haumana movie

I won’t say too much about the budget except that this would be considered a micro-budget feature. I put up most of the money and my best friend helped me raise the bulk of the rest by getting friends to invest for producer points. We did an Indiegogo campaign, which raised a couple of thousand extra. More than anything, though, it was the generosity of the community, crew and cast that kept our budget so low. Everyone worked for reduced or base rates, and the rest of the resources, work, time and talents were enthusiastically “donated.”

This was my first venture in such an undertaking. I have no college or film school degree, and no previous experience in writing, directing or producing such a project. I just had the burning passion to show the world a little more about our culture and assumed the hula and Hawaiian community at home and at large felt the same way about seeing something like that. Therefore, although I didn’t think about it much at first, I always knew that there was a core audience I could draw on, and hoped this film would speak to them.

My initial idea was to get into all the big festivals. Deadlines were coming up quickly and I sent them unfinished versions of the film (which I will never, ever, ever do again, even if they say they accept unfinished submissions). One by one, I was denied. I didn’t mind so much. It drove me to make the film better and gave me that much more time to finish my film the way I wanted. And in the end, I realized I needed every extra minute.

Finally, a programmer named Anderson Le who works for both the Hawaii International Film Festival and Los Angeles Asian-Pacific Film Festival approached me about submitting to these two festivals [editor’s note: Hawaii International (HIFF) and LAAPFF are unquestionably two of the most important showcases for Asian/Asian-American/Pacific Islander film in North America. HIFF also includes many other kinds of cinema as well, but is particularly well known as a “gateway to Asia.” It is important to remember that many “niche” films may find better premieres in specialty festivals than in the large, generic ones.] At that point, I had really become gun shy about submitting an unfinished cut, but ended up giving him the latest version to screen. This time proved to be a charm.

Haumana key art

THE HAUMANA was accepted into both festivals and ended up winning the Audience Award at both festivals. It made history at HIFF by being only the second film to ever sell out the 1400-seat Hawaii Theatre (the first was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and it was HIFF’s Official Closing Night Film. We also won a Special Jury Prize for Best First Feature from LAAPFF. Since then, it has played in a handful of other film festivals and won another Audience Award at the Philadelphia Asian Film Festival and was nominated for Best Film and Best Ensemble at the Orlando Film Festival.

With the support of these festivals, the word of mouth has spread quickly. From the success we garnered at HIFF, the film was picked up for a run at a small theatrical cinema on O`ahu, where the opening weekend gross was around $10,000. It just completed it’s 9th week at the theater. It is also available On-Demand to all Hawai`i residents

The parent company of the theater in O’ahu (Pearlridge Consolidated) was so enthusiastic about the numbers that they also invited the film to open at a theater they own in New York City, the well-known Village East Cinema. I originally assumed they wanted it for a single screening, but then they told me they wanted it for a one-week limited engagement! And then it was extended for a second week! I don’t have the grosses at the moment, but hope they will give them to me soon.

In addition, the film has also been playing a combination of four-wall screenings and Gathr screenings across the county, selling out the majority of the screenings where the average net is approximately $1500-$2000 per four-wall event.

The strategy has been simple. Hit the core target audience of the film and let the word of mouth carry it even further. Wherever the film has played, the word of mouth has been incredibly strong. The community is passionate about their culture and hungry for work that represents them in a positive and authentic light. I know this, because I am one of them. I have the same passion and hunger for my culture.

Most of the marketing has come from social media. I’m almost embarrassed to say that I didn’t start a Facebook page until about a year after we wrapped principle photography! But once I realized the power of social media, I went all in and I am amazed at how quickly the word spread about the film through Facebook alone. I also have a dear friend, Tracy Larrua, who is my PR person. She has been extremely hardworking and effective in getting the news out about the film into TV and press in various forms. And I had a trailer made as a teaser and then as a 30-second TV spot that played Hawai’i for 5 weeks, which has also been well-received on YouTube.

Through Facebook, I had been getting many inquiries on our page about screenings in a bunch of locations around the world. I did some research on four-walling and once the film made it’s Hawai`i premiere, I wanted to get it out to as many places as I could. The handful of festivals the film was invited to didn’t reach many areas the inquiries were coming from, so I put up a page on our website that allowed anyone who wanted to set up a screening or fundraiser event to contact us to arrange one.

The emails flooded in. Most were from Hālau (hula schools) around the country who wanted to use the film as a fundraiser to raise awareness about hula and our culture. There are several thousand hula schools across the U.S. alone, and these have been an invaluable resource for four-walled community screenings of the film. In general for fundraisers, we split the cost of the theater and then split the revenue from ticket sales. The average costs of the theaters have been about $850. The average net from the screenings has been about $1200. [Editor’s note: on an earlier film TFC worked on, another Hawaii-themed film called PRINCESS KAIULANI, we also used the Halau network for word-of mouth outreach. You can get a taste of what that network looks like at http://www.mele.com/resources/hula.html. It was easily found via Google. It is worth noting that many niche films have some sort of network like this that can be identified, although certainly not always as loyal as this one!]

I was also very fortunate to have a grant from the Ford Foundation pay for the flights and accommodations for the screenings when my travel wasn’t paid. Now we are signed with Gathr, a Theatrical On-Demand company that arranges screenings anywhere in the country. I still do the fundraiser model for the groups that still want to do those.

As of this writing, I plan to continue to do Gathr and fundraiser/four-wall screenings across the country and then pursue a similar model in Japan and Mexico where the hula communities are even larger than in the United States. I have been getting requests on our website and Facebook page from around the world about the film and hope to reach them somehow as well. A DVD release is planned sometime in the middle of 2014 for the States, after we get the word out a little bit more through the screenings and grassroots tour. There are a couple of other festivals that the film will play in as well.

In the beginning, I was just hoping the film would get into a couple of festivals. And now I am traveling to so many places and seeing how people are affected by the film. It has turned out to be so much more than I had expected in so many ways. I am continually humbled and overwhelmed by the response of the film and am so grateful for every experience it has brought me.

EDITOR’S POSTSCRIPT: We posted this blog not to try and trick anyone into thinking that ALL indie films can find niche success in this manner – of course not all films lend themselves to this kind of passionate niche marketing. But rather THE HAUMANA serves as a mirror that all films should at least take a long look into, asking yourself the all-important question….who is the audience for my film?

December 30th, 2013

Posted In: Distribution, Film Festivals, Marketing

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Next week (September 15 – 19) marks IFP’s annual “Independent FIlm Week” in NYC, herein dozens of fresh-faced and “emerging” filmmakers will once again pitch their shiny new projects in various states of development to jaded Industry executives who believe they’ve seen and heard it all.

conference

Most of you reading this already know that pitching a film in development can be difficult, frustrating work…often because the passion and clarity of your filmmaking vision is often countered by the cloudy cynicism of those who are first hearing about your project. After all, we all know that for every IFP Week success story (and there are many including Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild, Courtney Hunt’s Frozen River, Dee Rees’ Pariah, Lauren Greenfield’s The Queen of Versailles, Stacie Passon’s Concussion etc…), there are many, many more films in development that either never get made or never find their way into significant distribution or, god forbid, profit mode.

So what keeps filmmaker’s coming back year after year to events like this? Well, the simple answer is “hope” of course….hope, belief, a passion for storytelling, the conviction that a good story can change the world, and the pure excitement of the possibilities of the unknown.

Which is why I found a recent poll hosted on IFP’s Independent Film Week website [right sidebar of the page] so interesting and so telling….in part because the result of the poll runs so counter to my own feelings on the state of independent film distribution.

On its site, IFP asks the following question:

IFP voting

 

Before you view results so far, answer the question….Which excites YOU the most? Now go vote and see what everyone else said.

** SPOILER ALERT — Do Not Read Forward Until You’ve Actually Voted**

 

IFP result

What I find so curious about this is in my role as a independent film distribution educator at The Film Collaborative, I would have voted exactly the other way.

I suspect that a key factor in IFP Filmmakers voting differently than I has something to do with a factor I identified earlier, which I called “the pure excitement of the possibilities of the unknown.” I’m guessing most filmmakers called the thing most “exciting” that they knew the least about. After all 1) “Crowdsourcing” seems familiar to most right now, and therefore almost routine to today’s filmmakers….no matter how amazing the results often are. 2) “Television As a Platform for Auteurs” is also as familiar as clicking on the HBO GO App….even despite the fact that truly independent voices like Lena Dunham have used the platform to become household names. 3) Cross Media Story Telling remains a huge mystery for most filmmakers outside the genre sci-fi and horror realms….especially for independent narrative filmmakers making art house character-driven films. It should be noted that most documentary filmmakers understand it at least a little better. And 4) Digital Distribution Opportunities…of course this is the big one. The Wild West. The place where anything and everything seems possible…even if the evidence proclaiming its success for independents STILL isn’t in, even this many years after we’ve started talking about it.

But still we hope.

From our POV at The Film Collaborative, we see a lot of sales reports of exactly how well our truly independent films are performing on digital platforms….and for the most part I can tell you the results aren’t exactly exciting. Most upsetting is the feeling (and the data to back it) that major digital distribution platforms like Cable VOD, Netflix, iTunes etc are actually increasing the long-tail for STUDIO films, and leaving even less room than before for unknown independents. Yes, of course there are exceptions — for example our TFC member Jonathan Lisecki’s Gayby soared to the top of iTunes during Gay Pride week in June, hitting #1 on iTunes’ indie charts, #3 on their comedy charts, and #5 overall—above such movie-star-studded studio releases as Silver Linings Playbook and Django Unchained. But we all know the saying that the exception can prove the rule.

Yes, more independent film than ever is available on digital platforms, but the marketing conundrums posed by the glut of available content is often making it even harder than ever to get noticed and turn a profit. While Gayby benefited from some clever Pride Week-themed promotions that a major player like iTunes can engineer, this is not easily replicated by individual filmmakers.

For further discussion of the state of independent digital distribution, I queried my colleague Orly Ravid, TFC’s in house guru of the digital distro space. Here’s how she put it:

“I think the word ‘exciting’ is dangerous if filmmakers do not realize that platforms do not sell films, filmmakers / films do.

What *is* exciting is the *access*.

The flip side of that, however, is the decline in inflation of value that happened as a result of middle men competing for films and not knowing for sure how they would perform.

What I mean by that is, what once drove bigger / more deals in the past, is much less present today. I’m leaving theatrical out of this discussion because the point is to compare ‘home entertainment.’

In the past, a distributor would predict what the video stores would buy. Video stores bought, in advance often, based on what they thought would sell and rent well. Sure there were returns but, in general, there was a lot of business done that was based on expectation, not necessarily reality. Money flowed between middle men and distributors and stores etc… and down to the sellers of films. Now, the EXCITING trend is that anyone can distribute one’s film digitally and access a worldwide audience. There are flat fee and low commission services to access key mainstream platforms and also great developing DIY services.

The problem is, that since anyone can do this, so many do it. An abundance of choice and less marketing real estate to compel consumption. Additionally, there is so much less of money changing hands because of anticipation or expectation. Your film either performs on the platforms or on your site or Facebook page, or it does not. Apple does not pay up front. Netflix pays a fee sort of like TV stations do, but only based on solid information regarding demand. And Cable VOD is as marquee-driven and not thriving for the small film as ever.

The increasing need to actually prove your concept is going to put pressure on whomever is willing to take on the marketing. And if no one is, most films under the impact of no marketing will, most likely, make almost no impact. So it’s exciting but deceptive. The developments in digital distribution have given more power to filmmakers not to be at the mercy of gatekeepers. However, even if you can get into key digital stores, you will only reach as many people and make as much money as you have marketed for or authentically connected to.”

Now, don’t we all feel excited? Well maybe that’s not exactly the word….but I would still say “hopeful.”

To further lighten the mood, I’d like to add a word or two about my choice for the emerging trend I find most exciting — and that is crowdsourcing. This term is meant to encompass all activities that include the crowd–crowdfunding, soliciting help from the crowd in regard to time or talent in order to make work, or distributing with the crowd’s help. Primarily, I am going to discuss it in terms of raising money.

Call me old-fashioned, but I still remember the day (like a couple of years ago) when raising the money to make a film or distribute it was by far the hardest part of the equation. If filmmakers work within ultra-realistic budget parameters, crowd-sourcing can and usually does take a huge role in lessening the financial burdens these days. The fact is, with an excellently conceived, planned and executed crowdsourcing campaign, the money is now there for the taking…as long as the filmmaker’s vision is strong enough. No longer is the cloudy cynicism of Industry gatekeepers the key factor in raising money….or even the maximum limit on your credit cards.

I’m not implying that crowdsourcing makes it easy to raise the money….to do it right is a whole job unto itself, and much hard work is involved. But these factors are within a filmmaker’s own control, and by setting realistic goals and working hard towards them, the desired result is achieved with a startling success rate. And it makes the whole money-raising part seem a lot less like gambling than it used to….and you usually don’t have to pay that money back.

To me, that is nothing short of miraculous. And the fact that it is democratic / populist in philosophical nature, and tends to favor films with a strong social message truly thrills me. Less thrilling is the trend towards celebrities crowdsourcing for their pet projects (not going to name names here), but I don’t subscribe to a zero-sum market theory here which will leave the rest of us fighting over the crumbs….so if well-known filmmakers need to use their “brand” to create the films they are most passionate about…I won’t bash them for it.

In fact, there is something about this “brand-oriented” approach to crowdsourcing that may be the MOST instructive “emerging trend” that today’s IFP filmmakers should be paying attention to…as a way to possibly tie digital distribution possibilities directly to the the lessons of crowdsourcing. The problem with digital distribution is the “tree-falls-in-the-forest” phenomenon….i.e. you can put a film on a digital platform, but no-one will know it exists. But crowdsourcing uses the exact opposite principal….it creates FANS of your work who are so moved by your work that they want to give you MONEY.

So, what if you could bring your crowdsourcing community all the way through to digital distribution, where they can be the first audience for your film when it is released? This end-to-end digital solution is really bursting with opportunity…although I’ll admit right here that the work involved is daunting, especially for a filmmaker who just wants to make films.

As a result, a host of new services and platforms are emerging to explore this trend, for example Chill. The idea behind this platform (and others) is promising in that it encourages a “social window” to find and engage your audience before your traditional digital window. Chill can service just the social window, or you can choose also to have them service the traditional digital window. Crowdfunding integration is also built in, which offers you a way to service your obligations to your Kickstarter or Indiegogo backers. They also launched “Insider Access” recently, which helps bridge the window between the end of the Kickstarter campaign and the release.

Perhaps it is not surprising therefore, that in fact, the most intriguing of all would be a way to make all of the “emerging trends” work together to create a new integrated whole. I can’t picture what that looks like just yet…and I guess that is what makes it all part of the “excitement of the possibilities of the unknown.”

Jeffrey Winter will be attending IFP Week as a panelist and participant in the Meet the Decision Makers Artists Services sessions.

September 12th, 2013

Posted In: crowdfunding, Digital Distribution, DIY, Film Festivals, iTunes, Long Tail & Glut of Content, Marketing

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,


[updated comment below-August 28, 2013]

Back in January, I wrote a post called The Independent’s Guide to Film Exhibition and Delivery 2013 examining how rapid technological change was impacting the exhibition side of independent film, and how this was affecting  filmmakers’ post-production choices and delivery budgets. At the time, I worried that the solid state digital formats emerging as pre-eminent were simply adding cost to delivery and, in fact, creating a new hierarchy in which Studios were grabbing an even larger share of the market simply by virtue of the fact that the available exhibition real-estate was shifting so rapidly to DCP that it might price out both smaller films and smaller venues unable to afford the changeover to DCP.

But surveying the landscape even seven months ago, it seems I underestimated two critical developments that have overtaken the Industry at a breathtaking rate, seemingly changing the world of exhibition and delivery forever. And lest you think my lack of clairvoyance didn’t matter – I can sum it up this way: had I known what I know now, I would never have invested so much early 2013 money in HDCAMs for our Film Collaborative films.

screening

Of the many things that The Film Collaborative does, one of our core services, is booking our clients’ and members’ films in public venues all over the world – including everything from film festivals, traditional theatrical venues, universities, art galleries, etc. When we first got into doing this, of course most of our films had 35mm prints. And of course, those days are long past…digital tape has been the mainstay for some time now…most notably the HDCAM and the Digibeta before it. Disc-based formats (mostly DVD and recently BluRay) had been largely relegated to preview screeners and the smallest of festivals and venues.

As recently as the Sundance Film Festival (January 2013), all of our films showed at that Festival on HDCAM; DCP was still the exception at Sundance; and BluRay was still nearly unthinkable as a respectable format for a major Film Festival anywhere (note: many of the filmmakers we work with still think BluRay is an unacceptable exhibition format). And the general buzz before, during and after Sundance was that DCPs were creating a lot of technical problems at Festivals, and that BluRays of course were even worse.

Now flash forward to the impending Fall 2013, and everything is remarkably different. And I don’t mean subjectively different…as in I think it is different. I mean objectively, measurably, data-driven different, as evidenced by a rather simple breakdown of the data available to us.

Anyone who has had a film on the Festival circuit knows that October is the height of the booking season, the time when all the venues that can’t compete with Berlin or Cannes or Toronto before them, but don’t want to run into the end-of year Holidays typically stage their events (not to mention the flood of Oscar-bait films that are released by the Studios at the end of the year). As such, October offers the best window into the “generic” state of independent exhibition, and is in fact the largest sample size of data available during the year.

This being already late August, most October festivals and venues are locking their October schedules now. And The Film Collaborative films are featured heavily in the Fall 2013 programming schedules, as evidenced by the 195 separate bookings we have secured for our films scheduled thus far for October. I don’t mean 195 screenings mind you, I mean 195 separate engagements across all our films ranging from one day bookings to full theatrical runs.

Of our 195 bookings, the exhibition formats being used for these engagements are as follows (in descending order of frequency): 

BLURAY 144
DVD 25 
DCP 12
HDCAM 10
Digibeta 2
Quicktime File 2

The takeaway here is staggeringly obvious…in the current independent marketplace –especially in the United States — the BluRay rules far and away above all others. And this is NOT because we are forcing BluRays on venues….in every case we tell Festivals and venues what formats we have AVAILABLE, and largely let them make their choice. And for ALL of our films, we have at least two HDCAMS available….they just aren’t getting used for almost anything! As such, they are just piling up on my shelves…feeling more and more obsolete every day. And I’ll tell you they weren’t exactly cheap to make…especially the ones with fabulously mixed 5.1 sound!

I should clearly note that we do NOT have DCP available for all our films, largely because they are expensive to master and we’ve been able to get away without putting all our films on DCP. But I maintain that this is CRITICAL information for all indie filmmakers who face similar budget choices….clearly one is NOT FORCED by current booking practices to have DCPs available. I can guarantee you we have not lost a single booking due to a festival telling us they can ONLY play DCP (although MANY will tell you they prefer it, especially in Europe).

There is no doubt that if we DID have DCPs available for all our films, that number of DCPs being used in October would change. But I doubt it would shift more than 10%…. Maybe BluRays would go to somewhere like 130 bookings and DCPs to 40 bookings. The difference between the frequency of both formats would still be stark.

I’d also like to say to the naysayers, you’ll note that having CLEAN EXHIBITION QUALITY DVDS are still very important…in fact second most after BluRay. That’s especially true if you wish to show on the University or Gallery or Church or Community Center circuit….a valuable circuit for most niche-oriented independent film. And I’d especially offer this chart to the Festival programmer who electronically yelled at me via email today saying… “DVD is not an exhibition format!” Clearly, a large percentage of venues disagree.

Some of you will ask….why does this matter? Well, the answer (as always) is largely financial…and offers a fascinating look at how the independent film world continues to adapt to the economic realities of competing in a largely studio and movie star-driven industry.

From the venue side of the equation, HDCAM and other tape-based decks were never cheap to rent, so when suddenly given the choice to opt out entirely in favor of a consumer-priced technology like BluRay…the majority of festivals went running to the shallower (cheaper) side of the pool. Clearly, the added stability of showing HDCAMs (which are incredibly reliable) has not been enough to counter-balance the cost-benefit analysis, particularly because BluRays look and sound damn good when projected even across large throws and large rooms. I know that this cost-benefit analysis will remind many of our older readers of the Betamax/VHS era…when it was well known that Betamax was better quality and more reliable, but the cheaper VHS won out completely because of economics.

Add to this the fact that, with current technology, it is DCPs that are the least reliable common exhibition format, and currently lead to the most delayed and cancelled screenings. To date, software ingestion issues, subtitle problems, and encryption code dramas plague independent DCP exhibition…and almost all festivals showing DCPs in fact require BluRay or DVD backups as well!

From the filmmaker side of the equation, the economic forces swaying the state of delivery and exhibition are even more profound. Until recently, it was a given that independent filmmakers were finishing their films on HDCAM and investing in multiple HDCAM copies for exhibition as well as delivery to distributors and broadcasters, platforms etc. But examining the data above, and given that most distributors and platforms prefer now hard drive delivery anyway…why go to HDCAM at all?

Perhaps a post-supervisor could better answer this question, but one conclusion at least remains true from our January 2013 posting….”For the time being, it seems to wisest to counsel that we deliver films as a Quicktime ProRes 422 file available for quick turnaround at a trusted lab with multi-format output capacity. From there, we can be assured of the ability to take our opportunities whenever and wherever they may lead us.”

Back in those old days of January 2013, I made the following statement…”In 2013, the needs of your exhibition formats and delivery formats will likely be determined by how successful your film turns out to be. If your film turns out to be truly theatrical, you will likely need a combination of DCPs and HDCAMs and BluRays to meet the demands.” But as we near the end of 2013, I’m thinking that maybe we don’t need spend all that money quite yet. Lets go a little slower investing in contemporary formats….and check back in at the beginning of 2014 for the third part in this series….and see where we stand then.

 

Comment:

Hey Jeffrey,

Enjoyed your latest post. Sadly most of it rings true. You struck a nerve touting BluRay. I’m a film festival and post production veteran. You are correct B/R’s are now omnipresent. The demise of tape is tragic actually. Dbeta, HDCAM, SR all bullet proof exhibition formats. You could be reasonably certain if the film was delivered on a pro tape format, some professional editors, colorists etc., had a hand in the film.

Now people deliver exhibition copies on a 33 cent piece of plastic. You are lucky if it comes in a sleeve. Don’t expect labels with TRT’s, audio or aspect ratio information either. If you ask me, the Fukushima accident killed HDCAM and SR, you couldn’t find tape stock so people found another way, but I digress.My concern is the dreaded “can’t read disc” or “no disc” message. We have multiple players for this very frequent occurrence. I need to tell to the film maker I’ve played it in 6 different machines and none of them will read it. I, of course, follow this up with “did you provide a DVD B/U?” I always hear..”well it played on my mac” OMG!

Having spent over a decade as an editor and post supervisor, I am dismayed that film makers spend thousands and thousands of dollars and perhaps years of their lives on a doc or feature and deliver on a B/R! I do exhibition for a living now and you can ask any of the seven projectionists on staff here and they will tell you B/Rs are the bane of our existence. I’ve been the Technical Director for SILVERDOCS for 10 years, now AFIDOCS. We still don’t accept B/Rs, we ran I believe 3 DCPs this year. That said, it was a huge struggle this year getting professional media from all the FM’s. I don’t buy the “we can’t afford tape.” Really? Does you premiere mean that little to you? Drop the $150 bucks and have your editor knock out a digital cut to HDCAM.Our experience with DCPs is limited.

I will say this, we don’t have any issues when the DCP comes from Deluxe or Technicolor or a reputable post house. When you get the WD passport 1TB drive shipped in bubble wrap that was created by some guy in the film makers spare bedroom on DVD- o- Matic, that’s when things get dicey. In defense of DCP, the player will at least verify the file. The B/R on the other hand may play flawlessly at first, then throw up pixels all over a 40′ screen the second screening. Both of these formats are problematic from a festival perspective.

You can’t really do a thorough quality control check on DCP’s or B/R’s unless you have unlimited access to the venue and lots of time before the festival. Tape on the other hand can be QCed in a dark room frame by frame or spot checked. Or if time is short, FFWD to the end and jot down the TRT and time code out! Damn I’m gonna miss tape. The archive scenario is even scarier. Possibly subject mater for you and a future post! With camera acquisition largely file based, I see film makers do a good job backing up camera original files while in production. They get to post, edit, maybe color correct, maybe some sound design, render for hours and hours burn a few discs and they think they are done. Finally, the film maker may have their project backed up on some external drive purchased at Newegg or TigerDirect. Some form of spinning disc that more than likely will crap out when he/she needs it. 

We are in a era where hundreds of hours of material are being lost. DP’s and editors I’ve worked with for years have countless horror stories. So maybe we shouldn’t kill off tape so fast? Maybe you dump your select evergreen camera originals, your unmixed masters on a chunk of HDCAM. Put it on a shelf, and if you can find a machine to play it on it twenty years it will look as good as the day you shot it. (The B/R will have returned to dust) There isn’t a good answer out there yet, LTO perhaps or solid state drives when they become affordable. My next festival will be in eight different venues, not all DCP equipped, but all have HDCAM and B/R’s.

What’s a technical director to do?

Regards,

JOHN SUMMERS | Operations Manager 

AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center | American Film Institute

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

August 22nd, 2013

Posted In: Digital Distribution, Theatrical

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