DIY Filmmaking Sucks

Alt theater distribution

Most theaters -- including art house theaters -- won't book your film unless you can afford thousands of dollars of advertising to support the opening (tens of thousands in larger markets). Even then it's quite difficult. Indie distributors use the leverage of their future hits to strong-arm theaters to show their programs ("if you don't book this film, we won't give you the next hit we have").

It's ugly ugly ugly for the self-distributed indie film with little or no budget.

It's a major issue for DIY filmmakers -- how to get a film seen in theaters?

Those of us that have self-distributed our films can attest that it's not easy. Without the money for ads or other leverage with theaters, we're basically screwed. Only home videos have a worse chance of getting on the big screen.

Over at Self-Reliant Filmmaking (a great DIY-focused blog), there's been some discussion of creating a theater circuit from alternative venues and film societies. It's a great idea. Why do we have to recreate the wheel each time we self-distribute our films? Better to have an existing alternative circuit that's ready to roll.

Of course, it's never that easy, but with regular Indiewood theaters ignoring us, there aren't many other choices out there.

Check out the original post:
Fresh and Local: Some thoughts on "regional" film distribution

Follow-up posting that continues the discussion:
Notes Towards a Macrocinema Distribution Circuit

For your consideration: Anti-Oscars for DIY films?

The Academy Awards were on last night. What fun. What excitement.

But it's about as relevant to DIY filmmaking as the NASA holiday party.

Technically, we're all filmmakers making movies, right? That's where the similarity ends -- DIY films just don't show up there. Why not? Could it be because DIY films suck?

Or maybe because DIY films don't have the budget or the stars or the Oscar marketing machine that even small Indiewood films have. These days, Oscar campaigns are as well-funded and serious as political campaigns. After all, films can earn 10's of millions of dollars more from an Academy Award -- even a nomination earns more money.

What do little films have?

We have the festivals, of course. These offer jury and/or audience awards. Fests serve a vital role in helping your strong indie and DIY film break out from the pack. After all, without stars or budget, it's just another indie wannabe film with no distribution deal. Fests and their awards help films in similar ways that stars and budgets do: they validate the film as "good" (i.e. worth watching) and thus help build bridges to distributors and audiences.

The major fest awards out of Cannes, Sundance, Toronto and Berlin serve a similar function in our little DIY/indie film world as the Oscars do for Hollywood and Indiewood films. But the juries are much smaller and thus more fickle. Plus, they are scandalously biased toward Indiewood films with million-dollar budgets, big stars and/or star directors.

Outside of specific fests, the biggest awards for the Indie film scene are the Independent Spirit Awards (administered by Film Independent, formerly IFP-LA, the same people that put on the Los Angeles Film Festival).

But as usual in the "indie" film universe, Indiewood films mostly dominate the Spirit Awards: Little Miss Sunshine, Friends with Money, Pan's Labyrinth, etc. In fact, just to demonstrate the Indiewood/industry slant of the awards, their 2007 award list includes the helpful breakdown of awards by distributor (as if this was the important horse-race of the competition). Only one winning film was listed as having no distributor.

Again, where are the DIY films? Where are the films made without stars, or for less than $100,000? Where are the self-distributed films (what shows more "independent spirit" than that)?

Here's a major contributing factor: it's the submission fee that scares off a lot of low/no budget films from competing in the Independent Spirit Awards. It costs $300 - $450 just to enter the competition (variable based on early deadline and membership status). That's truly ridiculous.

Why does it cost so much to submit for the Independent Spirit Awards? Festivals generally charge only $50-75 to submit for inclusion. Is it that much more expensive for the Spirit Awards (who only fund and organize one event rather than a whole festival)? Doubtful.

The huge fees smell a lot like country club dues: is your "indie" film rich enough to play in our ritzy Indiewood clubhouse?

Our DIY film, Quality of Life, cost us about $30,000 to shoot. The biggest chunk of that went to film stock and processing (we shot on super16mm). In our world, $400 is a lot of money to spend (over 1% of entire production budget) just to have the CHANCE of winning an award. And given that we didn't have a theatrical distributor (we self-distributed in theaters), we didn't have the inside track of knowing the right people either. Basically, for DIY films like ours, the Spirit Awards are a $400 lottery ticket -- against better connected, better funded films.

So what would you do? We spent that $400 on 5000 postcards to promote our film, instead of submitting our film to the Spirit Awards. At least that investment would have some effect, instead of just paying for an expensive lottery ticket in a competition where the cards were stacked against us.

What's the solution?

We need a high-visibility anti-Oscars awards show for low/no budget films, to help break out films and better get them on the distributor and audience radar. Cash budgets for competing films can't be more than $500,000 (or maybe $250,000). It will take some serious star-power (ironically) to make this anti-Oscar show visible: a Redford or DeNiro (or perhaps a superstar director wanting to give back to the little guys) to make it cool and safe for the industry to support.

Oh, and then a sliding scale for fees, but no more than $50 per film and perhaps free (or very very cheap) for students and $0 budget films (subsidized by grants and sponsors).

And absolutely no Indiewood films. They have Sundance and the Independent Spirit awards and the entire art house industry already.

Us rag-tag DIY films need an awards show of our own too.

AppleTV as p2p VOD platform?

I was really, really disappointed with the the AppleTV launch at MacWorld. I could care less about the iPhone -- who wants a phone with no tactile number keys? (Well, lots of people apparently, but Hollywood has long ago proven there's no accounting for taste.)

My main purpose in visiting the Apple booth was a triumphant test drive of the AppleTV.

After years of hoping and praying for a VOD breakthrough that could finally enable an end-run around the high walls of traditional distribution via the Internet, it was here at last! Thank you Steve Jobs (Mr. Disney boardmember)!

Well that was the fantasy life I was living. The reality was crushing. I almost cried.

1) AppleTV had no "buy now" functionality or even the ability to browse available content. You literally had to go BACK to the computer to get onto iTunes and then order that way. No browsing a program guide (ala Comcast On Demand, et al). No choosing a movie or tv episode from the comfy chair. This wasn't just an oversight. Apple clearly saw this as a media extender -- a device to take what you already had and put it on the TV. Yawn.

2) But it got worse. You couldn't take ANYTHING on your computer and get it onto the AppleTV. Oh no. Say you have video of your local police brutality incident on your hard drive (editing it for your big grand jury appearance) and you want to view it on your TV via AppleTV. Can't do it. No user-generated content could come through AppleTV. Huh? I asked the Apple people about it and they said you could get it through AppleTV if you first uploaded it as a video podcast, then you can download it as a video podcast to your iTunes and then get it to AppleTV. Is that a joke? In order to get my personal sex videos (or whatever) to my TV, I need to first upload to the internet and then download again via iTunes? All to go a few dozen feet to the TV? And let's remember that video podcast quality ain't exactly high quality video that's appropriate for full-screen TV.

3) So we're left with whatever iTunes video content you already have. Well I don't have much -- which is to say I have none right now. So what if I begrudgingly agree to get my movies via iTunes? What's the selection? Well this was such a big deal that the Apple booth presentation actually had a whole slide devoted to it. I mean, the Apple people must be pretty proud of their wide selection of available films to trumpet it on its own slide on that big screen. Ready for it?

"250 Movies"

That's right, Apple offers a whole 250 movies.

The supermarket down the street has more films available to buy -- and no one is calling them the next movie industry powerhouse.....I think even Comcast On Demand has more movies at any given time (though not many more).

4) So naturally, with such a -- shall we say, exclusive -- catalog, I assumed they would be eager to get more films on AppleTV. Not so. There was no one at the Apple booth who dealt with getting films on AppleTV (mind you, this was the big AppleTV announcement -- the rest of the product team seemed to be there). They said this was an iTunes issue (remember, in their world, AppleTV is just an extension of iTunes, not a rules-changing VOD innovation). The "right" person got back to me a few days after MacWorld (to their credit) and basically said he'll be back in touch in March (next month). I'm not holding my breath. My experience with Apple (when we wanted to get our trailer for Quality of Life up on their Quicktime Trailers site), was that they didn't care much for the little filmmaker. But, to be fair, the jury's still out on this one.

So what's this AppleTV all about then?

Well, it's been more than a month since the show -- and the AppleTV is just about to ship (sometime this month -- details are sketchy), so we'll know for sure soon. I've dried my tears, but retain the hope that this is just a babystep and that the full Apple VOD Masterplan will unfold.

The ever insightful Mr. Robert X. Cringely has been thinking similar thoughts -- but with the advantage of higher reasoning and geek-level tech wisdom.

He sees a possible centrally-managed peer-to-peer network based on AppleTV. Now that would be interesting. Still it would be slanted toward the big players, since this is Apple. He uses a Disney example -- not exactly inspiring for the DIY filmmaker (welcome to Apple, where they charge DIY filmmakers $1200 for Final Cut Studio while screwing us on distribution outlets that would enable us to afford it). But still, it would be a big step to have a legal p2p network under the comforting consumer brand of Apple.

For DIY filmmakers, our biggest fear is that AppleTV (or any eventual internet VOD winner) will be a Comcast-like walled sandbox where only the big studios can play. Unless we can get our stuff on the distribution platform easily, it actually hurts us.

Here's why: Once DVDs are gone and 99% of the home users are using VOD, the DVD players will start to disappear.

DIY filmmakers: If you weren't worried about this yet, you should be.

How will we distribute our DIY films and indie TV shows if only the big studios get access to the VOD system? Who will be the VOD winner? Comcast, Apple, Microsoft, CinemaNow or some new player? It doesn't matter if we're not able to get our DIY films there.

By the way, I suspect the walled sandbox on iTunes/AppleTV largely results from Hollywood studio fears of a massive piracy invasion if broadcast and HD quality videos could be easily uploaded ala YouTube. I have no proof of this, but Hollywood ass-covering pretty much guarantees that they will leverage their content libraries to close down options for unsupervised uploading of content. They are more than happy to sacrifice the DIY filmmakers in order to shut down potential piracy outlets.

In other words, if any VOD system is easy and open enough for DIY filmmakers to use, you can be pretty sure it's easy and open enough for movie pirates to use to illegally distribute Hollywood movies. So Hollywood is not likely to support any distribution channel where uploading high quality videos is too easy.

That's why I suspect AppleTV is such an inferior, compromised product and why iTunes makes it so tough for small self-distributed indie films to get on the iTunes store.

Well, I guess I'll go back to hoping and praying.

Read the details of Cringely's AppleTV p2p conjectures.

Before we get started....

This is the official first post of this site. Woop woop.

We'll talk more later. I promise.

In the meantime, you should get acquainted with our film Quality of Life, if you don't know about it yet.

The film is an award-winning DIY narrative feature film about two young graffiti writers and shot on super16mm for around $30,000. It has a cult following among graffiti writers worldwide and those interested in street art.

Director Benjamin Morgan and I are filmmaking partners. Technically my title on the film is "Producer" but as with many DIY filmmakers I wore many hats (including story co-writer, chief fundraiser, business manager, marketing strategist, craft services, location painter, etc.).

In fact, you should buy it now, directly from the filmmakers. Yes, this is a shameless plug, but it will serve you well. Here's why:

1. Many of the examples and experiences that I'll share on this site will come from writing, producing and/or distributing this film. It will help you understand the references.
2. The Director's Commentary on the DVD is great and really focused on the DIY filmmaking aspects of the project.
3. Buying directly from the filmmakers is the best way to support indie filmmakers since more of the purchase price stays with them. It might be a little more expensive, but it goes to a great cause: supporting the work.
4. DIY filmmakers (and fans) should be supporting other DIY filmmakers. Simple as that. Think of it as your Quality of Life tax.

So get the DVD -- if the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Village Voice and even the New York Post liked it, maybe you will too.

Order here.