The New York Times has a fantastic article that discusses how small indie music labels and others are leveraging DIY music distribution methods for DIY film distribution.
It makes a lot of sense -- the DIY music "industry" has been finding innovative ways to reach their audience for decades.
In fact, the self-distribution plan for the theatrical run of our film Quality of Life was a hybrid combination of indie band outreach and political grassroots organizing. We hired a political organizer and got an ongoing team of volunteers (both friends and interns) to hand out tens of thousands of postcard flyers in cafes, bars, clubs, bookstores, and more (literally over 50,000 of these little bastards printed up cheaply from Overnight Prints -- with times/locations of screenings in each city).
Taking another page from the indie music playbook, we aggressively targeted MySpace (this was before Facebook) and grew a huge group of friends. In NYC, it resulted in 2/3 of our sold-out audience first hearing about the film through MySpace. Go Internet!
In other words: us DIY filmmakers have a lot to learn from the indie/DIY music world.
Take-aways from the article itself:
- A few small indie music labels are using their channels and methods to distribute indie films that might match their audiences, including setting up screenings at bars where they would normally book a band.
- One label is experimenting with bundling the DVD with a special edition vinyl, to make the DVD package more attractive (in the the age of free downloads of anything via the evil Bit Torrent).
- Filmmakers are jumping in old vans and touring around the country showing the film like an indie band on a DIY tour.
This is great stuff and serious inspiration for DIY filmmakers trying to get to in front of an audience.
Read the article:
The New York Times: D.I.Y. Music Labels Embrace D.I.Y. Film