Corrado Part II

Hey Adam,

I found your original thread yesterday by accident and spent yesterday and today reading the whole thing. Even though I found you to be initially arrogant, by the end I really started liking you. Nitrofour had some interesting comments that are true 90% of the time, but you don't have to let it be your reality.

I just went through EVERYTHING that you're looking to do. I did a documentary that played in 20 festivals in 2007. Was given EVERY reason in the world by distribs why the film would never work.

I then self-released the film in May of 2009 at the Landmark Theatre in Chicago and it ran for 4 weeks and it was the number one film 3 of those weeks, playing against Erroll Morris' Standard Operating Procedure and Red Belt.

I then got a Hollywood distributor and the film was released in NY, LA and 5 other cities losing a lot of P&A money.

I then thought about the way distribs release independent films and realized there's a way to make money theatrically.

I then released the film myself in 15 more cities and made a profit in every one of them. As a matter of fact, starting January 28th, I'm going to 60 additional cities.

I was panned initially by the NY Times, the LA Times. I did get a good review from Roger Ebert and I was on the Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN News and dozens of other TV shows.

My new way of releasing the film has so much steam that bad reviews can't stop the film from making money. I must note here that the intended audience for the film LOVES IT!

I'm negotiating a DVD deal right now, that once it plays out will shock the independent film community. The film will play at the Berlin Market in February. I had a screening in Vienna, Austria 3 weeks ago for leaders in Germany to hedge the Berlin screening.

To make a long story short. If you stop talking to industry people (they rarely know anything), and come up with your own tailored approach to marketing your film like I did. I think you can win.

You think I'm joking. You put up the P&A and come to Chicago with Tom Sizemore and I'll release the film for you and show you what I'm talking about. Then you can duplicate it more cities.

By the way, my film is called "America the Beautiful" and the website is www.americathebeautifuldoc.com

If you look on Box Office Mojo - You'll only see a $77,000 gross for the film. We've made way more than that. The new way of releasing the film doesn't fall into Rentrak's model of what they'll report. So the end result is we're making money, but the industry can't see it on their computers. Fine by me!

Stay strong my friend. You've come a long way.
 
Hey Chip

Hey Chip

Thanks for the reading recommendation. I thought I'd read every book on beauty on the market, but here's one that I missed. From what people are saying it looks good, so I will be ordering one tomorrow.

By the way, I just finished reading "Why We Suck," by Dennis Leary. It was funny as heck.

Keep up the good work my friend.
 
I saw Robert's doc in NYC.

Thanks very much for the info on your distribution strategy. I saw you on Zak's New Breed site as well. You will definitely be a good addition for the DIY filmmakers there.
 
filmman said:
gi, you submit it to http://www.createspace.com

they're a subsidiary of amazon

it's easy
Click to expand...

it's VOD. though not very profitable once you figure out the fees and percentages. (and fairly limited for control over content - i.e. no dual-layer DVD).

the other option is to have manufactured DVDs and sell them through their advantage program. it's seamless in terms of what the buyer experiences. amazon takes 55% of the list price (plus, recently, an annual fee).
 
roberts321 said:
Hey Adam,

I found your original thread yesterday by accident and spent yesterday and today reading the whole thing. Even though I found you to be initially arrogant, by the end I really started liking you. Nitrofour had some interesting comments that are true 90% of the time, but you don't have to let it be your reality.

I just went through EVERYTHING that you're looking to do. I did a documentary that played in 20 festivals in 2007. Was given EVERY reason in the world by distribs why the film would never work.

I then self-released the film in May of 2009 at the Landmark Theatre in Chicago and it ran for 4 weeks and it was the number one film 3 of those weeks, playing against Erroll Morris' Standard Operating Procedure and Red Belt.

I then got a Hollywood distributor and the film was released in NY, LA and 5 other cities losing a lot of P&A money.

I then thought about the way distribs release independent films and realized there's a way to make money theatrically.

I then released the film myself in 15 more cities and made a profit in every one of them. As a matter of fact, starting January 28th, I'm going to 60 additional cities.

I was panned initially by the NY Times, the LA Times. I did get a good review from Roger Ebert and I was on the Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN News and dozens of other TV shows.

My new way of releasing the film has so much steam that bad reviews can't stop the film from making money. I must note here that the intended audience for the film LOVES IT!

I'm negotiating a DVD deal right now, that once it plays out will shock the independent film community. The film will play at the Berlin Market in February. I had a screening in Vienna, Austria 3 weeks ago for leaders in Germany to hedge the Berlin screening.

To make a long story short. If you stop talking to industry people (they rarely know anything), and come up with your own tailored approach to marketing your film like I did. I think you can win.

You think I'm joking. You put up the P&A and come to Chicago with Tom Sizemore and I'll release the film for you and show you what I'm talking about. Then you can duplicate it more cities.

By the way, my film is called "America the Beautiful" and the website is www.americathebeautifuldoc.com

If you look on Box Office Mojo - You'll only see a $77,000 gross for the film. We've made way more than that. The new way of releasing the film doesn't fall into Rentrak's model of what they'll report. So the end result is we're making money, but the industry can't see it on their computers. Fine by me!

Stay strong my friend. You've come a long way.
Click to expand...


Thanks for the info. Couple of questions..

What did you differently to the hollywood distributor?

What are the costs of renting a screen/week?

Did you spend a lot of money on advertising in each city?

What was your budget for your film?

How did you convince the theaters to take your film?

What's your profit margin?

Great poster by the way. Where did you have it made?

Thanks
 
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Hey Pekar,

Here is the general scenario of the NY release by the Distributor. We opened August 1st at the Cinema Village Theatre on 12th Street.

Spend $50,000 on advertising. The NY Times ads alone were $14,000.
The theatre keeps 60% when all is said and done. We ran for 2 weeks and grossed $6,000.

That sucked my friend. After doing the same thing in LA, Seattle, San Francisco and San Diego, the distributor said the film's not working. The parties over.

I mentioned that women from 18-34 loved the film. The response was "You're only doing $6,000 a city and spending $30-40,000 to get it. Not to mention you only get 40% of the $6,000 which is $2400. It's a disaster.

I thought about my Chicago release where we ran 4 weeks and grossed $30,000 total and what I did there. Then it hit me. Distribs only know how to spend a fortune on ads and pray that people show up. If they don't, they drop the release, or if you're lucky like "Man on Wire," and get MAJOR festival exposure and 4 stars from every critic, then the art house crowd will pack the theatre and distribs know how to keep the momentum going from there.

Well I analyzed all of the strengths of the movie. I asked most of the people in the theatre how they heard about the film and devised a new strategy.

I think it sucks that the theatre keeps 60% of the money. So if I'm going to take all the risk, I want to keep all the money. I worked out a deal with the theatre that allowed me to do that. To get the theatre, they looked on Rentrak and saw that we'd grossed $30,000 in 4 weeks. I told them I had a new marketing strategy and they took a chance.

My current profit margins are:. Total cost per city - $2300 and the total gross ranges from $6,000 to $12,000 per city. I've done this in 15 cities and I'm heading to 60 more in 2009.

My budget was $800,000 and I've already recouped $250,000. After the 60 cities and our Berlin screening and a very aggressive, methodical DVD push, I'm expecting another $2 million to come in throughout 2009.

The poster was made by a designer in Portland, Oregon. I like it a lot myself. Not to mention with all of this that I got picked up to do a 45 University tour where I screen the film and do a Q&A afterwards. Also because of a marketing situation that I've created I have several theatres paying me $2-5,000K for the rights to screen my film. When have you heard of a theatre paying us $5K to show our film. I have 38 of them so far.

I must warn that my distribution model is heavily backed by a marketing concept. It's a concept that I made up as I went along and it's working more and more. I'm actually starting to formulate my thoughts on paper and one day I can share the entire concept with you. I believe it will empower us all. I hate typing on these email things and I can't gather a cohesive thought unless I go back and rewrite this thing like a script. So for the record this entire writing was off the top of my head if it sounds disjointed at all.

My current plans are to self-distribute all of my films. I know a lot of people that have sold films out of Sundance and Toronto last year and none of them are recouping the kind of monies that we are. Nothing against their films, they made great films, it's just that the distribution models are so different today that they rarely hand out large advances.

My personal philosophy is that if my film is going to tank, I'd rather tank it instead of blaming a distributor. So for the time being, I'm capping my budgets at $1,000,000
 
Roberts,

Great post!

Would you consider starting a thread about self dist. on this site so we can learn and follow your success?

I know Adam is at over 200,000 views for both of his Corrado threads and I'm sure he will sell 10,000+ dvd's at $19.95 from just dvxuser readers who have followed it.

I'm sure it will also have a payoff for you too.

Thanks!
Chip
 
roberts321 said:
I thought about my Chicago release where we ran 4 weeks and grossed $30,000 total and what I did there. Then it hit me. Distribs only know how to spend a fortune on ads and pray that people show up. If they don't, they drop the release, or if you're lucky like "Man on Wire," and get MAJOR festival exposure and 4 stars from every critic, then the art house crowd will pack the theatre and distribs know how to keep the momentum going from there.
Click to expand...


That is so true! I look at the charts on boxofficemojo.com and see all the independent films tapping out under $100,000 because the distributers don't know how to release these films. Rather than take the films on a tour of cities and find some marketing tool like you have. (looking forward to finding out what it is...)

A few years ago there was a distributer in the US called the Shooting Gallery who used to do tours of cities with films and they had a film called Croupier with Clive Owen (bombed in the UK, played in one screen in London) which launched his career in the US and took $6 million. They also had Following by Christopher "Batman" Nolan (so proud he's a brit) which got him his meetings for Memento.

I'm just about to finish my first feature doc and your approach is very inspiring stuff.

Thanks
 
Can you touch on the marketing concept at all? You didn't mention what it is, only that you need time to write it down.
 
pekar1876 said:
That is so true! I look at the charts on boxofficemojo.com and see all the independent films tapping out under $100,000 because the distributers don't know how to release these films. Rather than take the films on a tour of cities and find some marketing tool like you have. (looking forward to finding out what it is...)

A few years ago there was a distributer in the US called the Shooting Gallery who used to do tours of cities with films and they had a film called Croupier with Clive Owen (bombed in the UK, played in one screen in London) which launched his career in the US and took $6 million. They also had Following by Christopher "Batman" Nolan (so proud he's a brit) which got him his meetings for Memento.

I'm just about to finish my first feature doc and your approach is very inspiring stuff.

Thanks
Click to expand...

shooting gallery was run by larry meistrich who now is doing that and much more at nehst studios.
 
Hey Chip,

How do you start a new thread? I've been reading the site for 2 years, but don't know how to do the fun stuff. I'll start a new thread. You will be amazed at how inept these studios are.

My core team were most of the editing and producing principals from "Fahrenheit 9/11, Bowling for Columbine and Supersize Me." After hearing tons of distribution stories from them I swore I wasn't going to let a distrib ruin my film. I would try to get one, but if it didn't look kosher, I'd bail and do it myself.

My first foree (is that how you spell it?) with a producers rep and distributor was and I quote - "There's no market for your film because you're Black. Blacks don't go to see documentaries and Whites won't go because you're Black.....Hmmmmmm!

Needless to say that my first film festival which was AFI Dallas, sold out 4 shows and 99% of the audience was white. We won Best Director in the Documentary Competition at the Chicago International Film Festival. Steve James the director of Hoop Dreams was the head of the jury and all 3 screenings were sold out. 98% attendance by Whites. This was my first hint that the Hollywood guys were clueless and it's been substantiated. My audience for the film nationwide is 95% White and we screened in Vienne, Austria 3 weeks ago and the audience was 100% White.

I was told the film had 0% foreign potential and guess what, early next year we're screening in Switzerland, Italy and Germany. I just picked up a foreign sales rep that's launching the film at Berlin this year and he thinks we're going to have massive pre-sales.

I had a MAJOR hollywood publicist tell me that the press won't interview directors anymore. They went on to tell me how recently they repped Jonathan Demme and Neil LaBute and they couldn't get any press. I said really?

Well in the 30 days following that statement, I was on The Today Show, CNN News and Good Morning America along with 75 other TV and radio interviews across the country:

See here -

Today Show:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/25966129#25966129

CNN News:
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/living/2008/08/15/wynter.america.beautiful.cnn?iref=videosearch

Roger Ebert article:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080609/PEOPLE/840428890

PBS Chicago – “Chicago Tonight”
http://www.wttw.com/main.taf?p=42,8,4&vid=http://wttw.vo.llnwd.net/o16/wttw/c2n/051508d.flv

ABC Los Angeles News:
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/media?id=6338789

Good Morning America Now:
http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=5530052

Recently the Oprah Show, Ellen Degeneres, Dr. Phil and the Tyra Banks Show have called to say they've heard about the film and let's see if we can work you into the show.

Bottom line - The industry's way of thinking is very old. You have to believe in yourself and put it down. My belief and I really believe this is if you make a good movie that people want to see and if you devise a strategy to let them know about it. They will come.

I've even been offered a major deal from a publisher to write a book about the making of this movie.

Not to mention the call I got from Fox Television about possibly doing a 13 week show.

In my opinion, all of this is a product of my hybrid marketing/ distribution model. It's kind of hardcore, but it's working for me.

One of the distributors on my film used to be the president of distribution for a major studio. I can tell you point blank that if you have the moxy to make a movie, then with the right techniques, you are uniquely qualified to market and sell you movie.

Case in point. I had a friend of mine that made a movie called "All about You." Every distributor turned him down and told him his movie had no potential. I saw the movie and told him nonsense. I challenged him to put up $12,000 and release his film in Chicago. (I lived there and it would be easier for me to spend the time on it). Long story short, he released the film at the Museum of Science and Industry and left Chicago 2 weeks later with $50,000.

The moral to the story is the independent movement is up to us and I think we're ready for the challenge.

Once again, please forgive my disjointed writing. I write how I think, which probably isn't good, but it would take me a while to reformat this and make it rocking reading.
 
Hey Roberts321,

Fantastic news! I'm very glad of your success (I've been following your emails since we first talked). Sorry I was out of town during your NYC tour (I really wanted to see it!).

BTW, to all of those who've followed the threads about Drawing With Chalk, I bought my HVX that I used for the film from roberts321 right here on the dvxuser site! I hope the camera is lucky :)

Anyway, back to you... I have to say you are a generous man and you truly deserve the success you have coming.

Todd
 
Hey Todd,

How are you? It was such a pleasure dealing with you. I've sold 4 cameras on the site and met 4 really cool people in the process. When is your film coming out?

Keep me posted!

Darryl
 
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