Trials and tribulations of distribution...

I think there is a lot of great infor here, and agree with the person who said that making the film was the easy part, the art is certainly in the deal.

You often wonder why there is a lot of crap out there, it is because these guys know how to put deals together and find money

It's great to make short films and enter festivals, but when you do this as a business, there is a whole set of rules, and you realize that you are not totally in control.

I am about to start a second season of my series, and I am spending about 1 month of prep just dealing with legal and negotiating, and insurence. If you don't know about E&O and production insurance, then you'll be in for a surprise.
 
Art Films

Art Films

What are some pointers for Art Films? I only make art films and I used to look for the AFM as a source of distribution, but now distribution has changed and I'm not sure how effective the AFM is for indie films.

If you have any experience with art films, I'd appreciate some advice as to what to do.

Thanks. :violin:
 
What an important topic. Wealth of information. The info on deliverables alone put a lot into perspective. I'm in development on shooting my first feature and delieverables were last on my list. After reading the topic it will be a priority. Wish there were more resources on distribution. Awesome topic.

 
I agree, but how do we do it? A few years ago, I started a site that I felt could move in that direction by picking the best two submissions each month as well as a short film compilation. At the end of the month they'd be archived to the catalog page, but for one month, they'd be on the landing page of the website. The problem is that I had almost no money to market the site. We did actually get quite a few submissions over time, but I honestly wouldn't even release them. For me, the point of the website was that these are indies nobody has heard of that are the cream of the crop and if you buy here, you're buying quality. Most of the films submitted were barely watchable. I feel like it was a good idea, but this was 2006, and self-distribution has moved a bit further along since then. Indieflix.com was barely around for a few months when we started up, and I felt their mistake was not aggregating the best of what's out there. Now I realize, it wasn't a mistake, it was a way of staying in business. Also, with my site, I really did want to give the filmmaker the best possible terms, so they were getting 50% of the gross sales, not net sales after we deducted the cost of making the DVD's, etc. It came out to a little over $6 per DVD sold, and $2 per DVD sold for the shorts, since it was split among three short films on the one DVD.

But no company created 'by indies, for indies' can survive unless we hit a certain quality level with what's being released, and it would also help if the first 10-20 releases were good, entertaining genre movies, either horror, sci-fi, or comedy. From what I hear about a lot of these horror films, it's that they might actually be very good, and these companies that seemingly release anything wind up rejecting them because they don't cater to the LCD for 90 minutes. So a few great horror films on a label created by people like us might be a good way to start. Also, I think that there's not enough combination of indie film with indie music. Many of these bands on myspace have a following of 9,000+ fans, and if you could leverage the fans of a few bands and cross-promote the films, you could see a healthy profit.

The bottom line is, it just won't happen until we get a few indies with entrenched guerilla and grass roots marketing that also happen to be good movies, who actually choose the new kid on the block as an experiment for releasing their film. I think most of the good films are still on the festival/find a distributor road and it would be hard to knock them off of it, even if it ends without a deal. That's what I was trying to do, position my website as a rebound place for films that just didn't make it, for whatever reason, but were still entertaining. There were about four films out of thirty that fell into that category. These days, I'm guessing there are a lot more.

I don't know, there's a way to do this, we just have to get a nice group together that is willing to forge ahead and owns the rights to a few good films.
 
Seems like it's easy to get distribution if you just hand it over to someone, but hard to actually make money back or break even.
 
You have to get money upfront, otherwise who knows if you'll ever see any more. A bunch of tiny foreign sales, a solid U.S. DVD deal, U.S. TV, etc., it adds up fast.
 
you'd be surprised how many filmmakers just willing give their **** away like it's a free meal to the first distributor or sales rep that asks....
 
LOL, well maybe if you spent almost nothing and are desperate, with no other options. But it just depends what type of film you make.

It's not nice, or PC, and I know it steps on a lot of toes, but I will say it again because it's important people realize it -- making a little film with 4 friends and a few people who "took theater acting classes" and on a budget of $10,000 is bound to be a really bad movie, if you could even call it that. There is truly no market for that type of thing and for any real company they are going to laugh, same with any real producer. It's the kind of thing where I would say, "Great, good for you! What nice experience you must have gained." But that's about all you should expect. There's a world of difference between putting together a low budget film but that has all of the elements of a real film, with fully professional crew and actors, and throwing together an indie with just a few people and no real tools, pros, acting, etc. It's not going to get sold.
 
A great script and the right actors are key. 99% of the time the script or the actors or both are lame on 10k budget films and they try and do something Hollywood. Its not that they had a budget that low, its that they had sucky actors and a sucky script and spent the money in the wrong department (actors and sound with a great script). Usually by the time your able to write a great screenplay you've met enough people to get it made with other peoples money. Neal Labutte shot "in the company of men" for 25k (to the editing stage ) in 35 with sag actors. Today it would have cost him less than ten with sag actors. He had a script that had all the kinks worked out on stage and he knew how to cast. Slacker would have cost Linklater less than a thousand dollars today to make(no one was paid and he used public access gear to edit part of the time). Would they be lost today in the thousands of films, who knows. If your not a good playwright/writer its almost impossible effectively play in the super low budget pool. It amazes me that 90% of the questions on this forum are about gear and at the end of the day its probably has the least value for someone trying to make a good low budget film.
 
a lot of questions are about gear, true, but keep in mind everybody doesn't have the same goals and everybody isnt necessarily trying to be a hollywood director. there's a lot of people here just trying to make money from the craft too and just be work for hire (DP, editor, etc). on the flipside, the people who are trying to be directors arent always writer/directors and either cant afford to hire a writer or partner with an experienced writer that knows his craft so they end up having to do it themselves....and that's where the ball gets dropped a lot of times. filmmaking is hard. we're basically trying to entertain a bunch of strangers on shoestring budgets and a majority of the masses are comparing what you shot to something similar they saw on the big screen with talented name actors attached.
 
Your right FilmBoy77, many have no interest in writing/directing and that should have been acknowledged in my post. Its a valuable resource for everyone and hopefully I didn't infer it wasn't valuable. That being said many with the aspirations to be directors get lost in the gear forest without concentrating on the content. Content is king.
Obviously if you aren't a writer or know a writer you can work with its a more difficult journey. I wanted to disagree with JonathanLB because of the harsh tone of his post but had to reluctantly agree at least in general.
 
lambert said:
I wanted to disagree with JonathanLB because of the harsh tone of his post but had to reluctantly agree at least in general.
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harsh indeed, however the truth is there's a lot of junk out here ther's no denying that. in my opinion, i'd take a talented director/writer with 4 friends that know what they're doing and $10k over a director who has a $500k budget and doesnt know wtf he's doing or is just as inexperienced as the people that are just starting out. first off if i *had* to shoot a feature for $10k the script will be for a $10k film....not the next Jason Bourne or Casino royal, lol. without throwing out names, i've seen a fair amount of indie films in the $300k - $1mill range that looked great with all the quote unquote "professional crew and gear" and be just as uninteresting as the stuff it's competing against. only difference is the way it looks.
 
Right, making the budget match the material Mickey, that is always smart and you have to do that.

I personally don't believe in the idea of making a feature for $10,000, I'll be honest. I don't believe you can make a very good feature for less than $100,000 even with today's technology and whatnot. But, you know, if someone showed me a great film made for cheaper I'd be all for that, it's just I know from budgeting our own film and calling in a ton of favors that to do things the right way, to do them essentially the way that a larger film would be made but cutting some corners, you still need a fair chunk of change, well into the 6 figures, even with no above the line talent being paid basically.

I think it's harsh to say but it does bear repeating because the world that I've been exposed to is not the world that I read about on these forums, there is a serious disconnect, and there's probably no nice way to say that it's the difference between knowing professionals and knowing amateurs. I don't post here though to make fun of what anyone else does or put them down, that's absolutely ridiculous, but I want to encourage people here essentially that if you do things the right way, good results will follow. It's all about the script, though, and it's amazing how true I've found that cliche.

You really have to write a strong screenplay and amazing things can happen. I can hardly believe how my life has unfolded since the right people read my screenplay, and it is the first full screenplay I wrote, but it was enough to move mountains and make things happen that I never thought would with such a small budget film. It has been like the ultimate key. I'm very torn about what advice I'd give most people, though, because part of me is resentful and a bit annoyed at all of the negativity I read on this forum over the years, stupid statements like, "Oh you have to write ten screenplays before your first one is even decent," which is nonsense, my first screenplay got more attention and has gotten more praise than MUCH higher budget films projects that are already funded or completed, and I wouldn't be where I am right now if this script wasn't very good. Or the people who said never invest money in an indie film, it's too risky, they are all losers. The reality is that's just not true at all, not if you're doing things the right way, you have to be a complete moron to lose all of your money on a professional feature. A COMPLETE moron. Yet at the same time, the other part of me says that all of that advice on here is fantastic because most people really should be discouraged from risking their money, and they should be told over and over how impossible this industry is. Why? Because for most people, they can't make it, and they are going to ruin their lives trying. 99% of the scripts out there are terrible, and heck, a lot of pretty mediocre ones get made into movies, that should tell you something. So it's probably true that most people shouldn't have high expectations of the first few scripts they write. It's also probably true that most people should be STRONGLY discouraged from investing their own money in a film because for the most part they really will lose most of it and it will go nowhere, because they don't know how to make a film the right way.

There's a big difference between just throwing some money at a project with a bunch of amateurs and running a film through a professional production company where when it is finished you can setup distributor screenings and your producers are a phone call away from getting a number of people to watch the movie. That's not the same as someone in a random Midwest state making a $10,000 film, probably with bad actors and a bad script, and no industry connections, and then sending some screeners to LA and NYC and hoping for the best.

Not to mention that most people should be strongly discouraged from doing anything that is difficult for the simple reason that if it really deters them, they weren't meant to make it anyway. Every time I read on here how this or that was impossible, at first I was discouraged, and thought maybe I was pursuing this crazy dream in error, but then the more I thought about it, the more my ego kicked in and I said, "No, these other people are idiots, they fail because they have no talent, and where they fail I will succeed." It's cocky, sure, but that is the attitude you MUST have. You will not make it if you don't believe you are the best and that you deserve to make it. And then you actually have to BE the best, otherwise you're just another poser who goes nowhere. But one thing is for certain, if you don't have the confidence and the chutzpah to throw caution to the wind and take risks because you believe that you have something special, you'll never even know whether you do or not. You'll just sit at home and play XBox 360 all day and the days will fritter away as you wonder what might have been.
 
yep confidence is key because on the way up there will be a lot of people trying to tear you down. do you have any name talent attached to your project jonathan?
 
JonathanLB said:
Not to mention that most people should be strongly discouraged from doing anything that is difficult for the simple reason that if it really deters them, they weren't meant to make it anyway. Every time I read on here how this or that was impossible, at first I was discouraged, and thought maybe I was pursuing this crazy dream in error, but then the more I thought about it, the more my ego kicked in and I said, "No, these other people are idiots, they fail because they have no talent, and where they fail I will succeed." It's cocky, sure, but that is the attitude you MUST have. You will not make it if you don't believe you are the best and that you deserve to make it. And then you actually have to BE the best, otherwise you're just another poser who goes nowhere. But one thing is for certain, if you don't have the confidence and the chutzpah to throw caution to the wind and take risks because you believe that you have something special, you'll never even know whether you do or not. You'll just sit at home and play XBox 360 all day and the days will fritter away as you wonder what might have been.
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So, Jonathan, here's where it all shakes out.

All the discouragement in the world isn't going to stop folks who have confidence that their project is "the one" that will make it.

The problem is that many (or most) are mistaken in their assumption that they're good enough to overcome the odds.

You may be in the same boat, I certainly may be in the same boat (I've been there before) as well.

Content is king and a good script and actors are of course the elements that will set one low budget film apart from the rest.

The trick is that most people on the forum are confident they've got a good script and sure that they've got talented actors. Are they wrong? In many cases, Yeah. But it is hard to judge objectively on the inside.

I definitely agree with most of your assessment about the chances of most low-budget films. However, like you mention, I have the confidence to make a go of it and am doing it the right way in terms of subject matter/budget formula, etc.

I hope I'm able to do well with Battle and perhaps it'll serve as inspiration for others if I indeed do well. Of course, it'll all be because of the hard work of dozens upon dozens of folks who were part of the project and some good luck and good will on the Industry side in terms of finding the right distribution situation.

But I guess my point is that while the posts you rightly point out the issues out there. The truth is that someone with enough confidence that they can do it isn't going to be deterred. And true, for most it will lead to frustration (or worse) but I hope at least the folks are having fun pursuing it and learning along the way.

I guess, both our posts have swayed a bit from distribution to a philosophical "why bother doing it" but I believe we both know "why"...because we WANT it.

-M
 
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