Grassroots Movie Theaters- Concluding Idea Series, #3

In previous posts, we have explored how grassroots and DIY exhibition could be a viable way for filmmakers to distribute their films instead of relying on conventional distribution deals.  However, many of the filmmakers we have interviewed have noted how exhausting it can be to spend time and money to both make their film and distribute it on their own. Before the digital age of film, it was easier for new filmmakers to get discovered since fewer movies were being produced.  With the influx of films that get submitted to festivals along with Hollywood's growing tendency to only distribute blockbuster movies that appeal to a global marketplace, it is increasingly difficult for independent filmmakers to distribute new and original films.

Since studios are taking less of a chance on distributing independent films in movie theaters, a potential solution is for independent filmmakers to create their own movie theater circuit.  In a previous post, we interviewed Jay Craven, who successfully distributed his films by creating his own screening circuit in rural New England towns. Jay was successful at screening his films this way by targeting the same rural New England towns where many of his films were set.  He was able to then tap into an audience that would be interested in the cultural aspects of his film.  He also targeted small rural towns where locals were more interested in attending major events in their hometown instead of going to see blockbuster movies in a theater that could be over a half hour away.

What if a collective of independent filmmakers and community organizers created their own distribution circuit, based in towns that are likely to have a strong base of independent movie goers? Not only would this help films that slipped through the cracks on the festival circuit get noticed, but the films that did well on the circuit would get publicity that could help attract a deal with major distributors by showing there is a demand for the film at the local level.

However, finding the right locations to establish these grassroots movie theaters would be key, along with an effective outreach strategy on the ground to publicize film screenings at low costs.  From our background working on the Obama campaign, organizers played a key role in building relationships with supporters and community leaders through one-on-one meetings and cold calling. Similarly, organizers could be hired to build relationships with people in a community to determine the best places to screen films and recruit volunteers to help publicize the screenings. Another key strategy in the Obama campaign was collecting contact information from supporters at rallies, house parties and other events so they could email and call supporters to get involved in future events.  Similarly, a grassroots distribution collective could collect data from audiences at the screenings to better target and market their films in the future.  The data could be shared among the collective so every time a new film is distributed the filmmaker won’t have to start from scratch.

In one of our previous posts, we interviewed Kate West and Jacob Perlin who manage Artist Public Domain and Cinema Conservancy respectively.  The objective of both companies is to enrich culture through finding new venues for independent film.  Jacob suggested one thing that could help independent filmmakers would be,

“Some type of affiliated network where there is someone representing different regions who have more knowledge about it. Like for instance, if you have a [certain kind of] film in New York the goal is Film Forum because it gets the biggest best audience.  But what happens if your film doesn’t get in there? Well the traditional thing was always you open your film in Manhattan because Manhattan is better than Brooklyn but that isn’t the case anymore. Also, do you open your film at BAM or Nitehawk?  Someone outside of New York is not going to know the difference…there are so many iterations that only someone here could know and advise a filmmaker.””

What if there were a group of organizers who worked to distribute a slate of films in the non-traditional venues Jacob discussed in the quote above?  If done effectively, the films could attract buzz for independent films that big studios would never take a chance on since they lack the big stars and the special effects that appeal to a global marketplace.  Furthermore, running local campaigns for independent films based on word of mouth and grassroots strategies like cold calling and one-on-one meetings, might be a cheaper and more effective way of reaching the niche audience for an independent film compared to running a traditional movie theater P & A campaign, which is often expensive and targets audiences that are more interested in seeing blockbuster movies.

There is no doubt an effort for independent filmmakers to create their own screening circuit would take a tremendous amount of time, money and resources.  However, in the long run, it could have a greater impact than Kickstarter and other crowd funding sites that may help a movie get made but often fall short in helping an independent film get seen by a major audience, which after all is the most critical step for gauging whether or not a film is successful. A collective of filmmakers that create their own screening circuit and use grassroots organizing to target their audiences locally may be the secret weapon independent filmmakers have been looking for to help balance the recent tide of blockbuster movies flooding the theaters.

Grassroots Film Collective- Concluding Idea Series, #2

As we get closer to the end of our fellowship, we are publishing a series of blogs that propose would-be final project ideas related to our research on grassroots film distribution. Although we have decided not to turn these ideas into our final project, we hope the series will spark a conversation about possible grassroots tools that will help independent filmmakers distribute their films.  Part 1 of our series was a site that would serve as a Pandora for movie trailers, offering users the ability to type in their favorite movie and instantly watch trailers that relate to that film.  You can read more about our idea by clicking here. Our second CRI final project idea is a Grassroots Film Distribution Collective.  In our study we have found that many independent filmmakers, especially first time directors, feel overwhelmed when they distribute their films.  One of the many directors who we interviewed that felt this way is Marcia Jarmel who co-directed and self-distributed the documentary, Speaking in Tongues.  Although the film had a successful distribution run, Marcia commented, "I started out thinking I could do everything myself, and made myself pretty nuts for a while. It is much, much easier to have an army of people helping you. I think most filmmakers do not have that.”

This lead to us wondering if a film collective could be formed so that when audiences 'opt-in' to a film project--i.e through a crowdsourcing site like Kickstarter, or if they give their information to a volunteer at a community screening, the information is shared and passed on to a group of filmmakers that later use the data to target their audiences in future campaigns.  The mission of the group would be to build one big audience for a slate of films by sharing distribution information and resources with like minded filmmakers.  This is different than the normal distribution plan to build a big list for one film and then never use it again or wait to use the list for two to three years later when the director makes another film.

Unlike other non-profit consulting, this would be a group of independent filmmakers who pool together resources to distribute their films. The group would focus on developing a volunteer structure similar to the neighborhood team model, in which Jeremy Bird, former Obama National Field Director, discussed in our interview here. In the interview Bird suggested community organizers could help distribute films by connecting with non-profits, recruit volunteers to help set up community screenings and call through consumer data to identify target audiences for certain films.  This is similar to an approach that filmmaker and political activist Sandi DuBowski, who we interviewed in a previous post here, adopted to distribute his film, Trembling Before G-d.  Building a grassroots film distribution collective would take significant time, but overtime, if the films did well the data and grassroots resources pooled together by the collective could become invaluable and possibly compete with the publicity campaigns of major studios.

We look forward to your feedback on our second CRI final project idea in the comment secant below. In Part 3 we will discuss an idea for a website that enables filmmakers to plug in information about their film and find out which campaigns would be most effective to distribute their film.

A Conversation with the Filmmakers of Four Eyed Monsters- Does Digital Mean Distribution No Longer Matters?

Following our case study on the independent film Four Eyed Monsters, we decided to interview the filmmakers themselves, Susan Buice and Arin Crumley.  Four Eyed Monsters paved the way for DIY and online/grassroots distribution.  After the film premiered at Slamdance in 2007, the filmmakers found themselves in territory familiar to many independent filmmakers, a successful festival run followed by no distribution deal.  Susan and Arin then decide to market the film themselves by using innovative online tools like a videocast that documented their struggle to distribute the film.  They also created an online petition where fans could sign up to show their support for the film in order to convince local movie theaters to agree to screenings. Eventually Four Eyed Monsters successfully grossed a total of $129,000, $100,000 of which came from online sales. Below is some select excerpts from our interview with Susan and Arin, followed by our key takeaways.

MG: With Four Eyed Monsters it seemed like where you succeeded was on your own and not with the traditional gatekeepers of independent film.  When you look at the big picture of the independent film industry, how do you guys characterize what you did and how it's different?

SUSAN BUICE: A lot of what we were doing was a reaction to the feedback that we were getting on the film festival circuit…We ended up talking to distributors and they said “We like your film but you’re not famous and we can’t really sell a romantic comedy with no famous people in it to an audience; it’s too hard to market.’ And so we were like: we’ll become famous.  We’ll make people 'like us.'  We’ll make this video podcast; we already have this footage. And it wasn’t like ‘Oh we’ll get in this for fame,’ we [said to ourselves] we’ll make something so people have that connection and want to watch a film about whether these two people end up together or not together… So we knew we had this content that was leading into another project and we figured that other project would just be a continuation of Four Eyed Monsters because it was documentary stuff as opposed to narrative stuff.

We were telling distributors ‘we still want you to distribute the film but we’ll just take care of the marketing’ and they [told us] 'That’s not proven, let’s not do it.'  And after we got kind of shut down we [asked ourselves if] we still think it’s a good idea, do we believe in the idea enough ourselves that we would distribute it ourselves if it works. And that’s when we decided to move to my parent’s house and start making video episodes.

MG: You guys got an audience actually in the wake of trying to put out a film and then it ironically allowed you to put out a film in a profitable or break even way. Let’s say I'm not making that film whatsoever [a comedy\drama about online dating]; how do I structure my campaign in a way that uses the takeaways from you guys?

ARIN CRUMLEY: There’s this kind of dream that there’s this social medium button you press and it all works…The difference I believe is the volume of additional content.  Like how much extra stuff other than the movie exists.  And in our case we had more media than the film itself.

You need to create a story world, story universe. And that is maybe not something the filmmaker has planned for. They were hoping they could just get a consultant to come on in and read a little manual and then they’re going to get all the answers and they just have to do that and they’re all set.

For people who love the cinema medium there’s this resistance like “I don’t want to go design video games, that’s not what I do. Why do I have to do that?” No one said you have to do that. I mean in our case we got to make a video podcast that we wanted to make and other documentary media that was really fun to work on. So I think that should be the design challenge. What would be cool that relates to your project that you can make and create a media presence around it?

[For example:] create a trailer that is similar to a Kickstarter or crowdfunding campaign that creates a campaign to distribute the film.  It shows the trailer and then the director pops up on camera and says, “I can’t release the film; sorry, but I would love to… If you can simply request and tell me where you guys are we can do this and we can bring the film to your town”…And they did this with Paranormal Activity after we did this with Four Eyed Monsters and they got like a million people to request local screenings which gave the studio confidence to spend money on a wider release.

MG: Cause that's sort of the magic of Kickstarter, though you're technically raising money what Kickstarter also does is identify an audience. In a way what you're basically saying is you don't need the actual funding part you just need to manifest demand for it?

ARIN CRUMLEY: We are now in an era of post-crowdfunding explosion. So what does that mean? Crowdfund everything? Not necessarily. I think it means something else as well.  There are phases to your production, and different phases that previously wouldn’t have involved marketing of any kind now might.

And this is the idea of [Arin’s website] OpenIndie and other sites like Flicklist -- an app that lets you list films you want to see.  And they're working on a bookmark where on any page any filmmaker could put this universal button [that communicates] “People, hit this button -- this is the only way we’ll know what platforms to put this on or what cities to put this in or what countries this should go to”... Just ask, who are the people who want to see this thing.

MG: Because you were one of the first pioneers to build an online audience, do you think you will distribute your next film by yourself and possibly skip the film festival route? Or do you still see value in those gatekeepers and possibly getting a distributor?

SUSAN BUICE: I still see value in film festivals but it's different than I initially thought. Pre-Four Eyed Monsters I thought you could go to festivals to prove your worth and get picked up.  Now I look at going to film festivals as a way to generate buzz and as a way to meet people for your future career.  Not even to help your film necessarily, but to help you get a job on another film or to help you make your next movie.  I think if we go to film festivals with our next project that is going to be our goal.

ARIN CRUMLEY: It's like a non-event to distribute something. You will, in the process of authoring a film, distribute it; you will put it in a format that is distributable and that is distribution -- you're done. [With] digital, it's invisible.

The conversation about distribution should really just stop. It's so easy. There really should just be a conversation about marketing… The question really is marketing. And I think the answer is… media brand. Sundance is a media brand, HBO is a media brand.  And I think the opportunity right now is to create those media brands.

Key Takeaways:

In conclusion, our interview with Arin and Susan brings up the possibility that distribution has become so easy through digital and online tools, that the process of trying to get a "distributor" to pick up your movie could be more about branding. For example, getting your film distributed by Sony Pictures Classics isn't meaningful in terms of the actual practice of distribution -- ie delivering the film itself to the theaters.  Technology is increasingly making service they provide look more and more overvalued. The P & A costs spent by the distributor often means the filmmaker never recoups. However, the advantage of having a distributor like Sony Pictures Classics is that your film has been validated by the SPC brand. Just like your film playing at Sundance is kind of an award-like validation -- it helps legitimize and market your film but doesn't actually have anything to do with your distribution. Eventually anyone could have the power to digitally send their film to a theater. So what is a distributor left to do? Marketing. Something else that can be increasingly done on the internet.

However, when more and more people have the ability to market, brands mean even more because they help a customer make sense of the chaos of the marketplace.  This explains why festival submissions have increased over the years and major studios still dominate the marketplace.  Since new technology has made it easier and cheaper for people to make movies than ever before, there is a growing need for studios and festivals to act as the curator to the influx of independent films produced over the years.

Nevertheless, Arin highlighted the potential for filmmakers to build their own brands through creative online content like the video podcasts they created for Four Eyed Monsters. The Obama campaign was able to adapt a similar strategy to supersede the conventional news and media markets by generating its own media channels through YouTube and online listservs.  This enabled the campaign to communicate with its supporters efficiently at inexpensive costs and successfully build its own identity. Could filmmakers gain more creative and monetary control of their films by designing their own marking campaigns online instead of relying on studios and conventional movie theaters to brand their films?

However, the Obama campaign was only successful at moving its online community to action through a massive offline effort through phone calls, one-on-one meetings and door to door canvasing on the ground. Recruiting such a large grassroots team for distributing a film does not seem feasible.  Still, the success of the Four Eyed Monsters' videocast reminds us that we should not underestimate how creative online content can be used to build relationships and loyalty with an audience – just like the creative videos of the Obama campaign contributed to a feeling of community and loyalty. Furthermore, with film, it is likely there may be less of a need for as much on the ground organizing as that which is required by a political campaign.

In future posts we plan to further explore creative and resourceful ways filmmakers can build their audience online without relying on the traditional gatekeepers to brand their film.

A Conversation with Kate West and Jacob Perlin about Grassroots Distribution and Exhibition

We recently interviewed Kate West, who is the Managing Director of Artist Public Domain, and Jacob Perlin who is the Director of the Cinema Conservancy. The mission of Artist Public Domain is to support independent cinema through three core programs: Production, Cinema Conservancy and Education.  The Cinema Conservancy is a branch within Artist Public Domain that focuses on releasing and preserving film projects that have historical and social significance and for some reason have slipped through the cracks of traditional exhibition networks or venues.  What makes Artist Public Domain and the Cinema Conservancy unique from other production and distribution companies is that their main objective is to enrich culture through supporting independent film instead of serving their own commercial interests.  For example, if there were a hot film in Sundance, they would not try to distribute the project since it would probably have a conventional distribution run at the hands of more traditional distributor. In our conversation Kate and Jacob encouraged independent filmmakers to think of grassroots distribution as not only social media, Kickstarter, YouTube and blogging, but also as grassroots exhibition.  Jacob pointed out,

“If you can get your film on the screen in Hartford Connecticut at like Cinestudio, which is a traditional audience, yeah they are going to have a built in audience and then you can use grassroots to get people there. But another way to do it is you find a non-traditional venue that is more in tune with what your film is… I think the future will be about identifying other types of venues that aren’t necessarily only movie theaters.”

Often filmmakers spend a significant amount of their time and resources trying to get their films into a straight-up movie theater when a more unconventional venue might appeal more to their target audiences and require less effort.  For example, in our case study with Jay Craven, he attracted new audiences that normally would not go to the movie theaters by screening his film in school auditoriums and gym’s that were more accessible to people living in rural towns across New England.

Kate noted, “Maybe the issue is not finding your distributor but finding your audience.”  The advent of digital screenings has made it easier and cheaper for non-traditional venues to setup their own screenings. A good venue can save thousands of dollars on P & A and the countless hours it takes to convince a conventional distributor to screen your film.

However, with so many screening options it can be difficult to determine the best venue for your film. This may be especially true when the filmmaker is unfamiliar with a city. Jacob raised the possibility of creating a network of organizers in different regions who are familiar with the non-traditional venues available to screen films.  Jacob stated,

“You have to have someone on the ground. I think some type of affiliated network where there is someone representing different regions who have more knowledge about it. Like for instance, if you have a [certain kind of] film in New York the goal is Film Forum because it gets the biggest best audience.  But what happens if your film doesn’t get in there? Well the traditional thing was always you open your film in Manhattan because Manhattan is better than Brooklyn but that isn’t the case anymore. Also, do you open your film at BAM or Nitehawk?  Someone outside of New York is not going to know the difference…there are so many iterations that only someone here could know and advice a filmmaker.”

From our experience working on the Obama campaign, field organizers played a critical role in communicating the most effective places to have staging locations that were accessible to volunteers so they could make calls and canvass for the campaign.  Similarly, a network of organizers could help filmmakers determine the best place to screen their film at inexpensive costs and appeal to their target audience.

This led Jacob to consider the possibility of making information about movie venues more transparent so filmmakers could know ahead of time what exhibitors are worth their time to pursue. Jacob reflected,

“Think about it, you’re a filmmaker and you have one person on your team who is doing all this.  Do you want them to spend 10 hours trying to get the film to play in one place where you’re never going to get the money from? Or do you want them to spend that 10 hours trying to set up other things.  There’s certain venues, why wait?  Or just try another venue in that town.  There’s no reason it shouldn’t be public. If it would take two bookings in the amount of time it takes to do that one booking, that’s the kind of information that should be known.”

One could imagine a website similar to Yelp where filmmakers rate and review different exhibitors.  This would help filmmakers determine if screening their film at a certain venue will play to their target audience, and match the time and funding they have available for the screening.  The website would also keep exhibitors in check and more sensitive to the filmmakers needs for screening their film.

Conclusion:

Our conversation with Jacob and Kate reminded us of how important it is for independent filmmakers to consider non-traditional venues for screening their movies.  As Jacob noted,

“I think that everyone is just so wrapped up in the idea that they want to have their film in the theater where the lights go down and the trailers come on and everyone has popcorn, [but] that’s just not going to happen any more. With the screens left, the stuff that is going to be dominating the screens is going to be major stuff like Fox Searchlight.”

Many renowned filmmakers have talked about how the film industry is crumbling; most recently Spielberg talked about the industry crashing because even big budget movies that dominate the box office are tanking. What if the future of independent film isn’t in movie theaters, TV or on Netflix but in the non-traditional venues that Kate and Jacob are using to distribute independent films for Artist Public Domain and Cinema Conservancy?  This of course would require organizers who are experts in non-traditional distribution to set up screening venues. In future posts we plan to explore how the grassroots volunteer structure of the Obama campaign might be able to support a system of grassroots exhibition so independent filmmakers no longer have to rely on traditional movie theaters to screen their movies.

Durban FilmMart 2: Production Challenges in South Africa – Content and Commerce

The Durban FilmMart’s documentary section showcased eight non-fiction African films in development. A dynamic and diverse lineup of documentarians delivered short pitches and then received feedback from representatives of South African production companies and foreign funding agencies  (including ITVS, IDFA, Hot Docs, and the Tribeca Institute). Three outstanding projects from the Talent Campus Durban were chosen to join the eight official doc forum participants and give their pitches. After the market I caught up with one of these emerging directors, South African filmmaker Maanda Ntsandeni, to talk about his film Parole Camp and some of the challenges of filmmaking in his country.

Parole Camp follows three characters in an alternatives-to-incarceration program called REALISTIC and was born of a very personal experience of Maanda’s: “I had a friend who went to jail when he was 18. He got out, and his friends - including me – turned their backs on him. The next day he committed suicide.” REALISTIC supports young people during their time immediately following their release.

According to Maanda, “it’s very difficult to finance a documentary like Parole Camp, simply because people are prejudiced against ex-inmates, for a lot of reasons -- one which may be that they want to continue seeing them punished, despite whatever time they’ve served inside. No one believed in this project from the very onset… I applied though various funds, (but) I think they just couldn’t understand what I was trying to do. Until I applied to the NFVF (National Film and Video Foundation). They took a chance.”

South Africa’s NFVF provides grants and loans to South African Filmmakers at different stages: education and training, development, production, and marketing and distribution. They also have other initiatives aimed at fostering local industry, including the Sediba Spark Scriptwriting Programs.

Maanda Ntsandeni received a development grant of US $10,000 last year, which allowed him to shoot and cut a work-in-progress and trailer that he presented at Durban. The Parole Camp trailer and pitch earned Maanda a further development grant of €2,500 from Worldview.

In addition to the challenges posed by his subject matter, Maanda contends that persistent racial prejudice and a lingering old boys’ club mentality in the South African film industry create other barriers for young black filmmakers. Among other things, black filmmakers can have a much harder time securing equipment than their white counterparts – a real obstacle for unestablished producers, since rentals in SA can be expensive and grant monies are often not allowed to be spent on equipment purchase. Furthermore, according to Maanda, there is a relative lack of creative cooperation between South Africa and other African countries – in part because the South African industry is seen by many other Africans as a European industry. (Countries in Francophone West Africa, by contrast, have a stronger tradition of cross-border collaboration and creative germination. More on potential connections between African countries to come in future blogs).

Maanda, who was mentored by veteran producer Neil Brandt, is now seeking a partnership with a U.S. Producer so that he can open a Kickstarter campaign. Winning the Worldview grant, a project of the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association, may open doors to other funders in the UK for this project.

Whatever route it takes, Parole Camp is a documentary with heart that is likely to find financial support and an audience.

A Conversation with Gregory Bayne: Why It Could Pay to Distribute for Free

Following our interview with filmmaker Jay Craven about his screening tour in rural New England, we recently talked to another self-distributing filmmaker, Gregory Bayne. Greg took an unconventional approach by distributing his first narrative feature, Person of Interest (2010), for free on torrent sites instead of submitting it to festivals. Greg realized early on that Person of Interest, which follows an Iraq veteran’s descent into PTSD, was more suited for an online audience instead of theatrical distribution. Greg reflects,

“I looked at Person of Interest which kind of has a very underground esthetic and I thought the best way to release this thing is for free, vie torrents. It did pretty well, it quickly rose to like 100,000 downloads. But then the more remarkable thing was that because it was free to share someone uploaded it to YouTube and it pulled in three quarters of a million views on YouTube and sparked a fairly long conversation about things the film deals with.”

This resulted in Greg saving money on the expensive marketing and submission costs that normally go into a festival run, while also making the film more accessible to his target audience.

For Greg's next project Driven (2011), a feature documentary that follows the personal struggles of UFC legend Jens Pulver, he  again distributing the film through unconventional grassroots methods and online tools.  In order to fund the project he launched a Kickstarter campaign that tapped into the built in audience of the Mixed Martial Arts world. Greg then decided to immediately distribute the film online and through community screenings since he felt a festival run would only slow down the momentum generated from the kickstarter campaign.

In order to build interest in the film and attract a distributor (via 3rd party) to the film, Greg built a sense of urgency around online screenings by making it available for fans to watch or download for a limited period of time.  He did this first by streaming the entire film on his website for 24 hours so people could watch it for free.  This lead to an incredible 3,000+ people seeing the film a single day.  Needless to say, that is an even larger audience than screenings at major festival like Sundance and SXSW. Greg later made the film available to watch a second time through a free online stream on Valentines Day, which lead to different Mixed Martial Arts sites like Cage Potato supporting the promotion of the film.

After sparking an interest in the film, Greg realized the best way to organize community screenings with limited resources was by  “empowering people in their local community that had really enjoyed the film and really like Jens and thought that it would be valuable to show the community.” Greg did this by allowing fans to sign up on the website to host their own screenings, and then provided them with a two page guide that explained how to setup a screening.  Greg also offered a flat fee for one time licenses to screen the film.  This enabled organizations and individuals to raise money for programs that advocated for at-risk youth since they were able to keep 100% of the proceeds. Eventually the success from online and community screenings drew a significant amount of press to the film and lead to Gravitas Ventures distributing Driven through Warner Bros. on iTunes and a wide VOD (video on demand) release.

The success Greg has achieved by distributing his films through unconventional means, proves that the traditional festival and theater run is no longer necessarily a required step. As Greg observes,

“A theatrical release now is a very small pebble in a very large ocean in terms of who hears about it or who can see it. In terms of video on demand, whether it be Netflix, or iTunes or Hulu or whatever else it’s out there. People can see it and since now it’s been validated by these services and retailers who use it everyday, it’s like a studio validated you to a certain degree.”

Although DIY distribution and grassroots methods have probably helped Greg gain more exposure for his films than if he followed a more common distribution path, Greg also expressed how the whole process can be exhausting. Greg states, “When you’re an independent filmmaker you’re also doing professional gigs on the side to pay the bills, it’s managing a lot, and the biggest lesson learned for me over time is that you can’t do it all…”

This sentiment represents a common struggle many independent filmmakers experience in the digital age of distribution. There are so many tools for distribution that one can do everything on their own, but it can also wear you down overtime. Still, Greg’s remarkable resourcefulness and ability to legitimize his films through online and community screenings, sheds light on the new distribution channels that are starting to emerge for independent filmmakers. In our study we plan to further explore how grassroots organizing methods from the Obama campaign might help filmmakers build a volunteer base and infrastructure to support new and innovative ways to distribute their films.

-Michael, Josh and Carl

Crowdfunding - Patronage or Purchase?

I recently attended two great Aspen Institute events that dealt with society’s investment in the arts.

The first, entitled “What Are We Worth?: Shakespeare, Money, and Morals” combined Shakespearean monologues about money – performed by Matt Damon and Alan Alda, among others – with a town-hall style discussion led by Harvard professor and social philosopher Michael Sandel. The crux of Sandel’s argument is that while marketplaces are a necessary part of society, there are certain things that should be excluded from and protected from market forces. Up for debate was the question of whether arts should be among these. (A question that would, on average, be answered very differently in Paris than it would in Hollywood).

In thinking about the future of the Co-Production, I’m considering different types of film economies and their relationship to the global marketplace. One broad trend I anticipate is that there will be increasingly greater collaborations between private and public money the world over. Financing for the arts -- especially expensive arts like moviemaking -- will be subjected to the marketplace of audiences’ ideas and tastes. But films will also continue to be partially shielded from the marketplace by the patronage of those who are willing to pay for their existence without expecting financial gain in return.

So where does crowdfuding fit into all this?

Several CRI posts by the Grassroots Distribution team have dealt with the game-changing nature of crowdfunding – addressing the benefits of gift economies and the donor-versus-investor paradigm shift that many see occurring.

This brings me to the second Aspen Institute event, a discussion on “Democratizing the Arts” with Yancey Strickler of Kickstarter and Charles Best of DonorsChoose.org.

One of the things that struck me during this discussion was the blurring of lines between Non-Profit and For-Profit entities that has seemingly emerged with crowdfunding.  DonorsChoose.org, a Non-Profit that channels funds to specific need requests posted by teachers, functions very much the same way as (the For-Profit company) Kickstarter.com.  Both platforms facilitate the actualization of something that the audience/donor would like to see exist in the world.

Neither of these offer a financial return on investment for the donor, but they do both offer an assurance that by giving money, you are purchasing/funding the creation of a specific product or service. In the case of the now-ubiquitous rewards for Kickstarter Donors, you’re also likely pre-purchasing a DVD, digital download, or ticket to a screening of the film.

So is crowdfunding a movie patronage or purchase?  It seems to be both. And it’s an important question because mounting a crowdfuding campaign and mobilizing an audience’s participation (financial or otherwise) is now a prime directive of many producers.  For these projects, the relationship between the filmmaker and their audiences/customers/supporters is now exercised to a great degree in the fundraising stage.

Last year was the first in which money given to the arts through Kickstarter outpaced funding from the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts. It will be very interesting to see how the landscape has shifted by the time this benchmark is reached in a European country with a more collectivist, government funded film industry. But I’ve spoken recently with a number of European filmmakers working on first features who are foregoing the (stable and) traditional public funds of their home countries in favor of a more flexible crowdfunding base – which they believe allows for a quicker turnaround time and more artistic control.

Perhaps what is so promising about the future of filmmaking, and expensive artistic endeavors in general, is that the modern Medicis can be anywhere in the world. And an audience member of modest means can patronize your film and purchase it in advance – which in turn allows it to exist in the first place.

In the rosiest view of crowdfunding, it is indeed a new kind of marketplace – one in which return on investment means getting to see a film you wanted to be made.

Jay Craven: Cultivating Your Film Audience

Background & Context This week we interviewed Jay Craven who has developed his own grassroots screening circuit in the specific New England region whose culture, history, and stories take center stage in his films, which often take place in rural Vermont and New Hampshire. For screenings, Jay focuses on small towns, some of which have populations as small as 300. These towns are so small they typically can’t support a movie theater, and so locals typically look to church theater productions and high school sporting events for entertainment. This provides Jay with a unique opportunity to cultivate his own audience instead of competing against big budget films at the box office.

Key Takeaways

Jay has used three grassroots methods to establish a circuit of town screenings: 1) engaging the audience early on to grow a list of supporters 2) turning town screenings into a community event and 3) using offline and online sign-ups to grow his audience.

1) Jay was able to build an infrastructure of grassroots supporters that later helped finance and distribute his feature films by screening short student films in New England towns.  He came up with the idea of using grassroots organizing methods to distribute films during the Vietnam War. Jay explains,

“In 1971, I helped to make a Vietnam War documentary that was called Time is Running Out. We made 50 prints and took it to colleges and communities across the country--to help organize a big civil disobedience demonstration in Washington, DC in May 1971, where 14,000 people got arrested for committing civil non-violence disobedience… It was initially through this experience that the idea of mission-driven filmmaking appealed to me.”

When Jay joined the faculty of Marlboro College, his productions became educational opportunities for his students. He made a regional comedy series (WIndy Acres) with mostly students and he set up internships for ten students on his feature film, Disappearances.  In 2012 he took this idea one step further.  Two-thirds of the crew for his latest film, Northern Borders (2013) consisted of students from a dozen different colleges who came to Malrboro College for a film intensive semester that included literature and film study along with hands-on production classes, visiting artists, and six weeks of feature production, where students worked in substantial positions ranging from script supervisor, boom operator, associate editor, and location manager to assistant directors, costumes, props, and production coordinator. For Northern Borders, half the budget would be provided by Marlboro. This is a great example of the prominence and potential of academic institutions as points of intersections for grassroots ideas and industry tools (what with their shared resources) — a recurring theme we plan to explore later on in our study.

After Where the Rivers Flow North screened at Sundance and other film festivals, Jay activated his grassroots network of supporters in rural Vermont towns to do another round of regional screenings before its theatrical release. The film ultimately grossed a million dollars theatrically.

This is another example of how filmmakers can establish their contacts and audience through other means besides screening their film.  Similar to how B-Side was able to grow its email listserve by providing an online service that people opted into at film festivals, Jay was able to cultivate his own audience in rural New England towns by first organizing a touring film series to small towns where he showed classic, foreign, and indie films, along with his films and his students' shorts. Also similar to how B-Side was able to later use their listserve to distribute Super High Me locally, Jay was able to distribute his future feature films by gradually growing the network of supporters who originally attended his short film screenings.

2) The audience Jay seeks to attract to his town screenings may or may not be consistent movie fans, but they take an active interest in major events in their hometown.  Jay recognizes that,

“half my audience at least does not go to the movies very often except if I bring something to them… The theater is pretty full, and so the audience is reacting together, and there is a kind of chemistry that forms and there is an electricity that comes off the event that is like a performing arts event."

Not to mention that Jay enhances the appeal of the screening by being present himself to hold Q & A’s afterwards at nearly 80% of the events. Furthermore, by making screenings more accessible to residents in rural towns who have limited options for live entertainment, Jay is able to trigger a word of mouth campaign within the community. Jay notes that, “If my movie were playing 25 miles away at a movie theater, people who were motivated and into it would go. But when the movie is in their town or the town next to where they are, and their neighbors and friends are buzzing about it they will go because it is an event.”

From our perspective working on the Obama campaign, making campaign events more accessible played a critical role in expanding the campaigns’ volunteer base.  Similar to how Jay turned church basements, school auditoriums and libraries into town screenings for his film, the Obama campaign transformed barber shops, supporters’ homes and storefronts into phonebanks, voter registration drives and canvasses.  The effort to make the campaign more accessible led to thousands of volunteers to get involved especially in rural areas where supporters would have had to travel 30-60 minutes to reach the closest field office to their town. The accessibility and word of mouth campaign from Jay’s town screenings lead to an average audience of 80 in towns where the population size averaged 300. That means Jay was able to attract 26% of a town’s total population to the screening of his film.

3) Jay also grew his list of grassroots supporters by establishing a solid sign-up process at screenings and through offline postcards. Jay discussed,

“the standard that we have used a lot is postcards because for small and even medium sized towns you can mail a post card to everybody in town… when you go to larger areas you start working with mailing lists… and we have are own [email] lists. I have a solid list that is probably 4,000 people.”

Jay has people who attend his screenings sign in so he can add them to an email list he uses to advertise his screenings locally.  This allows Jay to continuously build his audience through every screening on his tour. In addition to sending emails to advertise screenings, Jay sends offline postcards to residents in small New England towns. Postcards add a personal touch that help Jay advertise in rural areas where people might not have Internet or are not frequent uses of the web.

Conclusion

The main question Jay’s town distribution model raises is whether independent filmmakers are better off trying to reach a demographic beyond indie and blockbuster audiences through local or regional screenings.  Not only is this method cost effective, but it also provides filmmakers with an opportunity to tap into support from people in small towns that are not lured into high budget Hollywood movies and more likely to appreciate the regionally specific cultural aspects of independent film.

However, Jay’s town circuit is dependent upon a very specific region of northern England where the setting of most his films take place.  Could town screenings for independent films be effective in other rural and medium sized towns across U.S? Should independent filmmakers consider making screenings more accessible to people in small towns where the cultural themes and setting of their film resonate? By knowing that his film will connect with a specific audience that he knows he’s going to target, Jay can avoid the problematic bottleneck “gatekeepers” of independent film festivals. We plan to explore how Jay Craven’s town screening model might be applicable for distributing independent films with different cultural themes in future posts.

-Michael, Josh and Carl

Online Distribution & Grassroots Distribution: Notes from a fellow CRI Fellow's Symposium

Claire Harlem’s CRI symposium on community and online distribution reflected a year of hard work and offered new insights into how the Internet is changing production, financing, and distribution. Claire’s program was especially relevant to our study since the Internet is a key tool for grassroots self-distribution. Here is a link to Claire’s fellowship blog from last year. During Claire’s symposium, several entrepreneurs spoke about social media sites they designed to help filmmakers raise funds and distribute their movies. The first presenter was Emily Best, the CEO and President of Seed&Spark.  Seed&Spark has a similar platform to Kickstarter with project pages that display a trailer, summary of the film, and prizes for donors. However, the Seed&Spark website also includes a wishlist where donors can contribute money or loan supplies that a filmmaker needs to make their movie. This feature seeks to tap into the “higher sense of service to others” that we discussed in our previous post Giving vs. Taking here.  Basically, creating a sense of service to others can be more effective than offering monetary rewards in motivate people to contribute since people have an inherent desire to help others in need.

However, Seed&Spark supplements the altruistic spirit presented by the wishlist with various material incentives and prizes for people who contribute. Similar to Kickstarter, Seed&Spark offers people who donate or loan supplies to a film project prizes such as DVD’s or movie posters. In addition, “sparks” points are awarded to people who sign up to follow projects, spread publicity for other films or watch films through the online cinema feature on the site. “Sparks” can then be used to watch movies offered on their cinema site or to get discounts from Seed&Spark partners, such as Film Independent and Big Vision Empty Wallet.

The Obama campaign applied an approach similar to that of Seed&Spark by having wishlists at field offices that displayed everything local offices needed, from food donations to cell phones and computer supplies. However, in contrast to "Seed&Spark," the campaign did not offer rewards or incentives to volunteers who donated. Instead, supporters were given more access to and ownership in the campaign, which motivated volunteers to believe that they were an integral part of a movement. See our post on Motivation and Transparency here.

Another speaker named David Geertz, discussed how his social media website Sokap seeks to create a community-based distribution system through a monetary relationship between the filmmaker and audience. Non-profits and individuals are incentivised to purchase the right to screen films in a town or city for a flat fee and then reap a certain percentage of the profit whenever someone buys the DVD in their area. This motivates people to advertise the film locally since they will receive a percentage of the revenue every time the film sells in their region. The amount of each commission varies between projects and is set by the filmmaker or production company. This model seems best suited for social issue films that relate to non-profit organizations with local chapters.

In contrast to Seed&Sparks, Sokap is focused on motivating audiences to help with the distribution of films locally rather than contributing resources for the production of the films. Furthermore, Sokap incentivizes audiences to get involved in the distribution of film by creating a monetary relationship with the filmmaker and audience, whereas Seed&Spark offers material prizes and “spark” points to motivate audiences.

All the speakers expressed the importance of filmmakers tweeting, facebooking and blogging in order to build their online audience. Although it is important for filmmakers to lay the groundwork for any future film by using social networking sites, we wonder if there is a ceiling to how much new filmmakers can accomplish when they do not have much work that is well known or at least can be shared and linked to on the internet. This is one place where a grassroots approach focused on offline outreach (cold calling non-profits, advocacy groups, etc.) to create relationships would probably bear more fruit in the early days. If no one is aware of who you are, tweeting a lot won’t magically build your audience. However, creating face-to-face or at least telephone relationships with people who have similar interests could result in people feeling more connected to you personally and later becoming more invested in your projects.

Social media platforms like Seed&Spark and Sokap that attempt to help filmmakers fund and distribute their films raise questions about what motivates people to donate their time, money and efforts to a project. Sokap attempts to motivate people to promote films by offering a percentage of the revenue.  Seed&Spark tries to motivate people through a sense of altruism offered by the wishlist and by offering material prizes. However, part of the success of sites like Kickstarter is the simplicity of pressing a few buttons and knowing you've contributed to a film's success. We found on the Obama campaign that when we tried to convey the power of donations in terms of what the amount of money could buy for the campaign, people were less incentivized to give. For example, giving $25 to a presidential campaign is more appealing than the explicit knowledge that that $25 will buy lunch for three organizers. In some cases, people seemed to prefer not knowing precisely how their monetary contribution would be used.

Furthermore, millions of Obama supporters were willing to donate their money without the promise of material rewards largely because it was the ultimate example of giving to a very large cause that they believed in. The campaign built personal relationships with supporters and volunteers, and organizers met with local supporters one-on-one to connect their interests to the goals of the campaign. Through these personal relationships, supporters became more connected to the grand cause of getting Obama elected and driven by indirect prizes that would come from his administration like passing healthcare reform, middle class tax cuts and bringing soldiers home from Iraq. People were inspired to get involved because they felt included in a movement that gave them hope for the future of their country.

Perhaps if filmmakers ran more of an offline campaign to build relationships within a community, audiences would be more willing to donate and loan supplies to film projects, whether online or offline. The Obama campaign was able to create a personal connection with supporters by setting up field offices and deploying thousands of organizers across the country. Obviously, a film campaign is much smaller in size. But perhaps a more narrow and focused approach to offline grassroots organizing would help independent filmmakers grow a deeper and broader connection with audiences online.

-Josh, Michael and Carl

Giving vs. Taking

Does embracing a sense of service to others move people towards action more effectively than material rewards? That is one question psychology professor Adam Grant explores in his new book, Give and Take, that sheds light on a new form of motivation that focuses more on giving than taking. In the New York Times article, Is Giving the Secrete to Getting Ahead, Susan Dominus writes about how Grant discovered that creating a culture of giving leads to productivity at a call center. “Given that one of the center’s primary purposes was funding scholarships, Grant brought in a student who had benefited from that fund-raising. The callers took a 10-minute break as the young man told them how much the scholarship had changed his life…A month after the testimonial, the workers were spending 142 percent more time on the phone and bringing in 171 percent more revenue.”

This reflects the power of a principle that was practiced effectively on the Obama campaign that originally comes from the President’s original mentor in community organizing, Marshall Ganz: sharing your story. Every community organizer was taught the importance of letting potential volunteers and voters know why he or she was personally motivated to work for the President’s campaign, in the form of a story. Volunteers were encouraged to share as well. Online content would reflect this emphasis on personal stories. Online and offline, the Obama campaign was able to install a “higher sense of service” in order to grow their grassroots army of volunteers and set historic fundraising numbers. Here is a video the campaign sent in an email blast to supporters during the 2008 campaign.

In the video, a donor named Greg Smith starts to get teary eyed as he explains how his mom left for Jamaica and almost was not allowed to bring Greg and his sister to America because of immigration laws. Greg explains, “Mr. Obama’s stance is that you can’t separate families… I think my fulfillment as a human being is only coming into play because of that fact that I was reconnected with my mom and able to now take part of the American dream.” Greg’s sincerity is very moving and turns the action of donating to a political campaign into the greater idea of investing in the American dream.

This leads us to ask if you can make a movie that is more than just a film. Similar to how the Obama campaign became more than just a campaign by inspiring supporters to remember the importance of community and empowering others. Can a film campaign also start to embody an idea greater than itself and motivate people to act? Are only issue related films able to spark a movement, or can non-issue films also go beyond just being a film? Already, those at Kickstarter will encourage potential fundraisers to do the equivalent of “share their story” in their videos.

This lessons of the campaign and the experiment mentioned in the Times could lead us to two possible answers to these questions. 1) If filmmakers shape the message of their fundraising efforts towards a higher purpose related to the issue or themes in their movie they are more likely to motivate people to contribute. 2) If filmmakers don’t have a higher purpose to their film, just being upfront and personal with why he or she wants to make that film (and what it means to them) can be a powerful tool.

-Josh, Michael and Carl

Four Eyed Monsters: What worked

As with many independent films, the distribution process for Four Eyed Monsters got off to a shaky start.  After going through the normal festival circuit, filmmakers Susan Buice and Arin Crumley walked away feeling that Film Festivals "suck."  Their takeaway was that you can spend all your resources and energy touring around with a film, but unless you’re in the high profile festivals, traditional distributors are not going to see your film.  However, instead of giving up, the filmmakers launched one of the first online DIY distribution campaigns that eventually brought in a profit for their film. Can Four Eyed Monsters’ DIY distribution model help independent filmmakers today? What Worked

The filmmakers of Four Eyed Monsters employed four online grassroots organizing tools to successfully distribute their film: 1) Producing a Four Eyed Monsters web series 2) Creating an online petition for theatre screenings 3) Investigating the metrics involved in how manifested online support translated to actual ticket sales 4) Selling DVDs and merchandise on their website.

1) Producing a “reality TV-style” web series about the filmmakers’ struggle to finance the film helped grow their online audience by making the film more personal to their fans. Here is a link to the webseries: http://foureyedmonsters.com/. The web series helped give background about the cast and crew, making the project more engaging and relatable. This in turn, led to more attention from online blogs and reviewers like the New York Times.

The filmmakers tried to put their movie out through the normal festival channels but it led them nowhere.  However they happen to document their struggle when new online formats were emerging like videocasts, youtube and facebook. Similar to how the Obama campaign would later use online video to persuade voters and encourage volunteers, the supplementary material from Four Eyed Monsters helped the filmmakers connect with fans and motivate them to become more invested in the film.

2) Creating an online petition to see the film in theaters channeled the support of their online audience towards theater distribution. Below is a picture of the Four Eyed Monsters Theater sign up page.

The filmmakers promised to screen the film in cities that obtained 150 or more sign ups. This helped create a concrete goal and sense of urgency that motivated fans to encourage their friends to also petition to see the film. Ultimately, Four Eyed Monsters received over 8,000 online requests to see the film in theaters. The hearts on the map helped signify geographic “posts of support” that enabled fans to connect and build momentum for the film at a local level.  The Obama campaign applied a similar strategy though the online organizing tool Mybo and Dashboard, which displayed dots on a map to signify new field offices. This gave supporters a visual understanding of the support in their neighborhood and where they could go to volunteer.

3) Translating petition signatures to ticket sales convinced more theaters it was in their economic interests to screen the film.  The filmmakers compared the number of online sign ups to ticket sales and determined 1 sign up led to 1 ticket sale. This led to 31 theaters across the country agreeing to distribute the film.

Metrics systems are common in political campaigns, but rarely utilized by filmmakers to distribute their film.  The Obama campaign used a wide array of metrics for calculating what emails and call scripts effectively communicated the message of the campaign to voters and supporters.  This helped the campaign adapt quickly and shift resources amidst the rapidly changing political climate of a presidential campaign.  The filmmakers of Four Eyed Monsters also used their own metrics system to focus theater distribution to cities with the highest level of support for their film.

4) Allowing audiences to buy DVDs and merchandise online helped direct enthusiasm from the film in theaters towards making a profit on the film afterwards. Interestingly, the film made more money from people interested in buying shirts, DVDs and other merchandise online than on ticket sales in theaters. However, theater screenings helped the filmmakers mobilize support offline, which later led to them raising money through sponsor websites like sprout.com which paid the filmmakers $1 for every new who signed up.

The film eventually grossed a total of $129,000. Over $100,000 came from online sales.

Conclusion 

The Four Eyed Monsters distribution model is a reminder that not every film can use the same distribution methods and expect to succeed.  In a way the Four Eyed Monsters Distribution model was a happy accident.  The distribution process worked, but in reverse to the normal process. The filmmaker made the movie, then they produced behind the scenes material (via a new medium - videocasts), that built interest in the film, leading to the effective release of the film in theaters and finally the Kickstarter-esque campaign to actually pay for the film.  This is as opposed to the normal distribution process of raising money for the film, making the film, finding a distributor and releasing behind the scenes promo material to promote its release.  Although there may be no cookie cutter way to distribute your film, the DIY distribution campaign for Four Eyed Monsters proves that if you are flexible and innovative  you can find creative solutions that lead your movie towards its target audience.

In our next post we will analyze why other online distribution models have fallen short compared to Four Eyed Monsters. We will also look at how new theories like "the trapped door theory" and "collective buying power" could be applied to independent film distribution.

-Josh, Michael and Carl

Making Movies in France - The American Way

Melanie_Small

Grad Film Alum Melanie Delloye’s thesis film Anna and Jerome, starring Élodie Bouchez, is a French road movie about a mother who doesn't have custody of her six-year-old son and decides to run off with him. Shot in Normandy, and taking full advantage of the geography of the province, this film eschewed traditional financing through France’s national and region­al film agencies. Instead, Melanie made use of a new feature of the French landscape – Crowdsourcing.

Melanie says: “We applied to a bunch of the regional grants, but we were told that in order to do it right we would have to wait a year to make sure that we met all the guichets [benchmarks]. We didn’t want to lose momentum so we decided to go ahead and make the film ‘the American Way.’”

Melanie and her producer Robin Robles raised funds through the crowdsourcing site Ulule, which accepts money in multiple currencies from inside and outside of France. Like Kickstarter, Ulule facilitates funding for a variety of projects (those currently featured on the site include film, photo, and music projects, and even an agricultural start-up).

According to Melanie: “It [crowdsourcing] is very new in France and a lot of people don’t really under­stand what it is. There isn’t even really a French word for it – we just say ‘crowdsourcing.’” To date just under 1,900 projects have been funded through Ulule – compared with over 38,000 funded on Kickstarter. And the goal of 14,000 Euros (about US $18,000) for Anna and Jerome was one of the larger amounts raised on the site – at least at the time.

The novelty of crowdsourcing in France had some benefits. Ulule was fully behind the project and fea­tured it in a number of ways (including a blog about Melanie as Ululer of the Week). Anna and Jerome also received a small amount of funding and other support from Daily Motion (the French equivalent of YouTube).

Melanie and Robin finally did get word from one of the regional film funds that they’d received a grant – but it came six months after Anna and Jerome was finished! (Most such grants require the production to take place within the specific region, province, or municipality, so it was moot.)

Productions that fall under  the guidelines of the Centre National du Cinéma et de l'Image Animée ( the 'CNC' - France's national film agency) also come with other rules, including minimum labor and benefit payments. Making Anna and Jerome outside the con­fines of that system allowed the production to function strictly as a student film, which gave more flexibility (Producer Robin Robles is a recent graduate of La FEMIS, the French state film school). So for a number of reasons, the decision to make the film ‘à l’américaine’ seems to have been a good choice.

Still, Melanie is not forsaking traditional French fund­ing methods. She is developing a feature film set in Colombia, for which she plans to find production financing within Colombia and also seek French co-production funds.

In future blogs I will discuss the Colombian film industry's new incentives system and other productions in development to be shot in that country.

‘Veronica Mars’ Phenomenon

In our recent post “What is grassroots?” we began the larger question that we’ll explore throughout the year: “What kind of grassroots methods work for which kinds of films?” In our second post, we will examine the unexpected success of Veronica Mars Kickstarter campaign, which raised close to four million dollars in less than a week. The film does not seem like a normal candidate for grassroots donations since it was on a network television show owned by a major studio.  However, through effective messaging, the filmmakers were able to set a new fundraising record on Kickstarter. Here is a link to the kickstarter page that is still going strong. Rob Thomas, the creator of the show explains in the Kickstarter page that after meeting with Warner Bros, “Their reaction was, ‘If you can show there’s enough fan interest to warrant a movie, we’re on board.’ So this is it. This is our shot. I believe it's the only one we've got.” With this quote, Thomas is turning his struggle with the studio Warner Bros into a grassroots cause that creates a sense of urgency for fans to contribute to the film. We learned in the last blog post about the important role urgency plays in the film distribution campaigns We Were Here vs. Henry’s Crime.

The Obama campaign in 2008 used a similar tactic to fuel its grassroots campaign by building the narrative that he was a party outsider running against the Washington establishment. This gave Obama’s candidacy a higher purpose, particularly among young, anti-establishment voters, that inspired his supporters to not only vote for Obama but also volunteer.

The question deserves to be asked: what is the equivalency between Kickstarter supporters and the supporter of a political campaign, in this instance? Is it a literal equivalence – ie the donor towards the Veronica Mars campaign is the equivalent of a donor to the Obama campaign? Or rather is it that this Kickstarter campaign has created a moment of “opting in” that the studio needed to see in order to know it could move forward with development? The moment of “opting in” is key on political campaigns because in lieu of the actual vote which comes later, it is a vote of support and of commitment, that can be used to extract valuable information from a supporter (email addresss, contact info) that can be capitalized on for later campaign initiatives. Similarly, by “opting in” to the Veronica Mars campaign, supporters’ contact information will be put on a listserv that the producers & Warner Brothers are sure to use to their advantage during distribution.

However, unlike the Veronica Mars Kickstarter page, many Obama supporters volunteered without the promise of receiving a material reward for their work. Instead, the campaign was able to motivate volunteers by giving them an unprecedented amount of access to the goals and campaign strategy, which made volunteers feel like they were playing an integral part in making history. In short, the Obama campaign inspired millions of people to volunteer by giving them a higher purpose that added meaning to their lives and not by offering a material prize. A lot of people wanted health benefits or an end of war in Iraq for example. People felt they would be getting something for their work, even if it was not as tangible as a t-shirt. The “return on investment” for Veronica Mars supporters is the existence of the tangible film itself, which will be given as a reward to those that give a certain amount of money.

This raises a more troubling element to the Kickstarter phenomenon, as far as how it intermingles with studio-backed projects. Are the fans who are opting in right now paying for the ability to pay again to see the film in a theater when it comes out? Or will they be content with the copy delivered to their (physical or digital) doorstep, and thereby the campaign is a way of “pre-selling” the film to its fans (ie using guaranteed distribution to pay for development).

What’s clear is that the Veronica Mars campaign has been successful because, to a certain extent, it was able to turn a potential film into a movement. This leads to our second question for this blog. How do you make your movie a movement, even if it is not about social issues?

-Carl, Michael and Josh

What's in it For Me?

I recently posted about this article on gift logic (vs free market logic), a social means of relating that governs certain cultures (like the Tiv of West Africa) and makes certain online platforms (like Kickstarter) work. Then someone seriously revamped our CRI website and accidentally killed that post in the process. So I just wanted to re-post the link to this compelling article since the author articulates relevant points about transactions that strengthen relationships, platforms that build communities, and social mechanisms that fund art. My CRI project is ultimately focused on understanding how online tools could support such transactions, platforms and social mechanisms, so I really appreciated this thoughtful perspective. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/magazine/why-would-you-ever-give-money-through-kickstarter.html?pagewanted=all

Community vs. Blob

I've written plenty here about innovative and exciting platforms for independent film distribution and/or discovery (plenty enough to make at least myself and probably you repulsed by the words Innovative, Exciting, Platform, Distribution, And/Or, and/or Discovery). I've also written a lot here about how few of these platforms actually deliver on their promises to connect filmmakers and fans. My CRI project is about this connection, about community--defining it, understanding why it is a critical component of the online ecosystem for filmmakers, and studying the attempts that startups and institutions have made to build and address it. Community is critical because if it isn't there, than it really doesn't matter if your film is. Is a good library enough to draw community? Recognizable and trustworthy curators? Interaction? Involvement? Empowerment? I think it's some kind of combination of all of the above, with an emphasis on everything that came after "good library." Which is not to say that the quality of content doesn't matter in the online ecosystem. Of course it does. And there are enough quality films not getting (or not getting enough out of) traditional, theatrical distribution to populate a robust online ecosystem. Rather, online communities want an ontologically online experience--they want a unique kind of empowering involvement that does not exist in an offline world. And so some excited rambling about two organizations (a bootstrap startup and a leading institute) that are tackling the community question in truly Innovative And/Or Exciting ways:

One of the platforms I've been researching that I think is killing it is Seed&Spark, (whose COO (and my Tisch classmate) Liam Brady is using the platform to seed and spark his film, FOG CITY). Emily Best, founder and CEO of the company, writes that she "founded Seed&Spark to allow indie filmmakers to leverage this WishList crowd-funding method specifically to build and grow their collaboration with their audiences for the entire life-cycle of a film," because "...when you activate the imaginations of your broader community, you set off a chain of actions, reactions and connections the result of which can push the boundaries of your film beyond what you imagined." The "WishList" to which she refers is essentially a wedding registry for an independent film. Best first experimented with the WishList idea for her film LIKE THE WATER:

What we came to call the "WishList" rendered our filmmaking process transparent to our community and sparked their imaginations. They started coming up with ways to get involved we hadn't imagined. They became deeply meaningful collaborators in the film who then lined up – literally – around the block to see the film when it was finished. ... When both you and your supporter can name the material contribution they made to your film, you both understand your supporter’s importance beyond the number of dollars they contributed. And they should feel important because they are.

Best understands that a community needs to be empowered and thus feel important in order to thrive. So many brands spend so many corporate dollars trying to create online communities and make them feel important. But this is a difficult verging on deceptive task since the individuals who comprise these "communities" are ultimately as important as any other individuals from like demographics. For an independent film, however, individual supporters are actually important because they can, as Best points out and as Seed&Spark allows, contribute uniquely to that film's actualization. I have $50 to donate, you have a car to rent cheaply, he has c-stands to lend, etc. It's kind of beautiful how the needs of an independent film and its online community align like this. All independent films depend to some degree on the good will of communities--local communities, friends, family and peers of the filmmaking team, etc. And a community by definition thrives on supporting its members (that's why it's a community and not a nebulous blob of loners). Seed&Park offers online tools to facilitate this good will and thus connect filmmakers and fans in a profound and uniquely online way.

The Sundance Institute has announced that its Artist Services program will expand its suite of digital tools through partnerships with Tugg, Vimeo, Reelhouse, and VHX. These partners join Kickstarter, GoWatchIt, TopSpin Media, as well as the usual retailer suspects. The above hyperlinked IFP release as well as this IndieWire article provide information on these platforms, and I've also written about several of them on this blog. Artist Services is further partnering with other organizations which will select filmmakers to share Artist Services privileges with Sundance alumni. The organizations are: The Bertha Foundation, BRITDOC, Cinereach, Film Independent, the Independent Filmmaker Project and the San Francisco Film Society.

It is clear that the Sundance Institute is committed through Artist Services to exploring the community component of the online independent filmmaking ecosystem. Between their retail partners (iTunes, Hulu, Netflix etc.), and the partner platforms that help filmmakers strategize their direct-to-fan distribution and marketing (TopSpin, VHX, Reelhouse), #AS is providing their filmmakers a pretty robust toolkit for self-distribution. By additionally partnering with platforms like Tugg and Vimeo, #AS is acknowledging that an engaged community is as important as quality marketing or visible shelf-space. Tugg directly involves and thus empowers its community to bring the films they want to see to their local theater. Despite their nascent experiments with monetization, Vimeo is essentially a community of people who make videos and people who watch them. Although YouTube's community is bigger (like hundreds of millions bigger), Vimeo's superior user-interface/experience, profile customization, and opportunities for discovery (staff picks, categories, etc.) make it feel like a prettier, comfier, more tight-knit community. (There are other differences, of course.) However it stacks up against its opponent, Vimeo is indisputably a community, not a tool for direct to fan strategizing. Artist Services does not end its suite of tools at direct to fan strategizing platforms because tools that empower communities are as vital to a film's self-distributed success.

I'd like to believe that we are in fact being wired together, not apart, but I also think that there's space and time for both the movies we watch together in theaters and the ones we watch alone on personal screens (as long as they're at least 13 inches or so). Personal feelings about the anthropological impacts of online connection aside, the independent filmmaking and loving community is very real and very capable of helping each other make and discover movies online. To me, online community means a collection of real individuals that make real things happen via the Internets (online communities fund films; online nebulous blobs produce analytics). To different platforms, community means different things. Some don't need it (Netflix) and others can't live without it (anything I've written about here). I'm interested in online tools that by virtue of being online tools help a widespread group of like-minded people come together and Seed, Spark, Kickstart, Gathr, and Tugg stuff--tools that empower our community.

Crowd Sourced Cinema... how we got here

This week, WIRED posted an article about the emerging phenomenon of crowd-sourced cinema. This trend seems to have emerged as a result of a confluence of factors, including:

(1) The digitization of the modern movie theater.  As studios has pushed back on exhibitors to outfit their facilities with digital projection technology, the requirement to create a 35mm print to play in a big house has fallen by the wayside. Digital theaters can now screen everything from DCPs to Blu-Rays, brining the cost of creating a screenable "print" from thousands to hundreds of dollars.

(2) Low weekday attendance at movie theaters.   There's a reason that the industry reports weekend box office rather than weekly box office. People go to the movies on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, leaving an opportunity for alternative revenue sources during the quiet weeks at the art houses and multiplexes. A model where theaters can show a movie without shouldering the risk makes a lot of sense.

(3) DIY. With Kickstarter and IndieGoGo filmmakers are raising capital themselves. And with the decreasing cost and increasing access to equipment, filmmakers have the ability to make films with more autonomy and creative control. For the entrepreneurial filmmaker, digital distribution and on-demand screenings offers an extension of this approach, affording artists the opportunity to control the distribution process, determine price and access, directly monetize a fan base or all of the above (see: Louis CK).

(4) The niche-ification of the independent film business.  As studio films get bigger, small films seem to be getting smaller (Sundance, SXSW and Tribeca have recently launched sections explicitly for micro-budget filmmakers).  Just as the music industry has seemed to transition from churning out overnight successes that could speak to most of us, to an array of middle class theater-playing acts that speak to few of us, the film industry may be headed in a direction where filmmakers grow and nurture smaller, but loyal audiences. Bring on the sub-genres.

Whether on-demand screenings are a new and legitimate alternative to traditional theatrical release, a marketing tool to help raise awareness and allow filmmakers to directly access (and monetize) their fans, a revolutionary approach to repertory cinema, or something in between, it's a fascinating development and one we should all have our eyes on as it continues to find its footing.

Communities Run On...Transparency?

Here's a thought-provoking post by Chris Dorr on indie film and network effects (in case you didn't already see it featured on the Truly Free Film blog). Film people talk a lot about transparency these days, but they rarely consider its implications beyond making the folks at companies who require discretion with numbers vaguely uneasy.

Chris' suggests that thorough, generous transparency (like that offered by James Cooper with his kickstarterforfilmmakers project) if continuously offered and collected by an active community (still grappling with that word) has powerful potential to create a network effect. This (very) basically means that the more transparent information is offered by the participants of the network, the smarter, more powerful and more attractive the network becomes.

The obvious questions remain: what does this network look like? What are the online tools available to facilitate such a network?

In a class I took at ITP on online communities, our lovely teacher Kristen Taylor/kthread would systematically bring us back to the question "Communities run on...?" Love, passion, connection, purpose, and other such adequate-verging-on-necessary answers came up often. I don't think that transparency is a requisite community engine, but I think the implications of its employment for a network of film fans and makers are exciting and require further examination. I'm on it!

What else do (online film) communities run on?

Whoopi's Wisdom, Or Why Famous Folks Who Don't Need Them Are Turning To Crowds

In this IndieWire interview, Whoopi Goldberg explains her decision to use Kickstarter to fund "I Got Somethin To Tell You," her documentary on Moms Mabley, a black, female comedian who influenced Whoopi and many other comedians with a penchant for addressing some of the less comfy issues of their times. In discussing why she turned to the crowd, Whoopi notes:

I could have gone back to one of the cable stations, but what that means is you don't get to do the project the way you want to. This project is about the impact that Moms had on people. Impact on comics. It's less about her life story and about what she brought. She was the only female comic for about 40 years! That's never been celebrated and it's never been celebrated as a woman. She was on the cutting edge, a pioneer, talking about things that nobody was really talking about at the time and how she did it. So that's what this is about.

The sentiment here (which is similarly apparent in remarks like "[My crowd-funders] want to see good stuff and they don't mind contributing what they can," or "This isn't a little bullshitty project") is uniquely that of someone who is established and connected but still choosing to step outside of a system that can work but not without an often impeding amount of begging and meetings and opinions and begging. Whoopi, like Paul, Amanda, and Louis, simply gets it: if I can get my fans to fund what I do directly, I can do it how I want to do it, plus I can give them rewards, shield them from middle-man screwing, and other such heart-warming perks. Of course simply getting it is easier if you already have a lot of loyal fans, but one of the goals of my CRI project is to figure out how filmmakers can find the folks who love what they do--to figure out how to define community and build it. So, stay tuned.

For now, back to Whoopi and co. If you're reading this, you're undoubtedly reading lots of other writing on the disruption, the disintermediation that these established artists' decisions to turn to their fans for direct support signify. Chris Dorr, who has generously shared his expert perspective with me and helped to hone the approach and scope of my CRI project, has some really fantastic related posts like this one on Amanda Palmer and "True Fans."

I want to add an observation to this dialogue that is simple but speaks to a critical and oddly overlooked aspect of direct to fan activity: these famous folks who don't need them are turning to crowds, in part, because they (the folks) love them (the crowds) back. There is something (the something I am here trying to define) that is really refreshing about Whoopi, Amanda, and Paul's frank, gloriously unironic campaign videos, about Louis' sincere, typo-ridden emails. There are actual people poking out of the screen, people who aren't particularly polished or aware of themselves, but people aren't supposed to be this way--brands are. PEOPLE ARE NOT BRANDS. More on that in just a bit.

Whoopi emphasizes that her project isn't little and bullshitty because she knows her fans "want to see good stuff." I wonder if every filmmaker with a Kickstarter campaign really believes that (or has at least considered whether) the crowds of potential fans whom they are trying to reach wouldn't find their project little and bullshitty. This is not to say that people should make what they think their fans want them to make, but it is to say (very much so) that once an artist starts asking the crowd for something, he has an (ethical? strategic? humane?) imperative to respect and understand the people who comprise it. Whoopi wants the freedom to make what she wants, but she consistently refers back to the fact that what she wants is what the fans want (and is what Moms delivered): something edgy, discomforting, and honest--"so that's what this is about." She recognizes that in the particular story of "I Got Somethin' To Tell You," the fans want the thing that they can themselves fund, and this thing will be different from the thing that the cable station would have funded. So, that's what this is, and it's pretty special.

I think the "something" that these artists all seem to possess in their campaigning and which I'm trying to define here is an open and honest appreciation for fans, an inherent respect for the people who are into what they're ostensibly into because they're making it. The most incredible thing that the internet has done for filmmakers is that it has allowed them to actively give a shit about their fans. Crowd-funding tools, with Kickstarter at the helm, seem at this point to be the only online platforms that realize how incredible the human reality of this disintermediation is and thus build the tools into their platforms to facilitate seamless connection.

The more I read that filmmakers need to "brand" themselves and have more of a "presence" so they can be "relevant" (and other words that make me feel ill), the more I understand why so many of us are loathe to explore direct to fan options. That said, many of these options themselves seem built around the premise of branding and selling. Throughout the course of my research, I am going to look deeply at platforms and tools that are trying to support real connection and community, as well as ones that want to help filmmakers find their fans. I'll also explore what connection and community are as concepts and practices in both real reality and the digital one, so that my analysis of these platforms counts for something (and so that I feel less pretentious using both words ad nauseam in one blog post). I am happy to share my working bibliography and very happy to receive feedback--just let me know. I will post it once it's slightly less of a mess.

Thanks for reading!