A Massive Online Course for Game Narrative - Starting Now

I can't comment (yet) on the worthwhile nature of this recently started Coursera course from Vanderbilt Univeristy.  But for anyone interested in narrative games and the translation process from book-to-film-to-controller, this might be worth taking a look into.   The focus is on Lord of the Rings and and the massive online game adaptation. I'll be tuning in for at least a few sessions

Check out the website below for more information

https://www.coursera.org/course/onlinegames

A Conversation with former Digital Politics Guru Nicco Mele- Has the Internet Really Changed the Game?

In our next interview we talked to the former Webmaster of Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential bid, Nicco Mele. While working for the Dean campaign, Nicco helped pioneer the use of social media in political campaigns to fundraise. After the campaign, Nicco co-founded a digital strategy consulting firm called, EchoDitto, that offered service to non-profit and corporate clients like Barack Obama’s Senate campaign, the Clinton Global Initiative, and the Sierra Club. Nicco is currently a professor at Harvard where he teaches graduate classes on the Internet and politics. His book, The End of Big: How The Internet Makes David The New Goliath explores the consequences of living in a socially connected society. In our interview, Nicco questioned whether the Internet had transformed political campaigns and the film industry for the better. He referenced three books that he teaches in his Internet and Politics class to outline how the Internet has impacted political campaigns: The Move On Effect by David Karpf, Taking Our Country Back by Daniel Kreiss, and Victory Lab by Shasha Issenberg.

The first book Nicco discussed in our interview was The Move On Effect, which proposes a three-pillar theory for running an effective digital political campaign. Nicco recalled,

“One is build a big email list. You need a big email list because people live overwhelmingly in their inbox. The average American spends more than 30% of their time in their inbox… The other thing about email is that it’s measurable and repeatable and you can build behavior models to increase interaction. You can’t do that on Twitter or Facebook. If I tweet something I have no idea if you saw that tweet or not and so I can’t go back to you in a contextual way to tell you a greater story. Whereas with email I know if you opened the email, I know if you clicked on it and I can build a model to deal with you.”

“The second core pillar is online community. Karpf talks about this pretty exclusively in terms of blogs but I think it is a much broader decision besides just blogs. Online community is some sense about feeding the most rabid people in your community. The care and feeding of evangelist is essential in online success.”

“The third pillar is online/offline. Politics is really a face to face business and you really have to be able to use the Internet to drive people to meet face to face.”

Nicco also mentioned that to be successful at these three things, you need a nimble operation that contains a willingness to take risk, has strong analytic skills and aggressive in measurement. “Part of being successful on the internet is taking advantage of when things go viral. But who knows what makes things go viral? That’s obscure and impossible to measure. So you have to try a lot of things hoping some of them go viral and you have to measure them so when something starts to go viral you can poor gasoline on the fire and then you have to be able to measure that.”

Nicco then contrasted Karpf’s three-pillars theory for running a digital campaign with a list of 5 key elements that go into running any campaign (regardless of its digital component)

   1) Raise money    2) Have a message    3) Communicate the message through media    4) Deal with press    5) Field or turnout operation

Examining the list, Nicco posited that perhaps the internet has only had a significant impact on one of those elements: Raise money.

“It’s fundraising and that’s where both Dean and Obama broke through. They used the Internet to build an alternative vehicle for fundraising. And the message is still crafted with polling. The message is still delivered by television… And I bet if we made a list of the 5 essential elements of pulling off a film we could figure out how the Internet or digital changes those things. Pretty clear Kickstarter and Indiegogo, etc., are having some impact on the funding of films. Although exactly how much impact and whether it’s good is a big question for me.”

This causes us to wonder if the only thing filmmakers can really learn from the Dean and Obama campaigns, as far as digital goes, is that the internet makes it extremely easy to raise money. However, the Obama campaign was known for recruiting a historic number of volunteers to knock on doors and make calls for the campaign, and many of these volunteers were recruited through offline phone calls and one-on-one meetings with organizers on the ground -- not email. However, translating money into action is usually harder. Nicco pointed out that out of the approximately 6 million people who donated to Obama’s campaign in 2008, only approximately [400,000] people or around 10% made phone calls to their members of Congress to support Obama’s signature healthcare bill 8 months later. Nicco noted,

“There is this bizarre paradox which has probably never been true in American or maybe human history which is [that right now] giving 100 dollars is easier than doing anything else. Which is kind of lunacy and probably bad for democracy. It is definitely not healthy.”

Nicco is suggesting that although the internet has made it easier to contribute to political and film campaigns than before, it has not had a significant impact in motivating people to take action in politics or in film. For example, an astonishing 80% of Kickstarter films that get funded are social issue films, but how many Kickstarter donors volunteer to bring about meaningful change for the social issue film they donate towards?

This led Nicco to draw a contrast between the internet, which he views as an intentional medium and TV, which he defines as a persuasive medium.

“From a political tactical perspective, TV is persuasive in a way that the internet isn’t. I think the reasons are: 1) the internet is intentional and requires focus and television is not and the second thing is just scale and repetition. Television’s reach and scale still dwarfs the internet and everyday it’s shrinking. But I could buy commercials on 300 television channels and effectively reach two thirds of America. And to reach two thirds of America the online ad buy is essentially inconceivable [as far as] what would be required, and probably practically impossible. At that equation of scale and repetition is where TV trumps the internet. And the gap is so giant that TV could decline for 10 years and still be a more effective way in reaching people in a mass media kind of way than the internet because the internet simply isn’t mass media at all.”

In this quotation Nicco offers 2 insights about the new media vs. old media. 1) The Internet causes people to dwell overwhelmingly in the present. This leads to people not caring about traditional narrative structure -- everything from reality TV to how it influences the message. 2) Television is still the most effective way to persuade and reach a mass audience since TV networks and shows have a much larger audience than websites. Although the audience for TV is steadily decreasing, it will take a significant amount of time for websites on the Internet to pass viewership on TV.

Conclusion

In conclusion, our conversation with Nicco causes us to wonder if online organizing is perhaps not the most effective platform for driving people towards action. Although the Internet has been proven to be an effective tool for fundraising, the intentional nature of the medium results in people searching for ways to contribute through small actions like donating instead of offline action like volunteering for a cause. From our experience working on the Obama campaign, complementing online organizing with old fashion door knocking, phone calls and one-on-one meetings played a key role in motivating supporters to act beyond just simply donating online. This makes us wonder if filmmakers should consider how offline meetings or phone calls with their online supporters could motivate the audience to get involved in distribution beyond just donating or watching a film. We plan to explore what approaches are most effective for building offline relationships with audience members in order to propel them towards the action of distributing films in future posts.

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.

Qualifier to Thoughts on "the Third Way"

In our interview with Chris Dorr here, he made an interesting observation that we might be wrong-minded to think about things like the modern independent film industry as needing a non-profit (or for-profit) model, that successful sites like Kickstarter represent a "third way" that is neither non-profit or for profit. He posited that it was all a kind of subsidy anyway, in the same way that ad revenue subsidizes what you watch on television. A recent article in the New York Times by Planet Money host Adam Davidson talks about how the prison industry violates standard economic practice by having someone other than the customer determine what product the customer gets. This is not really relevant to what we've been talking about, but Davidson does draw a comparison to the TV market that the show about prison he's using as a reference -- Orange is the New Black -- participates in:

“Orange Is the New Black” coincidentally reflects the television industry’s shift away from the third-party-decider economy. In the traditional broadcast environment, the customer is not the viewer but the advertiser, the one fronting the cost. The viewer’s attention, in effect, is the TV network’s product and the programming itself is a form of distraction to lull viewers into watching. This model often creates incentives for broad, unobjectionable fare that will appeal — or at least not repel — the largest number of viewers. Netflix, however, predicates its model around the actual end-user, or the person watching the show. As a result, the company needs to provide content that the viewer deems worthy of $7.99 a month.

In other words, while sites like Kickstarter may represent a third way that has actually been existing in capitalism for a long time in the form ad-supported television content, the new distributive platform of NetFlix takes the third party out of the third way and goes back to plain old "customer pays for what it gets" Adam Smith style economics. Furthermore, what's also interesting is that Davidson points out that advertisement-subsidized content might have to be broader in scope by nature of what companies are backing it; NetFlix can get very specific with who can target its show at... They don't have to appeal to everyone to justify to some users that Orange is the New Black is worth 8 bucks a month.

This ability to narrowly target must have some effect on the ability to limit production budgets as well (see our post on how the Obama campaign spent less money with more effect through targeting their TV ads), which is where there might be room for growth for the independent filmmaker. If he or she knows exactly who their target audience is or could be, there is no need to bloat a production to try to appeal to everyone. Independent can sometimes mean niche, and with the rise of the myriad television options (both on NetFlix and on your old appliance), we are in the age of niche. Ted Hope gets into a similar idea of how independent filmmakers can take advantage of the ability to target in his radio interview here; it's a topic we hope to explore more in the second half of our year-long study.

Large Scale Change Begins Door to Door

A recent article in the New Yorker about how certain historic developments in public health and medical practice (for example, the widespread use of anesthesia) came about seems ostensibly to have very little to do with our topic of grassroots distribution. However, as it is a portrait of monumental shifts that a certain industry experienced, we couldn't help but see some parallels and investigate what could be learned. Taking a step back, it often looks like the film industry is constantly in the middle of a massive tectonic plate style shift. But how can that be true? How can articles come out consistently for the last 10 years heralding the "death" or completely changing face of cinema (see statements by Soderbergh, Lucas, and Spielberg as the most recent examples)? If it has been going through revolutionary change for the last ten years and continues to change, when does the revolution end and what does it look like? Is the change different every year, or each year a chapter of the same (apparently gradual, not revolutionary) shift? For example, some people have predicted the end of theaters as venues to watch films since the early 2000's, yet their profits go up and down year by year with no real science to it.

An example of an industry where there has been a completely discernible and visible revolution that has at least reached a plateau is the music business. Napster, then iTunes, then further music sharing via the internet has brought a sea change in how music is bought and consumed, shuttering businesses and opening others, affecting how personnel at every level (from artist to executive) makes profit, and upending traditional power hierarchies.

For the most part, this hasn't quite happened in film. The internet affords us numerous new ways to watch film, but the marketing machinery of film (which is a huge part of the industry) looks largely the same, with just more of a sandbox to play in (social media sites, online press outlets, etc.). In many ways our study reflects an attempt to look hard at the problem that has not quite been solved for independent filmmakers: how to make the modern landscape of film distribution, with what technology affords it, work in a sustainable way for them? Production is happening, but how do use what we know and have now (because of the internet) to make the distribution system work for us? With the old guard and old channels of Hollywood (and even, arguably, independent film) still in place -- no recording industry style revolution having happened -- how do we take this moment and run with it?

With the stage set like that, such quotations from the article might as well be describing the film industry right now: "many ideas that violate prior beliefs are harder to embrace"... "this has been the pattern of many important but stalled ideas. They attack problems that are big but, to most people, invisible; and making them work can be tedious, if not outright painful." The plight of the independent filmmaker is largely invisible. Most Americans do not live in an area with automatic access to independent film; "automatic" here is a lazy word signifying basically that it is not in their proximity through an art house, or on one of their basic cable channels. Is it on the internet? Yes, but the internet is an intentional medium -- a user has to choose to search for something to find it. "As with most difficulties in global health care, lack of adequate technology is not the biggest problem." In other words, we have the tools, now how do we get people to use them?

"To create new norms," says the article, "you have to understand people's existing norms and barriers to change. You have to understand what's getting in their way." The norms, as we've explored in our blog, are the traditional gatekeepers. The festivals, the usual distributors, and the bottleneck effect of everyone aiming their films at them, with only a lucky few penetrating the fortress.

A conclusion of the article is that ironically, large scale change needed to happen hand-to-hand, door-to-door. The article leads off with an anecdote about anesthesia: "Proponents of anesthesia overcame [common] belief by encouraging surgeons to try ether on a patient and witness the results for themselves - to take a test drive." But a larger challenge came a century later, and not from the top down; the article spends much time with situations in which a solution has been established but just not popularized. For example, in oral rehydration therapy, it was found that a couple practices could significantly decrease the diarrhea caused by cholera in certain northern Indian areas. Then the challenge was making those practices common. The organization involved "didn't launch a mass-media campaign... It attacked the problem in a way that is routinely dismissed as impractical and inefficient: by going door to door, person by person, and just talking."

This is something we talk about a lot in grassroots ideas, as it is one crucial way that an unprecedented amount of voter contact happened in the Obama campaigns of 2008 and 2012. In this study, we are constantly toying with the idea that a similar thing could be enacted to make up for the gaps in data or knowledge about audiences that independent filmmakers run into. But the New Yorker article is actually an example of something else -- this isn't just about "contacting" users, it's about getting them to change practices through a hands-on show-and-tell demonstration.

What are the practices that could be changed through something like this in film? Are they on the viewer side or in the distributor world? Is there a way to show the viewer that they could watch quality content if they only knew where to go on the internet? The idea of guiding a stranger through using their computer seems odd, but probably so did the idea of a stranger teaching women in India how to deal with a choleric child. Where are the opportunities in the fractured, arguably "constantly changing" landscape of independent film for door-to-door or user-to-user or filmmaker-to-filmmaker demonstrations that prove that new methods can bear fruit? Is it about lowering the barrier to entry to new websites that give access to data? Or provide premium, targeted low cost content? Or creating an anti-festival festival, where curation is democratically executed?

The point of this post is just to raise these questions, about where these opportunities could be, using the article as an indication that these kinds of things can occur on the very lowest level, one by one, to create large scale change. Instead of making large scale commentary and hoping the industry hears us and reacts accordingly, perhaps finding some small solutions and popularizing them through grassroots tactics will make more of a difference. At the very least, let this study be a rallying cry for independent filmmakers to share their best grassroots practices with their colleagues. We are all trying to answer the same big questions; but some of us must already have answers to the smaller ones.

Durban FilmMart 4: FREE THE TOWN

FREE THE TOWN poster art

I recently attended the Durban FilmMart Co-Production market, which featured a diverse slate of documentary and narrative projects that are fostering collaboration between African countries and entities outside the continent. This is the fourth in a series of blogs about projects and issues related to co-productions in the South African industry.

NYU Graduate Film Alum Nikyatu Jusu participated in the Durban narrative feature market with her film Free the Town. Nikyatu went to Durban shortly after having attended Film Independent’s Fast Track program in Los Angeles.

I followed up with Nikyatu to see how things had developed since Durban, and what reflections she had about pitching her film to different industries around the world. (She and her producers have also been accepted to Independent Filmmaker Project’s Emerging Storytellers Forum, part of the IFP Film Week in September).

Nikyatu was born and raised in the U.S.; Her parents are from Sierra Leone.  Free the Town is a coming-of-age drama that explores three interconnected stories about different strata of life in Sierra Leone. Free the Town has cross-cultural elements, including an African American character. The project’s local/global narrative blend -- which I find makes it unique and relevant -- presents certain financing challenges, which Nikyatu described to me.

According to Nikyatu, many of the production companies that she met with during FastTrack in Los Angeles had difficulty placing an independent African film like hers within their (mostly mainstream American) purview.  Conversely, when meeting with European producers and grantmakers who had come to Durban to find African projects to finance, Nikyatu found that her background as a Sierra Leonian-American who grew up in the U.S. – and the African-American elements of her film – did not always fit easily into existing models of cultural and financial support for Africa filmmakers. Nikyatu’s short films have explored relationships between Africans and African-Americans, so there was some precedent – but still, she is pursuing subject matter that has not been extensively explored.

A primary goal of Global Film Connect is to find and track innovative partnerships (both creative and financial), so I was curious to hear about Nikyatu’s meetings with South African production companies. One prospect that was explored was to shoot Free the Town in South Africa, with locations there doubling as Freetown, the Leonian capital.  Filming in South Africa would allow the film to take advantage of tax incentives there and would potentially qualify it for co-production status with other countries. (Blood Diamond was shot in South Africa and Mozambique, doubled for Sierra Leone).

Nikyatu’s preference is to shoot in Freetown itself – not only for the authenticity of the filmic experience, but to help engage and support the nascent local film industry.  (Blood Diamond, by contrast, featured an American director, a Beninois star playing Sierra Leonean, and an American star playing an Afrikaner Rhodesian).

Free the Town aims to cast Sierra Leone in its vibrant present, a culture that is more rich and expansive than the stereotypes of its war-torn history. It will be interesting to see what kinds of international collaboration prove to be effective in getting this film made. This is a project worth keeping an eye on.

A Conversation with Chris Dorr- How Filmmakers can go around the Gatekeepers

In our next interview, we talked to Chris Dorr about his insights on how the film industry has evolved in the digital age of distribution.  Chris has a broad background working in both the independent and studio film world. He started his career at Film Arts Foundation where he raised money to support independent filmmakers and then worked on bigger studio films at Disney and Universal Pictures.  Chris is currently working as a media consultant for MTV Networks, Tribeca Film Festival and the Canadian Film Center. Below are three questions our interview with Chris raised that relate to how the film industry is adapting to emerging digital and grassroots tools.

Q1) How do you determine if your film is better on or off the festival circuit?

Chris suggested, “One might argue the only films that really benefit from Sundance are the ones like Beasts that are the few two or three that get big, big attention and [for] everyone else if you went there or not doesn’t really matter…” Therefore if your film is unlikely to win big on the festival circuit and if you already have at least the potential for a built-in audience, you might want to consider self-distribution.

In our recent post on the feature documentary Honor Flight, we learned that they were able to set the Guinness World Record for the largest film screening by tapping into a built in network of veterans who were interested in seeing the film, which documents the compelling story of war veterans who visit the WWII Memorial in D.C. as part of the Honor Flight program.  However, when the Honor Flight team took the film on the festival circuit, the momentum for the film slowed down since they were unable to top the excitement generated by their massive debut.  In addition, festival rules inhibited them from selling DVDs at screenings or online. This makes us wonder if more independent filmmakers should consider ways to distribute their film directly to their audience instead of relying on the traditional gatekeepers at festivals to give their films recognition. Especially since the multitude of ways to distribute your film digitally has changed the traditional process of getting buzz and attention for your film.  Filmmakers can often get more attention for their film by posting a trailer on YouTube or running a Kickstarter campaign instead of waiting for a critic to review their film at a festival.

Q 2) Can you generate your own distribution circuit online?

This next questions Chris raised relates to the possibility of using digital and grassroots tools to not only fundraise, but also distribute your film.  Chris pointed out,

“One of the reasons why people want to go to Sundance is Sundance is heavily covered by all kinds of media all over the world… Now there may be the same way to gain that kind of attention without going to any of the festivals. I think there will continue to be ways to of getting around the typical gatekeepers that people can use to build their own audience. But what you have to be able to do is figure out how to get mass media attention without spending mass media dollars.”

Digital tools like Kickstarter and blogging have enabled filmmakers to avoid the traditional publicity and marketing costs that go into a festival or movie theater run. In our recent interview with self-distributing filmmaker Gregory Bayne, he discussed how he was able to gain publicity for his film, Driven, which tells the story of UFC legend Jens Pulver, by making the film available to watch online during a limited time for free.  This lead to Mixed Martial Arts websites and blogs giving the film free publicity and later Warner Brothers acquired the film so they could distribute it on demand.  Greg was able to save thousands of dollars on marketing by hosting free online screenings that made it possible for more people to see his film than any film festival could provide.

Q 3) Does the independent film industry’s financing paradigm place it in a third category, somewhere between non-profit and for-profit film? If so what does that look like, and are there precedents?

The last question our interview with Chris raised relates to why people donate to projects on crowdfunding sites like Kickstater in the first place.  Chris recognized that Kickstarter is

“Neither for profit or non-profit; it’s somewhere in the middle.  In certain cases, you’re getting X, Y or Z which are actual things, certain incentives that are built in… I think we’re wrong in thinking something is for profit or non-profit.  It’s just different kinds of subsidies.”

This insight brings into question whether people donate out of an altruistic desire to help the filmmaker which is similar to a non-profit, or to simply obtain a DVD or movie poster, or do people donate because it appeals to both their altruistic and consumer desires. The idea that using Kickstarter lies somewhere in between running a for profit and non-profit company reveals that filmmakers should not limit their film campaign to run like either. Kickstarter and other crowdfunding sites give filmmakers the potential to attract supporters who wish to donate out of an altruistic need to help others and/or their desire for a material reward.  Although there is not yet a term for this kind of fundraising, it has been utilized by many film campaigns and is especially useful for independent filmmakers who need to take advantage of all available resources to get their films made and distributed.

Conclusion

In conclusion, our interview with Chris lead us to discover that although the emergence of digital tools is changing the film distribution rapidly, it also opens the door for independent filmmakers that are not afraid to go off the beaten path. However, it can be tricky to figure out which path to take when there are so many options.  This leads us to three questions we think will help independent filmmakers determine whether their film is best suited for a traditional or non-traditional distribution model, 1) Is my film likely to perform well at a top festivals? 2) Is there already a built in audience behind my film? 3) Will I be more likely to reach my target audience online or through community screenings?

Although these certainly are not the only questions filmmakers should be asking when distributing their film, it hopefully starts the process of thinking about whether you should go the traditional or non-traditional route. In future posts, we plan to look at the different categories of non-tradition distribution models and explore what models are most adaptable for certain kinds of independent film.

“Trembling Before G-d” Director Sandi DuBowski Discusses Organizing Around Film

Following our conversation with Obama guru, Jeremy Bird, we interviewed activist and independent filmmaker Sandi DuBowski. Sandi is known for directing and producing the award winning documentary, Trembling Before G-d.  The film tells the compelling story of several gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews who are trying to reconcile their sexuality with their faith. Trembling was very well received on the festival circuit and at the box office, winning seven awards including at the Berlin Film Festival and Chicago Film Festival, and broke the Film Forum’s opening day box office record by grossing more than $5,500 on the day of its single screen New York debut. Sandi later took the film on a town hall-style screening tour to schools and synagogues across the country to spark a conversation about LGBT issues among Orthodox Jews.  Similar to how Obama veteran Jeremy Bird gives consulting advice on grassroots organizing for political campaigns through his firm 270 Strategies, the success of Trembling has resulted in Sandi becoming one of the leading consultants for “issue” organizing around film. The distribution campaign for Trembling focused on the act of screening the film itself instead of an external action like passing a law or signing a petition.  This is a different approach than other issue-based films we have studied in our research like Participant Media’s film, The Visitor, which attempted to engage its audience in a number of external action campaigns on its website, i.e. offering free legal seminars to lawyers to learn how to defend immigrant detainees.  In contrast, Sandi decided to focus the campaign on distributing the film itself because, “Trembling was something that had a lot of resistance, so it really was about building a conversation as opposed to something like having the court law come in and change how the U.S. military deals with rape…” Sandi was able to channel the enthusiasm of LGBT community towards the action of distributing his film by focusing the goal of the campaign to break the silence of a community that many people felt needed to be more vocal. Sandi then formed metrics to gauge the progress of distribution and translate the success of the film to supporters and investors.  Sandi reflects,

“There is a whole growing field in  ‘How do you evaluate this? How do you measure it?’ And for me it was like, if I could create a conversation in a public institution that never had a conversation before, that for me was like a statistical marker of success. If I could get a school that never discusses homosexuality to really have all the teachers have a conversation about it with the principal and social workers, that was a victory.”

From our perspective working on the Obama campaign, metrics for canvassing, phone calls and fundraising played a critical role in giving supporters an understanding of how their time and money contributed to the campaign’s success. Similarly, Sandi shared the stories about people who went through transformative experiences at Trembling screenings to translate the success of screenings in Jewish Orthodox institutions.  These stories helped motivate supporters to contribute money and time to the distribution of the film.  As Sandi states,

“We consistently had a proven track record.  Were able to tell the story of the success about how people’s lives were really changing. It was very much turning a movie into a movement… That strategy for fundraising was throughout the whole process of the film, so it just felt like a continuation of the way I had worked.”

Instead of waiting on a distributor to support his screenings financially, Sandi raised funding on his own so that he could hire a network of outreach directors that helped organize screenings throughout the country.  Sandi discussed, “Everywhere we went, I would hire outreach directors.  I got my distributor to pay me to be an outreach director.  I hired in New York, I hired in Boston, I hired in L.A, I hired in San Francisco, I hired in Chicago, so I built a whole team nationwide, as well as in Canada.”  This is similar to how the Obama campaign hired organizers during the primary.  Sandi would hire organizers 6 weeks before a new screening so they could build publicity and work with different organizations to plan for the event.  He was able to sustain his team of outreach directors by tapping into various financial sources during the distribution process through grants, private donors, grassroots emails and donations.

Sandi also touched on the recurring theme in our research that new technologies make it even more critical for filmmakers to build a team that help manage the many tools available for distribution. Sandi observed,

"Now there’s such a menu of options to mobilize an audience…I think capturing the audience is really important, capturing the data in that room. And really being able to record that data, and having someone on board who can actually do all that social media work and that data recording and that data basing is what we all forget, and then we’re all flooded with information, flooded with data and we have no way of organizing it….I think team building, capacity building is so important right now, and it’s really important to think about how we’re going to run like a mini NGO with our film.”

Sandi’s example proves that filmmakers can build their own distribution team by being nimble with financing and embracing a grassroots structure. We wonder if Sandi’s successful distribution strategy of hiring outreach directors to organize community screenings could be expanded even further through empowering a team of volunteers.  In our recent interview with Jeremy Bird, he highlighted four key grassroots principles that emphasized the importance of data and sharing real responsibility with volunteers. Bird mentioned that what separated the Obama campaign from other grassroots operations in the past is the inherent sense of ownership and trust built into the core of its volunteer structure which is named “The Snowflake Model.’ In the ‘Snowflake Model’ volunteers were assigned to neighborhood teams and given specific roles like Phonebank Captain, Canvass Captain and Neighborhood Team Leader that each played a significant role in the historic turnout efforts of the campaign.  Could a similar model be adapted to empower audiences to get more involved in the distribution of film?  We plan to explore this question in future posts.

Durban FilmMart 3: Development(s) in Kenya

I recently attended the Durban FilmMart Co-Production market, which featured a diverse slate of documentary and narrative projects that are fostering collaboration between African countries and entities outside the continent. This is the third in a series of blogs about projects and issues related to co-productions in the South African industry. The Donkey that Carried the Cloud on Its Back, a documentary pitched at the Durban FilmMart by producer Atieno Odenyo and director Philippa Ndisi Herrmann, is about the impending construction of what will be Africa’s largest shipping port on the Island of Lamu off of Kenya. The film, previously titled We Want Development, will deal with the tension between globalizing commercial development and protection of local homes, culture and industry. Lamu Island is a historically rich center of Swahili culture and intersection with the Arab world. There are no cars; transportation there is by boat and transportation around the island is by donkey (hence the movie’s title).  Judging from the trailer shown at Durban, this film will be an artful, allegorical look at Africa’s interaction with the rest of the world. (The port contract was recently given to a Chinese company and will feature in China’s ‘string of pearls’ strategy of commercial bases across the Indian Ocean).

I spoke with Atieno Odenyo about her experience at Durban and other co-production forums, about Kenyan filmmakers’ reliance on European grant money, and about some of the work being done to foster local industry in Kenya.

For Atieno and Philippa, the Durban FilmMart 2013 was a chance to continue to foster relationships formed during development of their feature film Two Princes, which took them in 2011 to both the Durban FilmMart and the Produire au Sud Co-Production workshop in Nantes. Produire au Sud brings producing/directing teams from Africa, Latin America and Asia together with European financiers.

Since European production grants have been practically the only way to finance certain kinds of projects in Kenya, there is a need for more support for producers within Africa.

The Kenyan Film Commission hosted a pavilion at Cannes this year as part of an initiative to sell that country. They also signed Memoranda of Understanding with South Africa and France.  These MoU’s are short of Co-production treaties but will allow formalized collaboration between Kenya and these two countries.

Atieno, who was part of the Kenyan delegation to Cannes, runs a Nairobi-based Production company called Mawe Moja. She underscored the need for support for Kenyan producers – since without that, the fostering of industry and crews may draw foreign productions without necessarily cultivating local voices.

As in many emerging film economies, skilled, affordable crews that can work beyond the limits of U.S. union parameters are attractive to foreign productions – but that alone doesn’t necessarily promote quality films of the kind that people in those countries want to watch.

Part of Atieno’s push for Kenyans’ ownership of their own industry is the development of that country’s first crowd-funding platform for film. Kenya was the first country in the world to widely use SMS bank transfer and donation technology, so it’s an environment well suited to such a venture.

The ‘development’ chronicled in The Donkey that Carried the Cloud on Its Back – and its questions of local voice and agency – will like run a strong parallel to the development of the Kenyan film industry. It will be interesting to see how both turn out.

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.

Canada's Global Reach

From an American perspective, the big Canadian story of the last decade has been, of course, the flight of American productions headed there to take advantage of favorable tax incentives. But there are some other very interesting things happening there, too, as the Canadian film industry tries to expand its reach in terms of both content and financial influence. I spoke with Toronto native and NYU Grad-Film Alum Ian Harnarine about Doubles with Slight Pepper, the feature film he is developing within the Canadian system. Doubles With Slight Pepper is a feature expansion of Ian’s short film by the same name, which won Best Short Film at the Toronto Film Festival in 2011 and also won the 2012 Genie Award for Best Short Film from the Academy of Canadian Cinema and TV (Canadian Oscars). For the feature, Ian has teamed up with Producer Christina Piovesan (Amreeka, The Whistleblower). They are seeking funding from Telefilm Canada (TeleFilm is the more commercial, feature-film-oriented of the two Canadian national film agencies; the National Film Board has been a leader in funding animated films and also focuses on documentaries).

Telefilm historically organized its Production Program funds into distinct groups, one for French language films and one for English language films, as well as separating funds into lower- and higher- budget level categories. In a recent effort to streamline the process, Telefilm consolidated these into one major production program. (Micro-budget films will still fall into a separate category). While English-speaking Canadian films are generally overshadowed by American movies, Francophone Canada maintains a relatively high degree of prestige and audience support, with critical and financial success on the world stage. Telefilm’s current mission statement describes an increased focus on promoting Canadian content in both English and French, as well as aboriginal languages.

Telefilm-financed movies with Canadian producers but shot primarily outside of Canada have found great success of late -- notably Incendies (Jordan) and War Witch (Congo), both Oscar Nominees. About 20% of Doubles with Slight Pepper will be shot in Trinidad and Tobago, where Ian Harnarine’s parents are from.  (The short version was shot entirely on the island of Trinidad, and received a post-production grant from the Trinidad and Tobago Film Company, the national film agency).

While Canada has Co-Production treaties with over fifty countries, Trinidad and Tobago is not one of them. Still, the cross-cultural subject matter of Ian’s film – a young man’s dilemma over whether to reconnect with his terminally ill, estranged father – could bring an interesting dynamic to the English-language Canadian landscape if it finds funding at some level within the Canadian system.

Canada’s film industry presents government funding at federal, provincial, and state levels. Telefilm can offer up to 49% of eligible Canadian production costs as either an equity investment or a recoupable advance. If Telefilm comes on board for Doubles with Slight Pepper, Ian and his team plan to seek the rest from Ontario provincial funds and from private investment.

I’ve met with a number of first-time filmmakers from outside the U.S. who have chosen to make their films inexpensively and quickly in the U.S. rather than deal with the (sometimes slow) bureaucracies of their home countries’ film industries. With traction and momentum that Ian has going in Canada, and what will hopefully prove to be a smooth process with Telefilm Canada, shooting the feature of Doubles in his native Toronto could be a great homecoming.

Durban FilmMart 1: Pitfalls of Co-Production

I just returned from the Durban FilmMart Co-Production market, which featured a diverse slate of doc and narrative projects that are fostering collaboration between African countries and entities outside the continent. This is the first in a series of blogs about projects and issues related to co-productions in the South African industry. Durban FilmMart 1: Pitfalls of Co-Production

Michael Auret, Producer at South Africa’s Spier Films, delivered an excellent master class that catalogued in detail his last ten films done as co-productions. According to Auret, Co-Production (especially with European partners) is a very viable means of financing South African Films – nearly the only viable way at certain budget levels. South Africa’s Department of Trade and Industry offers a healthy tax incentive for qualifying national films or co-productions - a rebate of 35% for the first R6-million (about $662 000) spent, and 25% for the remainder of production expenditure in country. (Non-South-African films have a much higher budget threshold -- about 1.3 million -- to qualify for incentives).

Auret spoke to the Durban Talent Campus participants and shared his lessons, which are equally applicable to Co-Productions anywhere in the world. These lessons come from Auret’s experiences, especially cases in which he lost money because of problems described below.

Here are my takeaways from Auret’s presentation:

1. You must deliver your incentive. This is a no-brainer, but partners teaming up with you expect you to be able to successfully meet the requirements to get the agreed-upon tax rebate from your country. As the number of partners rise, the complications and distractions increase. Start with step one – make sure your production meets all incentive requirements and properly does all necessary reporting. If you fail to do that once, you likely won’t make another movie.

2. Be clear about deliverables. Industries in some countries tend to have more onerous requirements than others (according to Auret, films delivered in the U.S. and UK will require a mountain of legal paperwork relative to European films).

If you are the local production company for an international partner and you are handling the post deliverables, are you also responsible for delivering all the legal work for the international partner? Who is responsible for all releases, and do those releases meet the requirements of the partners in all countries? Who pays for versions of the film in different subtitle languages, etc.? Deliverables can be very expensive, and depending on the structure of a co-production agreement, often payment won’t come from a co-producer until you have met all deliverables.

3. Make sure everyone is on the conference call. If there are four countries involved, then the financial partners and producers/lawyers from all four countries need to be on the call. You don’t want a simple misunderstanding about the structure of an agreement to delay the deal or the film getting done.

4. Work with Co-Production partners that you like – or at least can share the red carpet with. Co-production is an intimate partnership, and whatever your level of involvement, you may be married to these people for several years.

Jeremy Bird, 2012 Obama National Field Director, Talks Grassroots Organizing and Film: Part 2

In our previous post we talked to Jeremy Bird, the former National Field Director of the Obama campaign in 2012, and discussed best practices from the Obama campaign that could help filmmakers distribute their films. In this post we will discuss our takeaways and conclusion from the interview. Takeaways

From our interview with Jeremy Bird, it is clear that filmmakers have 3 main disadvantages compared to political campaigns: 1) In film it is hard to access data and it is not clear what data sources will be most effective for targeting audiences, 2) You need experts that can interpret and use data to create models and 3) Models have to be customized to a specific campaign and this takes a lot of money and resources that independent filmmakers do not have.

However, Bird also recalled that when he first worked for the Obama campaign as the Field Director of South Carolina during the primary, they had to build their network and entire operation from scratch like many independent filmmakers when distributing their films. Bird went on to highlight 4 best practices from the campaign that filmmakers could adapt to distribute their movies.

1) Empowering volunteers by sharing access to more data and giving them real responsibility. Bird stressed that volunteers form the foundation of any true grassroots organization and need to be motivated through a sense of trust, responsibility and ownership. One of the major reasons the Obama campaign was able to effectively collect data and target persuadable voters was because organizers recruited an army of volunteers to call and knock on doors to figure out who in the universe were supporters. Without volunteers on the ground to collect information about voters, the data team would have had a far less accurate model of targeting persuadable voters.  This can only be done by giving real responsibility to volunteers and making them understand they are an integral part of the campaign.

2) Organizing consumer data to target potential supporters of a film. This can be the starting point for creating a data set of supporters for a specific film. For example, Bird mentioned the Obama campaign was able to look at consumer data and determine that someone who drove a Prius car is environmentally friendly and therefore a likely Obama supporter. The same type of modeling could be helpful for independent film, i.e. someone who liked the cult film Blue Velvet might also want to see another cult film like, Donnie Darko.  Examining consumer information further, someone who subscribes to Filmmaker Magazine or the Sundance Channel are avid indie movie goers and far more likely to want to see your independent film compared to the average consumer.

3) Creating multiple narratives about your film that market to both broad and niche audiences. The Obama campaign was very creative in forming many sub constituency groups like, Students for Obama, Latino’s for Obama and Veterans for Obama just to name a few. These constituency groups helped attract a diverse range of supporters by making them feel included. At the same time, the Obama campaign used messaging like “Change We Can Believe In” to appeal to a broad audience. In contrast, filmmakers often limit themselves by trying to decide if they should market their film as a story that appeals to the masses or only small niche audiences. The example of the Obama campaign suggests filmmakers might not have to chose and should market to both mainstream and specific groups. For example, filmmakers could cut multiple trailers of their film, one that appeals to the mainstream and other trailers that focus on certain themes that appeal to specific niche groups.

4) Using commit cards to motivate audiences to opt-in to watching your film at home. The Obama campaign increased the turnout of sporadic Democrats, people who have a poor record of voting; by asking them fill out commit cards that were eventually mailed back to their house to remind them they committed to voting. The same strategy could be used to motivate audiences to watch a film at their home. Filmmakers could create a sense of urgency around signing commit cards by sharing goals for number of VOD rentals, or hits on YouTube. For example, “commit to watching ‘Glory at Sea’ March 30th, and help us break our goal of 10,000 views.” Once someone signs an online commit card to watch a film on a certain date, it would then be sent back to them in an email to remind them of their commitment to see the film.

Conclusion

At the end of the interview, Jeremy Bird explained that with digital media the Obama campaign was trying to

“Create our own channel. When you have 20 million people on your email list, you’re no longer reliant on the establishment. We weren’t scared of things that were said about us in the bubble world because we had our own mechanism to distribute information.”

We have studied many independent filmmakers that have created their own distribution channels in order to overcome the established marketplace of Hollywood. However, many of these filmmakers are at a huge disadvantage from the start since there is no organization that can provides them with the necessary data, resources and knowledge they need to run an effective film campaign.

In contrast, political candidates can hire companies like 270 Strategies for consulting advice, and organizations like OFA and the DNC already have large voter databases and email lists they can tap in order to build their campaigns. This makes us wonder if a similar consulting firm like 270 Strategies or an umbrella hub like Organizing for Action, might be helpful for the film world.

However, how would the organization build its email lists and tap into data sources that independent filmmakers could use to grow and target their audiences? Would the organization consist of mostly of people in the film industry, or people from the non-profit and community organizing world? We plan to explore these questions in later posts.

-Michael, Josh and Carl

Jeremy Bird, 2012 Obama National Field Director, Talks Grassroots Organizing and Film: Part 1

Recently we interviewed Jeremy Bird to get his thoughts on grassroots organizing and how it can be related to film.  Jeremy Bird has become the ‘keeper of the flame’ when it comes to lessons learned from the Obama campaign. He studied under Marshall Ganz who was Obama's community organizing mentor and later worked as the Ohio General Election Director for Obama’s 2008 campaign, and served as the National Field Director for the campaign in 2012.  Jeremy recently co-founded a political consulting firm called 270 Strategies with former Obama Campaign Battleground States Director, Mitch Stewart.  270 Strategies helps clients connect with key constituencies and design innovative programs. Their current list of clients includes Cory Booker’s Senate campaign,  Ready for Hillary and Battleground Texas. Jeremy discussed the definition of grassroots and how organizing and targeting strategies from the Obama campaign could be adapted to help distribute film.

MG: What are the essential grassroots elements of the Obama campaign that you think can be translated to other industries like film. Is it going against an establishment, is it about empowering people, is it structure…What makes something a true grassroots operation?

Jeremy Bird: 1) Access to data and information.

That seems like something that just everybody does but people didn’t do that before. They would give access to their staff…but they wouldn’t give access to data and information down to the individual volunteer.

2) Real responsibility and goals at the local level.

Instead of saying here’s a packet call these people it’s, ‘let me talk to you about how we’re going to win your neighborhood and I want you to be a member of the team that’s going to do that.’ Now you’re going to do tactics, you’re going to do specific tasks but I’m going to think of you as someone who is responsible for this instead of someone who’s just going to do something because I tell you to.

3) The ability to scale and make your campaign accessible.

Ultimately what you’re trying to do is have people talking to people individually face to face as much as possible. You can’t do that if you’re centralizing the whole operation in D.C., Chicago or a different place.

4) A fundamental philosophy that volunteers can change the outcome.

I think the big difference starting in 2008 is that Plouffe and other people really believed that volunteers had the ability to change the outcome. So it all starts with that kind of philosophy and what you want to give people at the local level.

MG: In the film world there is a stunning lack of data about who is going to see what and how they are seeing it and that creates a problem immediately from a grassroots perspective. Have you ever had an experience where there is very little awareness about the candidate or issue and you’re starting from total scratch to see where they’re at? How do you handle a situation like that?

Jeremy Bird: When I first got to South Carolina no one knew who we were and no one knew how to pronounce our name so we did everything. We paid for TV ads, we did mail, we hired organizers on the ground to up our name idea, the full gamut of everything digital etc.

If you were trying to figure out who is most likely to go see an indie film for example as opposed to a Hollywood film, you want to figure out how big of a universe you need to talk to who tell you ‘yeah I like independent film’ and how can you build a model to say other people who look like them are likely to like independent film using a data set that you have on folks. You know we have it on voter file a lot of other people have it on consumer information.

But really, if somebody in Ohio had told us in 2010 that they supported Governor Strickland, that superceded any other piece of information we could ever get on them. It didn’t matter what car they drove, it didn’t matter where they lived, it didn’t matter what race they were…If they had told us in our worst year that they supported a Democratic candidate they were going to vote for Barack Obama.

The question is how do you actually ask people in some scalable way what movie they like to watch or what they like to eat or these things you want to know about them and then ask enough people that question that you can then build a model.

MG: A lot of filmmakers are stuck wondering if they should try to sell their film appealing to the broadest number of people possible like ‘this is a film that everyone can embrace’ or if they should try to target and isolate the audience that might like their film specifically. In your experience is it smarter to break up the audience and go after targeted constituencies or is it smarter to appeal to the broader elements of your candidate?

Jeremy Bird: Both. You have to have an overarching narrative that appeals to the largest audience possible, especially in a political campaign, then within that frame you figure out what are the things you really want to stress with specific constituencies…you want to have a broad narrative that ties it all together but then you want to highlight actually specific pieces for constituency to really speak to the issues that really matter to them. So I think it’s both.

MG: Have you ever had to do a campaign where people had to take action at home? That’s sort of a thing we have to deal with when it comes to people renting a movie on a certain day.

Jeremy Bird: That’s what we did for bad voting Democrats, sporadics. We called it commitment cards, or basically an ‘I’m in’ program. We would go to them and say, ‘do you commit to voting on Election Day?’ and have them fill out a card either online or in person saying ‘I will commit to vote.’ We wanted to know that they lived there still, that all the data was right but also that they were going to turn out.

The best was in Ohio we would send them back the card they actually filled out with their own handwriting reminding them that they committed to vote. In the states that did that in 2010, it upped turnout by like 4 to 7 points because people were reminded of something they previously committed to.

Part 2:

Our interview with Jeremy Bird gave us many key insights into how the Obama grassroots model could be utilized to distribute film. In our next post we will reflect more on what we learned from our conversation with Jeremy Bird, and present new ideas for how grassroots organizing methods can be used to empower audiences and improve targeting for film.

-Michael, Josh and Carl

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

ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS ABOUT TAX INCENTIVES

Tax incentives – do they work? The answer to that question depends not only on whom you ask, but also on how you define success.

For producers, tax incentives ‘work’ when they help get a film financed and made -- in a location that works creatively and logistically for the film.

For craft professionals, an incentive system that ‘works’ means just that – it helps them get work (and hopefully ‘good’ work in terms of both pay and creative satisfaction).

For a local or national economy, tax incentives can be deemed successful if they bring in more revenue than they pay out to attract that revenue – which can be highly contentious and surprisingly difficult to measure.

(Here is a good description – from outside the industry -- of how politically contentious that processes can be in the U.S.).

There are also the ancillary businesses that can accrue to an economy from the presence of the film industry. (New Zealand’s big budget gamble on tying the tourism industry into the Hobbit franchise is a high profile example, but regional film boards the world over deal with this on a smaller scale.)

For a community or society, tax incentives can serve the aim of fostering local talent and local creative voices. In countries with the means, this can be the most important desired result of an incentives system.

But not surprisingly, these goals aren’t always in alignment.

It’s likely that in most cases the attraction of big budget Hollywood/international productions support the technical betterment of local craft professionals.

But when it comes to supporting local creative voices, do such productions create a trickle-down effect? Or simply homogenize the art form and raise the cost of filmmaking to a level that crowds out independent producers working on projects with locally specific content?

I am particularly interested in the ways that this dynamic is playing out in emerging economies and emerging film industries. Next week I’ll be traveling to the Durban FilmMart in South Africa. South Africa is fertile terrain for these questions because it has an active national funder, an incentives structure at least partly geared towards attracting big money studio films, and a sometimes uncomfortable co-existence between government-funded local talent initiatives, big-budget international films, and local films made and distributed on shoestring budgets.

The Limits of Transparency

In his article on Indiewire, "Why Are People Frustrated with Film Financing? Maybe They Aren't Going After the Right Investors," Colin Brown, whose commentary we've posted about before, contends that a solution to the fractured economic state of independent film world may be the existence of investors who don't strictly have the bottom line in mind. However, the problem he raises, is that these higher-minded investors trade in their interest in the fiscal for their desire to be involved early in the process. This would not be a problem at all, in Brown's mind, except for the precious personal stakes that director, star, and producer have in keeping the process behind closed doors. It is largely perceived that it is better to conceal the making of the sausage. Transparency, as we've mentioned before, was a key hallmark of the Obama campaigns in 2008 and 2012. Campaign representatives were upfront and direct about specific goals and where money would go -- amongst field operations, in working with volunteers, and in video messages to the huge body of supporters. This was contrary to prior logic at the time as well.

Despite Colin Brown's concerns, transparency may be something that independent filmmakers could use to their advantage, as many of them transition to using a non-profit, donation-based, sometimes crowdfunded model of financing. Donors tend to have different expectations than investors anyway, and if communicated with properly and honestly, with respect, their growing enthusiasm can be mobilized down the road in many forms: to spread their support to their friends and family, to show up in large numbers as an audience, to volunteer to bring in more audience, and/or, of course, for further donations.

Also, the barriers to transparency that Brown names are largely oriented around the "big personalities" and motivations of a select few working on the film. This is akin to paralysis in operational finesse in a traditional political campaign, because everyone is worried about upsetting the big players. Independent films often have loftier, or higher minded ambitions than studio fare, and so the motivation for most people getting involved is bigger than strictly fiscal. If a grassroots mentality is instilled such that everyone understands that the particular concerns of a director, producer, or star are secondary to the Larger Cause of getting the film made, then transparency with the donor/audience base should not be an issue.

(Also, it's worth mentioning that most independent filmmakers aren't working with stars! And directors and producers, at a grassroots level of independent filmmaking, are just happy to get their film made!)

How to Set a Guinness World Record and Sell Your Film

Background and Context In this post we interviewed Clay Broga, one of the producers of the feature documentary Honor Flight, which set the Guinness World Record for the largest film screening. Premiering on August 14th, 2012 at Milwaukee’s baseball stadium, Miller Park, Honor Flight drew 28,422 attendees. The film tells the story of the Honor Flight program, which raises money so WWII veterans can fly to the nation’s capital for free to visit the WWII memorial. The storyline focuses on a group of Wisconsin veterans who are flown out to Washington, D.C. to see the WWII Memorial, which was constructed in 2004.

The Honor Flight Network is a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C. that has 117 hubs across in the U.S. They are primarily funded by individual donors, fraternal organizations like local the American Legion, and various corporations on a local level. Priority for Honor Flight trips is given to World War II veterans and other veterans who may be terminally ill.

The filmmakers started on the project independently by producing a YouTube clip of veterans from Wisconsin visiting the WWII memorial thanks to the Honor Flight program. When the filmmakers published the clip online on Veterans Day in 2009, it went viral, receiving over 30,000 hits on YouTube on its first day. The filmmakers later decided to turn the project into a feature-length documentary and the Stars and Stripes Honor Flight chapter, which is a Milwaukee based Honor Flight hub featured in the film, volunteered to act as a fiscal sponsor by raising a significant portion of the budget to help produce the film. The filmmakers and the Stars and Stripes Honor Flight chapter agreed to split the future revenue of the film, until the filmmakers recoup their production costs. At that point, the remaining revenue would go to SSHF.

Key Takeaways

There are three key takeaways that can be learned from the grassroots distribution experience of Honor Flight. 1) Working under the umbrella of an existing production company or agency gives filmmakers the significant personnel and outreach advantage, 2) Creating a sense of urgency gives a film’s distribution process the constant momentum of a campaign and 3) For films that appeal to a specialized audience, trying to squeeze into the traditional distribution process and pipeline for independent film may not pay off, both in audience reach and in financial returns.

1) After the first video clip about Honor Flight went viral, producer Clay Broga and director Dan Hayes started their own company, Freethink Media, to produce similar videos for issue advocacy organizations. Through this company, they were able to get other work such that they had an operation already in place when they went into the making of the feature, Honor Flight. This umbrella organization expanded their ability not only to raise money for the film, but, with a personnel beyond just the filmmakers, Freethink Media was able to do outreach and establish the media contacts necessary to help distribute the film after it was produced.

A common theme in our research is that filmmakers often have to build their own workforce and contacts from scratch every time they produce a film. But for Clay and Dan, Freethink is “kind of like a production company creative house,” so “by the time the film was done we had already built a full-time team and we had started to build more of a marketing capability as well.”

2) The marketing team at Freethink Media worked with the SSHF chapter in Wisconsin and the National Honor Flight Network to build a sense of urgency around the release of the film. The filmmakers released the trailer before Memorial Day, using it as a deadline to ask supporters to help the trailer reach a certain number of views on YouTube. Clay reflects,

“[We] made the language, ‘Help us get 50,000 views in honor of these veterans for Memorial Day. Showing that you care, send this on to 5 friends and family.’ And we posted it through Facebook Causes… And that worked beyond our wildest dreams. Within a few weeks we had 4.5 million views, and it was all earned and organic through Facebook.”

In addition, as a result of the trailer going viral, Freethink Media received $13,000 in unsolicited donations through Facebook Causes.

The team then created a sense of urgency to help build for the premiere of the film by announcing the goal of setting the Guinness World Record for the largest film screening at Miller Park. Freethink Media combined its network of online supporters and media contacts with the network of Honor Flight chapters to advertise for the screening. In addition, the local radio host Charlie Sykes of AM 620 WTMJ in Milwaukee, who is a partner of SSHF and is featured in the film, played a significant role by persistently promoting the event on his show. Ultimately, the cause inspired 28,442 people to attend, surpassing the previous Guinness World Record for the largest film screening by more than 1,000 attendees. The team decided to hold back on selling DVD’s at the screening since they did not want to limit their options for a theatrical and DVD retail deal and also a possible Academy Award run.

3) However, since Honor Flight had a built in-group of supporters through the Honor Flight Network, and such successful online word of mouth already, a non-conventional publicity campaign from the start might have been more profitable and effective for reaching their target audience. In addition, the choice to go for an Academy Award run meant 1) that the filmmakers had to pay for a PR firm to maximize their exposure and increase their chances, and 2) that they had to hold off on selling DVD’s until after a theatrical run (per Academy rules). Therefore, a traditional theatrical run, though it was brief, ended up costing P & A dollars as well as potential DVD units sold.

Still, it is also important to note that when the filmmakers realized the conventional distribution model did not fit their film they capitalized on the broad attention they had received by taking the film to communities across the country – an example of nimble, non-traditional thinking when it comes to self-distribution. Clay explains, “Basically our approach was to do big blowout events (like mini versions of the premiere) that we’d attract a large grassroots audience to, and try to make the events really special with big name people, speeches and bands and WWII vets from the film at screenings, etc…”

Through hosting unorthodox theatrical and community screenings, the Honor Flight team successfully held a high profile screening at the US Capital with 500 attendees, a 1,000 person screening at the Byrd in Richmond and a 1500-person screening at DAR Constitution Hall. For this national initiative, the Honor Flight team decided to mix their own screening tour while simultaneously partnering with the website Tugg.com. The Marketing Director for the film, Jo Jensen, explains how members from Honor Flight hubs and other supporters would request screenings through the Tugg.com website:

“Once they selected a date for the screening, Tugg talked to the national movie chains that they were affiliated with --- about 75% of all movie theaters --- to locate a venue. And then the screening had to meet an attendance threshold, usually about 70 people. The organization that hosted the screening received 5% of the proceeds and had the opportunity to raise funds for their cause. So we routinely raised $600-$1,200 for an Honor Flight chapter through these Tugg screenings.”

Tugg was helpful in offering the filmmakers the tech and online platform needed to successfully book a theatrical screening of the film. However, other times if the Honor Flight team wanted a bigger venue than a normal theater they found it more effective to host the screenings themselves along with other partners. Furthermore, the theater screenings set up through Tugg were effective in raising funds towards the cause, but not in generating revenue for the filmmakers. Tugg is premised on local theaters and organizations hosting (and benefiting from) the screenings – in addition to Tugg itself. So between the filmmakers, the hosting organization, the theaters, as well as the Honor Flight chapters that received proceeds, the revenue was split across so many partners that the profit left for the filmmakers proper was limited.

Conclusion

In the age of digital media and the web, there are so many tools for filmmakers to distribute their films it can be difficult to choose, and it is always tempting to go the conventional route. Clay points out,

“When we made some of those early decisions (like not selling DVDs at the premiere) it was because we were still considering more traditional options, conventional theatrical for instance, and wanted to leave the door open. But as we progressed we realized those weren’t good options for us and went the more unconventional route.”

For example, any criticism about not selling DVD’s at the premiere should come with a large caveat, because very recently, in another example of savvy marketing around an urgent initiative, the filmmakers were able to leverage their considerable body of fans such that the film debuted as the best-selling documentary on Amazon and the top rated film of all DVDs (measured by customer reviews).

In our study, we have seen films like Four Eyed Monsters and Honor Flight find their own audience through improvising and essentially creating their own distribution mode. However, we wonder if there might be a way to offer filmmakers a toolbox to help them chose the best grassroots distribution model for their specific film. This is one goal we hope to work towards and share with filmmakers at the end of this study.

-Michael, Josh and Carl