I went to Columbia University. Yesterday.
This weekend held the pleasure of attending a summit about the future of film very aptly named THE CONVERSATION hosted by Columbia University as a first ever collaboration between the Art and Business schools. A hearty thanks to my “Distribution Strategist” and true jedi in the dark arts of independent film Peter Broderick for inviting me.
The population was a heady blend of mostly filmmakers, with press and distributors of every variety sprinkled in. I really dig that it wasn’t a film market of any kind, there was no selling, no stacks of marketing materials littering the scene or even the faintest discussion of art/talent/quality. This was about education and networking plain and simple.
It would be tough to cover each speaker, discussion, and workshop but some overwhelming truths emerged which I’ll attempt to distill here:
What I Learned at The Conversation (Abridged)
This quote was made early by Ira Deutchman and pretty much sums it up: “The film business has never been a business, it has always been a hobby.” In his opening remarks he also quoted filmmaker Eric Mendelsohn who said “making a truly independent film is a bit arrogant…it’s like saying I want to fly a rocket ship to the moon but I want to do it without NASA.”
With the technology to tell stories more available than ever before there is a glut of content making it that much harder to stand out from the crowd. It’s often been said that if you have something great then it will get attention. New wisdom says that’s bullshit. Quality content is a MUST, but it is not enough to overcome such great odds without a strategy. Modern filmmakers must be willing to work for their film long after the cut has been locked.
I learned that there is no “one way” to go about finding an audience for your film. The evolution of media in the modern landscape makes this a really exciting time to be a storyteller, but that much more challenging because we are in uncharted territory. Between the internet, social networking and a proliferation of screens in every corner of our world. We are forced to be pioneers of this industry, prioritizing what we want to get back from our work and planing accordingly. Most important: What is success to you?
FaceTweet 3.0
The internet is here to stay and changing everything. The most powerful tool the filmmaker has is the web. Facebook is getting more robust and changing the way we network and will even be evolving with FourSquare-esk abilities. Twitters and Blogs and RSS feeds generate attention and we must all find a way to make them work for us. Web video is finally delivering on the promise of presentation with less compromise. (See my article about I’m Here for a great example) The best is yet to come, and it makes sense that what’s next will come from us the creators. So we better get crackin’.
Give It Away Now
A paraphrased quote from Nina Paley (who made the utterly incredible Sita Sings the Blues which is available free worldwide.) “Luck is about being in the right place at the right time. So to do that, you should be in a lot of places a lot of the time.” Nina was a standout at The Conversation for her semi-militant stance on giving her work away and seeming genuinely thrilled with the results. Nina also recommended I read The Gift: Creativity and The Artist in The Modern World by Lewis Hyde.
Distribution is now the wild west. A part of me finds that kinda badass. And a bit more emboldened to make my own way. I have a thousand books on my shelf about the industry that need to be tossed in the trash. Growing up and worshipping film through the 80′s and especially the 90′s, my heroes in the art of great storytelling are useless examples of how to “make it” in this business today. In many ways that’s liberating.
Going to SXSW this year turned out to be a perfect primer for a lot of the discussions, especially when it came to case studies about other films and the path they carved out for themselves. That said, I found every single panel and discussion at The Conversation to be more thoughtful and better moderated than anything I attended at SXSW. Watch your back Austin, breakfast burritos and great bars will only get you so far.
As part of a lunch discussion group with the editors of IndieWire and Filmmaker Magazine we discussed branding. How the story can help (or even hurt) the goal of gaining traction for your project in the media. This was easily the most difficult to digest because no two projects are alike. Scott Macaulay and Ian Hernandez were very forthright about what got their attention in hindsight, but the chicken and the egg issue remains, what would get your attention for my work now? The only obvious takeaway was great films with great stories in and around them are bound to get the most attention.
DVD is not yet dead and is actually still doing most of the heavy earning . This will not last of course as the digital and video-on-demand services are starting to reshape the landscape. But we are likely years away from the true turning point where digital sales of some kind outweigh the money earned from DVD sales. Soon the very idea of a Digital Video Disc will be quaint, but we’re not there yet.
The Festival Game
“Premiere-itis” is defined loosely as the practice of holding out on one festival for a larger one in regards to your world premiere. It’s always been transparent that the top film festivals in the world have very real premiere requirements regarding the films they program. If your aim is maximizing the exposure of your film big out of the gate with attention, press and reviews from the industry all at once, than waiting for a big festival is just a painful part of the game. (Full guilty disclosure: Hello Lonesome was accepted to the fabulous Slamdance Film Festival in Park City this January ’10 but ultimately decided to hold out for a larger festival. Please know I love you Slamdance.) This gets less tricky as time marches on, at one point filmmakers must decide when to accept an invitation from (or start submitting to) the most established festival that will have them regardless if it’s name starts with Sundance, Cannes, Toronto, Venice, SXSW, Tribeca, or Berlin. The fact remains that there are many amazing festivals around the world where audiences and the industry discover work all the time. Great films will have a long life and the festival circuit is just one tool in finding an audience.
The First Rule of Book Club.
There are some cool books I will now be downloading and reading, maybe you should too. Fans, Friends, and Followers by Scott Kirsner. Think Outside The Box Office by Jon Reiss. And a modern business book The Long Tail by Chris Anderson.
Stop Reading Here
And lastly, for only the most invested, video below of Peter Broderick discussing the new world of “Hybrid Distribution” which is his fancy lawyer-speak for filmmakers not selling all rights to one distributor, but making deals with multiple distribution partners for the largest possible audience, or monetary gain, whatever your bag may be.
Tags: Adam Reid, Columbia University, convoNYC, DVD, fIlm distribution, Hello Lonesome, Ira Deutchman, Nina Paley, Peter Broderick, SXSW, the conversation
You were born to be doing what you’re doing. Keep on doing. Lisa would be beaming.
I ordinarily do not publish in Blogs but your weblog forced me to, awesome do the job.. beautiful