Interesting New York Times article about how Bottle Shock Director Randall Miller is releasing the film himself, together with his wife and co-writer Jody Savin.

Along with the expenses incurred if you go it alone there are other caveats to bear in mind:

“You‘ve got to have the phone numbers,” said Tom Bernard, the longtime co-president of Sony Pictures Classics. “Self-distribution is good, it can work, but filmmakers who are so innovative in making movies have to channel some of that into learning how the marketplace works.” He said major pitfalls were “carpetbaggers” and “middlemen” who may agree to represent a movie at a place like Sundance, but gravitate to the easy sale and leave their less fortunate filmmakers high and dry.

We’re doing a bit of a catch-up on things that have been happening in the blogosphere over the past few weeks and wanted to draw your attention to this piece by Noah Harlan on the Filmmaker Magazine blog - written after he returned from the Sundance Producer’s Lab. In it he addresses online, ad-supported business models and comes to the conclusion that “In an ad-based model you would need a minimum of at least 800,000 viewers and possibly as many as 3.3 million just to break even.” Give it a read and make sure to read the comments - there are interesting thoughts from people like Jan Rofekamp (FilmsTransit), Doug Block (D-Word) and Scott Kirsner (CinemaTech).

HD EXPO is coming to NYC (September 22-25) after seven successful years establishing itself as the premier trade show, education, and community event for the content creation industry. Registration for the EXPO is FREE in advance and includes all panels, exhibit hall and Intensive Workshops which sounds like a very good deal to us indeed! Workshops include Sony, Panasonic and Adobe equipment and software and there will be panels on subjects like The Art of Editing in the 21st Century: Creativity and Technology - plus lots of exhibitors to check out.

You can stream panels and workshops from past expos on their website too.

We blogged earlier about Laure Parson’s excellent new blog on digital distribution. She has recently relaunched the site with even more resources for filmmakers including a list of online markets and a discussion board. The latest interviews on the blog include Doug Block, Sujewa Ekanayake, Caachi, IndiePix and Shooting People’s Ingrid Kopp. This is a great resource for folk trying to get a handle on all the latest distribution options. If you find this helpful be sure to check out Lance Weiler’s Workbook Project too.

From the Tribeca Film Institute’s website:

The Tribeca Film Institute asked Intelligent Television to launch an examination of the current economics of independent film and video distribution in the United States to help producers, distributors, and funders better understand current realities and trends in the film and video distribution market.  This study, supported in part by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, is intended to be of mainstream value—documentary films and education film and television remain popular, and education ranks high among the subjects American viewers watch online, tied in popularity with music, after news and comedy. “The Economics of Film and Video Distribution in the Digital Age” (PDF Download) thus investigates current financing models for independent educational media, the revenue that such film and video productions have realized from sales and licensing, and the potential for alternative models of video and film distribution in the digital age.

Scott Kirsner has a useful post on CinemaTech entitled How To Get Your Film on iTunes (… It’s Not Easy) - which explains how you have to go via an aggregator first. Kirsner says Amazon’s CreateSpace is the best alternative option if you just want to do it yourself (films can then be sold via Amazon Unbox, a digital download service) but “you’ll have to drive customers to your work — unlike iTunes, where the customers are already buying movies in big numbers.”

Moviestorm has launched some free software that allows you to make simple animated films, quickly and easily. This is obviously great for first-timers but perhaps it could also be useful for more experienced filmmakers who want to test out ideas quickly? The basic package is totally free so give it a try and see what you think. Thanks to SXSW News Reel for the info!

Gee Whiz kids, sorry about our long blogging silence. The writers all buggered off on holiday and left nobody in charge. Fools!

Anyway, our last post was about DIY Days in LA and now you lucky West Coasters get to do it all again in San Francisco tomorrow (Sunday, August 17th). So if you’re in the Bay Area get yourselves to 111 Minna Gallery tomorrow. Registration starts at 10am and as before there are lots of great folk involved and I’m sure it will be super-useful if you’re trying to figure out what’s going on with film production and distribution in this digital age. And what we can all do to make sure that it works better for independent filmmakers in the future! All the info is at diydays.com

Hey Folks

Current TV, From Here to Awesome and the Workbook Project are doing a FREE event on July 26th in Los Angeles that you should attend if you’re in town.

DIY DAYS
How do we sustain ourselves as filmmakers and storytellers in this day of shifting film distribution systems? How do we monetize our film and get the word out? Presented by From Here to Awesome the Workbook Project and Current TV - DIY DAYS aims to answer these questions with a day of panels, roundtable discussions and workshops: A look at how to fund, create, distribute and sustain.

Proposed Discussion Topics
- New Forms of Storytelling
- New models of Finance, Production and Distribution
- Audience Building & The Audience Becoming Collaborators
- War Stories: “What’s The Real Deal?”
- Self-Sustaining: what to know when trying to make a living from your art
- Case Studies (Arin Crumley, Lance Weiler, M dot Strange and others discuss the making and
distribution of their work)

Open Discussion Topics
- What are you working on? What are you looking for?
- How do you consume your media?
- What needs to change in order for you to sustain?

We’ve lined up a diverse group of speakers from all sides of the industry.

Speaker List
Robert Greenwald - Outfoxed, Wallmart the High Cost of Low Price, Iraq for Sale
Tommy Pallotta - producer of A Scanner Darkly and Waking Life
Mark Pellington - director of Henry Poole is Here, Arlington Road and Mothman Prophecies
Marshall Herskovitz - Blood Diamond, Quarterlife
Lance Weiler - The Last Broadcast, Head Trauma
Arin Crumley - Four Eyed Monsters
M dot Strange - We Are the Strange
Ondi Timoner - DiG, Join US, We Live in Public
Saskia Wilson-Brown - Current TV
Micki Krimmel - expert in social media and online community
Jon Reiss - Bomb It
Alex Johnson - digital media strategist / filmmaker
Christy Dena - cross-media strategist and designer
Matt Hanson - filmmaker and founder of A Swarm of Angels
Timo Vuorensola - director of Space Wreck and co-founder of wreckamovie.com

More info at diydays.com

John August, director of The Nines and also a screenwriter with a great blog, has written a really candid, useful post, partly in response to Mark Gill’s comments, about what he learned about distribution after his experiences with The Nines. Read his take on indiefreude and why acceptance to Sundance does not mean that you’ve made it and there’s money in the bank. He also makes the important point that there is much success to be found in Gill’s 99.9% failure rate for indie films:

We need to ask, “Failure for whom?” Even a movie that doesn’t earn its budget back will likely make money for its distributors, once you factor in video and TV sales. More crucially, a good indie film generates future work for its stars and filmmakers. So there’s a lot of success to be found in that 99.9% failure.

He finishes with this:

My advice? You should make an indie film to make a film. Period. Artistic and commercial success don’t correlate well, and at the moment, only the former is remotely within your control.

If I had to do it all over again, I would have made the same movie but completely rethought how it went out into the world. I would have challenged a lot of the standard operating procedures, which seem to be part of an indie world that no longer exists. The Nines would have likely made just as little at the box office, but could have made a bigger impact on a bigger audience. Ultimately, I think that’s how you need to measure the success of an indie film’s release: how many people saw it.