(Note: You probably wouldn't think a setting of a comic strip could survive in a Soviet prison camp. But as Ms. Bombeck so kindly points out, comedy and tragedy are close relatives. So, for those of you who missed the latest installment of the UNDER JAKOB'S LADDER comic strip -- #4 to be exact -- please join Jakob, Yasha, and the prisoners... Click here to view the comic strip.)This entry was originally published at Hope For Film
Guest post by Sheri Candler.
Yesterday we ran part one highlighting the problem. Today, Sheri points to how distributors will benefit financially from the new model.
It may be that while you are in audience building mode, you will be spending more than making to develop a truly exceptional experience for your community. If you start this now before your entire business collapses, you will fare better.
-Create an online experience that makes the lives of your community better, easier, richer and be the number 1 site they visit for news, information, resources and community tailored to what interests them.
-Fill the vacuum of the lack of curation. People are confused by where to find things they like and overwhelmed by the choice. In a sea of content, be their favored destination. In this way, you can take on the likes of Netflix, a company that offers a huge range that makes finding content specific to personal interests nearly impossible because they don’t intimately know who their customers are. You will know this.
-Lock in the community by maintaining a dialog that will turn their initial attention into a revenue stream for your brand. A subscription model is what you should aspire to, but you cannot rush to that without first showing what you have to offer and reeling them in. First offer the ability to sample, share and then buy.
-Innovate in the online experiences you build to keep the community engaged and interested in making the circle bigger for you and for them. Incentivize those who are the most active at enlarging the community. Take the money you would have spent on outside marketers and use it to think of interesting incentives for your tribe.
I fear the problem for all of you will be waiting to see if another business model becomes successful before you decide to reinvent your own. This is extremely detrimental because waiting only results in being that much further behind. The first ones to embrace a new model win. It is why Netflix beat out Blockbuster. By the time Blockbuster conceded the model Netflix forged was legitimate, they could never catch up. Entrenched companies usually misjudge the speed with which change happens. Now is the time.
Sheri Candler is an inbound marketing strategist who helps independent filmmakers build identities for themselves and their films. Through the use of online tools such as social networking, podcasts, blogs, online media publications and radio, she assists filmmakers in building an engaged and robust online community for their work that can be used to monetize effectively.
She can be found online at www.shericandler.com, on Twitter @shericandler and on Facebook at Sheri Candler Marketing and Publicity.
What was your filmmaking background before making Half a Person?
What was the writing process like?
How did you fund the film?
You wore a lot of hats on the production -- what's the upside and the downside to doing that?
What was the smartest thing you did during production? The dumbest?
And, finally, what did you learn from making the film that you can take to other projects?This entry was originally published at Hope For Film
Guest post by Sheri Candler.
In this second post, I want to focus on how to rehabilitate the film distribution entities so that they may continue to exist. I know what you are thinking “What’s she on about? We’re fine. We survived the latest shake out and are all the stronger for having less competition.” I am here to tell you that is fallacy. The old ways of bringing films to market are fading fast and it is time to reinvent your business. I want to acknowledge my gurus Gerd Leonhard, Seth Godin and Clay Shirky (though he is more my go to guy on all things having to do with immersive storytelling and audience collaboration) for being a constant source of inspiration for me in looking toward the future of media.
When Ted announced on his Facebook page that he would take part in a panel discussion at the upcoming Woodstock Film Festival concerning the new distribution paradigms, I had to look at who would be involved in this discussion. What people and companies would be taking part who are practicing radically changed business models for film distribution? It was as I thought; none. I posted a link on his page (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100326/1452138737.shtml) asking all involved in the discussion to read it and then talk about how they see the new paradigms. I don’t know if anyone did, but I did get a response from Dylan Marchetti from Variance Films explaining to me how his company functions to actively engage audiences for films they’ve booked in the theater. It was a lengthy exchange that resulted in my writing this post. I don’t think he read the article before he spoke because the point of that piece was to inform on how businesses need to form ecosystems around their companies, not continue only to sell copies of the content they distribute. Distribution companies should not be focused on selling copies, either for viewing or for owning. They should be selling access, creating networks of devoted fans around their brand and developing customized experiences instead. In other words, selling things that cannot be copied. This means they must first gather and cultivate a community of engaged followers and then develop, acquire, produce, and source material with only these people in mind.
Of the companies taking part in the Woodstock panel, I would say only Cinetic with their Film Buff organization has started with the potential to do this, but rather than building an engagement platform, they have merely built another online distribution portal (like so many others in existence that consumers have never heard of) to put copies out on the internet. Actually you can’t see any of the films on the site, it just directs you to their existence on VOD channels. Their “community” engagement is only a call for an email address so that they may send marketing messages. What is communal about that? What connection would a consumer have to the company itself besides advertising? None. Cinetic has no idea who these people are, what drives them, motivates them, interests them. It is not fair to pick only on Cinetic, I can’t think of a single distributor currently connecting directly with audience who can answer those questions. Troma comes to mind as a distributor with a very clear brand identity but even they are not directly in dialog with their audience. All current distributors are far too dependent on push marketing, usually hired from outside the company, and sourcing films purely on guesses based on audience reactions at festivals , favorable press or from hottest trends in market research. Every investment prospectus will tell you future earnings are not indicative of past performance, so why is that how decisions are continually being made?
What would I suggest for these companies? First, a total rethink of what business they’re in. Distribution of goods is no longer needed from you. You should not think of yourselves in the film distribution business because distribution has become easy to access by anyone online. (I know Dylan, you’re not online, but art house theater days are numbered too). Attention getting is now your main role. But from whom? If you don’t have a following as a company, a deep relationship with a community, how will you get attention and keep it? By building a tribe around the people in your company and, in turn, the company brand itself. This starts by identifying what kind of group you appeal to or want to appeal to, actively seeking them out and forging those deep connections. At first, this will mean attracting people through outside means, appealing through media and various outside groups to introduce yourself. Eventually the effort to enlarge the circle will be done by the community members, but until you have one, you must do that work.
Often, in a rush to monetize, companies jump right over the relationship building. The dismal failure of paywalls in newspaper circles only serves to prove my point. They did not build up an engaged community first, and then ask for payment. They falsely thought that their paper subscribers would be willing to continue the previous paid relationship even after it was possible to get most of the news stories from aggregators for free online. There is a great video from Jeff Jarvis explaining the new business models for newpapers here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jsb9NfJmqPY&) and lots can be gleaned from it for all corporate endeavors.
The reinvention
“The future leaders in business will be connectors, not directors”-Gerd Leonhard
The new model will be to build and foster a community around the brand as a company and to be in the entertainment fulfillment business. This community will have interests that the company can fulfill and that is the company’s ONLY function. To try and serve a well balanced diet of wide ranging content is to spread too thin and attract no one. Mass is not your target.
You will be a resource to your community not only in entertainment but in anything that interests them. This means you MUST know what “that” is. Is it books, is it music, events, clothes, games, causes, other similar tribes? These will be your other revenue sources as you create a network of interconnection with other companies who have their own niches, their own tribes. Also, consider enabling community members to profit in what you have sourced, to be affiliates and to create networks of their own. The network will feed each other spreading the brand even further.
A key part of your site will be to connect your community to each other. Some companies have sites where they connect to the user, but they don’t allow for intraconnection and some networking platforms are merely housed on a company website but members are never engaged by the company, merely left to use the tools as they see fit. Listening and collaboration will be cornerstones for this model to work. This isn’t work to be left to interns, by the way, but by those in power within the company.
You will also partner with other tribes of like minded individuals. Through these interactions, you tribe influence grows. There is no need for shouting out messages, gaining favorable PR placement, buying media for attention or forcing members to spread the word. If you are fulfilling their needs admirably, they will do it. You will however, generously reward those members in your community who do enlarge your circle. Instead of paying large amounts of money to outside companies to get “buzz” and “traffic,” you will invest that money in building experiences tailor made for your community. Development of experiences can only be done from active participation in the community and collaboration with them.
This model is far simpler to run as you won’t be going for masses, you will only cultivate your community. It will be labor intensive work, but not prohibitively expensive. You will need to develop tools so that the tribe members can speak to each other and so that they can spread the word to their friends easily. You should be facilitating sharability at all times, not closing it off and being insular.
The filmmaker/artist whose content you will source (not acquire as creators will have an equal partnership in your tribe) will be encouraged to participate with the community. In fact, if they will not, then their work is not very attractive to your community. Engagement at all times is key, this is no place for egos.
Tomorrow: How To Make Money With The New Model!
Sheri Candler is an inbound marketing strategist who helps independent filmmakers build identities for themselves and their films. Through the use of online tools such as social networking, podcasts, blogs, online media publications and radio, she assists filmmakers in building an engaged and robust online community for their work that can be used to monetize effectively.
She can be found online at www.shericandler.com, on Twitter @shericandler and on Facebook at Sheri Candler Marketing and Publicity.
Well, folks...This entry was originally published at Hope For Film
Guest post by Jeffrey Ballagh, lead strategist for Novacut (Note from Ted: I have not used Novacut, but heard what they were aiming for and asked Jeffrey to explain it to all of you.)
The future of distribution and funding for independent film relies on the Internet. The technology to forge a new business model for independent film success is out there, but it needs nerd champions to build a venue where artist-to-audience commerce can thrive. To thrive, that venue must be the condensation point for the independent filmmaking community. For that to be possible, that venue needs a strategy for reaching critical mass and a damn good draw for filmmakers’ attention. This is what we know, and this is Novacut.
The spark? A pro-grade video editor that’s free and designed from the ground up to exploit recent advances in technology and community – to name a few: digital production, HDSLR cameras, online collaboration, and cloud computing. We think that should get the attention of a few filmmakers.
The Landscape
Fundamental change has shifted every aspect of the filmmaking business: production, distribution, and most importantly how filmmakers can expect to make money from their craft. The new landscape is one of phenomenal opportunity fraught with incredible peril. Production costs continue to drop with advances in digital production, but more importantly, the old business model has evaporated with online distribution. Filmmakers now have an unprecedented opportunity to express their artistic visions and reach audiences directly. But online distribution also means there is no way to effectively stop a film from being available to everyone for free.
Where We Stand
With no way to prevent a product from being used for free, how can it be paid for? Economics has a few standard answers and there are compelling alternatives, but the dust has yet to settle and the market has yet to reach its final shape (author’s background: 1/2 nerd + 1/2 economist). The traditional answers to the free rider problem are patronage or government subsidies. These are not the only answers. No one yet knows the best approach for fans and artists to meet in the marketplace and both get what they want, but it is only the mechanics of the market that must be sorted out.
To an inspiring degree, fans are showing they are ready and willing to directly support artists. Current examples are in their absolute infancy. Film/video projects on Kickstarter have raised nearly $4 million since the site first appeared. That’s not a huge budget, but it has been accomplished with a new funding model on a site that has only existed for 1.5 years.
Promising alternatives include financing through complimentary business and a unique threshold pledge system. For complimentary business, think of monks making wine to support the monastery. Fortunately for film, there are options for supporting business related to the art, merchandising for example. The threshold pledge approach is a unique option for goods that can be freely copied. Also known as ransom publishing, distribution is withheld until a specified amount of money is raised. Nobody has access until the bills are paid, once they are, it’s free for all.
What’s Ahead
The aim is not to supplant traditional distribution. The aim is to be the single best destination for alternative distribution. A venue that artists can make their primary target or a next best alternative for projects not finding their place in mainstream channels. The distribution venue that rises to the top in this space must attract both the artists and audience needed to reach critical mass. Most importantly, it needs a path to reach that critical mass and way to draw filmmakers. Simply having a technically capable solution will not make a site the destination that everyone naturally turns to.
To be the primary venue for distribution outside the traditional market, we must be a venue full of great content and a venue where artists make money. To ensure great content means engaging artists with a unique draw, initially that is the editor. From there, we fan the fire with learning and collaboration resources to make a home for the leading community of independent filmmakers. Finally, that community takes its work to market on a platform for successful commerce. A platform that can accommodate any new funding approach, so the market can quickly help decide what works and what does not.
The New Ground Rules
On licensing, if anyone can get your film for free, the only sensible licensing scheme is to distribute with no restrictions on copying and reuse. I realize this rubs some people the wrong way (it used to rub me the wrong way), but in the new era, attempting to enforce all-rights-reserved copyright is a business disadvantage for anyone without a team of lawyers. With no feasible technical approach to stop reproduction and sharing, the only option is to attack legally. That takes lawyers and they are not cheap. Which approach is cost efficient – a market with profits that depend on copyright enforcement via legal channels or the venue that makes money despite unrestricted distribution? If you want to understand the future for copyright licensing, Lawrence Lessig is required reading. He lays it out far better than I ever could, plus his work is of the rare sort that is equally genius, entertaining, and inspiring. Specifically, hit up Remix and Free Culture – pretty sure a couple chapters will convince most anyone. You can buy the books or (Lessig puts his money where is mouth is) download them legally for free here and here.
There are other sites that aim to build the market that makes online distribution financially successful for independent film, but technology and intentions are not enough in vying for Internet prominence. Novacut stands alone with a singular path for achieving a viable marketplace and a powerful draw for getting the process started.
Jeffrey Ballagh is a developer, economist, and lead strategist for Novacut. Seeing powerful forces reshape the world of film and video, he and the Novacut team gathered to put their entire energies toward the goal of building a new infrastructure for independent film and video commerce. Novacut Kickstarter / Novacut Blog
This entry was originally published at Hope For Film
Sunday September 19th, as part of Independent Film Week, the IFP invited me to a “Cage Match” with Jeff Lipsky on Indie Film’s relationship with youth culture. The discussion was spurred on by a post of mine “Can Truly Free Film Appeal To Youth Culture “, and the robust discussion everyone had in our comments section to that post, and then still further by discussions on Filmmaker Mag Blog and Anthony Kaufman’s column. It was a good discussion before IFP even proposed the CageMatch, but I appreciated the opportunity to give it more thought.
You might have missed it but it’s been summed up pretty well by Robert McLellan on GlobalShift.org (thanks to Shari Candler for tipping me to that), Ingrid Koop on the FilmmakerMag Blog, and Eugene Hernandez at Indiewire (although I don’t agree, or believe I said, that Indie Film is aimed at white women over the age of 45 — although they are the dominant audience — but that we have to prevent Indie Film from being the province of the privileged, old, and white (i.e. me!)). Jeff and I could have blabbed for hours. I have plenty more to say on the issue.
As both a community and an industry, it is critical we look at both the creative, infrastructure, and societal factors for answers of why we have so failed to develop the alternative and youth sectors. Every other cultural form has a robust young adult sector that is defined both by it’s innovation and opposition — yet in film that is the exception and not the rule.
To me the issue comes down to the fact that unless Indie Film appeals to the under 30’s, Indie Film will continue to marginalize itself into the realm of elitist culture like Chamber Orchestras and Ballet. Indie Film as a form is already problematic in the way it self-censors and regurgitates last year’s success stories; it needs to be reinvented from within. We need to encourage and reward rebellion — plus it’s fun, and makes great cinema.
There is often the tendency to essentially blame the audience, but I am believer that American audiences are like the March Hare and “like what they get” (in a future post, I will attempt to demonstrate why blaming the audience is lazy finger pointing). The issue is not the consumption and appreciation patterns, but the lack of leadership to push for something unique from our creative communities.
What is it that Alternative Youth Culture wants from Indie Film Culture but can’t find on the menu? Granted, as someone pushing 50 I may not be qualified to answer (and I hope some people more of the age of which I speak raise their voices), but I think the answers are numerous (I have sixteen off the top of my head — and I am sure you can add more). They feel to me to be relatively timeless, as true to me back at age 20 as they are now to the folks that intern with me. They deal with both content, context,
I look forward to your suggestions as to how to expand this list. In the days ahead I hope to find the time to: a) consider the problems with the current infrastructure in supporting an Indie Film Youth Culture; b) why it is a fault of leadership and NOT the audience that we don’t have an Indie Film Youth Culture; and c) what has worked, why things that didn’t work before could work today, and what has never been in terms of Indie Film Youth Culture. But then again, I have a movie or two to make and get out there.
What was your filmmaking background before making Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead?.jpg)
Where did the idea come from? What was the writing process like?.jpg)
What sort of camera did you use for production and what were the best and worst things about it?.jpg)
What was the smartest thing you did during production? The dumbest?This entry was originally published at Hope For Film
Guest post by Orly Ravid of TheFilmCollaborative.org
Our friend and beloved social network marketing guru Sheri Candler posed a question to me today. She noted that filmmakers are often confused by this issue of “what is the difference between a sales agent or distributor selling a license to your film or selling your film outright for 15 – 20 years?”. She posited a real estate metaphor. So here I go: Sales agents are not like Re-Max brokers only having the right to sell your house for you, if you approve. They usually take your land and then resell it and its territorial clones all over the world, or as much as they can. Meaning, they first take the rights and take delivery (at least usually that is the way they do it) and then they license those rights territory by territory for a term, a minimum guarantee, and usually a royalty split. Sometimes all rights deals are done and sometimes rights are split.
I just did a redline to a sales agent’s deal/contract for a documentary we are consulting on. We do our best to protect filmmakers in these deals. We also do foreign sales so we do both the contracts with the filmmakers to handle their sales and we help them do contracts with other companies handling their sales. Here’s how it shakes down usually:
Many foreign sales companies do deals as if they were actual distributors in that they take rights. One is actually licensing them rights full on, in all media usually, for a very long time which is yes, sometimes as much as 15- 20 years. This is very much the old standard and I started in foreign sales twelve (12) years ago and saw it shake down even on napkins in Cannes. The sales company gets the rights to the film for a long time (though to be fair to them, often they pay producers up front for that though less and less these days). The sales companies also spend money shopping the films, but they also recoup expenses against any income that comes in and those expenses are not always actual and even when they are, they are not always sensible to put it mildly. It may be a bunch of films that are all paying for the same expenses, over and over again if you get what I mean. Not all companies are that way of course but we have seen statements from sales companies that will make your hair curl if it’s straight and straighten if it’s curly.
So, those companies like to take ALL your rights for a big fat TERM of 10, 12, 15, 20, 25 years and they will usually just resell those rights to a distributor who takes all rights for a particular territory (e.g. German & German Speaking Europe, or Korea, Japan, Greece.. you get the idea) in a market or via phone / email. They may also use those rights directly let’s say for Broadcast deals or DIGITAL platform deals (for example Mubi, or Content Republic or Love). Once the sales agent or sales company has those rights the rights are THEIRS to do what they want, unless you are contractually resolved otherwise.
The Film Collaborative does foreign sales in house and also with its partner Ariel Veneziano or Recreation Media. We do NOT take rights, our deals are done directly between BUYER and FILMMAKER almost all the time (exceptions only when buyer insists because they only want to work with companies). We are even offering a low fee program to have films positioned for sale at markets, again, no rights taken and filmmaker makes all decisions. TFC also helps filmmakers do deals with other sales companies / sales agents as I said above. Not all companies are quite as transparent and filmmaker friendly but they can still be worth doing business with because they have certain relationships that you don’t and they are going to markets that you aren’t and they have leverage with buyers to get paid because they have a steady stream of ‘product’. So we don’t say not to all those options. We do however say this:
Do not do a deal for such a long term as 15 or 20 years or even 10 for that matter. Put in performance clauses and of course there are loads of other needed protections that should be part of any deal that are beyond the scope of this blog post. You can let them enter into longer deals if necessary and for the right price but there is no reason they should have such a long deal. Also try to let them have buyers pay you directly, though most won’t do that. At least get approval rights for deals and get complete accounting. Approve and CAP expenses. And get references before you get into a deal to see if you have some hope of seeing any revenues. Do not give or license rights to them if you can help it but rather give them the right to enter into deals licensing rights and have you be a party to those deals (if you can do that). Many sales companies won’t play ball this way but we do and we recommend you try hard to do it this way so that you don’t live in regret watching your sales agent travel the world and eating well at film festivals while you get tiny checks, if any at all. I heard an amazing story of a sales agent who called a filmmaker and thanked her for making her (the sales agent) millions, so many that she was now retiring in the South of Spain. The filmmaker never made a dime over the advance. That’s the other thing, if possible, get an advance, always, that may be all you see. Of course that may not be possible so you have got to do your best in negotiating and being protected. In any case, save the direct distribution for yourself if you can unless there’s a great deal your sales agent can get you that you cannot do yourself but have the right at least to approve that. And as technology changes, you will able to do more and more yourself. The pirates manage to do it all, including subtitling and getting film seen around the world so surely, so can we.
TAKE HOME: Do a deal with a sales agent as close to the real estate model as you can, because if you don’t, you may end up as just a part of their library being monetized for their sake, and not yours.
This post was previously posted on TheFilmCollaborative.org.
Orly Ravid is the Founder and Co-Executive Director of The Film Collaborative www.TheFilmCollaborative.org, the first non-profit devoted to distribution. Having started out in the business doing foreign sales and previously served as a distribution executive at Senator and Wolfe, and worked as a Programming Associate at Sundance and Programming Consultant at PSIFF, she also co-owns New American Vision, a boutique B:B marketing services company whose clients include AFI Fest, LAFF, IDA, and Roadside Attractions.
Did you ever wonder why we refer to movie trailers as "trailers"?"One of the concessions hung up a white sheet and showed the serial 'The Adventures of Kathlyn.' At the end of the reel Kathlyn was thrown in the lion's den. After this 'trailed' a piece of film asking 'Does she escape the lion's pit? See next week's thrilling chapter!' Hence, the word 'trailer,' an advertisement for a coming picture."
This entry was originally published at Hope For Film
by guest columnist SHERI CANDLER
There is a ton of talk right now on how independent filmmakers can sustain themselves by making their films and how independent film can be “saved.” So much talk, without many answers. I felt maybe I should take a stab at providing one. This is purely my reaction to all of this talk and I fully expect that I will be challenged for what I propose. It isn’t going to be palatable to the vast majority of filmmakers or others who profit from their work in the industry.
First, let’s address why we need a new business model. Gerd Leonhard has said as a filmmaker, it is all about the story and the connection to the audience. Everything in the middle will be redone. That means the way films have been distributed to audiences in the past, through very constricted routes (theaters, tv, physical stores), is now open via online and through mobile devices, and all over the world. The access to those routes is open to anyone, not just through companies who stand in the middle between the filmmaker and the audience. Our problem is no longer distribution, our problem is attention. How to get and keep and convert that attention in order to live as artists? With this open access, there is a glut of content and, as consumers, how to know what to watch and where to find it? It will be through friends or through the tribe and more and more we are finding this work online. There will be a mass of niches, not a mass audience. Who can access the niche?
Going forward, here is what I see. Two roads to take for sustainability.
Filmmaker as Tribe Leader
The selection of the word “tribe” does indeed come from Seth Godin. The word “tribe” – as the anthropologists use it – means a society or organized group largely based on kinship that looks to a leader for guidance. This is not to be confused with a “crowd,” a non-organized group with no leader. There are lots of crowds in indie film, very few leaders. Filmmakers must create and cultivate an identity around themselves as artists. This identity will serve as leadership in forming a tribe of passionate supporters who will sustain their artist in order for this person to live and keep making the art the tribe enjoys.
This route will only serve the entrepreneurial filmmaker. A person who is good at sharing, making connections, mobilizing, contributing and engaging with audience on a regular basis will be the ideal tribe leader. Those who prefer to create without need or concern of anyone’s enjoyment will not prosper here. The tribe leader must constantly stay engaged with his/her audience in addition to creating so that the leadership does not wane and the tribe begins to feel isolated and wander off to find another leader. The advantage to being a leader is that you are the resource on which the tribe depends, they enjoy your leadership and their kinship with you and the other members. This work cannot be given over to outside companies who are not directly involved in the tribe, they will not be trusted and trust is the cornerstone of this model.
Filmmakers who follow this business model will have no need for advertising in or reviews from mass publications. The media is not going to support you financially. The leader has permission to talk to his tribe, he doesn’t shout at them with uninteresting messages. This is what advertising is about, shouting loudly and repeatedly in the hopes that someone will act/buy. This tribe is small and the leader talks directly to the tribe, not through a large intermediary. He will also collaborate with them and bring them into his process. The tribe will expect to be able to produce and contribute as this is what is becoming the norm for storytelling now, the opportunity to interact directly with the story and the story creator.
Tribe members will speak to others outside of the tribe, share their enthusiasm and, through them, membership will grow. The filmmaker /leader may speak to leaders of other tribes in an effort to find a common area of interest and facilitate a connection for members of both communities to enjoy, but the goal with this is to simply connect people with common interests, not push one group’s interests onto another. This is not a one to many dialog but a many to many dialog with the leader serving as moderator.
“If you make a difference, people will gravitate to you. They want to engage, to interact and to get more involved.”-Seth Godin.
In a future post, I will talk about how you form a tribe and manage it.
This scenario offers the freedom to create content around many different subjects since the tribe is formed around yourself and your vision of art is appreciated. It is also far less stressful because you only have to focus on creating for a small group, not try to conquer the world all at once.
Filmmaker Creating Content for Other Tribes
For filmmakers who are not interested or not capable of creating their own tribe (basically, they CHOOSE not to lead; EVERYONE is capable), they will make content for passionately engaged tribes where they are not the leader or embedded in the community. This will be tricky because to gain the trust of the group, you have to show an affinity for their passion. You will have to win over the leader, gain his/her trust and find out exactly what kind of content you can create for them that they currently cannot get anywhere else. If successful, this tribe becomes your support, a group whose content needs you can fulfill over and over since there is seemingly no end to the want of fresh, interesting content.
This would lock you into the same subject matter over and over. Perhaps you could wander from tribe to tribe in order to change subjects, but the trust gaining process has to be started over each time, a very labor and time consuming process. You are a traveling minstrel going from small empire to small empire to entertain. Again, there is no need for mass advertising or mass interest because you create content only for small niche audiences. Those niches must be highly engaged though, so you will spend your time researching and finding them. But if you can get permission to create for them and your creations delight them, you have the power to make a living that is not dependent on companies, gatekeepers, shouting to the world in hope that someone will buy.
Neither of these scenarios discusses fame, massive fortune or creation just for creation’s sake. Fame is fleeting and if that is why you are interested in filmmaking, it wasn’t going to last (if you achieved it) for long. Fame also depends on creating a very large amount of noise to gain attention in the attention deficit world.
This doesn’t take into account massive fortune because your success will be limited to the size of the tribe. Small, engaged tribes are where the success is, but it won’t make you a billionaire, it doesn’t scale like that. The minute you shift focus to go after people with different interests, your original tribe falls apart. It is the intimacy and trust that holds it together. The auteur who is only interested in their own vision and creativity makes a good audience of one. The auteur who is a tribe leader can sustain, but the obscure, lone wolf with a vision will not.
However, tribes can and do grow through the enthusiasm of the community; that enthusiasm is shared with outsiders who are brought into the tribe. The leader does not need to do this work, in fact it is far more authentic if the tribe does it instead. As long as the leader’s focus remains on the care and feeding of the tribe, the tribe will thrive.
Will there be anomalies, people who are creative and do not connect directly with audiences? Yes, there are always exceptions and I expect that someone will list a few in comments. But I am talking about a sustainable business model, not the rarity or the lucky. If you are willing to step forward to build and lead a group of interested individuals who have not been mobilized or you are willing to identify and connect with already established groups and make quality content only for them, you will sustain.
This post first appeared on Multi-hyphenate and is reprinted here with permission and sincere appreciation.
Sheri Candler is an inbound marketing strategist who helps independent filmmakers build identities for themselves and their films. Through the use of online tools such as social networking, podcasts, blogs, online media publications and radio, she assists filmmakers in building an engaged and robust online community for their work that can be used to monetize effectively.
She can be found online at www.shericandler.com, on Twitter @shericandler and on Facebook at Sheri Candler Marketing and Publicity.
This entry was originally published at Hope For Film
Okay, so the traffic is sometimes louder than the dialogue, but hey, this is Indie! I had wanted to partake in this interview that David Poland did at TIFF this year. There was only one hour when Christine and I were both in Toronto though, and it took a bit longer to close the SUPER deal than I had anticipated. Christine and David paint a pretty good picture of what things are like for indie producers these days.
9/21 Update: Seems like the link I found for this kind of jumped the gun. It came down as I was watching it. I assume David Poland will post soon on the MCN website. And hopefully the video will work again. Hope hoping here…
Update 9/21 #2: It’s up on MCN, but I can’t embed it for some reason
"We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths."
-- Walt Disney (1901-1966)
What was your filmmaking background before making Attack of the Vegan Zombies?
How did you fund the film?
You wore a lot of hats on the production -- what's the upside and the downside to doing that?
What was the smartest thing you did during production? The dumbest?This entry was originally published at Hope For Film
By James Fair
If I think back to the drunken bet in Dublin, when I said that I could make a feature in three days, I believe I have proven my point. I think the audience approval makes my point even further, as it was not only made in three days, but people also liked it. More importantly, I hope that we have helped demystify the production process and gone some of the way towards inspiring filmmakers to try different approaches.
However, the goalposts are now being moved, and people are asking whether it will have a life after the festival. I hope that it can, although it now competes alongside other films in the conventional fashion, jostling for distribution and exhibition deals. If we go back to the aims and objectives, we never designed a plan for what we would do at this stage, which was perhaps a mistake.
I believe there is currently a great deal of methodical examination of distribution and exhibition channels being conducted simultaneously by academia and by business. I have a constant concern that cinema is being marginalised in favour of more dominant screens, especially those of Internet and iProducts. As a filmmaker who fell in love with cinema in the darkened rooms of my local multiplex, I can’t subscribe to the loss of the collective experience of the big screen with no remote control. Whilst I am intrigued and excited by the emergence of technologies and concepts such as VOD and transmedia, I don’t currently use them and I don’t want to see their rise indicate cinema’s decline.
“Innumerable confusions and profound feeling of despair invariably emerge in periods of great technological and cultural transitions. Our “Age of Anxiety” is, in great part, the result of trying to do today’s job with yesterday’s tools – with yesterday’s concepts.”
Page 8, McLuhan, Marshall & Fiore, Quentin (1967) The Medium Is The Massage (California, Gingko)
McLuhan’s quote may be 43 years old but I genuinely don’t believe we have exhausted all avenues in cinema. I believe that we rely upon technologically spectacular advances to constantly woo audiences, and whilst that may have worked in the last century, it won’t work as effectively now. I feel that if we altered some of the ways that we made film, the audience could capture a sense of quality that didn’t depend on 3D glasses or special effects. It is because industry defines these elements as quality that audiences are desperately expecting to feel it, but they aren’t necessarily detracting a quality experience.
“Quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for. A product is not quality because it is hard to make and costs a lot of money, as manufacturers typically believe. This is incompetence. Customers pay only for what is of use to them and gives them value. Nothing else constitutes quality.”
Page 206, Drucker, Peter (2007) Innovation & Entrepreneurship. First edition 1985. (Oxford, Elsevier)
We can find solutions to many of our challenges through action followed by analysis. I believe that academic analysis by itself is of little world value and can lead to paralysis of activity, therefore it is important to create as well as criticise. I believe that film academia should stop standing on the sidelines of industry and actively engage in helping out during this paradigm shift. Whilst they are not there to be the research and development department of the studio, there is little value in them simply analysing cinema from a distance. Being truly innovative is to think of something and to make it happen. Thinking about it and not doing anything is not innovative at all; it’s just creative thinking.
It is for this reason that I have found it a pleasure to guest blog for Ted over the last few months. I think the quality of discussion upon the Truly Free Film blog is a valuable contribution to our community. It is important that we keep our contributions constructive. Machiavelli wrote, “The innovator makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old order and receives only lukewarm support from those who would prosper under the new.” This has recently resonated with me, especially when I would receive criticism even though I never envisaged 72 as being anything other than an inspirational exercise. However, I’ve tried to see other people’s frustrations and loosen my own resistance to them.
For some on the outside, it appeared as if we were stealing a slot in a major festival without having made the film yet. It looked like we are saying that it doesn’t take three months to shoot a film, it takes three days. It seemed were ‘showboating’ and ridiculing the filmmaking process. We actually set out to create a transparent process that inspired other filmmakers, but I can see how that may have got lost in the message. Hopefully our continued presence here upon Truly Free Film, as well as Chris Jones and Randy Finch’s blogs, has meant that we’ve had a chance to get our undiluted thoughts upon the 72 Hour Movie project ‘out’ there.
Thanks to those that have supported us along the way. If you are interested in finding out more about ‘The Ballad of Des & Mo’ and the 72 Hour Project, please visit our website www.72hourmovie.com and join us at www.facebook.com/72hourmovie .
James Fair is a lecturer in Film Technology at Staffordshire University, UK. He has directed two features in 72 hours. The first film, ‘Watching & Waiting’, was shot in Galway, Ireland, as part of the 20th Film Fleadh in July 2008. The second film, ‘The Ballad of Des & Mo’, was shot in Melbourne, Australia, as part of the 59th International Film Festival in 2010.
