Archive for the ‘Independent Film’ tag
THE RIGHT WAY TO APPROACH CROWDFUNDING
I’ve long followed Peter Broderick and even used his consulting services on Skatopia. In this article he outlines how the phenomenon of crowdfunding can be done right… or wrong. Worth a read.
Peter Broderick, the president of Paradigm Consulting and a guru of the digital distribution revolution, was on hand to moderate a panel about crowdfunding at the 2011 Film Independent Forum. He brought
Peter Broderick and Nick Lewis speak at the 2011 Film Independent Forum
with him the masterminds behind two highly successful crowdfunding campaigns; the team for I AM I an indie narrative written and directed by Jocelyn Towne, and Nick Lewis, co-director of the soccer doc, Rise and Shine: the Jay Demerit Story. Ready to start soliciting money from people you know and people you don’t? These tips come straight from the experts!
- Make a really really really good video. I mean it, it has to be really good. The director and producers of the film I Am I had set a goal of $100,000 and ended up raising over $111,000! You know why? The director made an extremely fun and personal video that really connected with people she knew and didn’t know. When I say “good” it doesn’t have to be slick, well-edited, or even clever. It just needs to touch a people on a personal level, something that most internet videos fail to do.
- Have a strategy. Ok, this one seems obvious, but all the really successful crowdfunding campaigns had a very detailed strategy that took at least a month to plan out. What is your fundraising goal, what will be your rewards structure, who will you target first? Second? Third? How will you keep your donors engaged throughout the campaign? What is your website going to look like (Yes, you definitely need to make a separate website for your film). If you can plan it out and execute it smartly, you’re much more likely to reach your crowdfunding goal.
- Who is your audience? This is, of course, part of your strategy, but it’s a huge one. Nick Lewis had a fairly easy time of identifying his audience – soccer fans! The producers of the film needed over $215,000 for their film (for licensing, rights, etc) and they raised around $223,000! You’d be right if you said a lot of their donors were European soccer fans. Be smart about who your audience is and market to them. (Marketing is part of the whole strategy-thing).
- Pick the Crowdfunding platform that’s right for your project. What’s the difference between IndieGoGo and Kickstarter? IndieGoGo allows you to keep the money, regardless of whether you’ve reached your goal – however, they take a larger percentage of the money on the back end. Kickstarter is all or nothing – if you don’t reach your goal, all the money gets refunded to the donors, but they also take a smaller percentage of the money in fees. There are a few other differences as well which you will need to research before deciding which one is the best for you, but those are the big ones.
- Have a schedule. Make sure you spend the money that you’ve raised crowdfunding in the same year that you received it! Otherwise things will get hairy on your tax returns, and you may end up claiming it as income and having to pay a lot in income taxes before you even get to use the money!
The best way to figure out how to run your campaign is to peruse both Kickstarter and IndieGoGo. Look for patterns and trends with what works and what doesn’t. With crowdfunding taking off in this day and age, you’re chances of successfully raising funds will be a lot better if you take the time to research it!
– by Film Independent Fellow Shilpi Roy for Film Independent
Why is Lance Weiler the “dean” of Transmedia? Read on…
Transmedia: Entertainment reimagined
08 July 10Esther Robinson got off the R train in Astoria, Queens, and started walking to the American Museum of the Moving Image. It was a warm July evening in 2007 and Robinson, then 37 years old and a filmmaker, had come with a friend to see a movie, Head Trauma. As they approached the cinema, she noticed that the payphones were ringing — all four of them. “You forget payphones exist,” recalls Robinson. “That was the first thing I noticed.” She picked one up: all she could hear were fragments of a conversation, “sounds of madness”. Outside the cinema, a preacher in short sleeves and a tie was raving, handing out apocalyptic comic books to passers-by. He pressed one into Robinson’s hand as she hurried past, anxious to get to the film. The opening credits prompted the audience to send in a text to a given number. As the film rolled, they started receiving “weird text messages”; phones were ringing.
The film was about a drifter who inherits his mother’s house and starts to lose his mind. The next day, back in Brooklyn, Robinson found the comic in her handbag. On the back was written: “Do you want to play a game?”, along with an address, headtraumamovie.com. She typed it in to her computer. What she found was an online game that continued the story. “In the middle of it, the phone rang,” she says. She recognised the voice. It was the film’s “hooded villain”. He started asking questions: “Do you feel guilty? Have you ever lost consciousness?” Last, he asked Robinson to tell him her darkest secret. Her answer started playing back on a loop through her computer speakers. Robinson clicked on the exit box. She kept clicking, but nothing happened. Her phone buzzed with a text: “Where are you going? We’re not finished yet…” At that point, Robinson was dumped into a conference call with other cinema goers who had just gone through the same experience. “We were all like, ‘What the fuck was that?’ It was totally nuts.”
Unwittingly, she had just participated in an emerging form of mainstream entertainment. Lance Weiler, the creator of Head Trauma, had programmed software to make all the payphones on the block ring. The preacher was an actor, a lead in the feature. Based on the participants’ responses to the automated phone calls, audio and video launched on the desktop screen. The exit box was a fake. Clicking on it sent that last text. For Weiler, a 41-year-old New Yorker, the experience “demonstrated the fluidity of an audience. After the movie ended, it followed people home.”
Skatopia hits PBS… Brewce & Laurie Video Interview
Laurie House and Brewce Martin of Skatopia are interveiwed by Thom Hallock of Mountain Lake Journal about Skatopia: 88 Acres of Anarchy. The movie will be playing June 11 at 11PM at the Lake Placid Film Forum.
DIY distribution – Is a couch tour the right approach for YOUR movie?
I loved reading this because I think it could apply equally to a filmmaker, animator or any other type of storyteller… find your audience, engage them, use their interest and passion to help you reach others. Inspiration!
Essay – The D.I.Y. Book Tour
I arrived early — I’m always early — at a house in Chesterfield, Va., a short drive from Richmond, down the Powhite Parkway. It was the 15th city I’d been to promoting my new book, “The Adderall Diaries.” I had given a reading the night before at a home in a nearby town, and when I mentioned Chesterfield people made sour faces. But I go where I’m invited.
The leaves were changing color, the lawns still green. The small house was on a street filled with similar houses and well-tended front yards. My host explained that she was a nurse at a hospital in Richmond, and Chesterfield was the closest place she could afford. She had just moved in, and there wasn’t much furniture, just 20 white folding chairs not yet arranged.
Soon 19 of her friends showed up, and we spread out into the living room and small kitchen. Many of them also worked at the hospital. One was a professional jujitsu fighter and personal trainer, another a real estate agent. What was most interesting to me was that none of them had ever been to a literary event. Several told me they were big readers, at least a book a week. But when I asked a few of them about their reading habits, they hadn’t heard of the authors who are famous in my world: Lorrie Moore, Roberto Bolaño, Michael Chabon. This is most of America, I thought; I’ve stepped through the door.
I recently wrapped up a 33-city book tour. Originally, my publisher had a standard tour planned for me, bookstores in five large coastal cities. The early reviews were strong, and one friend, a successful author, encouraged me to do a larger tour. But the idea depressed me. “The Adderall Diaries” is my seventh book. I have my following, but I’m not famous. I didn’t want to travel thousands of miles to read to 10 people, sell four books, then spend the night in a cheap hotel room before flying home. And my publisher didn’t have the money for that many hotel rooms anyway.
I decided to try something I hoped would be less lonely. Before my book came out, I had set up a lending library allowing anyone to receive a free review copy on the condition they forward it within a week to the next reader, at their own expense. (Now that a majority of reviews are appearing on blogs and in Facebook notes, everyone is a reviewer.) I asked if people wanted to hold an event in their homes. They had to promise 20 attendees. I would sleep on their couch. My publisher would pay for some of the airfare, and I would fund the rest by selling the books myself.
I had no idea what to expect. When you read in people’s homes you’re reading to a reflection of their world. In Lincoln, Neb., I read in the home of Ember Schrag, a 25-year-old folk-rock musician. She plastered the town with fliers, but the people who came were all in their 20s and into rock ’n’ roll. In Las Vegas I read at Laurenn McCubbin’s house. She’s a painter, and her primary subjects are adult entertainers. Many people in attendance were either artists or sex workers or both.
The people who showed up for these events had usually never heard of me. They came because it was a party at their friend’s house and the friend promised to make those cupcakes they like or was calling in a favor. Nobody wants to give a bad party, and touring this way ensured there would be at least one person other than myself who would be embarrassed if no one showed up.
The readings mostly went very long, over an hour with questions, and people didn’t leave. We were often up discussing until 1 in the morning. An important part of the book is my troubled relationship with my father and what I took to be his confession to murder in an unpublished memoir. (I investigated and found no evidence of any such killing; my father refuses to confirm or deny it.) Following the reading, over a glass of wine or slice of cake or nothing at all, people told me about their own difficult relationships with family members, people they couldn’t forgive or who wouldn’t forgive them. In a weird way the readings began to feel like an extension of the book.
At a reading last month in West Seattle, I sat in a chair in a corner. The attendees surrounded me on a large sectional sofa with extra seats. The host had stacked my books above the mantelpiece. Nobody asked about my writing process, or how to find an agent or a publisher. Unlike at every reading I’ve done for every other book I’ve written, there were no aspiring writers in attendance. One of the guests asked about my mother — why isn’t she a bigger part of the story? I said she was very sick for five years and died when I was 13, which is when I left home.
Reading in people’s homes is a little stressful. With a few exceptions, these were people I’d never met. They usually picked me up at the airport or bus station. Once I arrived I couldn’t really leave. Then I met their friends and I tried to sell them books, like Tupperware, one at a time. All together, I sold about 1,100 books (not counting copies of my older books, which I was also selling) at 73 events. Seven hundred of those were books I purchased wholesale, a few hundred more were sold by local booksellers invited to the readings.
One of the more obvious things I realized is that people with money buy a lot more books. They will buy books out of obligation, just to be polite, because you did a reading in their home, or for a signed souvenir of a fun evening. I did one of the best readings of my life to 40 college students and sold fewer than 10 books. Other nights, at fancier homes, I sold more books than there were people in attendance.
Not everything worked out. At a home in Boston I read to seven people, six of them graduate students. During the discussion one of the students announced, “You must be tired of talking about yourself.” None of the students bought a book, and on the way out the same woman urged me to “keep writing.”
In Chesterfield, after an hour of getting to know one another, we set up the folding chairs and people sat politely in rows. They asked interesting questions about murder and confession and the moment the lie mixes with the truth like red and yellow paint, becoming orange, the original colors ceasing to exist. Afterward people went back to talking, grabbing another drink or a snack. Leaning against the kitchen counter, I thought to myself that they weren’t a standard literary audience: they were better.
Stephen Elliott’s most recent book is “The Adderall Diaries.”
Sign in to Recommend More Articles in Books » A version of this article appeared in print on January 17, 2010, on page BR23 of the New York edition.
Skatopia at the Lake Placid Film Forum!!
It’s fair to say that this’ll be the only time Skatopia shares the bill with Hal Holbrook and Parker Posey! Come check us out in Lake Placid – June 11th at 11 PM!
skatopia: 88 acres of anarchy. june 11 at 11.
May 25, 2010 by tjbrearton
There’s a lot of talk out there about anarchy, about anti-establishmentarianism. There’s a lot of talk about living the dream. The creator of the real-place “Skatopia” and his constituents are doing it. Skating, hedonism, and the impulses of the id reign. Not for the faint of heart, “Skatopia” delves into the philosophies of aggressive patriarch Brewce Martin, a self-described dictator, and the mythos of his disciples, prone to foul mouths, crash-up derby driving, and escaping from realities of life outside the park. Director of Programming for MLPBS Colin Powers and filmmaker Laurie House helm this down and dirty documentary.
“He comes to Skatopia for genuine reasons…to skateboard, get drunk, and [get] chicks….”
- Brewce, describing a regular visitor
Come for the skating, stay for the life.
Showing at the Lake Placid Film Forum Friday June 11th, at 11pm, Palace Theatre. Followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers.
Producer’s Academy Take 2
I really didn’t mean for these to appear in alphabetical order, but here’s a teaser for fellow student Mark Barroso’s film A Puppet Intervention. When I read about it I thought I knew what I’d see (seen lots of activist puppet stuff living in Philly, Eugene, Berkeley). These have to be seen to be appreciated. Obviously a nice light touch with the filmmaking and some cool verite moments.
“A Puppet Intervention” movie trailer from Mark Barroso on Vimeo.
Lobby group wants to make docs a priority for Public Television
Lobby group wants to make docs a priority for PSBs
by Kelly Anderson
At the recent Hot Docs festival, MercuryMedia CEO Tim Sparke took the opportunity to announce the launch of the Documentary Distributors’ Association, a group that aims to lobby public service broadcasters to consider airing more documentaries.
Sparke says the idea behind the Documentary Distributor’ Association came from MercuryMedia chairman and former ITV director of television Simon Shaps. “He felt it was something that the industry really needed,” says Sparke. Shaps will be chairman of the DDA, while Sparke’s role right now is to get the word out and get the first 10 distributor members on board.
The main goal is to approach public service broadcasters to get docs back on their schedules. “It’s about documentary fighting – and I use that word guardedly – for an enhanced position within television schedules and on other platforms,” says Sparke. “There’s no doubt in my mind that television is still the preeminent place for telling people about what’s going on in the world and documentary is the single most important tool [for] telling people that.”
Adam Curtis and some bold documentaries
A couple years ago, some friends in Philly held a little screening session with a selection of films they brought back from the annual INPUT festival that features the best of worldwide public television.
After the screening, a couple films really stuck with me. One was Adam Curtis’ “The Mayfair Set”, but at the time it seemed destined to remain a UK-only film.
I was struck by the playful imagery, imaginative work-arounds for sections without direct footage and for Curtis’ willingness to tackle a bold narrative that assailed major figures in the UK power structure and even threatened his bosses at the BBC.
Thanks to the magic of the internet, we can now view much of Curtis’ work on line (albeit missing quite a bit of beauty due to web delivery limitations.) As his wikipedia entry describes, Curtis combs the BBC film vaults for archival footage that wonderfully illustrate his narratives.
Here are a couple of links in no particular order. I haven’t watched the whole of Mayfair Set yet, but look forward to working my way through.
A more recent film “The Trap”
A writeup and trailer for his most recent collaboration with an avante garde theater group:
A wonderful dialogue between Errol Morris (Fog of War; Fast, Cheap & Out of Control) and Curtis.
Finally, here’s Adam’s blog at the BBC.
Hope you enjoy his work as much as I do.
Tribeca Film Fest takes its movies to Video on Demand
Tribeca looks to expand notion of film festivalBy JAKE COYLE (AP) – 6 days ago
NEW YORK — When British director Mat Whitecross was growing up in Oxford, only so many movies screened in his local cinema — and not the intriguing movies he read about playing at film festivals or elsewhere.
Whitecross estimates that 90 percent of the films that were influential to him — such as “Taxi Driver” and “La Dolce Vita” — he watched “on very dodgy, knocked-off VHS tapes” or on TV early in the morning with commercial breaks.
“Better to have seen them that way than not at all,” he says.
Whitecross’ experience guides the ninth annual Tribeca Film Festival, which kicks off Wednesday amid concern that the volcanic ash disrupting air travel in Europe might ground some of the many European filmmakers who were planning to attend.
. In an effort to help films find audiences, movies won’t just be screening in downtown Manhattan.
A new distribution company, Tribeca Film, founded by the festival’s parent company, Tribeca Enterprises, will make a dozen movies — including Whitecross’ directorial debut “sex & drugs & rock & roll” — available on TV by way of video-on-demand in some 40 million homes. A “virtual festival” will also stream eight movies and 18 shorts online for viewers willing to shell out $45.
A win-win for indy filmmakers and indy-loving audiences who can’t get to Manhattan (or can’t get a ticket.) Get the films on VOD and watch in your home theater. Now I’ve got to convince my little cableco to sign up!
Skatopia: By Popular Demand! Another Athens Screening
Notes on Milk | POV | PBS Video
Art + Art = something more
This post really gets one thinking about how you might add value to that victim of piracy and VOD.. that endangered species – the DVD. Thanks, Brian for thinking out of the box!
SpringBoardMedia: Ken Price, Bukowski, Curation and Film
My favorite part of the show was over at the Franklin Parrasch Gallery in Midtown (only until April 20) – they have a collection of ephemera, books, postcards, album covers and even tequila bottles designed by or featuring art works by Ken Price. If you like his sculptures (I’m not as big of a fan of these as his other work, though they are what he’s most known for), then you must stop by to watch the ten minute video showing his process (layering up paint and then sanding it down to expose layers in patterns). Note to curators – put this video on YouTube once the show is over and his sales will likely triple. Anyway, the piece I most liked, and that I think is in a weird way most relevant to film, was a limited edition hard-bound coffee table book of Charles Bukowski’s Heat Wave, with drawings and original art work by Ken Price. The cover is the photo I’ve used here. As Black Sparrow’s website explains, the book was a large format (15×12) portfolio, with text by Bukowski (poems), illustrated with 17 black and white works by Price, handbound and including a disc of Bukowski reading his poetry and containing a compartment in the back with 15 original serigraphs which could be removed and framed. A limited, signed edition was made as well as a limited, unsigned edition and the entire thing came in a slipcase with a cool design.
I’m a fan of both Price and Bukowski (yes, I’ve not left my college reading days too far behind), but you don’t have to like either to think about how this could be used for film. Not every film, but some. I’ve often talked about ways to monetize content in a world where everything is increasingly becoming free – well, here’s a great example. I can see Price’s works for free, in galleries and online. Bukowski’s poems are all over the place, and even with his popularity, I can find them in numerous used bookstores for cheap. But this is a piece of art – when it first came out in 1996 it sold for about $3,500 and I imagine it’s worth much more now. I can’t afford it, but I bet the 100+ editions they made sold out. How can filmmakers duplicate this? Again, not everyone can, but I imagine there are fans who would buy something similar from many indie films. Perhaps stills from the film, coupled with the script, a DVD, etc. Or maybe the film, the soundtrack and text from an author that is in a similar vein as the subject of the film. I’ve got lots of ideas for this, and I’m helping a few filmmakers whose films could definitely be re-purposed this way, but thought I’d share the idea with all of you, perhaps you can come up with an even better way to copy the idea in your work.
