Indie Memphis - come hear me gab on a coupla panels

I'm currently in Memphis, Tennessee for the Indie Memphis film festival. The festival staffers have kindly invited me to speak on two of their "Café Conversation" panels. Both talks take place outside the Malco Studio theater at the Festival Café tent. The events are free to the public so even if you weren't planning to attend the festival itself (and you should), you can stop by and soak up a little knowledge without spending a dime.

The Film Festival Circuit, Saturday October 10 at noon with Heidi van Lier

Distribute Me: A Conversation On Getting Your Film Out To The World, Sunday October 11 at noon with Steven Beckman.

The World As We Know It Is Over? 10 Insights on the Movie Biz - indieWIRE

I would say that only three of the ten "insights" are ideas that haven't been flogged to death in the indie film press over the last couple of years, but there are a couple of interesting quotes in there if you can wade through the redundant muck.

Every town has a film festival, there are film festivals of every possible genre, every possible niche that you can think of. And so now we’re kind of entering this world where nontraditional distribution platforms are starting to emerge and film festivals are definitely coping with and struggling with that new world. There’s real fear, I think, of obliteration. People think that technology will obliterate anything that came before it and I don’t believe that at all. I do think that film fess have to recalibrate, reboot, what their role is and why they’re important beyond simply promoting a sponsor’s product or beyond being a good junket for a few celebrities prior to the theatrical release of a big film. - Christian Gaines, Withoutabox

Read The World As We Know It Is Over? 10 Insights on the Movie Biz - indieWIRE.

Staff departs Starz Denver en masse, says indieWIRE

A dramatic mass exodus is underway at the Denver Film Society, organizer of the three decade old Denver International Film Festival. Longtime veterans of the organization, including Festival Director Britta Erickson and Artistic Director Brit Withey, as well as esteemed co-founder Ron Henderson, have resigned in Denver. And now they are being followed out the door by more then [sic] fifteen other people at the Film Society and the festival.

Read Mile High Mutiny: Major Shakeup Hits Denver Fest.

Samsung backs photography doc on the festival circuit

In a smart move for the filmmakers and possibly for Samsung as well, Variety reports that documentary film Rock Prophecies has received funding from the electronics firm in return for some exposure to the audiences who show up. The film features rock photographer Robert M. Knight and presumably the audience who shows up to such a film will be highly interested in Samsung's new handset, which sports an 8-megapixel built in digital camera.

In your search for festival play and distribution, you should always ask yourself who your audience is and how to reach them. Then ask: who else wants to reach those people? Strategic partnerships begin when you identify those people & companies whose goals align with yours.

Groth Named Sundance Director of Programming - indieWIRE

Trevor Groth is taking over the reins as Director of Programming for the Sundance Film Festival effective immediately. Groth takes the position after John Cooper, who previously held the position, was appointed Director of the Sundance Film Festival following the departure of longtime event head Geoff Gilmore to the Tribeca Film Institute in March.

No word yet on how this will affect Groth's duties as Artistic Director of CineVegas.

Read Groth Named Sundance Director of Programming - indieWIRE.

IFP searches for a Community Manager

IFP (formerly known as the Independent Feature Project) is on the hunt for a new Community Manager, someone with a strong background in marketing and web savvy.

Full-time position available immediately for high energy, organized individual with managerial, marketing and web experience. Must have excellent project management and strong social media expertise - this includes managing forums and online communities for at least 3 years and/or maintaining successful blog for at least 2 years.

BASIC DUTIES

The Community Manger is responsible for building an online presence for IFP and its publications and programs. Their primary job will be the maintenance and continuity of information about the organization both internally and externally, acting as a strong community advocate who represents the organization online and off, working to build IFP brand awareness in both directions. They will be in charge of all membership management, online content development and design, and management and marketing of IFP publications, programs and events. The position reports directly to IFP’s Deputy Director and works closely with IFP’s Programming staff members and Gotham Awards Producer.

Inquire with Amy Dotson, (212) 465-8200 x 203.

Fest Circuit 101 - A Guide to Fests

indieWIRE announced last week that it will be maintaining a guide to film festivals on its site. Presumably this will be a more formal effort to present information on particular festivals than its usual practice of simply covering festivals as they occur. Not that the coverage in and of itself was a bad thing, but it could be difficult to get a sense of indieWIRE's overall view of the festival world.

indieWIRE is rolling out a cross section of North American and international film festivals listings with dates and links to iW coverage when relevant. Big events such as Cannes, Toronto, Sundance and Berlin are listed along with other large fests as well as regional and specialty festivals. This list will continue to evolve and we hope it will be a useful guide for filmmakers, film fans and industry. We also plan to add further features to the list, so please check back in the coming weeks and months.

To get to the guide, hit "Quicklinks" on the indieWIRE navigation bar and select "Film Festival Guide."

The indieWIRE Guide to Film Festivals.

What's next for the film festival world?

The LA Times examines the recent shakeup in staff at several major film festivals and tries to put it all in context.

This recent surge of job switches was not set off by any single fracture within independent film (where a number of top distributors have closed their doors) or inside the festival world (which is suffering its own shakeout, with numerous festivals shutting down). But the moves do underscore how volatile the festival world has suddenly become and how programmers foresee leaner and more focused events in the months ahead.

"There's been more news in the independent film festival world in the last three weeks than I can recall ever happening in my life," says Nancy Schafer, executive director of the increasingly prominent Tribeca Film Festival, whose eighth annual get-together runs in New York from April 22 to May 4.

Says Trevor Groth, a veteran Sundance programmer who also serves as artistic director for the up-and-coming Las Vegas CineVegas Film Festival, marking its 11th edition this summer: "It's indicative of what's happening in the indie world -- there's a lot of change going on."

Read the full article at the LA Times web site.

Here comes SXSW 2009 - Book signing March 15, 1:30 pm

If you're one of the lucky few, uh– thousands headed to South by Southwest in Austin next month, please stop by the Southby Bookstore in the Austin Convention Center on Sunday, March 15th at 1:30 p.m. Go ahead, mark your calendar, I'll wait. Bring along your copy of Film Festival Secrets or buy a fresh copy from the bookstore and I'll sign it on the spot.

I'm really looking forward to this year's SXSW – they have a strong program this year and it's always fun to meet the filmmakers and tech types who come into Austin for this surreal celebration of entertainment, music, and technology.

If you're planning to attend SXSW interactive but think you might want to dip your toe into the waters of the film side of things, Agnes Varnum just posted a great article entitled A Geek's Guide to SXSW Film. (Did you know there are films that your Interactive badge will get you into even if you don't have a Gold or Film Badge? It's true!) Also useful is Jette Kernion's guide to SXSW film venues over at Slackerwood.

And finally, if you're lucky enough to be a filmmaker with a film in the program, here's a series of articles just for you: Last minute filmmaker tips for SXSW.

New Yorker Films closes its doors

It's lights out for New Yorker Films, the boutique distributor that brought international films and "difficult" cinema to the U.S. for over 40 years.

From the New York Times:

One of the most influential distributors of foreign and independent films, New Yorker has amassed a library of more than 400 titles, including Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless” and Claude Lanzmann’s epic Holocaust documentary “Shoah,” said Dan Talbot, who founded the company in 1965.

Mr. Talbot, 82, said in a telephone interview that the company was going out of business because its library was being sold. It had been pledged as collateral on a loan taken out by its former owner, Madstone Films, which bought New Yorker Films in 2002.

Lesson: Even if you sell the rights to your film to someone you trust, those rights can then be resold, traded, used as collateral, and foreclosed upon just like any other property. Think twice before you sign those rights away for more than a few years.

From the IndieWIRE article:

These are ‘difficult’ films, not popular mass-market films,’’ Dan Talbot told the New York Times in the 1987 profile. ‘‘They’re meant for a small, elite audience. And nothing has changed in 20 years; it’s still a very tiny, elite audience. There were other distributors who were bringing in these films, but I would say that our role was to introduce some of the more risky films that on the surface did not seem to have a wide audience. Distribution of that kind is a very financially masochistic business."

Lesson: There are distributors out there who love movies and who will help you get your movie in front of the audiences who want to see it. That doesn't mean that anyone will be getting rich in the process.

Mr. Talbot said he was crushed by the end of the company. “I nurtured this,” he said. “These films are like babies.”

Lesson: Distributors are people too.

Read the indieWIRE article and the NY Times article.

(Via John Merriman.)

Cinevegas gives away copies of "Film Festival Secrets"

If you're more of a Twitter follower than a newsletter joiner, you can get your free PDF copy of Film Festival Secrets simply by following Cinevegas on Twitter.

You've got 12 days to do it, so get cracking. Check out cvtwt.com for more info.

If you have a Twitter account, please spread the word by posting the following to your own Twitterstream:

Follow @cinevegas and receive a FREE copy of "Film Festival Secrets", a $25 value, at http://cvtwt.com.

Thank you!

NewFest artistic director departs, reflects on state of film festivals

Basil Tsiokos in indieWIRE:

Over the past several months, even before news of the financial crisis broke, it's been an open secret that many film festivals around the U.S. have been suffering - while some have managed to secure enough funding to stay in operation, others (like the recently shuttered Jackson Hole Film Festival) haven't been so lucky. While I leave NewFest in the capable hands of my Board of Directors and on good terms, chiefly out of a desire to move on to new challenges elsewhere (yet to be determined), it would be disingenuous to not acknowledge that the difficult realities of non-profit funding had some role in my decision. Running a film festival, in my experience, is hardly a standard full-time job - it's an all-the-time job.

On a brief hiatus

I'm still here but on a bit of a break as I move out of my old apartment and into a new place with my family. The book launch at the Austin Film Festival went well and I've been getting lots of good reactions from filmmakers and festival directors, but there's a lot of work to be done getting the word out. Once this move is over (the end of the week) I'll be working to get back on track with new blog entries and a write up of the press mentions the book has received so far.

Until then . . . .

Embed "Film Festival Secrets" on your own site!

OK, this is nifty. Not only can you read the entire text of Film Festival Secrets online, but you can share it with your own readers by embedding the book on your own site or blog in this cool little flash reader from Issuu. The book is now available for sale at Createspace and Amazon (two faces of the same entity, but I get a better cut of the proceeds if you direct people to Createspace). On the other hand, you can earn a commission if you direct people to Amazon with your own affiliate code, so do whatever works best for you.

Get your own - Open publication

A coffee with ... Kelly Williams of the Austin Film Festival

The Austin Film Festival film programming team. From left to right: Jesse Trussell, Kelly Williams, John Merriman.

The Austin American-Statesman sits down with Kelly Williams, the film programming director for the upcoming Austin Film Festival. Apart from just being a nice profile of a friend (I used to work at AFF), the piece reveals the sorts of things programmers look for and the ways festivals might differ from one another.

"It's a long process. Thousands of entries come in, and it takes a good portion of the year to just get it down to a small group. I sort of look at it like a pyramid. You start at the bottom and figure out how to get to the top. Since the festival focuses on screenwriters, the main question we ask is how well is the story told. That's the No. 1 thing. The same goes for documentaries. We look for ones that are very narrative-driven."

Read A coffee with ... Kelly Williams of the Austin Film Festival.

Jackson Hole Institute, Film Festival shut down

The Jackson Hole Film Institute closed its doors Tuesday following the nation’s worst single-day points drop of the Dow Jones Industrial Average on Monday.

“Funding dried up pretty quickly because of what’s been going on with the financial markets,” said Todd Rankin, managing director of the Jackson Hole Film Festival, the primary program of the institute. “Even leading up to this summer’s festival, things were tight.”

The film festival had board and staff committed to raising a sizeable percentage of the full festival budget for 2009, estimated at $1.2 million to $1.5 million. To date, sponsors and support were in place for only about $300,000, and with the worsening national financial outlook, board members were not comfortable going forward, Rankin said. Even streamlining the festival to an $800,000 event didn’t seem feasible.

The sad state of the economy seems to be leaking into everything these days, including the film festival circuit. For those filmmakers suspicious of the way festivals seem to be "raking in" the submissions fees, this should be a bit of evidence to the contrary -- for a festival to survive, they need a few more revenue streams.

Read the full story in the Jackson Hole Daily. (Via indieWIRE.)

Film Festival Secrets: the book is finished.

Has it been quiet around here lately? That's because one cannot complete a book and blog at the same time. At least I can't.

I've been devoting all of my writing resources to completing Film Festival Secrets: A Handbook for Independent Filmmakers and I'm happy to say that it's finally finished. Since I don't want to spend months or years looking for a publisher I'm putting it out myself through Amazon's Createspace print-on-demand service. A downloadable PDF version will be available for free and the print edition will list at $24.95.

There's still the print proof left to approve but I'm confident that I will be able to make the PDF and print versions available simultaneously on October 16th with a launch at the Austin Film Festival.

So now you know what I've been up to and why it's been so quiet around here. I'll be doing more writing on the blog in coming months with excerpts from the book (annotated and expanded to include things that didn't make the print edition) as well as new material, interviews, etc.

More to come.

Catch me this weekend at the Sidewalk Moving Pictures Festival

I'm serving on the narrative shorts jury this weekend at the Sidewalk Moving Pictures Festival in Birmingham Alabama. You should be able to see me on a panel or two during the festival, in particular the "alternative distribution" panel at 4:00 p.m.

Niche Marketing Tools Panel - Independent Film Week

These are my notes on the Niche Marketing Tools panel, including some of my thoughts before the panel and some of the more interesting concepts that came up during the panel. I've listed them below in no particular order and attributed them to the panelists where I could remember where they came from -- apologies to those whom I misremember.

- To speak generally, niche marketing is about identifying special interests in your film, researching that special interest, and contacting those heavily engaged in that interest to spread the word within the existing community. Tapping into existing communities who can spread word of mouth for you is the goal.

- The basics of marketing a film still apply -- still photos, well-written supporting material, making a good first impression. (Jon Gerrans)

- Jason Cassidy - On marketing "Blindness" -- speaking to the built-in core audience of people who loved the book was hugely important in marketing that film.

- Larry Fessenden - On creating a film web site: Stills, etc are important but it's also important to use the ability to customize to help draw visitors into the story of your film and the story behind the film. A director's statement (while it may seem corny) can very much influence press and audience perception of the film. Web site preferable to facebook or myspace in this way because you can customize a web site in ways that one cannot with facebook.

- Larry Fessenden - On building community -- your community consists not just of your fans but also of other filmmakers, journalists who cover your genre (including bloggers, etc). Recruit them to your cause and be a partner to them as well. Larry has built a network of horror/genre filmmakers who have their own stories that feed into the larger story of this filmmaking community. Like a mini-studio or unofficial releasing "brand."

- Jason Cassidy - On Facebook: New media like facebook can make marketing more efficient but the social tools only work if people are drawn to them. That can actually take a media/advertising spend to gain critical mass and make maintaining Facebook presence worth it.

- Jon Garrans - On Facebook: Facebook is a great place to store data like trailers, etc, which might otherwise cost you money to store and transmit (outgoing bandwidth fees).

- Aaron Hillis - On bandwidth fees - Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) can also help with storage at low cost. http://amazon.com/s3

- Aaron Hillis - Facebook & MySpace can be oversaturated, difficult to attract an audience to any one thing -- get more creative, take steps beyond just setting up a social network page.

- Stephen Raphael, on communities - some communities are stronger than others and distributors make decisions based on that. For example Jewish community networks are very strong and can be relied upon to spread word of mouth but also have strong formal networks (community centers, email lists, etc).

- Stephen Raphael, in answer to question about tapping known niches - Don't self-distribute to a niche if you think you might want to beyond self-distribution. If you tap out a potential revenue source then you're reducing the value of your property to a distributor. Doing the research on that niche, however, is a selling point -- the more supporting evidence you have that there are people out there just waiting to buy your film, the stronger selling advantage you have.

Web sites for panelists:

Jason Cassidy, Miramax - http://www.miramax.com/

Larry Fessenden, "The Last Winter" - http://www.thelastwinter.net/

Jon Gerrans, Strand Releasing - http://www.strandreleasing.com/

Aaron Hillis, Benten Films - http://www.bentenfilms.com/

Stephen Raphael, Required Viewing - ???

See also Film Tiki's Eyewitness report of the panel.

Independent Film Week

For the next couple of days I'll be hanging out at Independent Film Week in NYC. Everyone still calls it IFP but they rebranded this year and moved to the Fashion Institute of Technology so I guess I'll do them the favor of using the proper name, but if you want to read about it on Twitter you'd better search for IFP.

Saw the talk on festivals yesterday which was pretty basic but it sounds like a lot of people need the basic info; it only reinforced my feelings that Film Festival Secrets (the upcoming book) is a book that needed to be written. Speaking of which, I'm making rapid progress and on track to release the download version by mid-October; the print version should either be available at the same time or shortly thereafter. If you haven't subscribed to the newsletter I suggest you do so, as I'll be releasing a sneak preview to newsletter members only.

I also stuck around for the Kevin Smith talk, which was a variant of the same Q&A Kevin Smith always gives -- there are only so many questions to ask the guy, and he has answers ready for all of 'em. This might be a bad thing but since he's such a born yarn-spinner it's usually entertaining even if you've heard the story before. When asked to compare his experiences between indie and studio filmmaking, he shot back:

I've made one independent film: Clerks. But I'm labeled as an independent filmmaker forever. I saw in indieWIRE the other day that I'm a "veteran independent filmmaker." That made me feel old. But I guess it's like being gay, right? You suck one cock and you're always gay.

Smith also encouraged filmmakers to make Clerks, as it's the only way he knows to break into the industry.

Nobody's made a convenience store movie in 15 years! You could be that guy.

When asked what the reaction might be if Clerks were released today:

"This guy rips off Judd Apatow!" . . . (smiles) You feel me?

I'll be in New York for the next couple of days and moderating the Tuesday afternoon panel on Niche Marketing Tools. Hope to see you there.