Karina on SpoutBlog

As the gap widens between the hundreds of features that play the festival circuit every year and the ever smaller handful of films bought and sold by the studio-dependent indie arms, certain overlaps become readily apparent between the inevitable day-todays of the young indie filmmakers who might have been inspired by a book like John Pierson’s Spike Mike Slackers and Dykes, and the indie rock kids who might have been inspired by a book like Michael Azzerad’s This Band Could Be Your Life. For one thing, both the record business and the film business (particularly as it concerns small films, mid-size non-genre films, and virtually anything without franchise potential) have, in the past few years, entered into periods of reckoning which has made it ever more important for emerging artists to take charge of their own marches towards destiny. Last night AFI Dallas assembled a varied panel to answer the question, WHAT LESSONS CAN INDIE FILMMAKERS LEARN FROM INDIE BANDS? To hear the panelists tell it, those lessons break down into two categories: taking advantage of the inroads made by bands to sell themelves (in ways easily monetized and otherwise) online; and taking the old school model of the DIY band on the run and using it to take advantage of brick-and-mortar institutions in financial crisis.

Much of the conversation focued on how to use online vendors like iTunes as a hub for music/movie synergy. Aaron Marshall, the co-director of the doc Zombie Girl - Anyone can put an album on iTunes,” he says, noting that the composer of his film’s original soundtrack did just that. “And people have been buying it,” he says — apparently, the film’s festival run has drummed up interest in ancillary products. Film Threat’s Don Lewis, speaking on the panel as both a journalist and as a filmmaker with two shorts behind him, said he hoped a similar strategy would work for him in reverse: when he puts his short films up for sale on iTunes, he hopes the bands who scored them will be able to rally their significant online fan bases to consume the films as if they were music videos.

Unfortunately for DIY filmmakers, the iTunes Movie Store is somewhat less accessible than the music store — to both consumers and to filmmakers. “iTunes is not anywhere near where the current DVD model is in terms of rental,” said Brandon Jones, a member of the Dallas Producer’s Associaton who sat on the panel with a bottle of Zodiac Vodka at his feet and proudly claimed to be speaking on the booze company’s behalf. “But it’s going to be.” Jones called the current problem a “hardware issue” — in other words, people don’t like watching feature films on their computer screens, and not enough of the market has yet invested the time and/or money in figuring out how to hook up their computers to their TVs. This same issue came up in the panel I moderated on Saturday at the festival, Documentary or Vlog; the consensus seems to be that when it becomes easier for the average consumer to use their home computer as the hub of their media center, they will. And at that point, says Jones, we’re in for a seismic change in the popularity of online movie sales.

“If you look at what the music industry did in the 80s with CDs [ie: establishing them as the primary format over records and tapes], it took us all the way until 19997 to do the same thing with DVD. Watch what music did over the last five years, and that gap will shrink and the same thing will happen to movies in the next 2-3 years.”

Even without crystal ball-gazing, iTunes has potentially had an effect on the psychological process of consuming different types of media which could benefit the indie film and music worlds equally. “With iTunes, everything has kind of folded into one,” said Wade Hampton, a Dallas-based movie music supervisor/nightclub manager, suggested that that as filmmakers travel the country on the festival circuit, they try to find angles that would let them book events at local music venues, where they can in effect sell the idea of the film to an audience that might not have otherwise have sought out the movie.

Brandon Jones suggested filmmakers take that plan a step further, and actually book their own tours. “Your film can film a venue. Nobody goes to the movies Monday through Thursdays, so theater owners are dying for you to pack their houses.” Jones pushed DIY touring as a publicity stunt. “Use the theaters for what they’re for: as a promotional vehicle,” he said, recommending that filmmakers zero in on smaller cities where it might not only be easier to book space in an independently run theater, but also “where you can be a big fish, and important news.” Although Justin Johnson of the Zombie Girl team did mention the self-booked tour-as-catalyst for corporate deals story of 5 MPH, no one on the panel expressed awareness of Todd Sklar’s recurring Range Life Roadshow, which, as Sklar told us a few months ago, functions both as DVD marketing and as a surrogate for theatrical distribution which eliminates the distributor as middle man and thus keeps the filmmakers directly engaged with the experience of presenting their movies to audiences. Clearly, this type of self-distribution could be a means to a number of different ends.

The most important takeaway of the session — other than that the biggest overlap between wannabe rock stars and fledgling filmmakers may be the drinking; with the panel held in a festival lounge partially sponsored by Stella Artois, most panelists sat on stage with a cup, and one even disappeared at one point and came back with a refilled glass –– may also have been the most pat, but it’s something that would seem to bear repeating as the sky seems ever closer to the ground: you can do it yourself, if you refuse to give up. “When the top 6 studios don’t pick your film, or you don’t get into Sundance, your life isn’t over,” said Jones. “You just have to come up with a secondary plan.”