Filmmakers Forum

The Future of Independent film

There seems to be a complete shift happening in the independent film, especially in terms of promotion.  I am fairly new to the subject, but if I had to summarize what I am seeing it would be something like:

Old way- Make a film, cross your fingers, submit to festivals, sweat in your shorts, and if you were lucky enough to get into a festival, pray that a company would pick you up for exhibition and distribution.

New way- Make a film, submit to festivals, but spend most of your time promoting your film through social networks online. Even big companies know that a successful promotion package includes a killer Myspace Movie profile. You can now have a Facebook product page where people become fans of your film. And then there is Spout, where we want to work our tails off to connect you with your audience.

Make sense? The new way requires a lot more work from you, but the benefits are all yours and it costs very little, if anything to do it. The internet has managed to change everything from the way I shop to the way I learn and film is not an exception. Even companies like Paramount are reaching out to us because they know that the future of what they do is closely tied to what we are doing in this space. If you get what I am talking about at this moment you are ahead of the curve and in an opportune moment. 

What do you think? am I off my rocker?

Re:The Future of Independent film

Check out this week's FilmCouch for more thoughts on the state of independent film, they probably put it more eloquently than I could:

http://blog.spout.com/2008/09/26/filmcouch-89-choke-whats-up-with-independent-film-fantastic-fest/

Also, if you're not subscribed to Spoutblog in an RSS reader, you should be. They are always posting great material on this subject and keeping their finger on the pulse of independent and Hollywood film. In fact you might just want to follow as many blogs as you cant find on the subject, then, when you are feeling adventurous, you can engage in the discussion too.

Re:The Future of Independent film

Also, FYI: If you haven't checked out Adam/Skypilot's thread on promoting your film on Spout, you should do that too.

http://www.spout.com/groups/435/34097/ShowPost.aspx

Re:The Future of Independent film

I think a big part of the equation in the new paradigm for media promotion is the ability for potential viewers/fans to interact with each other and ideally the media itself, whether its a q&a with a producer, or commenting on a blog.  This brings Hollywood down to street level so to speak, gives the audience a sense of ownership and comraderie, and helps build and interest/fan base.  And, its super cheap. 

Fans are more than willing to do the work (see the 'fan pages' springing up all over Facebook) that the companies used to pay marketing execs big money to do.  Its not even just indie or small releases using this approach--I think we are starting to see it more as major film labels are losing credibility and the independents are gaining credibility.

csprague:

Also, FYI: If you haven't checked out Adam/Skypilot's thread on promoting your film on Spout, you should do that too.

http://www.spout.com/groups/435/34097/ShowPost.aspx

Re:The Future of Independent film

csprague:

There seems to be a complete shift happening in the independent film, especially in terms of promotion.  I am fairly new to the subject, but if I had to summarize what I am seeing it would be something like:

Old way- Make a film, cross your fingers, submit to festivals, sweat in your shorts, and if you were lucky enough to get into a festival, pray that a company would pick you up for exhibition and distribution.

New way- Make a film, submit to festivals, but spend most of your time promoting your film through social networks online. Even big companies know that a successful promotion package includes a killer Myspace Movie profile. You can now have a Facebook product page where people become fans of your film. And then there is Spout, where we want to work our tails off to connect you with your audience.

Make sense? The new way requires a lot more work from you, but the benefits are all yours and it costs very little, if anything to do it. The internet has managed to change everything from the way I shop to the way I learn and film is not an exception. Even companies like Paramount are reaching out to us because they know that the future of what they do is closely tied to what we are doing in this space. If you get what I am talking about at this moment you are ahead of the curve and in an opportune moment. 

What do you think? am I off my rocker?

You are so right. I finished producing my first feature last year and I've been to 2 low tier festivals with awards and no distribution. So now I'm diving into this Internet world to market my film and I have no marketing experience. So, I'm definitely going to try and release the movie online, I just have to figure out what the best route to that is.

Oh, thanks Seely for the invite!

Re:The Future of Independent film

Looks like I did already send you an invite!  Anyways, distribution is really becoming an issue for small producers.  It used to be that companies would pick up an indie-film for $20-50k at most, and then turn around their investment for a low-risk and low-effort profit.  Prices of films have gone up and the market seems saturated right now with good quality indepenedent projects, while at the same time the box-office has taken a bit of a slide backwards. 

That being said, there are a LOT of new distribution platforms popping up left and right for filmmakers.  Are any of them good?  Its difficult to say, but I know that Amazon has a new low-cost distribution program, as well as a few others.  Most of them aim for end-user/consumer distribution though unfortunately, instead of shopping your project to a larger film distributor.  Essentially, you pay them $x.xx and they will print and package your movie and have it available on their website.

Social media has been both a curse and a blessing to the independent film world.  On one hand, it has leveled the playing field, giving EVERYONE an opportunity to promote their film cheaply and easily, but on the otherhand that has led to a gluttony of films, and a lot of larger houses taking advantage of the technology to promote large releases as you would an independent--so the advertising channels just become saturated. 

Really, I think it is why sites like Spout.com are so important and going to become more important in the future... we rely on our users and our 'mavens' (reviewers/bloggers) to wade through all the crap that is being released and pull out the few gems that make it through!  No one person really has time to watch every new release, so using everyone's collective input and wisdom, it makes it a lot easier to make an educated choice in film viewing and latch onto those flicks that fly 'under the radar' we may have otherwise missed!

There's my rant for the day :-)

CorneliusTheMovie:

You are so right. I finished producing my first feature last year and I've been to 2 low tier festivals with awards and no distribution. So now I'm diving into this Internet world to market my film and I have no marketing experience. So, I'm definitely going to try and release the movie online, I just have to figure out what the best route to that is.

Oh, thanks Seely for the invite!