Awhile back in The Huffington Post, Marshall Fine pointed to Comic Con as an example of what is wrong with the Studio Biz these days. I too miss the days when it seemed like there was business in creating work for mature audiences. I will be among the first in line for Innaritu’s BUITIFUL for sure, and when I watched FAREWELL the other night, I longed to make a film of that weight, craft, and themes. Looking at what my immediate future holds as a producer in the USA, I don’t think I will get much opportunity for such exploration anytime soon, at least not on a reasonable budget.
Nonetheless, as opposed to Marshall, ComicCon does not represent for me what’s wrong with the film biz, but quite the opposite. Although the communities are smaller , and the passion and fervor far less, the art house contingents should take note what ComicCon does. It is the only populist film event we have in this country.
I am incredibly energized by ComicCon and believe it is a model that can be extended to support work beyond the specific genre it currently supports. That is, if the audience and community for specific genres and subjects can unite the way ComicCon’s has, we as filmmakers could truly start to collaborate with audiences the way the fan boy and geek crowd does with their filmmakers. Taking SUPER to ComicCon was one of the highlights of my twenty plus years in the business. I felt unbridled support for what we’ve made, and we only offered up a wee taste.
The following is a bit of an update to the reply that I posted to Marshall on the Huff:
I share your lament about Hollywood abandoning more serious fare, but it is what it is. Let’s face it, movies for adults are difficult to execute and difficult to market; how can you blame the studios from abandoning them?
Audiences need to unite and demand what they want. [...]
Mike Hedge pointed out to me that we now have a major distributor using Eventful to organize screenings on a local level. Back when Adventureland was released, I few fans found me to let me know that they had organized screening groups on MeetUp. Both of these are powerful tools, that the indie film community needs to make more use of.
Okay, so now you’ve decided you want to start a film club. First you need to invite people. Which means you need a bunch of emails. I was fortunate in that I waited 15 years to start such a club. Which meant I knew a lot of indie film fans in my town to invite. You’d think that would solve the problem, right?
We’ve been curating a regular screening series in conjunction with our friends at Goldcrest all year. It’s free and every screening has been filled to capacity. We send out 800 emails to “influential media types” here in NYC and have 60 seats. Makers Mark Bourbon gives us some fine sippin’ whiskey to share afterwards. The filmmakers always come and we do a Q&A afterwards. It’s a lot of fun, the films have been great, and the filmmakers have made important connections from it. Most importantly it builds word of mouth for these films that deserve more. My dream is to get some form of sponsorship so we could give the filmmakers a speaking fee and fly folks in from out of town.
There’s a good post today on FilmmakerMagBlog by Jake Abraham on LOVELY BY SURPRISE, a film he produced and is now distributing. The only way DIY is going to really ever become a viable model is for filmmakers to do precisely what Jake is doing, and share the experience. You should definitely read the whole post, but I definitely appreciated this nugget:
we worked with Indigenous to make sure that every possible outlet, both retail and online, would carry the film. They set up Netflix, Blockbuster Online, Amazon.com, iTunes and all those other online rental and purchase sites. Also, as they are set up as a vendor with all the wholesalers that distribute to retail rental stores and purchasers like Target, K-Mart, etc., we have orders coming in from those guys as well. This detail can’t be overlooked. Working with an approved vendor is a key step to getting your DVD in rental stores all over the U.S. (yes, they still exist). Don’t wait until your DVD is pressed to do this. It takes months to get all of this set up properly. The consequence of delaying this process is severe, as your film will not be available everywhere you want it to be when your marketing push is on and potential viewers won’t be able to access it.
This site could not have been built without the help and insight of Michael Morgenstern. My thanks go out to him.
Help save indie film and give this guy a job in web design or film!
