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Truly Free Film

How to Make Money in the Age of Abundance, Part 1

Part One: The Stuggles You Are Facing and How You Can Cope

By Jon Reiss

Since the collapse of the traditional distribution for filmmakers in 2007 we as a community have been struggling to figure out new solutions of how to monetize our work – in other words:  how to make money from our content and create a sustainable living.  In this two part series I will reformulate and address some of the problems we are facing – but also present some potential solutions for independent filmmakers.   These thoughts come from a creating a series of new presentations on Artistic Entrepreneurship over the past year that I presented at the recent SFFS A2E Workshop (http://www.sffs.org/Filmmaker360/A2E-Artist-to-Entrepreneur.aspx) and this spring’s IFP Filmmaker Labs (http://www.ifp.org/programs/labs/).   I welcome your comments!

While there were a number of factors that caused an upheaval of the distribution landscape in 2007 and while there have been many positive signs of improvement, filmmakers and all artists still face an enormously changed market for content.