What is the Worst Possible Mistake You Could Make on Your Film's Web Site?

Sony Pictures Classics makes it on the Web site for their doc, 'Every Little Step.'

I stumbled across a trailer for the film on the New York Times site today. At the end of the trailer, they direct you to the film's Web site, EveryLittleStepFilm.com.

Good start.

Then you get to the Web site.

Is the film in release now? Being released?

No info at all.

Is it available on DVD, or coming out soon? Is it on iTunes?

No info.

All you are told is that it played in 2008 at the Berlin Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival.

Even if you as the filmmaker or distributor knew absolutely nothing about when the film was coming out theatrically or on home video... why wouldn't you give me a way to stay in touch, by entering my e-mail address or joining your fan page on Facebook, so that you could notify me when the film is out?

This is just about the dumbest thing you could do on your movie Web site. It's akin to buying a full-page ad in the Yellow Pages and forgetting to include your phone number. There's just no way for the visitor to take action and express an interest in eventually seeing the film. If I'm interested in seeing 'Every Little Step,' Sony Pictures Classics has got to hope that I'll see another ad for it once it's released, notice the title on my local arthouse's marquee, or happen across a review that lets me know it's finally out. Why take that chance, and why spend all that extra money and effort?

(IMDB, by the way, says the release date is April 17th.)

As a counter-example, check out the site for another doc, RiP: A Remix Manifesto, by my pal Brett Gaylor. You can sign up to "attend" Facebook events they've created for each of the film's screenings, subscribe to an RSS feed that lets you know about the film, follow them on Twitter, or enter your e-mail address in a box that says "Keep me posted."

CinemaTech Filmmaker Q&A: Brett Gaylor of Open Source Cinema

At the IFP Filmmaker Conference last month, I had a chance to sit down in the speaker green room with Montreal-based documentarian Brett Gaylor.

We talked about his current project, a doc tentatively titled 'Basement Tapes,' which focuses on the changing concept of copyright -- and which is being made collaboratively. Brett is in the vanguard of people who are exploring the way large communities of people interested in a topic can work together on a film (in much the same way people work together to create Wikipedia.) Here's the video of our conversation, pretty much uncut...

More from the IFP Filmmaker Conference

Lance Weiler moderated a great panel yesterday afternoon that was supposed to be about "Consumer Viewing Habits" but wound up being more about the economics of supporting one's creative work, whether it involves full-length features (Arin and Susan from 'Four Eyed Monsters' were there), short-form funny videos (Andrew Baron from Rocketboom), or documentary (Brett Gaylor of Open Source Cinema).

Some very random notes:

Arin mentioned to Brett how important it is to collect ZIP codes from people interested in your project. That way, when you're doing theatrical screenings or events (or trying to figure out where you should do these events), you have a sense of the geography of your fan base: do people love you in Madison, Wisconsin, while they couldn't care less in Portland, Oregon?

Brett showed the trailer for his doc, which garnered applause -- a good sign. It should be finished next year, he says.

Andrew said that Rocketboom is one of YouTube's advertising partners, and that YouTube will share revenue from the ads it places on Rocketboom. But none of the ads have started showing up yet. Lance suggested that one reason why is that someone created a hack for Firefox that allows you to strip the ads off YouTube's videos. I suspect there may be other reasons, too. Afterward, Baron told me that the ad payments are based on impressions (not click-throughs), and that YouTube would be splitting the revenue roughly down the middle with its creators.

Arin and Susan shared a lot of financial info about 'Four Eyed Monsters.' They've grossed about $135,000 from the movie so far (but are still trying to erase some credit card debt.) About 69 percent of that has come from selling DVDs, movie tickets, and downloads, and 31 percent has come from selling t-shirts, posters, and other merch.

Afterward, Hunter Weeks (director of the doc '10 MPH') came up and we talked about distribution a bit. He said he hasn't really been selling many downloads on Amazon Unbox, even though an Amazon PR rep told me recently that his films was among the best-selling indie downloads on that site. (They had 12 downloads in the month of August through Unbox...and yet a representative for Amazon's CreateSpace division, which handles the indie content on Unbox, told me that month that they were "in the top 20 Unbox titles." What does that say about how well Unbox is doing?) Hunter said he also sells digital versions of the movie on his own site using a service called E-Junkie, which charges $80 a month to host the movie -- and nothing per transaction.

Then there was some hanging around in the lobby...I spoke with a couple knowledgeable folks about when, if ever, indie movies will appear on iTunes. The smart money is on 2008 -- not this year. iTunes is supposedly still more focused on trying to get more studio content. (It is now almost two years since I wrote this opinion piece in the San Francisco Chronicle arguing that Apple is being hypocritical by not allowing independent creators to sell their film and video on iTunes.)

Then there was a dinner that Slava Rubin of IndieGoGo organized....which brought together the 'Four Eyed Monsters' team, Lance, Brett, and M dot Strange...basically, an incredible about of DIY filmmaking smarts gathered around one long table.

30 Hours in Toronto

Today's panel on social networking at the Toronto International Film Festival was a lot of fun, thanks to five really brilliant panelists and the organizing efforts of Shannon Abel of TIFF. We had a really engaged audience, too -- especially distribution guru Peter Broderick, who heckled from the second row.

The main message, to me, was that we're still in an era when filmmakers are figuring out how all these new online tools can connect them with their audience in a way that makes sense. Some of the points I heard:

- Jason Klein of Special Ops Media said that what works for one film may not work for another. Clients still come into his agency and ask him to duplicate the positive word-of-mouth that spread online when "The Blair Witch Project" was released in 1999.

- Filmmakers Sandi DuBowski and Corey Marr said that they're trying a lot of things on MySpace and Facebook, like reaching out to particular groups (in Sandi's case, gay and lesbian Jews around the world) to introduce them to their movies. It's still hard to tell how much of this effort pays off, in terms of people actually purchasing a DVD or buying a ticket to see a movie in a theater. But both said they'd run into people at festivals who'd heard about their movies via social networks like MySpace.

- There's lots of confusion over how much marketing and commerce you're technically allowed to do on MySpace. I asked Christine Moore from MySpace whether, when a movie is released on DVD, a filmmaker would be allowed to message all his MySpace friends to let them know where they could buy it. She gave that her blessing.

- Sandi said that holding onto as many rights as you can is a great idea; he has a deal with his distributor where he can sell DVDs of "Trembling Before G-D" on his own. (He buys these DVDs at wholesale price from the home video distributor, New Yorker Films.)

- Bill Holsinger-Robinson from Spout talked a bit about the release of "Four Eyed Monsters" on YouTube; the money that Spout supplied to Arin Crumley and Susan Buice helped them eliminate some of the credit card debt they'd accumulated in making the movie. (Crumley and Buice got $1 for every new Spout member who registered at the site after they watched "FEM" on YouTube.)

- Someone from the audience asked about collaborative online efforts to make documentaries, and all of us on stage whiffed. Moira Keicher from the National Film Board of Canada, who was in the audience, pointed us to OpenSourceCinema.org.

TIFF recorded the panel, and I'm hoping they'll make it available online soon.

During my 30 hour stay in Toronto, I got to go to a couple parties, but mostly camped out at the Varsity Cinemas. I saw four really wonderful movies: "The Secrets," an Israeli/French production about an unlikely friendship between two girls in a seminary, and an ex-prisoner they try to guide toward redemption; "The Last Time I Saw My Father," about a tempestuous father/son relationship, starring Colin Firth and Jim Broadbent; "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," an exceptional Western photographed by Roger Deakins and starring Casey Affleck and Brad Pitt; and Helen Hunt's impressive directorial debut, "Then She Found Me," a deep and thoughtful romantic comedy co-starring Firth and Bette Midler. I caught about an hour of "Into the Wild," the Sean Penn adaptation of Jon Krakauer's book, which didn't really appeal to me. (I haven't read the book, though I'm a fan of Krakauer's magazine work and "Into Thin Air," his best-seller about climbing Everest.)

I wish I could've stayed for the rest of the festival, especially to see some documentaries (tops on my list were "A Jihad for Love," which Sandi DuBowski produced, and the documentary about The Who, the title of which escapes me.)