Is There a Future For Indie Film? Filmmakers and Festivals Will Decide...

Can we all concur that the business model for making and distributing independent films is in flux?

(Mark Gill certainly thinks so … and this article from the Wall Street Journal adds more detail to the picture.)

I’d like to humbly suggest that film festivals need to play a different, more muscular role in helping filmmakers earn money from their creative endeavors.

The model today, for filmmakers lucky enough to win a slot at high-profile festivals like Toronto, where acquisitions execs are prowling, is to hustle and hope for a distribution deal –- before, during, or after their festival run.

And yet we know that the majority of films – even those that win entrance to Toronto, Tribeca, or Sundance -- don’t ever get that deal.

So months later, the filmmaker is stuck trying to figure out a self-distribution strategy, or working with shady sales agents who may sell the broadcast rights to Bolivia for a few grand. (I know you’ll never believe this, but sometimes the filmmaker never actually gets that money.)

For most movies, playing at a festival (or two or three) is the most attention their film will ever get from the media, movie lovers, agents, and yes, potential distributors.

I acknowledge that some filmmakers will choose to continue playing “festival roulette”: spin the wheel and hope for a deal.

But I think smart filmmakers ought to consider using the highest-profile festival they can get into as the platform for launching their movie. During the festival, or on the day it ends, they should make their movie available through their own Web site, perhaps using DVD-on-demand services like NeoFlix, Film Baby, or CreateSpace/Amazon. Same thing for making downloads available: get that movie onto Amazon Unbox, B-Side, or iArthouse.

And I think festivals ought to do more to create opportunities for their filmmakers: a deal with iTunes, for instance, which puts movies into that popular marketplace (iTunes is notoriously difficult for individual filmmakers to work with), or a broadcast deal with a cable channel or pay-per-view service to put the movies on TV, plastered with festival branding, which would serve as a “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval” for movies that might not have stars or high production values.

From a filmmaker's perspective, it’d be good to have a movie available during the festival. If I read a glowing review of something playing at Toronto this weekend, I’m going to want to download it or buy the DVD right then –- and I may not feel the same way a week later, after the festival ends (I may not remember the movie at all by that point.)

From a festival perspective, I understand the fear that allowing movies to be sold online during the run of the festival might diminish that “I saw it first” feeling that festival audiences enjoy. They might prefer for distribution to begin only at the end of the festival. But if the DVD or download featured the festival logo as part of the opening credits, that could also serve as additional marketing for the fest.

So...wouldn’t distributing a movie during, or just after, it plays a festival totally torpedo any chance for distribution?

For some old-school distributors, yes. But the more forward-thinking distributors might look at strong sales of downloads or DVDs in the weeks following a festival as an indication of viewers’ interest in the movie. They might appreciate a filmmaker who has been collecting e-mails and ZIP codes of everyone who has purchased her film, since that data can be used to pick the perfect cities for a theatrical run, and to promote that run.

And distributors, if they want to work with a filmmaker, can always ask that she pull down the DVD or downloadable version of her film. (It’s important to ask DVD or download services whether you can do this; some require that you give them the movie for a specified period of time.)

I spoke earlier this week to a Sundance spokesperson, who said that nothing prohibits a filmmaker from selling his movie online during the festival, “although we wouldn’t recommend it.” She said no filmmaker had yet tried it, to her knowledge.

Toronto’s rules say that films can’t be available on the Internet prior to the last day of the festival. (It’s hard to tell if that refers just to downloads, or to DVDs sold through a Web site like Amazon, too. Even if that’s the case, the rules would seem to allow you to sell DVDs during the festival through Wal-Mart or Best Buy or another retail outlet, if you could cut that kind of deal.)

“We know certain festivals where it’s clear they discourage distribution during the festival, but I think that even those festivals aren’t going to discourage it for long,” says David Straus, CEO of Withoutabox, which helps festivals run their submission processes, and is increasingly getting into the distribution business. “I think festivals see that it’s important that filmmakers really have the ability to start monetizing their film at the festival, and they can be the catalyst to help them do that,” Straus adds.

I think it’d be great to see more filmmakers and festivals experimenting with these kinds of new strategies. (I wrote a bit about how the relationship between festivals and their filmmakers ought to evolve back in December, during the International Film Festival Summit.)

Of course, I could be totally wrong, and this could be a dead end. Some people believe that films that don’t get picked up for distribution at festivals are completely worthless, and that nobody wants to see them. (I don’t.) Some people believe that things never change, and that distributors will forever give the cold shoulder to filmmakers that pursue the kind of self-distribution strategy I’m proposing, to make the most of their festival buzz. Some people may feel that it isn’t part of a film festival’s mission to help filmmakers make a living.

And some people –- the real pessimists –- may believe that there will never be a new business model for independent film.

I’m curious what you think.

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.)

Metacafe banks $30 million ... YouTube officially intros advertising ... Video search ... EZTakes gets friendly with the iPod ... Panel at Toronto

- Metacafe just raised another $30 million in venture capital. While no video site has really yet figured out a great way to integrate advertising with their videos, clearly that's what the investors are hoping here.

- YouTube will officially start selling ads in some of its videos, according to the Wall Street Journal. YouTube won't use pre-roll ads. Emily Steel writes:

YouTube...plans to sell these ads only on videos from its select content partners, whose original videos include professionally produced clips and user-generated content. The partners will earn a share of the ad revenue. The system is similar to Google's AdSense network, which matches ads to the content of a network of Web sites, and gives those sites a cut of the profits. YouTube, of San Bruno, Calif., has established revenue-sharing deals with more than 50 partners, including Ford Models and Warner Music Group Corp. YouTube declined to say what percentage of videos on its site comes from its content partners.

YouTube started testing its in-video ad format in June and July on more than 200 videos from 20 content providers, and found that 75% of viewers watched the entire ad. The ads had five to 10 times greater click-through rates than standard display ads that appear on Web sites, YouTube said. Other ad models are in the works.

- The Journal looks at four video search sites (Truveo/AOL, Google, Yahoo, and BlinkX) and seems to like Truveo best.

- Jim Flynn, CEO of the Massachusetts movie download site EZTakes, sent a note that his site is about to start selling videos that can play on Apple's iPod. "Consumers, who could already burn EZTakes downloads to playable DVDs, can now also enjoy their purchases on their Apple iPods, and just about any portable media player that they may own in the future," the press release says.

- The panel I'm doing at the Toronto International Film Fest next month, on how filmmakers can use social media, has filled out nicely. It'll include Jason Klein of Special Ops Media, Sandi DuBowski of Films that Change the World, Bill Holsinger-Robinson of Spout, Christine Moore of Myspace, and producer Corey Marr. It's on Saturday, September 8th. See you there?