Press Kit Essentials: What Should - and Shouldn't - Be In This Crucial Piece

Press Kit Essentials: What Should - and Shouldn't - Be In This Crucial Piece

A press kit is an essential part of any film’s production plan. Like a storyboard or line budget, it’s a behind-the-scenes necessity. And when done right, it can make all the difference in how the press, film festivals, theaters - and ultimately the audience - talk about your movie.

"Birth of a Nation" breaks sales records for Sundance and festivals worldwide

"Birth of a Nation" breaks sales records for Sundance and festivals worldwide

From the Hollywood Reporter: The Sundance audience gave the slave-rebellion drama an extended standing ovation, which was followed by mostly enthusiastic reviews. By the next morning, Fox Searchlight had plunked down a jaw-dropping $17.5 million for worldwide rights to the film, the biggest sale in the fest’s history. It also marks the largest sum ever paid for a finished movie at any festival, including Cannes, Berlin and Toronto. 

Film Festival Secrets Podcast Episode #22: Emily Best, founder of Seed & Spark

Film Festival Secrets Podcast Episode #22: Emily Best, founder of Seed & Spark

Since meeting filmmaker and startup founder Emily Best in November, I’ve wanted to get her on the podcast to talk about her company Seed and Spark. This fundraising tool reimagines crowdfunding from the perspective of an indie filmmaker and takes the experience way past fundraising into audience building and distribution.

Sundance by the Numbers: An Infographic of the 2014 Festival

Sundance by the Numbers: An Infographic of the 2014 Festival

With the 2015 Sundance Film Festival just a few months away, I felt like taking a look back at the 2014 event – in particular this "by the numbers" infographic published by Cultural Weekly. Unlike most crappy infographics which are just articles tortured into vaguely graphical presentation, this one mostly makes good visual use of the data by comparing the last few years of the Festival against one another.

What "Stripped" teaches us about the future of self-distribution and the marketing power of "Calvin & Hobbes."

What "Stripped" teaches us about the future of self-distribution and the marketing power of "Calvin & Hobbes."

This is the future of film distribution that "the industry" has anticipated in increasing degrees over the last decade: filmmakers creating quality content, cultivating an audience, and selling directly to that audience with as few middlemen as possible. The tools for this distribution model have been sneaking up on us but they finally seem ready for prime time. More importantly, there finally exists a critical mass customers who have the technology to watch movies this way -- and they seem perfectly fine "owning" just a digital file.

Time to add IndieFlix to the mix?

Time to add IndieFlix to the mix?

Recently I saw some smart messaging from IndieFlix. This 30 second spot acknowledges that Netflix is the reigning king of streaming entertainment on the mass media side, but it encourages movie lovers to expand their range of options to include indie films on the IndieFlix platform. 

Streaming video revenue could eclipse US box office within the next 3 years

Streaming video revenue could eclipse US box office within the next 3 years

Rich McCormick writes a piece for The Verge about a new report from PricewaterhouseCoopers that predicts that streaming video services will make up 43% of the American film industry. Read on to learn where the revenue growth is coming from (spoiler: it isn't at the expense of movie theaters).

YouTube Is Ready for Its Close-Up

YouTube Is Ready for Its Close-Up

According to this Ad Age article, YouTube is ready to start pumping out TV stars and hit series, even if it has to go old school to get your attention by actually (gasp) advertising them. Read on for a few thoughts about Netflix, YouTube, and the near-future of TV.

Veronica Mars digital download fiasco a depressing finish to a Kickstarter miracle

Veronica Mars digital download fiasco a depressing finish to a Kickstarter miracle

By now you've probably heard about the nasty fallout of the delivery of digital downloads to Veronica Mars backers: the disappointed fans and the offers of refunds to backers who ended up buying copies of the film from Amazon and iTunes. It speaks a lot to how much services like iTunes have become the default entertainment ecosystems and the fact that, if you want to try to buck that trend with a Veronica Mars-shaped Trojan horse, the execution had better be flawless.

The best collection of film distribution advice you're likely ever to see in one place

Thom Powers, who programs documentary films for more film festivals than is probably good for him, gathered the latest in doc distribution wisdom from a wide range of filmmakers.  A must-read. 

My favorite tidbit:

ALEX GIBNEY (DIRECTOR, WE STEAL SECRETS: THE STORY OF WIKILEAKS): Ask every dumb question you can think of. The dumb questions are always the best ones because they tend to provoke the clearest answers.  Don’t ever pretend to know more than you do.  That is the best way to get conned.

Read Thom's entire article here.

Film Festival Secrets Podcast #12 - 3 Questions To Ask Yourself As You Contemplate Your Film's Distribution

Film Festival Secrets Podcast #12 - 3 Questions To Ask Yourself As You Contemplate Your Film's Distribution

Episode #12, featuring Sheri Candler, Director of Digital Marketing Strategy for The Film Collaborative. Sheri shares the three questions that filmmakers should be asking themselves about their films – and usually don't – as they begin to contemplate that picture's distribution. 

12 Steps to a Saner Festival Game Plan

12 Steps to a Saner Festival Game Plan

Filmmaker and Slamdance Film Festival co-founder Dan Mirvish thinks it's time filmmakers took more ownership of their film festival runs. In this piece for Filmmaker Magazine, Dan lays out his personal 12 steps to achieving a healthier outlook on film festivals.

Digital Tape is Dead: Bidding “Adieu” to the HDCAM (and its cousins)

Digital Tape is Dead: Bidding “Adieu” to the HDCAM (and its cousins)

HDCAM? Festivals still accept those? According to Jeffrey Winter at the FIlm Collaborative, not anymore. Instead they want Blu-Ray.

Gasland's Josh Fox on "Here's the Thing"

Gasland's Josh Fox on "Here's the Thing"

Josh Fox, director of Gasland, talks with Alec Baldwin on "Here's the Thing," one of my favorite podcasts. Topics of conversation include elevation sickness at Sundance and moviegoers storming the box office at CineVegas.

Toward Transparent Festival Economics

Heather Croall, writing for Indiewire:

Filmmakers deserve more money for their hard work on making their films. It’s time to look at who’s really benefiting from, and piggybacking on, their success. Analyze the budgets – are there any people in the budget earning fees for hard-to-define roles? Is all film funding going directly to the filmmakers? If not, where is it getting stuck along the way? Analyze the contracts - who gets what in the back end, so to speak?

Where would the money come from?

Tom Hall from the Sarasota Film Festival, responding on Indiewire to a recent article by Sean Farnel which promoted the idea that festivals should share ticketing revenue with filmmakers:

...a reality check seems in order; in almost all cases, there is no profit to share and the loss of revenue from ticketing would create another economic disadvantage in an already difficult environment. That said, festivals must work with filmmakers to help create real value for their films, value that capitalizes on the rapidly changing marketplace without repeating the failed models of the past.

I didn't link to Farnel's original piece because, frankly, it is an argument which surfaces all the time. "Festivals spend all that money on plane tickets and parties," goes the thinking, "so why can't they kick some of that ticketing revenue back to the filmmakers?" I've written rebuttals before (here's one from 2008), but the bottom line is, as Hall points out, that there is very little revenue to share. (Never mind that the accounting would be nightmarish.)

I like Hall's attempt to shift the focus from potential monetary compensation to the value that festivals should bring to filmmakers and their films in other ways. Hopefully we can put this idea to rest for another few months.