This article originally appeared in our Summer, 2013 issue. With substantial revenue (sometimes well above 50 percent) coming from exploitation outside of a film’s home country, it is vital that producers know how to target and then structure deals with foreign sales agents. For those beginning to explore international distribution, here are some very basic ideas and concepts about the business of foreign sales to know going in. What is an international sales agent? In simplest terms, an international sales agent is the conduit to your film’s distribution outside of its country of origin. The sales agent will acquire a […]
Still the only lab focusing entirely on what happens after rough cut —- from locking picture to devising a distribution strategy — the IFP Narrative Lab concluded its ninth edition last month. When I created the Lab with the IFP almost a decade ago, the idea was simple. A successful career in film is partly based around making mistakes — and then not making those same mistakes again. But first-time filmmakers don’t have prior experience to draw upon, and in today’s hyper-competitive, content-swamped environment, failure is a luxury many of them can’t afford —— especially when that failure is made […]
In the final part of our interview with brothers Michael and Shawn Rasmussen, they talk about the importance of music and audio, costume design, and how they found a distributor. After writing the script for The Ward, which was directed by John Carpenter, the brothers decided they really wanted to direct their next script themselves. They spent almost a year trying to raise money, but ultimately decided to shoot Dark Feed with a Canon 7D and the resources they had available. Dark Feed was successfully completed and sold to a distributor, and they are now working on their second low-budget feature, […]
Amazon is upping the ante in the original content wars. On June 27, the giant online retailer’s movie group, Amazon Studios, started accepting 2- to 15-minute sizzle reels or pitches for feature-length films. Its Hollywonk blog said it was seeking projects that “express an idea that’s begging to be seen on the big-screen, in full-length, full-budget form.” Amazon’s current development slate includes a mixed bag of movies: the horror flick, ZvG: Zombies Vs Gladiators, a thriller, Burma Rising, a sci-fi, Hiber, and a family comedy, It Came in the Mail. “Amazon Studios wants to discover great talent and produce programming […]
In my office hangs a blue and green woodblock poster that features an image of Woody Guthrie and a lot of hand-carved text. The text is a quote — an exhortation, really — adapted from Born To Win, Guthrie’s autobiography, about why he writes songs and who his audience is. I’ve had this poster as long as I’ve been making films, and — not coincidentally — that poster’s been on my mind for the last week while I had the honor of workshopping my debut feature, Something, Anything, through the first week of IFP’s Narrative Lab. Throughout the week, our […]
Intel, the giant computer chip manufacturer, is joining the growing roster of tech companies entering the web-delivered video jamboree. In addition to Google’s YouTube and Netflix, Apple and Microsoft are carving out space on the web to offer live and video-on-demand (VOD) TV programming. Web video distribution can be executed either as Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) or as Over-the-Top (OTT). With IPTV, the digital signal is streamed and/or offered as VOD programming over a closed or proprietary network through a cable or telephone company. OTT refers to streaming and/or VOD programming distributed over an open or unmanaged video data stream […]
Winner of the Best Feature Tiger Award at the 2012 Rotterdam Film Festival, Maja Milos’s Clip has stirred controversy on the festival circuit for its graphic and downbeat look at the sexual rebellion of a barely-teenage Serbian girl. The first feature of its young female director, and partially financed by the Serbian government, the film takes its title from its 14-year-old protagonist’s penchant for recording her drug-and-sex-fueled environments on her cell phone. Brandon Harris covered the 2012 International Film Festival Rotterdam for the Spring, 2012 edition of Filmmaker and below is his take on the movie. Clip is released on […]
As of January 2013, comScore reports that 129.4 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones, accounting for more than half (55%) of mobile devices. A recent study by Harris Interactive for Telly, a social networking video service, conducted with 2,000 smartphone users projects that 78 million mobile device owners watch videos on their smartphones. One of the study’s surprise findings is that Apple’s iOS devices do not dominate the mobile video viewing market. Rather, Android devices are viewed by nearly one-half (46%), while Apple captured only a little more then a third (36%) while a little more than a tenth […]
Is your short online and your heart is set on premiering it for audiences at the Cannes, Berlin, Edinburgh, Maryland or Chicago International film festivals? Well, kiss those dreams goodbye as those five festivals are among a number of fests that disallow shorts that the filmmakers have previously placed online. The good news, however, is that an increasingly number of important festivals, including Sundance and SXSW, accept online shorts. The folks at Short of the Week have compiled the Essential List of Festivals and Online Eligibility, a list that concludes that two thirds of today’s fests welcome such submissions. View […]
Earlier this week I posted “15 Lessons for Producers from the Cannes Film Festival and Market.” With the festival and market now firmly in the rear-view mirror, the consensus is that it was a solid one for the international sales community, without, perhaps that one giant locomotive title but with an appropriately modest number of films hitting their ask prices. Tastes were noted to have shifted, with buyers wanting “more Jennifer Lawrence and less Sylvester Stallone.” And on the pure indie level, I noticed, as I wrote in my piece on producers, a new crop of American independents have figured […]