Today one of the most anticipated panels for filmmakers in the Tribeca Talks series took place. Moderated by Hollywood Reporter's Steve Zeitchik with a panel consisting of IFC's Ryan Werner, 42 West's Cynthia Swartz, Bomb It director Jon Reiss, YouTube's Sara Pollack, Tribeca Enterprises' Geoff Gilmore and Oscilloscope's David Fenkel (pictured above right-left), the group discussed the alternative distribution and marketing models currently on the minds of filmmakers and the industry alike.

Like most panels on this subject no one has the answer on how filmmakers can make money outside of the traditional forms of distribution. YouTube has begun their Screening Room page recently that's showcasing shorts and feature films for free. And though Pollack notes that there have been over 30 million views to the page, filmmakers aren't really seeing much money, if any. Then there's IFC which has been the trailblazer in VOD distribution. Werner says that they moved to the VOD platform and created Festival Direct (which are festival favorite titles they release only on VOD) because they couldn't take chances on some films that they loved on the festival circuit by spending P&A to give it a traditional theatrical release. "It was a response to what we saw at festivals," says Werner of IFC's VOD model. "We couldn't take a chance on them [theatrically] so this was the only way to release them."

Gilmore also noted that a real change is needed on what the industry views as a success. "When sex, lies was bought everyone would have been happy to make a $2 million gross," he says. "Now everyone wants to have a Slumdog Millionaire." He says that the "hit-driven" mentality has to be toned down and that the system that has been in place for the last 30 years (theatrical to home video to paid cable) is outdated and that everyone is waiting for that one online model that is profitable. YouTube could soon have the answer.

Pollack told how when Magnolia released Wayne Wang's The Princess of Nebraska and A Thousand Years of Good Prayers close to one another in 2008, YouTube premiered Nebraska and got close to 150,000 views in the first week it went up along with a review from A.O. Scott at the New York Times. But Pollack says that with Nebraska being online at the same time A Thousand Years was in theaters it helped bring more attention to Thousand. So perhaps the best way to use the Web right now is by creating original content for the Web that can help motivate audiences to see a film in a traditional way.

Swartz believes that filmmakers need to think out the marketing even before funding begins on a project. "You can no longer make a film and they say, 'what do I do with it?'" she says. "You have the cultivate an audience before making the movie and have a back up plan if your film doesn't get bought."

Reiss concurs and says that you can make more money selling parts of your film than giving all rights to one company (many of these issues and more can be found in the series of stories Reiss wrote for us in our Fall '08, Winter '09 and Spring '09 issues). He also states that there's still money that can be made in releasing a film theatrically, but you just can't do it the way the studios do. "Often times [when screening Bomb It] we made most of our money when we did one or two day screenings instead of a week long," he says. "We would do promotion and do the street team thing so people realized after a few days they would never get the chance to see the film so they had to come to the theater."

Though many filmmakers could have taken away a lot of doom and gloom scenarios from the discussion, Reiss put it in a positive prospective. "This is the best time to be a filmmaker because there has never been a time like this where you have all these options to release films."

Labels: Festival Ambassador

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 4/28/2009 10:54:00 PM Comments (0)

Friday, April 24, 2009

HIGHLIGHTS AT TRIBECA APPLE STORE PARTY 

Though the Tribeca Film Festival kicked off on Wednesday with the screening of Woody Allen's Whatever Works, the fest really kicked into gear on Thursday as screenings started as well as the parties. Apple Store's annual party was tonight with the highlights being an appearance by a cute dog named Archie (pictured right) who roamed around the first and second floor with ease, acting more civilized than most of the humans in the store.

Case in point, this group who decided to start a conga line around the second floor.

Labels: Festival Ambassador

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 4/24/2009 01:32:00 AM Comments (0)

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

SWEETHEARTS AT SXSW 

At this year's SXSW we asked Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo director Bradley Beesley to take along Nokia's N95 multimedia device to shoot pictures of his funny and touching doc about women convicts who get the chance to compete in a rodeo.

We thank Bradley and the crew of Sweethearts for taking part in this. Here's his photo diary.

Here's a shot from the VIP balcony at the newly remodeled Alamo
Ritz theatre. This pic is of our opening credits -done by the fine
folks at SUPER! ALRIGHT! a post house here in Austin. What you can't
see from this photo is that a man is being gored by a 1500 pound bull
and flipped 10 feet in the air.


This was at our cast and crew dinner at Progress Coffee Shop. I
made fajitas for everyone and we drank mountains of Chimay beer. This
photo with Louisianna Kreutz, our editor, and Melissa Scaramucci, our
associate producer, must have been taken before I started serving
food because at the end of the night I was covered in guacamole, meat
juices and beer.


If you're wondering why those 3 people to the right of that
bearded beast look so miniature, it's because that's the tallest man
in Oklahoma (7 feet tall and 385 pounds of half man/half big foot)
who happens to be our talented cinematographer Mr. Alan Novey and yes
he bites. Also, dwarfed with me is James Payne and Amy Dotson our
sweet producers. This was after our second screening at the Alamo
Ritz -we once again packed the house and I somehow managed to win a
pizza eating contest during our screening.


Pictured here is Dr. Michael Friedman our trustee associate
producer. Michael is holding a Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo
wallet which was hand made by the female inmates at the Eddie Warrior
Correctional Center. A great deal of our film was shot on location
at the EWCC saddle shop so we thought it was fitting to order leather
goods from the prison as gifts for the cast and crew.


Here's me with Andrew Bujalski who was kind enough to make it to
our second screening. Andrew's only screening of Beeswax was during
our premiere party so I didn't get to see his film but I can't wait
to check it out. That's the problem with these film festivals -
there's just too many great films to see in one week. Although Andrew
and I don't hang out that often in Austin we once had Thanksgiving
dinner together at a film festival in Greece.


Our main female characters had collectively been in prison for
over 25-years and I wanted this SXSW premiere to be special for the
girls so we rented a Lincoln town car, got them matching western
outfits and gave them the red carpet treatment outside the Paramount.
Here Crystal and Jamie are walking on the red carpet into the cinema
which was packed with over 1,000 people. Our premiere could not have
been any better and the ladies did an amazing job during our Q&A.


Still trapped in the Winnebago, apparently i have not only fallen
asleep while traveling at 40MPH but someone has enlarged my face to
the size of a giant pumpkin. If there's a less flattering photograph
of me I have yet to see it. Please look away.


Somehow, we thought it was a good idea to pack over 50 drunk
filmmakers into a Winnebago and drive around Austin -spilling beer on
each other, shouting out the windows and generally annoying anyone
within earshot. I am not certain what Ben Steinbauer (pictured here)
paid for this Winnebago but it was well worth every cent. We
certainly put the wreck in recreational vehicle and for the record
the giant man Mr. Alan Novey was driving.

Labels: Festival Ambassador

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 4/08/2009 04:39:00 PM Comments (0)