Distribution
Filmmaking - Distribution
-
The Book of Lone Peak: Distributing and Marketing the Short Film
For ten days in January a documentary called The Book of Lone Peak ranked as the top-selling short film on iTunes. The film, which profiles a high school basketball team from the town of Highland, Utah, was made by New York City-based filmmaker Ben Altarescu and a fifteen-year-old journalism student named Zack Samberg. The pair moved quickly to push the project through to completion before the basketball players left for post-high school pursuits. The filmmakers talked with me about how a professional filmmaker and teenager collaborated and how they helped push the film on iTunes and other platforms. Filmmaker: You both came to this project […]
-
Should You Stream Your Festival Premiere on VHX?
Good podcast conversation today at TFI Live with Jason Guerrasio speaking with producer Marilyn Ness (E-TEAM) and Indiegogo’s John T. Trigonis about the nascent trend of live streaming features for crowdfunding backers. They discuss the live stream of Steve James’ Life Itself alongside its Sundance premiere. For $25, 1,900 Indiegogo backers took James and his team up on their offer. Trigonis talks about the effort from the Indiegogo point of view, and Ness discusses why she and her team couldn’t do such a release. The conversation expands to include discussion of the types of films that would and would not […]
-
Contemporary as Repertory: Aaron Schimberg and Jon Dieringer on Go Down Death at Spectacle
Perhaps it’s the fabulist way its characters relay their inverted sense of normality or their ragged way of dress, but something about Aaron Schimberg’s debut feature Go Down Death is unshakably anachronistic — and it’s not just the black-and-white 16 mm. Fitting then, that the film accounts for the first-ever theatrical run at the Williamsburg repertory theater, Spectacle. Screenings begin this Friday, with select showings in Smell-o-Vision, the aromatic brain child of producer-editor Vanessa McDonnell, who considers Go Down Death to be the ultimate vehicle for “the weird perfumes and other odd tinctures I’ve made out of plants, foods, etc.,” aside from […]
-
Robert Herrera on the App and Distribution of the Basketball Documentary The Gray Seasons
It’s been two full decades since Hoop Dreams, but any basketball documentary is still bound to be compared to that iconic film. Still, technological changes over those 20 years beg the question of how Steve James and Kartemquin Film would handle distributing the film today. When director Robert Herrera was faced with the same challenge for his new film The Gray Seasons, about the women’s basketball team at St. Louis University, he struck upon a series of festival screenings, simultaneous cable PPV and VOD (via Vimeo on Demand) availability, and finally a DVD release and iOS app that encapsulates much of […]
-
POV and The New York Times Launch New Documentary Film Initiative
Yesterday the PBS documentary series POV and The New York Times announced a collaborative effort to simultaneously show documentary films on the organizations’ individual websites. Later today the first film, Dan Barry and Kassie Bracken’s half-hour The Men of Atalissa, which was produced by the Times, kicks off the effort, with a full series of films following throughout the year. Along with the film, which is about a group of mentally disabled men who endured decades of abuse in the bunkhouse they lived in in Atalissa, Iowa, the Times will run an article about the men by Barry and the POV […]
-
Vimeo Execs Talk New $10 Million Investment for Direct Distributing Filmmakers
Vimeo announced today a $10 million investment in direct financial support and online services for eligible creators distributing their work using Vimeo on Demand. “The direct distribution movement gains momentum every day,” said Vimeo CEO Kerry Trainor in a statement, “and we are fully committed to empowering creators with a vibrant alternative to the ad-dominated online video ecosystem for monetizing content.” Vimeo’s $10 million fund will support the following initiatives. From the press release: Expansion of Crowdfunding Program: Vimeo is expanding on its crowdfunding program announced at the 2014 Sundance Festival by extending access to part of its $10 million […]
-
Simple Machine to Award Micro-Festival Grants
Simple Machine, the online distribution platform connecting filmmakers to non-theatrical venues, is offering quarterly $1,000 grants to new small, innovative film festivals. “How can we more fully explore the possibilities of hyper-local events designed to create an effective context for contemporary cinema?” asks Simple Machine’s creator, Nandan Rao, in a statement. “How can we push the film-festival concept into smaller, more intimate nooks and crannies in our societal fabric? What new terms are needed to describe the formats of communal movie watching that resonate with us today? These are the questions we’re hoping our grant-winners will help to answer.” The […]
-
Go Down Death Acquired by Factory 25
An IFP lab film from a couple years back, Go Down Death is having a rather busy week. The near-apocalyptic tale of a crumbling village, haunted by illnesses and the supernatural, was announced as the first (and only?) theatrical run at Williamsburg’s repertory Spectacle Theater, and, as of today, is yet another prime addition to Factory 25’s slate. I’ll have more on the film’s unique distribution path from writer-director Aaron Schimberg and Spectacle programmer Jon Dieringer when the time comes, but till then, the rest of the country can expect a July VOD and iTunes release, with a theatrical rollout to follow.
-
The Future of Compression: Google Attempts to Replace H.26X… Again
For a second time, Google is attempting to pitch a compression format as the replacement for an H.26X compressor. They tried to do it three years ago for HD video when they pitched VP8 as a replacement for H.264 and had little success. Now they’re back with a new angle: VP9 is the format for 4K, and they are putting it up against H.265, the new 4K compressor that is also referred to as HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding). Should you care? Compression codecs can be fascinating, frustrating and their naming confusing. For example, everyone’s heard of H.264 and AVCHD, […]
-
“Owning Your Own Copyright Is a Good Thing… Until It Isn’t.” Producer Jim Stark on Filmmaker Rights and Responsibilities
In today’s treacherous distribution environment, should filmmakers seize control of their destinies by controlling the copyright of their films? That’s the question posed — and answered in the affirmative — by Chris Dorr in a recent blog post, “We Own Our Own Copyrights.” But this argument isn’t one that’s just arisen in the digital era, and, I’d argue, Dorr’s conclusion isn’t one that filmmakers should automatically reach. Owning copyright and tending to a film’s needs over the course of a lifetime is a choice some filmmakers will benefit by making. Others will be better off taking a fee for their […]
