Back in 2011, around 50 percent of the films that played the Sundance Film Festival went on to receive distribution. “That was an unacceptable violation of our mission as a nonprofit to connect audiences and artists,” recalls Chris Horton, director of Sundance’s Artist Services, which was founded that same January in an effort to help filmmakers navigate the changing landscapes in funding, marketing and distribution. For the subsequent three years, Artist Services partnered with content aggregator New Video to distribute over 100 Sundance pictures, working with the filmmakers to determine the best possible release and windowing strategies. When Sundance’s deal […]

“The most important task is to make great movies,” said Sundance Institute Executive Director Keri Putnam at the start of Thursday’s Artist Services Workshop at IFP’s Filmmaker Conference. “All this talk about audiences is meaningless unless you have something in your heart you want to get out there.” However, Putnam’s comments were not to construe that filmmakers shouldn’t think about the rapidly changing world of distribution, marketing and audience building. As Putnam went on to say, it is “easier, less expensive to make a movie, but no easier to find an audience. There is a volume of movies and a […]

While many Sundance filmmakers last year this time were nervously awaiting distribution deals, one had done something completely different. Upstream Color director Shane Carruth entered the festival with a DIY distribution plan already in place. He partnered with Sundance Artists Services’s Joseph Beyer and distribution consultant Michael Tuckman, devised a theatrical campaign and swift VOD rollout, and was already at work on merch for the large fan base eager for the follow-up to his cult classic Primer. Carruth and his team pre-screened the film for journalists, including Filmmaker, and, we responded by endorsing both the movie and its distribution paradigm, […]