DIY
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Register Now for Free Hundreds of Beavers Distribution Case Study
Next Thursday, October 17, over Zoom at 2:00 PM Eastern, Jon Reiss — a longtime Filmmaker contributor and author of the new and highly recommended (and distribution-focused) 8 Above Substack — and I will be hosting a distribution case study on DIY hit Hundreds of Beavers with producer Kurt Ravenwood. We’re going to investigate how the Hundreds of Beavers became a breakout success that grossed over $500K at the theatrical box office — more than tripling their production budget of $150K. Kurt will reveal how their team identified, mobilized and grew their audience, how they eventized their theatrical release and created […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 10, 2024 -
“Punching Above My Weight”: Director Simon Hacker on Partnering with NBA Star Gordon Hayward and Self-Distributing His Indie Comedy, Notice to Quit
I first met Simon Hacker more than a decade ago when I was teaching at the School of Visual Arts in New York and Simon was a film student. He stuck out as someone who responded to what most people around him in the classroom weren’t much interested in: tradition. While the nascent auteurists were looking to reinvent the wheel, Simon grabbed hold of the ideas of a couple of people I introduced him to: Alexander Mackendrick and David Mamet. I was preaching the basics of classical narrative storytelling, and Simon took the time to listen. “What happens next?” became […]
by Paul Cronin on Sep 26, 2024 -
Ten Takeaways from Hundreds of Beavers‘ Success
Each Friday I send out a free email newsletter with an original Editor’s Letter along with viewing recommendations and festival deadlines. The Editor’s Letter is usually not reposted here on this site. As a way of encouraging sign-ups — you can join for free here — I’m posting here a slightly edited version of last week’s edition, in which I draw some production and distribution conclusions from the success of the Mike Cheslik’s independent hit Hundreds of Beavers, drawing info from linked interviews, now unpaywalled, from our current print edition. — Editor Because I edit Filmmaker and am supposed to […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 23, 2024 -
“We Had Made This Film Against All Odds… Why Not Take On This Last Chapter of the Film’s Journey Ourselves?”: You Resemble Me Producer Elizabeth Woodward on Embracing Self-Distribution
With You Resemble Me currently playing at the Angelika Film Center, Filmmaker presents two guest posts about the film’s self-distribution, one by the film’s writer and director, Dina Amer, and, below, one by producer Elizabeth Woodward. After a beautiful premiere in Venice, 30 festival awards from over 70 festivals around the world, our special film You Resemble Me did not have any meaningful distribution offers on the table. We could not believe that our only option was to take a deal that not only would place the film in a catalog of films that we didn’t feel were of the […]
by Elizabeth Woodward on Nov 4, 2022 -
“We are Proving the Market Wrong and Hopefully Inspiring Other Filmmakers”: Writer/Director Dina Amer on Bringing You Resemble Me to Screen
It’s been nearly seven years since I embarked on the journey of my directorial debut, You Resemble Me. It has been a thorny and steep hill to climb. My film is about a woman caught in the center of a terrorist attack, notorious after being named the first female suicide bomber in Europe. I’m a Muslim Egyptian American–not a fluent French speaker–and yet I found myself drawn to a story, at once delicate and destructive, one with roots buried deep in French soil, layers of history — of, for many, injury — that are still raw. The decision to make the […]
by Dina Amer on Nov 4, 2022 -
DIY Lives? #LIKE‘s Distribution Journey, Part Two: The End of the Beginning
On January 26th 2021 my film, LIKE, a feminist noir thriller, debuted on Apple TV, Amazon Prime and others. It has been a long and winding road just to get to the end of the beginning. Part 1 of my article, published in July, details my voyage into the opaque world of film distribution and the ever-evolving influence of streaming, which had for years been diminishing independent film theatrical box office. But then, of course, live audiences were near-obliterated when COVID-19 lockdowns shuttered theaters. In other words, the theatrical exhibition experience was all but gone until who knows when. I […]
by Sarah Pirozek on Feb 4, 2021 -
DIY Is Not Dead
A number of people in the independent film world have been saying lately, “DIY is dead” — more specifically, that do-it-yourself (DIY) distribution and marketing is dead, that it’s no longer useful or practical. As a filmmaker and distribution consultant who has been accused of being a proponent of DIY, I thought it important to respond to this claim because it can be harmful to our community in a variety of ways. DIY is a concept, a philosophy, a prime motivator. It’s a phrase with a lot of historical power and roots in the punk rock movement of the 1970s, […]
by Jon Reiss on Dec 14, 2017 -
Market Timing: Sales Agents Glen Basner and Ryan Kampe Talk the History and Current State of Independent Film Sales
Independent film has always had a funny relationship with the world of foreign sales. In the ’80s, it wasn’t uncommon for a certain breed of hip, black-clad downtown New York filmmaker to find most or all of his or her funding from a besotted West German TV-commissioning editor. By the late ’80s and early ’90s, following the model of Jim Jarmusch, independent film produced auteurs like Hal Hartley who developed real audiences — and financing — in territories like France, Germany and Japan. But for a myriad of reasons — and, indeed, like the rest of the film business — […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 14, 2017 -
Distribution Transparency: Four Filmmakers Reveal Their Numbers, Part Two
Tuesday’s post looked at Neil Berkeley and Judy Chaikin as two filmmakers who wanted to create a theatrical release for their films to boost visibility, increase ancillary value and learn for themselves how to operate in the new hybrid model of distribution and marketing. Today we will look at Paco de Onís from Skylight, the company he runs with creative director Pamela Yates and editorial director Peter Kinoy, and their film/media project Granito Paco de Onís, Skylight and Granito According to de Onís, Skylight is “as much a filmmaking organization as a human rights organization.” Hence their goals are not about monetary gain […]
by Jon Reiss on May 8, 2015 -
Distribution Transparency: Four Filmmakers Reveal Their Distribution Numbers, Part One
Alternative distribution models are no longer the experiment, but are now the norm for the vast majority of filmmakers. However because of a variety of reasons, including not least contract obligations and a fear that exposing numbers may not show the filmmaker in the best light, many filmmakers have been reticent to give out the real numbers from their film’s releases. As a result, for last October’s Getting Real Documentary Conference, held by the International Documentary Association, I wanted to create a panel where the participants were required to reveal the data about the releases of their films. I wanted […]
by Jon Reiss on May 5, 2015
