Creative Distribution 101

Curtis has written for ABC, Disney Channel, and Nickelodeon, and won awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, and the San Diego Asian American Film Foundation. As a community activist, he co-founded the Asian American Writers Workshop and Asian Pacific Americans for Progress. His first film, Vincent Who? has screened at nearly 400 colleges, NGOs and corporations in four countries. Curtis is currently a Visiting Scholar at NYU. His documentary, "Tested," which follows a dozen racially and socioeconomically diverse eighth-graders as they fight for a seat at one of New York City's schools, has screened at hundreds of schools and communities around the world, and Curtis planned this campaign himself. He's here to tell us how.

This is episode 6 with Leah Meyerhoff, whose debut feature film I BELIEVE IN UNICORNS premiered at SXSW 2014 and continues to travel the film festival circuit. Her previous short films have screened in over 200 film festivals, won a dozen awards, and aired on IFC, PBS and MTV. She has been shortlisted for the Student Academy Awards and Gotham Awards and received high profile grants from IFP, the Tribeca Film Institute and the Adrienne Shelly Foundation. She was honored with the Adrienne Shelly Director's Award and has been featured in Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and The New York Times. Leah also created in 2013 the acclaimed non-profit Film Fatales which advocates for an inclusive community of women feature film and television directors.

Mark your calendars for mid-August when brand new episodes will drop every week for Season 2 with guests including Leah Meyerhoff of Film Fatales, Emily Best of Seed & Spark, Curtis Chin of Tested, amazing alumni from the Firelight Media Impact Producer Fellowship, Naomi McDougall Jones of the Joyful Vampire Tour, and experts from Picture Motion, Together Films, The Raben Group and more !

Welcome to Episode 5, with Maria Judice. Maria is an award-winning writer and director, who also founded INDIGO IMPACT in 2016 with a mission to bring left of center stories and creators to global audiences as an Impact Producer. She worked for such titles like DREAMSTATES starring Saul Williams, Haiti's first Oscar selection called AYITI MON AMOUR, and SXSW breakout JINN by Oakland native Nijla Mumin. She brings affordable music, literature, art, and performance to the Bay Area as a Co-Curator of the MATATU FESTIVAL. She sits on the Diversity Board of SF FILM and Advisory Board of Code Tenderloin. WIRED magazine called Maria a "filmmaker provocateur" bridging technology thinking with art making. Here she talks about the decolonization of docs, how to build relationships with audiences and communities and about what an Oscar campaign entails.

Show notes:

• Thinking about your strategy before you enter the festival circuit is crucial. Even if you get into a top festival, it's about marketing your screening to fill the room with the right people who can amplify your message. You can get into a top festival and have very few people attend your premiere if you dont promote it properly ahead of time !
• Depending on your goals, strategy will vary. If a film is meant for impact, or to screen widely, or to be a career milestone, all this will determine your priorities and the people you should meet.
• Oscar campaigns: Ayiti Mon Amour was the first Haitian Oscar nominee ever (short-listed for the final nominations), and just getting the pre-selection in was a huge deal as most films selected have a lot of money for marketing campaigns. Their team used this campaign to connect with the Haitian diaspora and make people think about Haiti in a new way, away from the poverty porn. The goal was also to put the director Guetty Felin on the map for her next career opportunities, which was a success.
• Very important to be realistic: if you don't have the money or star power, you need to take a step back and have realistic goals and do all the outreach necessary to cut through the clutter. Until you're rich or famous, you do the work for people to come to you.
• Maria has very real conversations with filmmakers who approach her about connecting with a specific community. If you're a white man who made a film about people of color, as is often the case, you might not be the right person to have those dialogues and might have to take a backseat during screenings, and let people from the community lead the conversation. You also can't expect people of color to want to embrace your film. Always ask yourself: Am I the right person to tell this story ? Do I have a genuine connection to the community I am filming ? How can I make them participants and not just subjects? It's a constant checking in. Once we turn the camera on, we have impacted their world, and can't pretend we are not participating with another person, and with that comes accountability and responsibility.
• If you made a film about or for underserved audiences, don't think of them as a pipeline to get your film seen. It's a complex relationship that takes time, especially for films about hard topics. Figure out early on and in-person how that audience is connected and rooted into the subject matter. It's "Holistic filmmaking" - treating your audiences as participants who help you curate and lead those conversations and the path of the film.
• When you do engage with audiences at screenings, it's also about creating a genuine connection and serving your audiences. They will always sniff out dishonesty and lack of authenticity. Treat your audiences with respect and intelligence. They are also your number one ambassadors !
• Partnership building advice: look at what is around you, what partners do you already have in your community, the groups you already belong to, are involved in or who have invested in you ? Look at the low hanging fruits first.
• Relationships: show up to other filmmakers' stuff, be there for your community, remind yourself aboutt he support you do have around you and nurture those relationships.

In episode 4, Robin Hauser Reynolds, the director of the award-winning documentary "Code: debugging the gender gap" about women in technology shares her distribution and fundraising tips. CODE premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2015, and has caught the attention of the international tech industry and of policy makers in Washington, DC and abroad with hundreds of screenings around the world. Robin ran the kind of creative distribution campaign filmmakers only dream of, and shares what she learned.

In episode 3, Orly Ravid, who founded THE FILM COLLABORATIVE in 2010, tells us all about how to market docs and fiction films, the golden rules of online distribution, how to have a sustainable career with creative distribution and build festival relationships. Orly has spoken on distribution at Sundance, Cannes, SXSW, and many more places.

Show notes:

• Orly focuses on removing the middlemen so more money goes back to the filmmakers.
• TFC Offers free education resources (Distripedia, Guides, blog), paid consultation for members and custom distribution. Will educate everyone but doesn't distribute everyone.
• Not every film is a festival film. You have to know how to see past your immediate vision, most people won't go to Sundance and even if you do it might not work out the way you want. Think outside the box. Having distribution potential means some awareness and niche potential to market to.
• For narratives, if you have an unknown cast, you need niche appeal or themes that equate to marketing potential. Example of a fiction film that worked, "Light of the Moon": had some cast and a nice festival premiere, but also an issue and themes. If it's very funny, it's also a marketing hook. You need a hook, otherwise how many people are going to go see a film if it's just a poor version of a studio film ? You need a combination of factors for success.
• B-list cast can be very deceiving even if on a successful show, that doesn't translate into audiences. If you don't have A-list cast or a big festival premiere, be creative with niche marketing. The premiere creates buzz and gives you press. You need a plan B if it doesn't happen. Really think of the distribution very early on and look at what similar films did and what worked for them.
• Some of the films that worked well: "Mosquita Y Mari", a lesbian Latina film, "Hooligan Sparrow", "Invisible War" and "The Hunting Ground" on sexual assault issues. Those issue-based films and with niche appeal will do well in every category, they also had top festival premieres. "Landfill harmonic" is our most successful film in festivals, made about 200K in festival income gross alone. We turned down Netflix worldwide to do a semi worldwide SVOD deal and a HBO deal, educational, etc. They got corporate sponsorships. We did a lot of various deals in various territories. It was a once in a blue moon movie that got covered in 60-min. It usually doesn't happen like that.
• Stuff you can do even without a big festival run: we had the film "Under our skin" about lyme desease, the director was making 25K a month just selling DVDs, when DVDs were still a big thing, but DVDs and educational licenses still sell very well.
• Niches and their strengths vary. For example LGBT content is more competitive now, because thankfully there is more content. In Europe there's a lot more public funding, but in the US it's about investors, equity, donations, grants, etc.
• The Basics: 1) Have a great publicity team 2) Have great marketing assets (trailer, stills, etc). You need new content to build an online community, and custom content for each platform. Include all of this in your budget, it's just as important.
• Key ingredient: get everyone to sign up at every screening so you can let them know when the film is released and build a mailing list. Get organizations on board, corporations, NGOs, schools, early on to be a screening venue and a place of outreach and marketing.
• Basically you need a plan before the film premieres: it takes time, work, and care. Assess where your film is and what worked or didn't for similar films. Coordinate timing if you were funded by a broadcaster, or adjust to SVOD restrictions or knowing when you have to turn that down. Corporate sponsorships take a very long time, so get help. Hire the right person if you don't have the relationships, it's rare that it's worth the time and energy.
• Windows matter: have the longest possible window when the licenses are at a high price, but also release the film online before people completely forget about it. It's a balance. If you are offered a lot of money from a streaming platform, weigh if it's worth it to forego other windows or not, and what they can bring tot he table. Each film is different. Streaming is king and transactional (iTunes ) diminished but still works for some films. Ad-supported VOD will be key, like original TV, as people won't to pay for multiple subscription services. Community screenings and educational are still generating plenty of revenue for the right type of films.
• Digital distribution advice: Don't assume that just putting it out there will be enough. If no one knows about it, if the platform is not promoting, no one will buy it, films don't sell themselves. Design key art that sells on those platforms. Some people don't want to own a film if they won't replay it over and over - renting or streaming with ads or a subscription service can be enough for most content. Do not give exclusive rights to anyone when you don't know what marketing they are doing or if you don't know what other deal you could be getting from another platform.
• Build festival relationships with programmers, and other gatekeepers and entities that have reach. The film festivals' appeal is on the rise, as they are the ultimate curators within a sea of content.

The "Creative Distribution 101" podcast features interviews with experts and filmmakers who have used creative, alternative and non traditional ways to get their film out there. Whether you're interested in the future of filmmaking, or just want to learn some distribution tips, this is for you !

Sarah Moshman is an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and TEDx speaker. Her first feature doc The Empowerment Project: Ordinary Women Doing Extraordinary Things has been screened over 700 times around the US and around the world in schools, groups, organizations and corporations starting conversations about gender equality. With Indieflix as the distributor, the film has been sponsored by major brands like Nordstrom, American Girl and Microsoft . Sarah's second feature doc, Losing Sight of Shore, follows the incredible journey of four women who rowed across the Pacific Ocean. The film was released globally in 190 countries on Netflix in May 2017. Now she's making a documentary examining sexual harassment in the workplace entitled NEVERTHELESS.

The "Creative Distribution 101" podcast features interviews with experts and filmmakers who have used creative, alternative and non traditional ways to get their film out there.

In this first episode I interview Liz Manashil (@LizManashil) who runs the Creative Distribution Initiative at the Sundance Institute. Before that, Liz spent several years as a film critic for the PBS/Hulu series JUST SEEN IT (which she also helped produce and direct). Overlapping this, Liz worked with distribution guru Peter Broderick. Her debut feature, BREAD AND BUTTER, was called "an absolute must-watch for women everywhere" by HelloGiggles. It was released by The Orchard and can be seen on VOD nearly everywhere. Liz is currently in post-production on her 2nd feature film, SPEED OF LIFE.

Show notes:

• The basics of distribution: in the old model, for a traditional deal a distributor might take all rights in all territories, you would get an advance and very little control on the life of your film. Creative Distribution is about splitting up rights (theatrical, semi-theatrical and community screenings, educational, broadcast, digital rights, etc.) and not give all of them to one or a couple of parties, but rather exploit them in various ways with various partners.
• Educational can be quite lucrative for documentary makers, be careful not to give away to a distributor a big slice of the pie.
• We publish data from the case studies of the films we take on and give more intimate support to filmmakers.
• Be careful when signing contracts: look at the term length, and what does this distributor know how to do
• Shame for filmmakers keeps them from sharing information, because we think we are the only ones not leading sustainable lives.
• Start small: email addresses are incredibly valuable, start with a newsletter, pull back the curtain on your process. Don't turn into a marketer, be authentic to connect with audiences who care about your topic.
• There's never nothing happening even in between projects: share your process, be transparent and share your story in your newsletter and on social media with your fans.
• Don't forget the value you bring as a filmmaker, we tend to underestimate our value.
• The Creative Distribution Initiative application process is very detailed and takes several months.
• The three big goals: Impact, Eyeballs, Revenue, the filmmaker has to figure out what to prioritize. For the films we take on we look at the platforms you want to use, the funds you have access to, what team mates we can connect you to, what resources we have that could be helpful.
• You have to start by building a team and figuring out what your windows are. (*specific windows for the various distribution rights listed above).
• Look at the materials you have and calendar out moments in your campaign to use each asset and announce things (trailer, casting, premiere, etc.)
• Always be humble and grateful in your communication with your audience. Unrest was very successful partly because of the director's incredible relationship with her audience, from her crowdfunding campaign up until now. It's also very powerful to come from a personal place.
• Don't do a deal with someone or a distributor who cannot add value to what you are doing.
• The bottom line, is we look for filmmakers who are ready to roll up their sleeves.