Peter Broderick on hybrid distribution: Micro budgets and micro audiences

Peter Broderick has been one of the leading voices in the new approach to distribution, and in Micofilmmaker Magazine he breaks down the approach on how filmmakers with limited resources or a more narrow topic can find small but profitable audiences through “hybrid distribution.”

The piece, by Tony Levelle, really details Broderick’s notion of separating rights and finding the right audience, with the right channel, at the right time.

He says micro-budget filmmakers need to think, instead, about micro audiences and to think of the Internet as a collection of audiences. Some of those audiences are at certain websites, some of them are on mailing lists, some of them are on Facebook, and some of them are on Twitter, and so on.

Here’s one snippet worth considering:

TL: Do you negotiate deals for filmmakers?

PB: There are some situations where I agree to negotiate deals for filmmakers but I am not a rep (distribution representative). I am not the person who goes out and pitches the movie to every distributor in town. I am really a strategist.

I only agree to negotiate a deal if somebody gets an offer from a company that I think is a good company. Then I can be the point person with the distributor, negotiating the deal, because I have had a lot of experience with a lot of companies and a lot of deals.

TL: Should filmmakers try to negotiate these deals themselves?

PB: I do not recommend that filmmakers negotiate deals themselves, because whoever is on the other side is going to have a thousand times more knowledge and experience. I can bring much more knowledge and experience to the negotiation and the filmmaker can end up—hopefully—getting a fair deal, a good deal. If there is no good deal to be had, then I do not recommend that they take it. I think that no deal is better than a bad deal.

The question of whether to go to film festivals is also interesting. Broderick seems to be of a growing number of people who see festivals not as the bottleneck through which one must go to find success, but rather a fun option if you want to go for it, which may yield some positive results.

‘Freakonomics’ will have iTunes release before theatrical – a truly Freakonomic decision

Another sign of the changing landscape in documentary film, and film distribution in general, is that “Freakonomics,” the doc from a best-selling book and using an all-star team of directors, is releasing Friday on iTunes, a month before it hits theaters.

TechDirt reports that our friend Sheri Candler spotted this on the trailer. Techdirt also notes that in “flipping the windows,” there might be some trouble.

The first window, normally, is the theatrical release — and the theaters go absolutely livid if anyone suggests shortening the theatrical release window. Heaven forbid anyone go so far as to suggest something as “radical” as a so-called day and date release, where it’s released in all formats at the same time, and watch the theaters go ballistic and boycott the film, as a startling admission that they don’t think they can compete with home theaters.

Remember, this film is about the against-the-grain theories of economics that shake up the conventional wisdom. There, I said it – is that what they want me to say? Because getting some buzz for making a counterintuitive marketing decision is exactly telling us what the film explores. Bravo!

Christian Science Monitor on the upside of docs

The Christian Science Monitor makes note of the releases of several summer documentaries in theaters, and notes that docs “from a sleepy educational product to a must-see event for an increasing number of film lovers.”

More than 20 feature documentaries are playing in theaters across the US this summer. The buzz began with a quirky profile of comic Joan Rivers and continues into the fall with “Countdown to Zero,” the next project from the makers of the Al Gore docu-hit “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Expect more of the same, says author Patricia Aufderheide (“Documentary Film: A Very Short Introduction”). “There is a growing hunger for content on all screens from cable to the movie theaters,” says the American University professor, “and the audience for feature documentaries has been underserved in the past.”

Don’t forget public libraries in your distribution plan

The question for most documentary filmmakers, when selling the final product, is a balance of making enough money (or not making too little) while also getting their film to people who actually want to watch it. That includes all the old ways – theatrical screenings, festivals, and so forth – and the new ways – video on demand, iTunes and other digital platforms.

But what isn’t always accounted for in a DIY distribution plan is  libraries.

A  study by the Online Computer Library Center finds more people in the U.S. get their DVDs from their public libraries than Netflix, and more by far than Redbox or Blockbuster.

The study, “How Libraries Stack Up,” finds that libraries circulate 2.1 million videos a day, compared with Netflix (2 million), Redbox (1.4 million) and Blockbuster (1.2 million).

While getting films into libraries is a time-consuming task for DIY distributors, remember there are, according to the American Library Association, 122, 573 libraries in the U.S., with 9,221 public libraries and 3,827 college/university libraries.

Oprah’s ‘documentary film club’ looks to be a closed membership

If you were an author of fiction in the late 1990s, “Oprah’s Book Club” was one of the best things that happened to the business, and perhaps a troubling one as well. By stating that literature was important, and inducing her following to engage in book clubs as a fashionable social activity, Oprah Winfrey helped put an array of writers on the map: Wally Lamb, Andre Dubus III, and Jaquelyn Mitchard became best-selling authors (rather than the low-selling, well-reviewed writers they otherwise would have been). The downside to the Club was that there really was only one Oprah book: A young woman, facing long odds, overcomes adversity to find some measure of happiness.

Now Oprah has announced a “documentary film club” for her new network, OWN. But the “documentary filmmakers” she’s going to use include Julia Roberts, Julia Roberts, Forest Whitaker, Goldie Hawn, Gabriel Byrne and Mariel Hemingway to do subjects such as “Extraordinary Moms” (Roberts), “Searching for Happiness (Hawn) and (Seven Suicides) Hemingway.

We’re not aware that any of these people have ever actually done a documentary. But that seems to follow the trend of celebrities becoming documentarians, be it Johnny Depp, Casey Affleck, William Shatner (doing a doc on himself) or Lindsay Lohan. Look for most of the documentaries on OWN to lean toward celebrity projects that not only get viewers because of that celebrity but conversely build the star’s own “brand.”

The good news? Documentary film clubs may spring up, and that might be good for “real” documentaries. Bad news is these clubs, as with the book clubs, are likely to be middle-aged women; the book industry spent much of the last decade trying to market books for such clubs, which often diminished the prospects of books not obviously written for such clubs.

But films that cater to that audience may have greater prospects. Back at Sundance, OWN picked up “Family Affair,” by Chico David Colvard, which, while having gotten good response, nonetheless does sound exactly like an Oprah segment:

“OWN is about real life stories of self-discovery, inspiration and transformation,” said Chief Executive Officer Christina Norman. “Family Affair is exactly that—a multi-layered, raw and provocative family story. I applaud Chico Colvard for his bravery in creating a deeply personal film that shares with us his pain, his anger and ultimately his transformation.”

Documentary on grocery baggers donates part of proceeds to food banks

“Ready, Set, Bag,” a documentary about a competition for the fastest grocery bagger, has been as grassroots as the subject itself implies.

Liz Shannon Miller at NewTeeVee details how filmmakers Alex D. da Silva and Justine Jacob have done a DIY distribution that has the film opening in theaters August 6.

Part of the plan has been to share some proceeds with charities, in the form of local food banks.

That’s where the local angle comes in — a portion of all Ready, Set, Bag! profits from screenings will go to a food bank in the area. “Typically, for every ticket sold we donate one dollar to the food bank, which for a $9 ticket would mean 15 percent of the gross,” Jacob said via phone. “We have to negotiate it individually with each theater, but so far we’ve gotten 100 percent of people on board.” This means that not only is the theater doing something for the community, but those food banks contribute to the film’s local promotion by reaching out to their networks.

The article also details the social-media efforts of the filmmakers, including Twitter:

On the Twitter side, when the film’s trailer premiered on iTunes a few weeks ago (which according to Jacob “really opens up things for you”), buzz about the film began to grow. “We were seeing sixty, eighty, a hundred Tweets from around the world talking about our film,” he said. So @readysetbag began actively replying to them, always asking where an interested filmgoer was located so that Jacob could look into maybe booking the film there.

Why documentaries will crowdfund and self-distribute better than fictional films

Filmmaker Magazine has a piece by Anthony Kaufman that questions whether crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter, or distributing DIY, are the salvation of independent film.

Kaufman writes,

While social media’s cheerleaders are many — Scott Kirsner, Lance Weiler, Ted Hope, Peter Broderick, Jon Reiss — the solvency of an Internet-enabled DIY filmmaking-and-distribution model is far from guaranteed. At this early stage, the successes are few and far between (Tze Chun’s Sundance drama Children of Invention; Franny Armstrong’s eco-doc The Age of Stupid), and some are calling a sustainable indie-film infrastructure built around crowd-funding and social-network marketing a naïve proposal.

I’m not sure how “few and far between” successes are, when it comes to documentaries. I also think crowdfunding can be a very successful approach for nonfiction film, as can DIY distribution. Here are some reasons why:

Fictional film is an art, documentary a craft. Art is more of a mystery, even to those who create it; one’s last successful work doesn’t assure future success. Even once a screenplay is written, add into fiction film the artistic vision of a director, then actors. When it all comes together, it’s wonderful, but anyone who invests in art knows the result is not always return. Even a patron of the arts, whether it be a granting agency or a microfunder, never is sure of a finished product being worthwhile. Craft steps away from art’s pretensions and its aspirations, but it also then settles itself into workmanship as well as intrinsic value.  A craftsman such as Alex Gibney or  Errol Morris is likely to repeat successes more than an artist such as Kevin Smith or Kathryn Bigelow (for those of us who are a bit older, think Michael Cimino and Peter Bogdonavich, who both followed early success by nearly disappearing from the grid). The more “journalistic” the documentary, the more craftsmanship trumps art.

Fiction films are personality driven; documentaries are subject-driven. With the exception of names such as Werner Herzog (“a documentary about Antarctica? I’m there!”), audiences seek out documentaries based on topic. Find a topic of high interest to a core audience, particularly a topic that has been underrepresented, and you’ll get interest. Years ago I sat in an Atlanta theater watching the 1977 Danish documentary “A Sunday in Hell,” about the grueling Paris-Roubaix cycling race. The place was jammed with cyclists, many wearing their team jerseys and caps. It was all about their interest in seeing a topic for which they had passion. A great example of that are Gary Hustwit’s films, “Helvetica” and “Objectified,”  which are about typography and industrial design, respectively. Hustwit has built a core audience out of the design community, a group that likely has read scores of design magazines that cover much the same terrain. But a documentary lets us hear the people, and more importantly distills all that material into a perceptual value.  And that core audience that wants to see that film done will chip in to make it. Which leads to the next point.

Documentary filmmakers with a track record are safer future bets. Hustwit would likely do well with crowdfunding a design-related film, because he’s established himself there. I remember years ago going to Denver for my interview with The Denver Post, where I consequently worked as reporter, and sitting in the hotel bar with every television in the place pumping out Warren Miller ski documentaries. Welcome to Colorado, Dude! Miller was synonymous with ski and surf films, and therefore with Colorado and Southern California, and each successive film he made had a built-in audience. If crowdfunding had existed then, and you couldn’t wait for a new Warren Miller film, you might well have gone to Kickstarter and sent your $10.

Low cost means greater chance for success. Because a documentary budget can be siginficantly less than an actor-driven film (even if actors defer payments, they are still contracted payments), I’m more likely to believe my donation toward a documentary will actually lead to a documentary. It doesn’t have to be pitch-perfect, either: Watch Jonathan Nossitor’s “Mondovino,” a doc about small estate winemakers in France and elsewhere fighting big, bad Mondavi, and you’ll see low production value but great story. I think where some Kickstarter documentary projects have failed to get funding is where the funding goal seems out of whack – I want to know the filmmakers are sleeping on friends’ couches and not at the Hilton when they’re on the road. The famed Brazilian photojournalist Sebastiao Salgado documented the South American backroads in his book “Other Americas” by traveling in third-class buses, carrying a sleeping bag, and loading his own film from bulk reels into reusable cannisters, a “roll-your-own” aesthetic that allowed him to do great work. As Ben Franklin said, “Be Frugal, Be Free.” Documentary filmmakers who can squeeze the most out of the budgets they have beget more support. And, of course, the lower the production costs, the sooner you’ll actually make money.

As in funding, documentary distribution is topic-driven. The documentary “Beyond Biba,” detailed at this site in April, had a very successfully DIY distribution based on finding that small audience with passionate interest in fashion. Director Louis Price found theatrical distribution all over Britain and beyond for his film about “Biba” fashion doyenne Barbara Hulanicki. I’ve always thought of a film like this as being the ones distribution companies like First Run would never even bother watching, because distribution companies seem stuck in the old-school notion of all-or-nothing success. Sure, Magnolia found a winner with “Man on Wire,” but for people passionate about their topic, their all-time favorite documentary is the film the rest of us never even heard of.

In the end, no project is assured of success or interest, but it goes back to skillful craft having staying power in the market, for many reasons. Kaufman’s article is thoughtful, but makes the mistake of speaking of “film” as if there is really a strong affinity between fictional and documentary films. I think his perspective may be right and wrong, and that in the areas of crowdfunding and DIY distribution, documentary and fiction films may take greatly divergent paths to success.

Snagfilms expanding distribution of documentaries

The New York Times reported on Snagfilms moving from being an ad-supported aggregator to an on-demand paid source of documentary films.

According to Michael Cieply,

The plans include fee-based channels through Comcast and Verizon’s FiOS service, as well as deals to allow the sale or rental of films on iTunes, on YouTube’s premium program, and on the Apple iPad, SnagFilms executives said in interviews.

Ted Leonsis began Snagfilms in 2008 and the site currently has a library of about 1,500 films.

In the case of SnagFilms, the public service element has to do with finding viewers and revenue for at least some of the thousands of documentaries that are produced annually by professional as well as amateur filmmakers, few of whom will ever see their pictures play in theaters or on television networks.

“The costs of making a documentary in some respects have disappeared,” said Michael Lumpkin, who is the executive director of the International Documentary Association.

The Film Collaborative explores nonprofit distribution

Orly Ravid says that she began The Film Collaborative after becoming acutely aware of the layers of middlemen who can, in the name of “distribution,” be the buffers between a filmmaker and his or her chance of making some money.

Ravid, who studied film at Columbia University, had spent a decade in the world of traditional film distribution, even as the world of traditional film shifted significantly.

And so was born TFC, Ravid’s effort to create a nonprofit distribution company that can help filmmakers move their work to deserving audiences and still come away with some compensation. She is founder and co-executive director (with Jeffrey Fabian Winter; David Averbach serves as creative director).

Based in Los Angeles, TFC works with two assumptions. First, that the traditional distribution pipeline for independent films has largely collapsed, and second, that filmmakers deserve to retain the rights on their work.

In some ways, it’s an oxymoronic phrase – “nonprofit distribution.” We did have a for-profit company that we did operate as we do the Collaborative, which is not taking rights, taking very low fees, and being in partnership with filmmakers and not owners of their film. As a nonprofit we can be up for a grant, to do a series of films that are not inherently commercial enough to get traditional distribution. We can help filmmakers make their money back if a lot of the money isn’t going to a middleman, or lawyers who are charging more than the filmmaker can afford. We can justify it in a way that we’re not charging a lot from the filmmakers, but we’re making up for that through donation and sponsorship.

TFC takes donations through Paypal, has done some funding efforts through IndieGoGo and has members ships ranging from “contributor” to “conspirator” to “teammate.” The films on the roster include shorts, fictional features and documentaries such as Kimberly reed’s “Prodigal Sons.”

We’ve been officially launched since March, and right now we’re waiting on a grant to do, theatrically, a film series of films directed by women, so that’s the kind of thing we do to find money to allocate to films that wouldn’t otherwise find distribution, so that filmmakers don’t have to finance distribution themselves.

We do a whole bunch of different services. Sometimes it’s a consultation. Sometimes we’re doing the festival distribution, talking to people about having films screen in their festivals.

The way TFC works with film festivals is an interesting example of the groundshift in the way films move into the world.

We do charge rental fees from festivals. The A-list festivals don’t pay, but the way we see it is that your film might have a big brand of its own, if you the filmmaker, or the subject of the film, has its own brand. But the brand gets more elevated and gets more publicity when you show it publicly – if either the festival or you do the job of making that happen.

A filmmaker needs a festival as much as a festival needs a film. It’s the cheapest way to see how audiences react to your film, to get publicity and marketing around your film, and frankly as a standard of legitimacy to separate your film out from other films. Certainly, digital platforms and cable look for those signifiers.

TFC takes a 15 percent cut of digital distribution (and encoding and marketing costs that are negotiated in advance with the filmmakers).

We’re constantly expanding the digital platforms we’re doing direct distribution to. The way we function is we play a lot of different roles, and wear a lot of different hats depending on the needs of the film. Sometimes we behave as a producer’s rep. We’ve done some films where there’s a traditional deal going on, but we’re doing it very nontraditionally. And then there are other times when we’ll do direct distribution, inclusive of digital, which is obviously emerging for us.

While the big theater chains are the stuff of studio films, more attention is paid to the many art houses and independent cinemas.

I’m meeting with one theater that has an initiative about connecting with other theaters; Emerging Pictures has done that and there are other companies looking at that. AMC has its independent initiative, and Landmark. Then there are organizations like the Northwest Film Forum that don’t have an official linkage between theaters but book with a cluster of theaters.

To me, the most important next step is that the theatrical concept of getting book for a week with four or five shows a day and trying to get a crowd in, is just silly. We’re looking for ways of getting the benefit of theatrical, which at the end of the day can just be getting reviewed and getting awareness of your film, but for a fraction of the cost.

Publicity is key, as more films flood the market. In particular, documentaries may have a solid audience interested in the topic; letitng them know about it in the shifting media landscape presents difficulties and opportunities.

The journalists are few and far between unless your at Cannes, and the space they have to write is shrinking, and online there’s just too much noise for that kind of press to mean as much as you’d like it to. Everybody wants a New York Times or Los Angeles Times review. Even the New York Times doesn’t want to cover a film that’s just opening in New York; they’re mandated to cover films that have wider releases.

The emphasis is on community, including a page called The Film Collaborators,” which TFC would like to see become a “Facebook for Filmmakers.”

Ridley Scott to crowdsource documentary

MTV reports that director Ridley Scott is planning a “user-generated” YouTube documentary.

Called “Life in a Day,” the film will be made entirely of footage shot during the 24 hours of July 24, 2010. Anyone in the world can participate and then upload their content to YouTube.com/lifeinaday. Participants will be credited as co-directors if their footage makes it into the finished film. The doc will premiere at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, and 20 of the participants will be flown to Park City, Utah, for the event.

Scott is known for, among other things,directing “Gladiator” and “Robin Hood.”

Scott, in a producer role, and director Kevin Macdonald (“The Last King of Scotland”) announced on Tuesday their plans to team with YouTube to generate what they’re calling “the first user-generated feature-length documentary.”

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