Saskia Wilson-Brown

April 12, 2010 • 3:10 pm 1

OpenIndie

I’ve agreed to join forces with OpenIndie, Arin Crumley and Kieran Masterson’s awesome, open website tool for independent filmmakers. I’ll be joining the team as a consultant in the role of filmmaker outreach- something I know all about thanks to my time at Current TV.

As you may or may not know, I’m a big fan of searching for ways to help independent creators find new audiences for their work. I do this because in a world of corporate news, branded content and sponsored everything, I want (and need) independent art & media to thrive.

In the past, my focus has largely been on trying to help filmmakers make sense of the digital distribution landscape- I’ve long been a big fan of VODO.net, for instance, as the only logical way to harness P2P sites when releasing your film digitally; also of the ‘filmmaker first’ Indieflix.com for their open approach to rights, their DVD sales, and online film streaming systems. Oh, and of course I feckin’ LOVE IndieGoGo, & Kickstarter for totally revolutionizing the way a project gets funded.

With that all said, as time has gone by (and the carpal tunnel has set in), I’ve found myself leaning more and more towards a desire to develop the tangible — the ‘meatspace’ as online gamers used to call it. Simply put: I love the feeling of being in a room with other smart, creative people- all experiencing something together. Although this is by no means the only way to watch a film, I think that we will increasingly need this human interaction when faced with a progressively more digitized world. In short: human interaction has become a big priority.

To that end, I’ve engaged in some efforts of my own (launching a screening series Cinema Speakeasy in Los Angeles). I’ve also closely followed efforts like the brilliant Brian Chirls’ Crowd Controls, the b-side distribution lab — albeit from the sidelines. Efforts like these are crucial because they aim to support the arts in new, intelligent, actionable ways.

So… Why OpenIndie?

I like OpenIndie because it’s open. Making it easy to track your film’s progress, it lets filmmakers set up their own independent theatrical distribution strategies- complete with utterly self-sufficient revenue share systems set by the filmmaker and the venue/screening host. In other words, it’s setting up a support system for those working outside of The System. And for that, it deserves our applause.

I’ll keep you all posted, and in the meantime check out their blog post, and of course, their site.

Filed under: diy distribution, film, friends doing cool things , , , ,

March 22, 2010 • 10:39 am 7

How small festivals are the future of meatspace film distribution: Thoughts 4 & 5

In January, I attended the Slamdance / Sundance extravaganza in Park City, Utah, helping produce the Slamdance, WorkBook Project & Open Video Alliance Filmmaker Summit.  While there, I participated in and listened to a lot of conversations about the shifting role of film festivals, particularly as those shifts apply to a mid to high-level independent festival such as Slamdance. What follows here is the fourth and fifth (combined) of the now only four thoughts that came to me about the functionality of film festivals (and in no particular discursive order).

4/5. How to sustain without selling out: An exercise in ego management.

In the last several posts I’ve argued that film festivals should take a step away from the commercial approach and should adopt a community-centric view in their strategic direction.

Maslow's pyramid, as applied to film festivals

However, if we apply Maslow’s taxonomy of human needs to film festivals, it becomes quickly apparent that it’s all well and good for festivals to try to better serve their communities, but when they’re barely surviving, simple basic needs end up perforce taking precedence.

Most independent festivals function at the ‘safety’ level of the pyramid—trying to securely retain theatre space, staff, volunteers, film submissions… It’s hard for these hard-working people to discuss the philosophical approaches towards how they serve filmmakers (the top of the pyramid) in these tenuous circumstances.

Running & funding a film festival

Consider, the BARE mimimum needed to run a festival:

  • Theatre rental
  • Projectors, seats & screens, if you use alternate spaces
  • Special decks (beta decks, for instance)
  • Liability insurance
  • A marketing budget for banners, festival programs, lanyards and passes, any further visibility needs, and a budget for the design thereof
  • A publicity and advertising budget to garner submissions and audiences
  • Transportation
  • Online operations (email, url, web design & maintenance, submissions tracking)
  • Staffing: Fest director, programming director, submissions manager, volunteer manager, ticketing manager, print traffic manager & runners (if more than one venue), sponsor liaison, filmmaker liaison, venues manager… etc.

Festivals are, in short, pricey. Looking to fill these basic needs without going out of pocket, most festivals survive through four options for revenue sources: Public funding, ticket & merchandise sales, submission fees and sponsorships (private and corporate).

Unfortunately the United States happens to be a government that has piss-poor public funding for non-profit arts institutions, so the European model of public funding is, for the most part, out of reach for US based festivals.

Similarly, ticket and merchandise sales are helpful, but usually provide a tiny financial drop in the big bucket of need. If you take an average independent festival—7 days long with 3 screenings a day in a 100-seat house, selling tickets at an accessible $9 each- the festival stands to bring in $18,900 IF EVERY SCREENING IS SOLD OUT. More realistically, they can probably hope to bring in about half that.

Looking at submission fees- say a small independent festival gets 800 submissions in (it’s usually less for most festivals) and charges an average of $30 per submission, it stands to make an income of $24,000. Though distasteful to many, submission fees nonetheless become the bulk of the funding.

In this climate, then, it is not surprising that most festivals immediately turn to sponsorships, which have proven in some instances to be very helpful. However, this is an approach that is problematic on many levels, not the least because it turns festival directors into glorified salesmen. Further, still, corporate sponsorship is a double edged sword.

Both support and interference in the arts, corporate sponsorship, when done wrong, turns an inherently let’s-talk-about-art sort of experience into a hyped-up advertising vehicle, potentially void of substance. Also, in today’s world of ‘branded content’ and ‘online properties’, it DOES bears reminding: Corporate Sponsorship is cheesy. Nothing says independent film more than a miniskirt-clad alcohol-wielding would-be actress imploring you to try her company’s vodka. Right?

Though there are many examples of sponsorship deals that do not force the festival to scream “AUDI!!!” from the rooftops, it remains a fact – to me – that corporations should not be our answer to the Medici. One might correctly point out that ulterior motives existed from time immemorial (the Medici were really into self-image, after all- a sort of precursor to the obsession with branding and corporate image), but the ulterior motives of late are just too base. Neither lofty, nor profound, our experience of philosophy and thought evolves into an experience of commerce. ‘What do you think he meant by his reference to Nietzsche in that one piece of dialogue?’ turns into ‘Oh, shit! They’re giving free Nikes away down at the filmmaker lounge! Do you have the right pass to get in?’

So: How can festivals survive without selling their souls?

I believe the answer – the way to survive without selling our souls – is in a crowd-sourced / crowd-powered film festival – a no/low sponsor film festival that is small, community-driven, and community-funded. This is possible to achieve, and would additionally be a solid step towards empowering the festival’s audiences and participants through transparency and involvement.

This would require a few action steps:

  1. THINK about what you want to accomplish with the festival—what you think you should provide to the arts community and how you can best provide it.
  2. Band together with local community groups as partners to share expenses or trade assets, band together with other festivals to create larger incentive and reach
  3. Create comprehensive, community-based micro-donation strategies to meet goals, as they arise.
  4. Maintain your relationships with your community through transparency, accessibility, invitations to curate/ host screenings/ participate in whatever way it sees fit.
  5. Embrace your role as a community-based organization by lowering the klieg lights, ditching the red carpet and toning down the ego.

Festivals taking ownership of their small part of a bigger whole means that they allow themselves to expand more organically and buoyed by bigger better support systems. Not trying to be the next Tribeca implies a level of humility and restraint that many festival directors would probably rail against, but one must ask oneself, how does raising $500,000 for an exclusive red carpet premiere of the latest Big-Studio schlockfest really help independent film? Is the ‘visibility’ one gains from this type of event more helpful for the festival and its filmmakers, say, than that gained by having a series of smaller open screenings in venues that are invested in the success of the film they are showing?

Festivals with high overhead are festivals that are forced to toe the line- spending the lion’s share of their time wooing and maintaining sponsors. Smaller festivals – I would argue – actually have it a lot better than they typically think. Their overhead is controllable, and they can focus on programming and their community.

There’s this ‘marketing guru’ called Seth Godin who wrote:

“Big used to matter. Big meant power and profit and growth. [...] Today, little companies often make more money than big companies. Little churches grow faster than worldwide ones. [...] Small is the new big because small gives you the flexibility to change the business model when your competition changes theirs. [...] A small church has a minister with the time to visit you in the hospital when you’re sick. [...] Small is the new big only when the person running the small thinks big.”

(Seth Godin, ‘Small is The New Big’, Portfolio, 2006).

Provided of course that the festival director is OK with slow (and I mean slooooow) growth, small fests are in a position of power vis-à-vis the increasingly irrelevant behemoths. Enjoy!

Filed under: diy distribution, film, subverting dominant paradigms, theory , , , , , , , ,

March 10, 2010 • 2:40 pm 1

How small festivals are the future of meatspace film distribution: Thought 3

In January, I attended the Slamdance / Sundance extravaganza in Park City, Utah, helping produce the Slamdance, WorkBook Project & Open Video Alliance Filmmaker Summit.  While there, I participated in and listened to a lot of conversations about the shifting role of film festivals, particularly as those shifts apply to a mid to high-level independent festival such as Slamdance. What follows here is the third of five four thoughts that came to me about the functionality of film festivals (and in no particular discursive order).

3. What festivals should do to better serve their communities.

The motivations that guide independent film festivals vary wildly: Whereas some were founded solely to develop industry in a second-city environment, others take radical stances against the industry altogether, shifting their focus towards serving their local creatives instead. Others, still, strive to function as arts-based businesses, leveraging sponsorships and ticket sales in an attempt at joining the ranks of corporatized culture-hawkers.

It is hard to generally classify the purpose of pre-existing film festivals, then, as their needs and motivations are often so divergent. One can nonetheless begin to make an attempt at creating a sort of style guide outlining some pragmatic ways that festivals can better serve independent filmmakers and artists, their contradictory purposes notwithstanding.

Based on several conversations had with such luminaries as Lance Weiler, Brian Newman, Paul Rachman, Peter Baxter, Lisa Vandever, Roger Mayer and others, here is the beginning of a list of how festivals can better help independent filmmakers.

NB. I see the following 5 points as responsibilities, not suggestions. I believe that arts organizations, due to their very nature of being the cynosure of dialogue and thought, have the responsibility to guide that discussion in the correct, honest direction.

I. Manage Filmmaker Expectation (No dangling carrots)

Too often festivals obliquely play into a system based on false promises and permission-based access. In this, they encourage and fail to manage filmmaker expectations, and inevitably end up with some seriously disappointed filmmakers on their hands.

It is crucial for independent filmmakers to understand how the system actually works, and to understand, also, that there are alternatives. It is therefore crucial for a festival to actually explain what they are to expect – from an industry point of view- from inclusion in the festival.

Action point: Clarify what will and probably won’t happen at the festival with your filmmakers along every step of the way, from the call for submissions to the acceptance letter.

II. Be transparent:

If a filmmaker, however naively assuming that his independent festival of choice has scads of dollars to throw at promoting his screening, throws up his hands and lets the festival do all the work, imagine the shock and dismay he may feel when finds his big premiere empty. Conversely, if a filmmaker is aware that the festival has no marketing budget, he might be inclined to engage in a little marketing of his own, and in so-doing will support the festival’s efforts (with the happy accident of helping ticket sales, to boot).

My point is this: Anyone who’s worked a festival knows that they are damn hard to run, and are often on the verge of collapse. BUT: Most filmmakers and attendees do not realize this. In order to – again – temper expectations and ensure a good experience for all, it is simply a question of a festival engaging in a little transparency in its affairs. Open books and open access (within reason, of course) can be positive for several reasons, most saliently in helping people know what to expect of you- what you are capable of providing as a festival. It also allows a community to help where they see problems or deficiencies.

Action point: Clarify and publish your budgets, be clear about shortcomings and explain how your community (including your filmmakers) can help fill them.

III. Educate:

With transparency in festival affairs and transparency about the reality of what to expect, festivals also have a responsibility to provide their filmmakers with information about alternative solutions for independent film. This can be done simply by shifting the focus away from old-industry panels towards realistic, functional and educational seminars centering both on the ‘art’ side of the filmmaking process and, of course, the business.

There are several areas that are drastically changing with the advent of new(ish) technologies:

  • New fundraising stratagems (crowdsourced)
  • New storytelling techniques (transmedia)
  • New production processes (crowdsourced)
  • New distribution strategies (online, VOD, etc)
  • Open culture

Action Point: Taking a cue from The WorkBook Project’s DIY Days, and Slamdance/WorkBook Project/ Open Video Alliance Filmmaker Summit, create open access educational seminars around the new models in distribution and fundraising. Make the information available online.

IV. Develop access to new distribution models

In addition to educating filmmakers about new models for film production and distribution, festivals should also provide optional distribution solutions for its filmmakers in new media platforms, VOD and theatrical. These should allow filmmakers to exploit their rights piece-meal, monetize their films and gain new audiences, with the appui of the festival’s curatorial credibility behind them.

This is a hugely lengthy topic to go into, but for examples of festivals that are attempting to do this, take a look at a few examples:

  • Slamdance’s deal with Xbox (which has made money for both Slamdance and the filmmakers)
  • Sundance’s deal with YouTube (which has not made money for the filmmakers, as far as I am aware
  • Tribeca’s recent VOD deal (which is, as far as I am aware, NOT optional for the filmmakers- which if its true, totally sucks)

Action Point: Use your festival’s organization cachet to broker deals for your filmmakers, and offer those deals as optional systems to complement their distribution strategies.

V. Share resources and organize year-round community screenings

Imagine a scenario where the audience winner at Nashville FF is given a 15 city theatrical run through community screening programs run by Nashville FF partner fests.

In line with the previous point, festivals could increasingly work together to further four-wall film exhibition through year-round screenings, and by combining marketing and local resources with other festivals.

In turn, by leveraging partnerships with other arts organizations and venues worldwide, festivals can help their filmmakers reach wider audiences, and also provide them with a de facto theatrical release. Of course, the benefits of partnering reach beyond only helping filmmakers, as these sorts of partnerships can help spread a festival’s brand, vision, and curatorial voice- in turn allowing for higher levels of sponsorship or- better yet- more participants in its next crowdsourced fundraising campaign.

Action Point: Organize year-round screenings in your community. Make friends with your colleagues and organize film exchanges. Share resources and programming.

A Conclusion!

All these points, to me, demonstrate one overarching fact: In order for an independent arts community to thrive, it must take a conscious stand to stop trying to emulate a corporate business methodology of exclusion, competitiveness and opacity.

In copying a system that, really, has little to do with how we as independents actually work, festivals are unwittingly incorporating all the nasty little habits that are anathema to thriving collaboration and creativity: Status-based ranking systems for humans (‘VIP’ passes, for instance), one-way payment systems, the obsession with celebrity attendance, fearful and covetous business practices. In following this approach, of course, we effectively stop innovation and discourage the development of new collaborative systems altogether.

In servicing the arts, a festival services the arts community in all its forms – even those it sees as its competitors. One will never exist without the other.

Next installment:

  • #4: How to sustain without selling out: An exercise in ego management.

Filed under: diy distribution, film, subverting dominant paradigms, theory , , , , ,

March 1, 2010 • 11:08 am 1

How small festivals are the future of meatspace film distribution: Thought 2

In January, I attended the Slamdance / Sundance extravaganza in Park City, Utah, helping produce the Slamdance, WorkBook Project & Open Video Alliance Filmmaker Summit.  While there, I participated in and listened to a lot of conversations about the shifting role of film festivals, particularly as those shifts apply to a mid to high level independent festival such as Slamdance. What follows here is the second of five four thoughts that came to me about the functionality of film festivals (and in no particular discursive order).

2. Money-making should not a successful small festival make. Culture-defining should.

When I was co-directing the Silver Lake Film Festival in Los Angeles with Greg Ptacek and Kate Marciniak, we didn’t invite host any distributors at the screenings. Those that did attend never cut a deal with any of the festival’s filmmakers. I’m pretty sure that the Cucalorus Film Festival in North Carolina has never immediately helped filmmakers pay off their credit card debts.

In these two instances, there is no commerce involved, and no one’s making any money to speak of. Are these festivals then to be seen as failures?

The answer, of course, lies in how one defines the purpose of a cultural event. I believe that if we put aside commercial functionalities for a minute, we see that though the utility (and success) of smaller festivals becomes inherently value-based, it is nonetheless inherently of value.

Here are some points, then, on the value and purpose of film festivals, above and beyond commerce:

  • To curate, provide imprimatur and thus help shape culture;
  • To create access to independent voices and new stories within specific, underserved geographic communities;
  • To educate filmmakers;
  • To grow independent film communities and foster creative collaboration;
  • To help create de facto four-wall releases for filmmakers through festival-run programs and partnerships above and beyond the event itself;
  • To assist with DIY distribution by offering access to distribution tools through festival-run partnerships with emerging content platforms

These last two functionalities are becoming more important as filmmakers and festivals realize that the old system – the permission-based system – is falling apart. So, to reitirate: Festivals should increasingly focus on helping filmmakers sustain and exhibit their work through various non-traditional methods such as digital distribution deals (see Slamdance’s recent deal with Microsoft Xbox), DIY distribution education, and, of course, festival run four-wall programs and partnerships that allow greater visibility for the participating films.

From experience I know that acknowledging an alienation from the mainstream film industry implies owning up to a radical shift away from ‘the system’, and has big repercussions for festivals and filmmakers alike. Silver Lake FF, for instance, with all its focus on working outside the system was unable to harness the sponsorships that festivals so drastically need for survival, and died a fiery financial death in 2007 (the results of which I am feeling to this day).

With that all said, it still feels successful in that it spoke to several of the points I believe to the inherent in a fruitful arts organization- points that have nothing at all to do with (immediate) economic exchange. The organization focused- largely- on what we thought should be the primary goals: Empowering a community and its artists through coherent promotion; leveraging its name to garner publicity and opportunity for our participants; facilitating radness in general– Art for art’s sake, as it were. The efforts were mostly spent on promoting and advocating for micro-communities through programming decisions, and fostering creativity and creative collaboration in our neighborhood and beyond. Mainly, though, Silver Lake FF focused on curating a very cool and forward-thinking festival (under the benevolent expertise of programming director Roger Mayer, as well as a plethora of special guest curators), the results of which are still bearing fruit in the continued existence of some of its former programs in the form of special screenings and ongoing collaborative output.

So do these artsy, community-driven, low-budget, no-commerce festivals like the still-thriving Cucalorus, Nevada City or Slamdance still have value? My conclusion would be that yes, they do. These festivals’ value (and purpose) lies in providing an imprimatur – an edge – for its filmmakers, and a strong platform for community-empowerment. This value, to me, supercedes the worth of some crappy distribution deal.

At the end of the day, sometimes being part of something amazing and cultural is worth more than being paid a grand to have your documentary air once or twice on TV.

** NB: Kate Marciniak, one of the co-directors at SLFF, makes this note: “[We] slogged many long and arduous hours for SLFF’s festivals trying to reel in distributors to attend and trying to get films with name stars to entice them. It was not through a lack of our wanting or trying [that they didn't attend].” So, I guess the rebellious stance was assigned post-fest, by me. I still think it’s cooler without the distributors.

—

I will address the inevitable next question (the ‘how the hell do we avoid the Silver Lake debacle and sustain our arts organizations?’ question) in subsequent posts.

Next installments:

  • #3: What festivals should do to better serve their communities: An exercise in managing filmmaker expectations.
  • #4: How to sustain without selling out: An exercise in ego management.


Filed under: diy distribution, film, subverting dominant paradigms, theory , , , , , , , ,

February 26, 2010 • 10:50 am 5

How small festivals are the future of meatspace film distribution: Thought 1

In January, I attended the Slamdance / Sundance extravaganza in Park City, Utah, helping produce the Slamdance, WorkBook Project & Open Video Alliance Filmmaker Summit.  While there, I participated in and listened to a lot of conversations about the shifting role of film festivals, particularly as those shifts apply to a mid to high level independent festival such as Slamdance. What follows here is the first of five four thoughts that came to me about the functionality of film festivals (and in no particular discursive order).

1. For small festivals, the ‘shifting’ purpose of film festivals is actually not shifting at all.

People seem to concur that the primary purpose of film festivals is (was?) akin to that of an art gallery: To sell art.

Festivals have been acting as the gatekeepers to commercial distribution, and the standard path for a filmmaker would be simple: Make a film; get into a fest; get the film acquired for distribution (of course, if all went well).

Though this is a relevant deduction for festivals like Sundance, which were indeed functional gateways for the film system, I would argue that for the smaller festivals catering to independent or local film (and for the indie filmmakers whose work was typically programmed there) this was never a relevant model in the first place. The reason for that is simple: Distributors tended not to attend those festivals.

This commercial raison d’etre, then, has only ever been an apt assigned purpose for the bigger festivals. Further to that, this fact was sort of inherently understood by the film community: Not many filmmakers ever submitted their film, for instance, to the Tulsa Overground Film Festival, Nevada City Film Festival or Cucalorus with the intention of selling to HBO.

I think we’re assigning and bemoaning this dwindling commercial purpose to small festivals retro-actively in light of a perceived dearth of distribution deals – a dearth which, again, is only really relevant to festivals that were the hosting space for sales in the first place, and entirely irrelevant to the continued purpose of the small festivals who saw no such activity in their meeting rooms. Most annoyingly perhaps, small festivals gamely play along, trotting out their one or two success stories as bait for a system that never functioned for them or their filmmakers in the first place.

With the advent of digital media and the burgeoning (but hopeful) success stories around online/DIY distribution strategies, the purpose of the festival as a sales agent becomes even more obviously questionable. But more on that later when I publish my second thought: ‘Culture-defining, not money-making’. Probably fairly obviously from the rather literal title, it is about what I see as the ‘new’ purpose of film festivals.

For now, I leave you with a recent tweet from Ted Hope: David Brown’s Secret To His Success: “I never lived beyond my means, & therefore, I never had to be a slave to Hollywood.”

Next installments:

  • #2: Money-making should not a successful small festival make. Culture-defining should.
  • #3: What festivals should do to better serve their communities: An exercise in managing filmmaker expectations.
  • #4: How to sustain without selling out: An exercise in ego management.

Filed under: diy distribution, film, theory , , ,

January 25, 2010 • 11:51 pm 1

An Open Conversation about Film Festivals

“SABI Pictures presents the first of the New Breed video reports realized this year in collaboration with Filmmaker Magazine and The Workbook Project. This one’s an open discussion between Lance Weiler, Peter Baxter, Saskia Wilson-Brown, Brian Newman and Paul Rachman just prior to Slamdance and the Open Video Alliance’s Filmmaker Summit in Park City.”

See the video on Vimeo or read the article in Filmmaker Magazine here.

Filed under: diy distribution, theory, video , , , , , , , , , ,

January 20, 2010 • 7:40 pm 1

THIS IS NOT A MANIFESTO… It’s a survival mechanism.

Published in the 2010 Slamdance Film Festival catalog for the WorkBook Project, Open Video Alliance and Slamdance Filmmaker Summit, written by moi.

Of the 3661 feature films submitted to the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, about 120 made it into the festival. Of those, 50 have no distribution as of this October. For the just about 3,500 total films submitted to Slamdance in 2008, 20 made it in to feature narrative and feature documentary competition, and 92 made it into the shorts programs. Of those features that got in, 5 got picked up for distribution. And then… What sort of distribution? Though there are some exceptions, as a general rule filmmakers are often faced with strict acquisitions deals demanding rights worldwide, across all platforms, in perpetuity… often for negligible sums of money.

The truth about the independent film world is that for the most part, the only ones that are able to sustain comfortably are the lawyers, the middle-men, and the studio execs. There are exceptions, of course, but for all the success stories that serve as models of the “what if?” there are an equivalent amount of quiet failures, films languishing in obscurity while their makers shrug and dutifully begin developing their next project.

Most filmmakers take it for granted that there is a slim chance of receiving a supported release, assuming, as artists do, that the fault is somehow theirs. In truth, this reality is more a symptom of an outdated, broken distribution system that can’t keep up with the spike in creative output than it is a testament to bad filmmaking. Though it goes without saying that some films could be better, what of the thousands of very good, relevant films that sit on the shelf? A sense of futility sets in: Since the filmmaker’s lot is to engage in public storytelling, there inevitably comes a time when we ask ourselves what the point is of spending all this money and energy creating films that end up reaching an audience of, like, 40 people. Why make films at all, if there’s such a slim chance of having them seen?

We here at Slamdance take this situation very seriously, asking ourselves a few simple and crucial questions: What role does a festival play in furthering its filmmakers’ success? In disseminating stories? In ensuring the continuation and sustenance of independent film? We suspect that if festivals have the curatorial purpose of introducing new film to new audiences, then they also need to further that by taking an active role in helping filmmakers harness audiences through new distribution and marketing methodologies — and not just by inviting acquisitions execs to the screenings. A symbiotic and self-empowered relationship needs to form in order for all to survive — one that is built firmly OUTSIDE of the permission-based system in which we currently work.

With all this in mind, this year Slamdance has teamed up with the WorkBook Project and the Open Video Alliance to present the first ever Filmmaker Summit.

From the Summit release, as drafted by Lance Weiler & Peter Baxter:

“The mission of the Filmmaker Summit is to jointly craft a new charter for filmmaking, storytelling and content distribution, with and by the global filmmaking community. Born out of reaction to an independent film industry in a state of turmoil, the summit aims to explore how a global filmmaking community can better understand new DIY distribution strategies, and work towards the democratization of new technologies, tools, story-telling techniques, and processes. We believe that sustainable independent filmmaking is no longer just about production. Instead it is about the ways in which filmmakers must expand their roles and take charge of reaching and engaging worldwide audiences, across all viewing platforms. The topics to be explored at the summit are set through crowd-sourced methodologies (topics voted on and suggested by the independent film community). During the summit itself we will be hearing from filmmakers and strategists from around the world, chiming in on new marketing and distribution techniques they have employed to get their content made and distributed.”

Slamdance believes that we need to help our filmmakers sustain by supporting the self-empowerment inherent in self-distribution. Though this emerging methodology is still, largely, theoretical, we believe that we can all find some working models, together.

And, let’s not forget our special thanks: to Scilla Andreen at Indieflix; Mike Beynart at Elephant Pilot and Micah Hahn at AutumnSeventy for their amazing design work; Ben Moskowitz and Josh Levy at Open Video Alliance; George Chriss; Flumotion and XMission; Zak Forsman and Kevin Shah at SABI;  Brian Newman, Brian Chirls and Chris Holland for their insight; and of course all our filmmakers.

Filed under: dispatches, diy distribution, self-referential , , , ,

November 1, 2009 • 2:29 pm 0

New Breed writes up Cinema Speakeasy

Click here to check out the article Zak Forsman posted on New Breed (Workbook Project) about Cinema Speakeasy. We’re most indebted for the plug.

“After reading Ted Hope’s 18 Actions Towards A Sustainable Truly Free Film Community, I held a mirror up to SABI to see how we faired. And we held up well. Our endeavors last year covered everything from mentoring younger filmmakers to collaboration and participating in this community. But there was one item on Ted’s list that we weren’t doing: curating. Not in any meaningful way, anyhow.

So I sought out who in Los Angeles was showcasing uniquely indie works. And only one came to my attention: CINEMA SPEAKEASY.”

read on…

Filed under: diy distribution, links to interesting things , , , , , ,

October 17, 2009 • 4:27 pm 0

Marketing Your Video Online

Picture 1A semi-updated version of my introductory primer for learning how to market your film or video online… Download the PDF here.

If you have any questions, suggestions, addendums, please email me at saskia@saskiawilsonbrown.com.

Filed under: diy distribution, film, video ,

Que pasa con Saskia?

I’m an independent media advocate, producer-at-large, and strategist for independent film, film festivals, and filmmakers.

A captive tweeter @saskiawb

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