MAVERICK: 'Bottle Shock' helmer Randall Miller, far right, with his cast at Sundance.
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Veterans of Sundance 2008 have a message for this year's incoming crop of filmmakers: Wake up! With both the economy and the indie distribution biz in shatters, several producers and directors say it's futile to hold onto the "ridiculously blind hope," as "Ballast" producer-director Lance Hammer calls it, "that you're going to be the one film that's going to find distribution. I had to be slapped several times," he admits. "There's a tremendous amount of denial."
Rather than stare like blinded deer at the distribution landscape, Hammer and others say, it's necessary to be proactive, with a DIY distribution plan already in place as filmmakers' best, and perhaps, only option.
Hammer says his biggest mistake was not readying his film's release immediately after the Sundance buzz had reached its peak. "We were going to lose 10 months, from the time it premiered to when we'd be able to release it," he says. "Therefore, we had to spend all that money to create a second awareness campaign."
Likewise, "Bottle Shock" director Randall Miller says if he could repeat Sundance 2008 over again, he would have used the festival as a platform for release rather than try to sell it. "I should have said, 'Let's just do it,'" he asserts.
Miller eventually raised $10 million for P&A, hired marketing vet Dennis O'Connor and Freestyle Releasing for distribution, and brought in a tidy box office sum of more than $4 million. Upon reflection, he says, they should have been even more aggressive, opening in 200 theaters rather than 48. "Because we don't have the money and wherewithal, it's hard to sustain a release," he says. And if filmmakers don't spend like a studio, Miller adds, "There's no way for the audience to find the movie, and after week three, the theaters won't keep you."
If critics of self-distribution claim filmmakers don't have the same access to exhibitors, advertisers and marketers as established distribs, Miller says that's a "bald-faced lie."
"I had the biggest billboard on the 405 (Freeway in L.A.). I had the biggest trailer company, and if you want expertise, you can hire all these marketing guys," he says. "And I had the same theaters: the ArcLight in L.A., Lincoln Square in New York. I don't think anyone could do better than that," he says.
But Required Viewing's Steven Raphael, who marketed "Ballast," says doing a one-off release can be "challenging and frustrating," because exhibitors are more likely to take films from distributors with a slate. "We had to start from scratch," he says: "every vendor deal, every agency deal, every exhibitor deal."
Distribution consultant Richard Abramowitz, who helped on the DIY releases of such Sundance titles as "Good Dick," "Never Forever" and the upcoming "Anvil! The Story of Anvil," says there's no way to compete with the studios, so filmmakers have to define their audiences "before they even make the film," he says. "The more specific you are, the better chance of success you have."
"I.O.U.S.A." director Patrick Creadon did just that. After no distributor deals were forthcoming post-Sundance, the filmmakers sold the film to fiscal-responsibility nonprofit org the Peter G. Petersen Foundation, which supplied $1 million in P&A for a service deal with Roadside Attractions. The distrib then partnered with National CineMedia and Fathom Events for a live, digitally broadcast post-screening Q&A, featuring Warren Buffett, which drew more than 43,000 people to 359 theaters around the country, and grossed approximately $500,000. "We never dreamed we'd reach that many people," Creadon says. "It's a really interesting model for timely, issue-driven documentaries."
On a more modest level, Hammer argues that special-venue screenings at museums and other alternative venues, which pay upfront fees, are a good revenue stream for self-distributing films "because they don't cost anything to market and it's a guaranteed number."
Ultimately, the DIY experience has opened Hammer's eyes to what he sees as a completely dysfunctional theatrical model. He says that filmmakers should take responsibility for their films all the way through the process. And the future of promoting indie films lies in the Internet, Hammer adds. "It's entirely about social networking technology and creating a world around your film. And that has to happen as early as production."
"Good Dick" producer Cora Olson agrees: "If I had to do it again, our website would be up much earlier and much faster." And, like Hammer, she sees a silver lining in self-distribution. "Ultimately, it's returning the power to the filmmaker. It might seem dismal, but actually it's very promising."
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