MICRO-BUDGET SELF-DISTRIBUTION Corona pre to post in 1 month

See the links list (screenshot to right; scroll down the blog to find links lists on the right side) for other examples of filmmakers showing gutsy determination despite very limited resources to produce and gain distribution for full-length feature films. Especially Coz (Corrie) Greenop (Wandering Rose, or Demon Baby in the US market) and Harry MacQueen (Hinterland). Coz used a broken back to inspire his £40k horror, and social media to get distributor meetings in Cannes, leading to a US DVD release and a multi-million 2nd feature. Harry, an actor, a £10k inheritance to shoot a social realist drama, and a limited theatrical distribution deal with Curzon Cinemas' screenings with Q and A's for members plus Ilkley Film Festival.

This new example has the spirit of Shane Meadows' infamous five day shoot, £48k Le Donk and Scor-Zay-Zee about it...


Spotted a rather excellent example for all of you of fast, determined real-world media production. A Canadian director has scripted, cast, location scouted, costumed/set dressed, filmed, edited/post-productioned, cut a trailer and now released (self-distributed) through VOD platforms Corona. A little exploitative perhaps, but nonetheless when it's easy to make excuses for yourself you could maybe ponder this example. He's done this all in March.

Coronavirus: the movie is somehow already here – but are we ready for it?

I can't see any specific release details yet - perhaps he can't do it all?! Info should appear on the IMDB page. Or on his own website...

UNIVERSAL OFFER CINEMA STREAM and PANDEMIC DISRUPTION threat to cinema future?

"Universal Pictures has a broad and diverse range of movies with 2020 being no exception. Rather than delaying these films or releasing them into a challenged distribution landscape, we wanted to provide an option for people to view these titles in the home that is both accessible and affordable," said Jeff Shell, CEO of NBCUniversal, in a statement. "We hope and believe that people will still go to the movies in theaters where available, but we understand that for people in different areas of the world that is increasingly becoming less possible." [MacRumors]

FilmGuardian analysis

It's unclear how (if??) NBCUniversal have cleared this with cinema chains (all posed to be forced to close in the USA, already shuttered across much of the world), but they've announced a new streaming option for titles currently/recently on their theatrical run.

The price is $20 per movie, not quite the cost of two cinema tickets.

They are clearly online innovators, seeking to flip the narrative of disruption into their own favour. I haven't seen any reports on how successful Prima was (if you don't remember, find the tag on this blog), but that for-the-filthy-rich-only model now has its own scruffy cousin. 

The disruption of convergence and digitisation was meant to be in favour of the little guy, according to web 2.0 evangelists like David Gauntlett and Malcolm 'long tail theory' Gladwell, but the dead hand of the big five has not loosened at all from around the throat of the global film industry. We're not seeing a spurt of Indie growth like the late 60s or late 80s/early 90s - though in both cases most of the new auteurs became studio insiders and the upstart companies got bought up.

The pandemic could have as big a long-term impact in disrupting traditional practices and behaviour in its estimated 18 month run as a couple of decades of digital - more specifically, online - disruption has managed. All the big 5 have delayed their tentpole releases and productions (same for TV) are grinding to a halt. 

Universal are trampling over the theatrical release window in a way that Disney tried with Alice in Wonderland - only to back down when the major cinema chains threatened a complete blackout/boycott of the movie. It could be that the pandemic lockdown builds up a renewed appetite for expensive cinema screens ... or that people get very used to their home cinema setup. And just how long can the Bond and all the other tentpoles be held back? Will all the studios ultimately copy Universal's innovation as this lockdown looks set to continue for many months???

SEE: MacRumors and As cinemas go dark, the film industry may go straight to Netflix.

WEB 2.0 Will vlogging boost two Smiths?

More widely seen through Facebook, but in 5 days 125k views (link)

Vlogging and other examples of web 2.0 application are more readily associated with the music industry: from Lily Allen's (quietly corporate-funded) bedroom recordings and MySpace, to Gaga's self-contained Little Monsters site and Biebers army of lunatic Beliebers on Twitter and anywhere else anyone dares to question their deity, while he pours out seemingly unfiltered nuggets on those same platforms.

Will Smith has just gone viral with one of a recent series of seemingly off-the-cuff, unfiltered videos, or vlogs (vodcasts). I've seen it through my own Facebook feed, switching it off after a few seconds of what struck me as American hokum (though I'm sympathetic to the general point of the potential power of learning from failure).

Link.

The article on this struck a particular chord (i'm even writing this post a 2nd time after a finger slip lost me an hour's worth of phone tapping on the blogger app) as 2 of his tracks popped up on a shuffle play of one of my more eclectic playlists during an hour or so at a local hostelry yesterday - deeply buried amidst 1,293 tracks with Slayer and Celtic Frost among other delights - and the clear retro-fuelled buzz (yup: namecheck for Simon Reynolds' book Retromania but also the ol' uses and gratifications theory...) it sparked.

Smith's stellar career has dulled, with the Netflix-distributed Bright not exactly setting the world alight. Haven't seen it yet, so I'll reserve my own judgement, but the LOTR-Lethal Weapon mash-up it suggests at least sounds faintly intriguing.

DISTRIBUTION horror case study

A lengthy, detailed post with lots of examples and figures, plus external links

VOD DISTRIBUTION Amazon attracts TIFF Indies with 200k offer and 30c per hour streamed

NoFilmSchool report.

Amazon continues to expand its disruption of the traditional film market and industry practices, especially distribution (though it, like Netflix, is also expanding its production arm).

TIFF, an especially notable (Toronto International) film festival (very important for Warp over the years) has begun including TV, a strong sign of the convergence between the two industries (again, consider Warp Film's recent output - mostly TV!).

An event at TIFF sponsored by Amazon.

The 2017 TIFF has also seen Amazon build on its 2016 Sundance offer of $100k plus royalties for distribution rights, now a $200k package - a hugely tempting proposition for young or Indie filmmakers to instantly gain large scale international distribution.

Would you accept a $200,000 bonus to upload your official festival selection to Amazon Video Direct? That offer is now on the table for directors with films playing at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival. 

In May 2016, Amazon launched the Film Festival Stars program, which aimed to lure festival fare to its streaming platform by offering $100,000 upfront and royalties to rights holders. At Sundance this year, we spoke with the head of Amazon Video Direct, Eric Orme, who told us that he hoped the program would help filmmakers capitalize on self-distribution. "We recognized that a lot of films at Sundance don't get full-service distribution deals," Orme said. "We want to provide a new distribution pathway for those films. Expanding distribution options means more great films have the opportunity to reach wider audiences."

Is this having any impact? Quite simply - yes:

The Film Festival Stars deal requires filmmakers to make Amazon Video Direct the exclusive SVOD home for this film, although directors can wait up to 18 months to upload their movies to the platform. In the interim, their films can play at other festivals and theaters. In addition to the initial bonus, filmmakers will receive a royalty rate of $0.30 per every hour their film is streamed on the platform—more than double the rate Amazon offers other Video Direct users.So far, the program has proven a hefty incentive. At SXSW 2017 alone, Film Festival Stars signed deals for 40 movies. 

See NoFilmSchool article.

Variety report.

Another report.

DISTRIBUTION Video resources

An evolving playlist of YouTube videos on distribution. There are a wide range here, most are from/by industry insiders - often Indie, so similar to yourselves - with a range of specific themes covered. Click through to watch on YouTube to view the full playlist.

If you have any suggestions of more resources you've found useful, send a link/brief description as a comment


BELOW: boxofficemojo data on Bridget Jones' Diary.
Compare to films like Submarine - 
[boxofficemojo]
[film site]
[IMDB]
[Wiki]
[posts on this blog]
[BFI feature]
[review of the book]
[Guardian review].

...

DIGITISATION Hinterland £8k budget 15 year-old camera...

Harry Macqueen (centre) and Ben Hecking on stage after their Ilkley Film Festival screening

HINTERLAND (Harry Macqueen, 2015)
DISTRIBUTION: Indie/arthouse/world cinema specialist Soda Pictures (digital); self-distribution deal with Curzon Pictures, linked to director/cinematographer Q+A appearances
PRODUCTION CO: Inheritance Films [Macqueen inherited £10k and decided to make a film with this!]
BUDGET: £8k
SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter;



Thanks to Martin Pilkington, organiser of the Ilkley Film Festival, I got to see Hinterland gratis, and to speak to the debut director (and co-star/writer/producer) Harry Macqueen plus cinematographer (Director of Photography) Ben Hecking afterwards.

The film is archetypal arthouse; an essay on male diffidence with French New Wave part of the aesthetic: montage sequences, dialogue over fairly abstract shots, some non-linear strands. That's simplifying rather - both said their influences were just too numerous to really pin down; "unconscious osmosis" would amount for much of this. Richard Linklater was held up as a particular influence and, indeed, inspiration to all Indie filmmakers (and Macqueen noted how Linklater had similarly gone out and produced his debut feature for a very low budget). Both professed a love for and strong influence from this unheralded 1979 British Indie road movie, re-released on DVD by the BFI (Radio On, Christopher Petit):


(Read more on this film: IMDB; Wiki; ScreenOnline)

Both describe Hinterland as a road movie. It centres on the friendship, with clear undertones of desire for more, of a late-20-something man and woman, childhood friends, the woman a free spirit, the man seemingly a more sedate character.

DISTRIBUTION: Warp X's Le Donk + Scor-zay-zee

Use the tag cloud to find more on distribution

KEY POINT: Cinemas continue to insist on an exclusive release window as home cinema would otherwise eat substantially into their prospects, and they have gone as far as threatening to boycott a blockbuster Disney movie when they tried to reduce this window. Frankly, they will care little what an Indie micro-budget production does, and the 'cinema release' was really a marketing stunt by Warp to attract newspaper reviews!

Scroll to the end of the post for a short list of all key points. 

Impressively, Warp secured distribution in several foreign markets, such as Norway. Note how Meadows and his previous movies are highlighted as a key selling point.

Le Donk and Scor-Zay-Zee (Meadows, 2009) is an interesting counter-example of what we conventionally see. Okay, so this micro-budget Indie (just £48k, it launched Meadows' 'five day film' concept which, at the time of release, several other well-known directors expressed an interest in, though it doesn't really seem to have taken off in the way Dogme 95 - Lars von Trier etc - once did) got limited cinematic release.

All warp trailers are embedded in 1 post tagged distribution!

Lets be clear - the vast bulk of Indie productions simply fail to get any cinematic release; almost all are straight-to-DVD or, in the worst case scenario (as the DVD release window should come before the TV release window, which can itself be split between terrestrial, satellite and streaming) straight-to-TV (maybe made-for-TV).

By the way, Working Title's debut production, My Beautiful Laundrette, started out as a made-for-TV film, but when it got a screening at the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) and the critics raved about it, a swift decision was made to fund a cinematic release, from which it made a modest but significant profit, and WT would grow from this small success (including a US release).

There are no figures for Le Donk's box office, which usually suggests there was no cinematic release. It is not alone in Warp productions in getting a very, very limited cinema release, presumably a premiere and some limited London screenings.