Liam Finn: So what compelled you to enter a reality TV show contest? And did you already have a film or did you make a film for submission?

Will Bigham: My original submission was my thesis film from Florida State. Florida State sends out alumni letters regularly and in it was a notice about On The Lot looking for submissions. I checked out the website and said, “I should probably give this a try.” I sent in my submission video and filled out the application and a couple of weeks later got a phone call; they wanted me to make another movie. I had a week to make a movie. I submitted it and a few weeks later I got another phone call asking for me to come in for an interview. I interviewed and then from there … I think they had two or three hundred people making movies and from that they paired it down to fifty people and that’s when the show started.

LF: What kind of parameters did the show give you to work with?

WB: This competition really gave me the chance to go out there and do what I wanted and came to Los Angeles to do. Basically, there were two tracks. The primarily comedy track and the mixed genre track…the one’s that did horror, action and then they went into comedies. I was pretty much in comedy the whole time. We were able to play around in those comedies like we had the romantic comedy week. A log line which we could basically pull from anything, but for the most part I was primarily one of the comedy guys. But the parameters they gave us week by week…the challenges that they gave us more than anything else was the fact that they would give us a location and a set number of actors we could use. We would write scripts according to those parameters. And of course our biggest parameters were our running times. We were always given a running time of… your running time can’t be longer than two minutes and next week it was two minutes and twenty seconds. And that kind of a thing and one thing that I think helped me greatly in this competition was that I was able to write a two-minute script. Where a lot of the other contestants would write a five-minute script and shoot a five-minute movie and cram it into two minutes. And I got that skill or I developed that skill I guess with film school because we had the exact same parameters when I was going to Florida State University.

LF: When you where making that thesis film I assume you were using the other people in Florida States film program. Now that you have this opportunity and access…is there a core group of people you work with? Or is there anybody you’re hoping to work with and bring along that was there in the struggle with you?

WB: I’m kind of restricted as far as the contract goes with DreamWorks about who I can work with and what I can do. I know that right now my main job at DreamWorks is to find the next project, the first project. And so I’m definitely making a lot of phone calls to people I’ve worked with in the past that have scripts. I’m reading their scripts and seeing if that’s the project I’m going to go with.

LF: Are you looking for something specific? Any genre?

WB: There are no parameters. They haven’t said what they want me to do yet. I know I have a meeting with them next week. I’m pretty much going to pitch every idea I’ve ever thought of. And we’re going to see what sticks and doesn’t stick. I’m asking for more specific directions. If one of my ideas is good enough to go forward with, then that’s what we’ll go with. It’s kind of an open page right now: genre, story - anything. But I think the direction I’ll probably end up going is a quirky comedy, something Cohen-esque, that kind of flavor.

LF: That’s great and I’m sure you have a million ideas. The deal with DreamWorks has always been couched as a million dollar deal, but how does that breakdown? Is it a million dollars to make the movie?

WB: A two-year salary, two years of overhead and a discretionary fund to option/buy materials. (NOTE: Will tells me the specific monetary breakdown, but I decide not to publish it. I see it like publishing a film’s budget before a distributor has purchased it, it doesn’t help the filmmaker.)

LF: And how about representation, did you wind up getting any agents or managers?

WB: Doug Dransen and Val McLeroy were managing me before I entered this contest and they’ve stuck with me through all the bad times, so now I’m sticking with them through all the good times. Their good people and they’re already hitting the pavement trying to find scripts for me. And as far as representation what I’ve decided to do is stick around with DreamWorks for a couple of weeks and let DreamWorks know that I’m here to do business and not to just sit around and collect a paycheck. Then we’re going to go out and talk with the agents and tell them the ideas were going with.

LF: Of the movies you made during the contest is there one that you are most proud of and why?

WB: You know I love “Glass Eye,” just because we did that one with
two-hundred bucks and some friends. It was a one-day shoot and I was able to tell a three-page story with a minimal amount of shots and barely any camera movement whatsoever. So that was kind of an accomplishment. Other than that, the “Yes Men,” the last one I shot…that one because I was able to….I don’t know… leave the comfort zone and try and use a style that I’d never used before and it succeeded.

LF: What about the whole meeting Spielberg? How did that go? How did that feel? What was that like for you?

WB: Well, I’ve talked with him twice now. The first time…the one that was televised…that one I wasn’t quite there. My head was definitely way in the clouds. So I don’t remember much of that…I have to watch television to watch what was going on there. But it was incredible. He was a very down to earth guy, very welcoming. Since then I was able to have lunch with him the other day and again another surreal experience eating lunch with Steven Spielberg. But…he really cares about this. I had a fear going in to the DreamWorks building that I was going be looked at and laughed at like here’s a reality guy. He tricked his way into the office, but everybody there is extremely welcoming. Even the receptionist…she pulled me to the side and said you know if we’re all kind of staring at you and smiling it’s because we’re all really big fans of you. I said, okay. It’s a crazy thing to hear coming from somebody at DreamWorks. It’s definitely a good thing.

LF: Are there any actors you’re hoping to work with?

WB: There’s a ton of actors out there that I think are fantastic that I would love to work with eventually. Too many to name I guess….I would hate to leave anybody out. There are some actors out there like Gary Oldman; I’ve always respected his performances in everything I’ve seen.

LF: And when did you know that film was a calling for you?

WB: Well my wife Cat and I both started as stage actors. As soon as we graduated…got our undergraduate degrees at Texas Tech we moved to Abingdon, Virginia and we acted on stage for five years at the Barter Theater and during that fifth year I was starting to get burned out and it’s kind of crazy to say if you’re a working actor you should be grateful no matter what you’re doing but we were on stage at least 340 days a year and it was starting to take its toll after five years. And one day I just decided to…you know I love performing on stage, but I don’t necessarily love watching theater. I like it but you know…if I go see the best play on earth I might find myself fidgeting once in a while, but if I go see the worst movie on earth I could be highly entertained from beginning to end. So I figured…I decided that I wanted to spend my life doing something where I loved the product as much as the process. So we decided to try film.

LF: Is there a filmmaker or film that inspired you or is it a general sense of liking film? Some people get inspired by a film they watch, some by a filmmaker, sometimes it is an aggregate of movies in general that clicks on a light switch. I’m curious as to where it comes from for you.

WB: I definitely have..there are directors out there and movies out there that have inspired me. There’s one in particular that…during that time when I was at the Barter…I was kind of juggling back and forth should we go to film? Should I do this film school thing? Or should we just continue doing theater? And I went and saw The Road to Perdition, Sam Mende’s movie. After I saw how beautifully crafted that movie was, I knew that I had to go into film. That’s what I had to do. But I guess my love of film kind of all spurred from when I broke my leg in the sixth grade. And I..previous to this I was kind of a known liar…like I would tell people that I’d seen this movie or that movie and I had never seen it. And I have no idea why I would tell people this, just to impress them I guess. When someone saw Revenge of the Nerds, I would say, “Oh I’ve seen that,” having never seen it. But then I broke my leg and I was bed ridden for about two and a half weeks. During that time I watched every single movie I that had ever lied about watching and so I saw a ton of movies when I was in sixth grade. And that’s where I kind of became …I don’t know…well versed..well read I guess..in movies.

LF: Prior to this great opportunity, you were a struggling filmmaker with a family trying to pay the bills and make ends meet for your wife Cat and two kids. Was that the reason for making the DVD exercise series, Empowering Pilates?

WB: Absolutely. When you’re stuck in a never-ending hole and you just keep digging yourself deeper, you either jump to try and get out or you just keep digging. What we were doing with that was, trying to jump to get out. And when you jump, you can end up landing further in the hole than you started out in, but we decided we had to take a shot.

LF: Not only were you making the show on spec, but you also chose self-distribution to release it, how do you feel self-distribution has worked out for you?

WB: Self-distribution is not necessarily easy, but I think it can be more rewarding. I think you make that your job…you decide that that’s what you want to do and you push it to the limits, then I guess…as soon as you start making profit it’s all the more rewarding. It’s been slow going, but I’m happy with the product we ended up with, Cat’s really happy with it as well. Our biggest markets are the schools, like high schools, Jr. high and right when the product came out, schools closed for summer. So…school is just starting up this week and next week, so we’ll see how it’s going to hit.

LF: Look into the future for yourself. You’ve got this access and opportunity and you want to turn it into a clear career launching moment, but where do you think or want it to take you?

WB: We’ll it can go either of one or two ways. I could waste this opportunity or I can use this opportunity to the fullest and there’s absolutely no way I’m going to waste this opportunity. I’ll give up sleep for the next two years if I have too. So it all depends on my first project. This is definitely going to be a tricky situation to be in because I have to find something that is just right. If I settle on a script just to go out there and start directing right off the bat I can end up screwing myself big time. There are a lot of people out there, since this is a reality show, hoping I’m going to fail with my first film. Then there are a lot of people hoping I’m going to succeed with it as well. But it’s the skeptics that I’m keeping my eye out for and there’s no way I’m going to give them the satisfaction.

LF: Do you have any advice for filmmakers?

WB: The best advice for any filmmaker is just pick up a camera and shoot at every opportunity you get. Because throughout this competition I grew as a filmmaker and it was because I was shooting a movie every week. And that is the only way you grow by going out there and doing it.

LF: Thanks Will and congratulations to you and the family. Hopefully I can call you back in a few months and follow up to see how it’s going for you.

WB: Absolutely, feel free to call any time.

In the summer of 2006 my producing partner Jacques Thelemaque released his film, The Dogwalker while I was producing a film titled, Within. What ensues is a conversation between filmmakers Jacques Thelemaque and Diane Gaidry about preparing the limited theatrical release of The Dogwalker.

In the beginning of 2006, Jacques Thelemaque and Diane Gaidry began the process of distributing their feature film, The Dogwalker. In this article, we have part one of a conversation between the filmmakers.

Jacques: What did you think we were going to do with the film prior to our current distribution efforts?

Diane: Before we made the film, I was certain that we would sell if for a gazillion dollars and live happily ever after. But that didn’t happen. We had some lame offers while we were doing the festival circuit and working with Stephen Beer, our erstwhile producer’s rep, and then we ever going to do a dvd distribution with Cinema Libre before we realized that Philippe Diaz was a sociopath, so we pulled out of that deal. Ultimately, our options were limited, so we’re really grateful that we have this investment through FA Productions, and are able to essentially self-distribute with the support of our hand-picked, brilliant distribution team.

J: Yes, we always had strong feelings about independent film distribution as a whole, and felt that a lot of smaller films like ours were not treated well by the prevailing indie film distribution paradigm. It seemed that the options were limited. Your film could get picked up by a distributor for no money, where they would take the rights across all media, and try to get it out in the world, usually in a half-assed kind of way, where they hoped it would make money through world sales and home video sales and the filmmaker usually saw nothing up front and nothing on the back end. And the other option was to self-distribute which is a LOT of work. And most filmmakers don’t have the resources to do that for themselves.

D: And we hope to have other things in our lives at some point besides this goddamn film someday. But we’re grateful that we have an amazing team of people that we were able to hire with this fund from our investor.

J: Yeah, we were planning to go the traditional route because we didn’t see any other way. And then luckily we met this investor who we set up a deal with for our production company, FAP. he very much liked the film, and he provided the funds for us to get the film out into the world. So we were able to test our own theories about what we think works and doesn’t work in independent film distribution.

J: I always tell filmmakers to budgety for festivals and distribution. When you’re raising money for the film. raise money for distribution at the same time.

D: That is if your primary investors aren’t Visa, Mastercard, and American Express, like ours were.

J: And if you get picked up and don’t need to spend that money, great!

D: At first, Jacques and I thought we could handle a lot more than we actually could. But we were completely delusional. We had no idea what this effort entailed. We really only had a very general idea of what we were getting ourselves into and didn’t even really know where to start. So we hired Elizabeth Stanley to oversee this effort and she really got the ball rolling.

J: We’re consulting with Peter Broderick who is advising us on how we can roll our film out. And we’ve put together a team, Elizabeth Stanley, who used to work with the Director’s Guild, Elizabeth’s former assistant at the DGA, Michelle Wells, who is co-managing this effort with Elizabeth, an amazing marketing person, Melissa Sweeny, and our friend, Jessica Willamson, who is doing a lot of the research and message board posting.

D: Once we got this awesome distribution team together, we started contacting bookers to help us get the film into theaters. Most of them never returned our calls or e-mails and the ones who did assured us that without name talent or a genre or an award from Sundance, we were wasting our time. So that route was closed to us, but had we had the opportunity to work with a booker, we would have paid through the nose for that privilege. If I”m remembering correctly, I think one of the people we actually spoke with quoted us something like $15,000 for his services.

Fortunately we learned about a new program set up by the Landmark Cinemas, called Truly Indie, which tries to help independent filmmakers get their work out into the world. It’s kind of a curated 4-wall deal where they give a special rate to filmmakers who’s films are selected to be part of this effort. They also help filmmakers get reduced advertising rates and offer some marketing and publicity support. We’re working with Truly Indie ins San Francisco, Berkeley, Denver, Boulder, Chicago, and Minneapolis. And the Dogwalker was also booked at the Rafael in Marin, and the Laemmles’s Music Hall here in L.A. We’re also working with the Dipson theatre chain in Buffalo and 4-walling one of the screens at the Market Arcade theatre downtown. We chose each of these citites in each of them - except Chicago, where we just felt intuitively that that was a good market for our film.

J: We’ve decided to take sort of a multi-pronged, grass roots approach to our marketing. We’ve built a web site that has some community aspects; blogging, chat rooms, links, various community building elements. And off line we are also setting partnerships with various non-profits that work with and for issues that are part of the film: animal rescue, cancer relief (our other lead actress, Pamela Gordon, died of cancer a couple of years ago), domestic violence, and women’s shelters and empowerment. We are setting up a program to donate a percentage of DVD sales to these non-profits who partner with us.

D: We always knew that marketing was key, obviously, to any distribution effort, but again, we had no clue as to how much work this required — the amount of effort and energy and clarity and experience. Our campaign is almost all grass roots. We’re kind of almost pretending that traditional media doesn’t exist but still doing a little bit of print advertising and mabye some cable and progressive AM radio ads. But we’re primarily focuing on partnerships and word of mouth.

J: So we asked ourselves, “Who is our target audience? Who does this film speak to and who would be receptive to what the film has to offer?” And then we created a strategy for how to reach that target audience and how to hopefully, eventually get peopole to organically work on behalf of the film.

D: And we’re still figuring that out.

J: Yeah, it’s an ongoing process. First we thought, who are the taste makers, who are the peop0le who sit at the top of the pyramid and can spread the word to a lot of other people. So we started thinking about organizations for whom the issues in the film might be relevant. And we came up with independent film organizations and non-profits that deal with the issues that we mentioned above, in each area where the film is going to screen theatrically.

D: But sometimes it’s been difficult to get the non-profits to respond when we didn’t have a personal introduction, because organizations like these are understandably careful about who they partner with. We’re the same way with Filmmakers Alliance because it’s a reflection on the organization and its branding and one has to be conscious of these things, especially when running a non-profit.

And early on in our efforts, at the beginning of the year, we took the pathetic approach of trying to get high profile celebrity types to validate us and give us a supportive quote. And I’m sure that works for some people, but it’s just not in alignment with who we are or the spirit of this films. For the record, I was against this from the beginning, be went along with it thinking “what do I know?” But it ended up being a total waste of time and money.

J: So we wound up sending the screeners to people wo work with organizations that had a relationship to the film and who we either knew personally or had a personal introduction to. And we got some responses there and actually got some responses there and actually got some great quotes that we’re putting up on the site. We’re also doing benefit screenings in two or maybe three of the markets that we’ll be in: Arts Fighting Cancer here in L.A., and a consortium of cancer relief and domestic violence relief organizations in Buffalo, including Why Me House, Crisis Services, The Morlock Foundation, and The Mathew Foster Foundation. And we’re still working on trying to possibly set up a benefit screening in Minneapolis. Also, in Minneapolis, the Walker Art Center has programmed an evening which I will be talking about Filmmakers Alliance and collectivism and filmmaking and showing some FA short films and some clips from The Dogwalker.

D: This event was set up by this wonderful man, Robb Mitchell, who runs a film and video workshop there called Screenlabs, and who has been a guardian angel for The Dogwalker and introduced us to all kinds of helpful and supportive people in Minneapolis.

J: And we also have other levels of partnerships with non-profits in which hopefully they will promote the theatrical and DVD and we will donate a percentage of the DVD sales when the purchaser uses the code for that organization when buying the film.

Also, we had hoped to do more additional screenings at college campuses and micro-cinemas as a means of promoting awareness of the film, but that hasn’t panned out as well as we had hoped because we didn’t have a database or road map of who to contact and how that all works. And we gathered a bunch of information and lost it in a server crash and got lukewarm responses if any, when we did make contact, so as we got closer to the release, we put that on the back burner and focused our attention on more pressing concerns.

D: We hope to be able to build out that database at some time, because we see it as the way that smaller films will be able to get seen in the future.

J: Also, a key component of our distribution plan is the services provided by a lifestyle marketing company, FLAG Marketing, run by Christi Crowe. FLAG (fight like a girl) has teams in cities across the country and in Canada as well, who put up posters and put our postcards, etc. at locations strategically selected by Christi and the publicity/marketing people for a given film. In our case, along with the usual cafes and stores, we will ahve our materials at pet supply stores, vets’ offices, dog parks, yoga studios, etc. in each of the markets where our film is playing theatrically.

D: Oh, and speaking of postcards and posters, we recommend that you hire your key art designer as early as possible. We hired a woman who after two months of nothing, gave us three insultingly ugly and thoughtless mock ups. So we had to fire her and scramble to find a new designer. Fortunately, some other filmmakers we know who had had a similar experience with their first designer, gave us the naem of a wonderful, communicative, collaborative, and talented designer, and we had our final key art within three more weeks.

J: The same goes for web designers. Get your website up and working as early as possible. Our design is a little more complicated than some because we wanted to have a lot of community building components.

D: And as of two weeks before we open our film in our first market, we still don’t have a fully usable site because our first designer never completed it. So a fat lot of good those community-building elements are doing us now. We hired a designer who said we should have something up in the next few days, but I’ll have to let you know how that goes at a later time.*

J: So that’s where we’re at. This issue goes to print before we open in our first market, the three theaters in the Bay area, so we’ll let you know how the theatrical release goes and how the beginnings of our DVD distribution is going in the next issue.

(*Note: Website was completed before the film’s launch and can be seen at: http://www.thedogwalkerfilm.com/ or purchase the DVD the Filmmakers Alliance store.)

Filmmakers Jacques Thelemaque and Diane Gaidry talk about their experiences of indie distribution of their film The Dogwalker. It is written by the filmmakers themselves.

In the August ’06 issue of the FA Magazine, we printed a conversation between Jacques Thelemaque and myself regarding the preparation for the limited theatrical release of our feature film, The Dogwalker. This has to have been one of the most difficult things we’ve ever attempted and as I re-read the part 1 article, I can see how negative and dispirited we were even before we opened in our first market. I wish I could say that the subsequent experience was affirming, but a few months hence, hopefully we can at least offer an objective summary of our theatrical release experience in part 2 of the distribution of The Dogwalker. I will attempt to illustrate which elements of our strategy and experience were more effective and which where less effective. But no matter how valuable these lessons were, I would recommend to 99.9% of independent filmmakers that you treat your festival run as your theatrical release and go directly to DVD without attempting your own theatrical release. The infrastructure to support a commercial release for small independent films does not exist, and your time and money are better spent promoting and selling your film on the internet.

Our goals for this distribution were: a) to hopefully recoup some of the money that we spent on the distribution, b) to build awareness of the film for DVD sales, c) to build awareness of our work in general, and d) to gain a better understanding of distribution that we could apply to future projects and to hopefully help other filmmakers get their smaller, more personal films out into the world. We had varying degrees of success with each of these goals.

Our experience at the Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael was by far the most affirming part of this limited release. This is the experience that every filmmaker dreams of. Of course, the Smith Rafael is run by the California Film Institute, which is a non-profit organization. They don’t do 4 walls there. Richard Peterson, the director of programming, programmed The Dogwalker. They promoted the film heavily through e-mails, their website, their marquis, prominent poster display, and extensive play of the trailer. They have a loyal audience that they have cultivated over the many years of their existence. We had decent ticket sales and they held the film over for a second week. Sadly, this idyllic scenario was not to be repeated in the for-profit arena during our theatrical release.

The Dogwalker played in San Francisco, Berkeley, San Rafael, Los Angeles, Boulder, Denver, Buffalo,Minneapolis, and Chicago. All of the theatres were Landmark theatres that we booked through their Truly Indie program except the Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael, the Laemmle’s Music Hall in Los Angeles, which booked The Dogwalker and took a cut, and the Market Arcade theatre in downtown Buffalo which we 4 walled because there is no Landmark theatre there. We had some personal connection to each of these cities, except Chicago, and felt the film could find an audience in each of these markets.

As we mentioned in part 1 of our distribution diary, Truly Indie is a program set up by Landmark to help independent filmmakers do limited theatrical releases of their films. The films are curated, selected by the Truly Indie programmers, but the filmmaker still pays a fee which covers the rental of the theatre, ads at a reduced rate in local papers, and publicity support from the local Landmark regional managers who aren’t publicists but have contacts with the local media. We hired publicists in the Bay area, Los Angeles, and Buffalo. Karen Larsen, our publicist in the Bay area was amazing. We had more coverage in the Bay area than in any other market.

As we began our release, I must say that we had some issues at the Landmark theatres in San Francisco and Berkeley. Truly Indie had us do an encoding process where the film was put on a hard drive that was to be shipped around the country and connected to their projectors. But on opening night, at the Opera Plaza, we saw that the image was very jittery. Nobody seemed to know what was causing that or how to fix it, so we gave the theatre manager DVDs and asked them to project the film from the DVDs at the Opera Plaza and the Shattuck for the rest of the week. Fortunately, due to these issues, they didn’t charge us for the encoding, and the film looked and sounded good projected from DVD because the Landmark digital projection is top notch. However, when we arrived at the Shattuck in Berkeley, the Sunday of our first weekend to do the Q&As, we found out that the projection was the least of our worries. We discovered that they had never played our trailer there nor hung any of our posters. Several months later, we can chalk it up as one of life’s little lessons. Check your venues as soon as you arrive in town or send scouts and spies ahead of time if possible. I think that more care was taken by Truly Indie from then on, because our experience with the rest of the Landmark theatres was much better in the other markets.

Because Los Angeles is our home base, we had high hopes for our week here at the Laemmle Music Hall. We had a good turn out at the benefit screening we did with Arts Fighting Cancer. Friends and supporters came out and we actually made some money for the cancer relief fund. The Laemmle Music Hall staff was great, but the digital projection, which they rented for our 1 week run and which we had to pay extra for, was horrible. We had other challenges, too. Unfortunately, our publicist here in L.A., Mickey Cotrell, failed to get any extra media coverage despite his best efforts. Also, he inadvertently requested a critic at the L.A. Times to review the film who historically hates small female character-driven films like ours. Another lesson. If you request a reviewer from a paper, be sure to first look up their history of reviews at rottentomatoes. com or metacritic.com to make sure they will be in sync with your film. Fortunately, with all of our arm twisting and begging (and offering ? price tickets), our friends came out to support again and brought a few friends with them. Still, the receipts were ultimately dismal in L.A.

In Denver, our next Landmark market, we were offered the opportunity to do a preview screening which was done in conjunction with the local public radio station, which we paid for, but which made a big difference for our ticket sales there. Truly Indie had encouraged us not to hire outside publicists in the remaining markets and just to rely on the general managers to do the publicity for the films, but these guys aren’t publicist and they simply didn’t have the time or resources do it properly. The Denver/Boulder regional manager indeed suggested and set up the preview screening, but he did not follow through with contacting the smaller local media in and around Boulder. Jacques grew up just outside of Boulder and the hometown boy angle would have been attractive to the local press. We know this because we contacted them ourselves while we were in Boulder. They were indeed interested but editorial deadlines had passed. So we missed that opportunity to get that coverage and the sales were much lower in Boulder than in Denver. The good news is that Denver turned out to be the most profitable venue in the entire run. We’re guessing (one can never really know unless you poll everybody) it was due to a combination of the preview screening and strong reviews in the Denver papers.

By the time we got to our fourth market, Buffalo, we had had a strong enough dose of reality and decided that, since we already paid for the theatre rental, we might as well give away as many tickets as we could in order to get people into the theatre and hopefully cultivate word of mouth for the DVD release. And our publicist in Buffalo who also handles publicity for the theatre company where I was about to go into rehearsal for “Long Day’s Journey Into Night”, managed to get us extensive coverage. We did a television interview and we received a rave review on one of the most popular drive time radio shows. And we did get the hometown girl angle coverage there. But still, very few people came to see the film. A cancer relief organization that my mother is involved with did a benefit screening which was fairly sparsely attended. And the projection in the Market Arcade theatre, which is the only commercial venue in the city that has digital projection, was disappointing and did not exactly serve the exceptional cinematography of our film.

After Buffalo, Jacques headed out to Minneapolis and Chicago solo as I began rehearsals for the play. It is considered one of the most difficult roles in American theatre. But it was nowhere near as difficult as self-distributing an indie film. Although the role was indeed challenging, at least it was creative and rewarding. Jacques soldiered on alone.

We have a fan in Minneapolis, Robb Mitchell, who I met when “The Dogwalker” played at the Central Standard Film Festival a few years back. He’s been actively involved in the Minneapolis film community for many years. Upon seeing our film at the festival, he pledged his undying support and we’ve kept in touch over the years. Robb set up an event at the Walker Arts Center, a very prestigious institution in Minneapolis. Jacques showed some clips from “The Dogwalker” and some FA shorts and talked about Filmmakers Alliance and his filmmaking life, including “The Dogwalker”. This raised some awareness for our week long run there, but aside from that we didn’t have any other publicity other than reviews in the local papers, which were for the most part, mediocre. And ticket sales were again, disappointing.

The Landmark regional manager in Chicago, Brian Ross, served as our publicist there, placing notices in local listings and hosting the press screening, but the reviews were not kind. A woman who we hired in Chicago who is connected to all kinds of people there, managed to get Jacques an interview on a big local radio show geared to pet owners and hooked us up with a rescue organization in Chicago, CASA. But even with that partnership, and our pledge of a percentage of the ticket sales to this association, ticket sales were weak. But at least the weather was great at that time of year, Chicago is a fun city and Jacques wound up having a nice week there.

We knew going into this that corporate main stream media, including “alternative” weeklies, were not geared to support small, personal, truly independent films that don’t have any stars or sensational elements, but it still knocked the wind out of us when we read some of the reviews we received. They say that the target demographic of most studio films is teen age boys. It appeared to us that several of the reviews were written by members of that demographic, to which our film is clearly not targeted. And the lack of analysis in the reviews that dismissed or stomped on our film was astonishing. The dumbing down of corporate media should not have come as a surprise, but we’re human and it hurt. We also received love letter reviews with incredibly astute analyses of the film. It was surprising how disparate the opinions were. But the ones that hated it seemed to be responding to the energy of the film, not the film and the filmmaking elements. They weren’t interested in looking at the intent of the filmmaker. If you are interested, I encourage you visit www.rottentomatoes. com or www.metacritic.com and look up some of your favorite films and see what the state of film criticism is in this country. It’s an interesting phenomenon. And I think that it is important to recognize patterns and biases in our media.

We failed, in our pre-release internet marketing to create a buzz which we would have needed in advance of the runs in each market, to have had any chance at financial success. We had hoped to build alliances with organizations that would spread the word about the film, and a good deal of our distribution budget went to paying the people on our distribution team to research information and to cultivate relationships with organizations with which we could potentially partner. However, for all of our hard work, this avenue was for the most part, fruitless. Organizations are slow to respond, if at all, and understandably suspicious of anyone soliciting their support. Unfortunately, we didn’t anticipate this and spent a great deal of time and man/womanpower (= money) trying to make this happen.

Our presence in chat rooms and on discussion boards didn’t seem to spark much interest in or awareness of the film, either - for a few reasons. Mostly, because it needed to start FAR in advance of a film’s release and needed to be consistently done and followed up on. The website, too, needed to be complete far in advance and with all of the community-building elements in place right away (message boards, chats, etc.). We were unsuccessful getting things going or in place with enough meaningful lead time.

Also, our street marketing was not as effective as we had hoped. We hired a marketing company that does “lifestyle” marketing – meaning, they go to lifestyle locations relevant to the film and flyer/card/poster the locations and hand out cards to people. Los Angeles was plastered with our posters and postcards because the owner of the street marketing company lives here, but she wasn’t in the other markets to oversee her teams and we saw much less evidence of their efforts outside of L.A. It’s theoretically a great service, but with many practical challenges. Our advice is to pre scout any market, and find the events and lifestyle target areas that you feel will support your film and you hands-on direct the street marketing. Either by pointing a hired company to those target areas or hiring people yourself through local connections. The key is to make sure you are in direct contact with the people (usually young people) working the streets so that you have some measure of oversight.

We had also hoped to make inroads into alternative exhibition via micro-cinemas and colleges. However, there was no pre-existing database for such venues. We tried to build one, but we simply didn’t have the time/manpower to do it. Between building the database and contacting all of the venues, we could clearly see this would take a very long time. Then, the Truly Indie deal came along, so we took it. However, the alternative screening approach would probably have been the best release strategy for a film like ours. We could have partnered with organizations in various markets to do a one night screening or short run. We could not be at all of them, but we could have provided them with a DVD of us answering frequently asked questions as a bonus extra for the screening. This way, we could build awareness for the film across a broader range of the country – and for less money. We have heard that some people have come together to build such a venue database (and keep it current). We hope that’s true. It’s still a goal of ours to make sure a database like that exists for filmmakers.

So now it’s on to our DVD release. We have a distribution deal with Reel Indies, a division of Mill Creek entertainment, which we hooked up with via Breakthrough Media. They will be primarily responsible for the retail distribution of the film, but may also be managing the internet download availability of the film – the technology for which is rapidly advancing. Also, we are selling the film directly through our site, with low replication and fulfillment costs allowing us to maintain a healthy profit margin. Breakthrough is giving us an amazing deal on replication and will arrange our fulfillment plans. We’re right now in the midst of producing the DVD and doing the pre-marketing of it.

Despite the disappointing theatrical run, we have high hopes for DVD sales. First, because the film is better-suited to this market. Secondly, we’re applying some of the marketing lessons we learned along the way. Yes, the theatrical run was a bit disastrous financially, but it did generate awareness of the film and provided the valuable education, which we’re eager to utilize. Thirdly, there are a whole bunch of new and still developing internet marketing tools and sites that will aid us significantly in building interest in the film. Finally, we are getting a lot of spill-over marketing from the success of “Loving Annabelle”, a sweet and very popular lesbian melodrama in which I play one of the leads. So, we are willing to risk feeling encouraged. Keep your fingers crossed for us.

Aug. 15, 2007 - This is the official launch date of my blog about self-distribution. Thanks for checking it out. My goal is to research the ever-changing modalities of distribution and try to figure out how they can be utilized by any filmmaker. As a filmmaker myself, I want to have as much direct control over the audience-to-artist relationship possible. My twenty years in film gives me some expertise however, this is a new and burgeoning field, so not only do I offer my opinion and observations but also invite filmmakers to post comments back. I’ve always found a dialogue to be more instructive then a monologue. It’s a heady time for distribution and I’d like to figure out how we as filmmakers can take advantage of it for our own films. Please come back and let’s change the distribution paradigm together.

When filmmaker Ben Rekhi turned down the traditional theater and DVD distribution deal for his film, “Waterborne,” and instead forayed into the emerging realm of digital distribution by signing with Google Video, the future was clear. Filmmakers would now be able to circumvent traditional distribution channels, still reach a wide audience and avoid handing over the bulk of their profits to those in the distribution system chain. Filmmakers charging whatever they wanted would reap the majority of the profits themselves. Close to 80,000 people streamed Waterborne when it was available free, but when it was offered for $3.99 per download, only about 300 actually purchased it by the time it was pulled by the filmmaker in July 2006.

In all my thinking about the technological upheaval that is taking place right now in digital distribution, I always thought of the old established constructs being the ones who would take the blows. But Google, the mega search engine, having decided to pull the plug on it’s 19 month old video marketplace proves that this landscape isn’t settled and forward thinking companies can misread the tea leaves too.

Google Video was giving unknown filmmakers the same platform and access to sell their films to Google’s huge audience along side traditional major players like CBS and the NBA. Any filmmaker could upload his or her films and distribute it for free or for a price with no minimum or maximum selling price. Filmmakers could also choose whether to add copy protection or not. As much as I love Apple, the i-Tunes store isn’t allowing indie films access to their platform.

Although touting their video marketplace, Google was certainly hedging bets when they purchased YouTube in November of 2006 for $1.76 billion and for good reason. The zeitgeist of free video on the web made it uncertain if online viewers would tolerate other business models including ads. CBS, who offered their shows at Google Video for a price, found out online viewers were willing to watch some ads. “It was no comparison,” said Larry Kramer, former president of CBS Digital Media. “It was just clear the audience was more interested in free. But they were also willing to watch ads. Nobody knew that was going to be the case.”

According to Adams Media Research, Consumers spent about $29 million to buy or rent downloaded movies and shows in 2006. Yet in-stream advertising, generated a revenue of $402 million for that same year and is projected to reach $700 million in 2007. Many companies seeking to monetize web video are still pursuing pay-to-own downloads but also searching a variety of other business models, including subscription services, online rentals and ad-supported streaming. Right now, all roads are leading to ad-supported content. “Many online video revenue models are emerging, but the growth of an ad-revenue model for online video will be critical to the health of the industry,” says Paul Verna, eMarketer.com Senior Analyst.

If big companies are seeing ad-supported video as the new model in the foreseeable future, it’s up to us filmmakers to usurp it to our own advantage. The sponsors and the filmmaker have the same goal, to get as many people as possible to see your film. You build an audience. They get exposure. Why not get paid by the advertiser, if not the viewer. Aggregate enough of an audience and you’ll be able to approach sponsors to fund the next project.