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Branded Doc class and updates
- Posted on 4th Apr
- Category: Newsletter
AdWeek – Will a branded doc win an Oscar?

Branded Documentary Class at UnionDocs I’m teaching a new branded documentary workshop at UnionDocs in Brooklyn May 4-6. I’ve done this twice before, and they both seemed to be a great success, so we’re doing it once again (it’s been a year or two now). I have some great guest instructors, including filmmakers Trish Dalton and Sarah Tricker; and producers of branded content, Rob Sheard from Zero Point Zero and Megan Cunningham from Magnet Media (all bios in the link), and we’ll likely add one more soon. We’re covering everything from business to creative, and it’s a great opportunity to learn how to work with brands to make great content, as well as pros/cons and how to break-in to this area. Register here.

STUFF I’M READING/AROUND THE WEB & NOTES

Film:

Blockchain and Film: Blockchain is in the news daily, and I get a call once a week from someone launching a new film-related business based on it. But I’ve yet to read a single smarter thing about the potential of blockchain for film than this Tweet-storm from Erik Opeka. Read it. Everything you need to know to solve the problems of film via Blockchain is in this set of tweets. It’s from back in January, and I keep meaning to write a post about it, but really, he says it all.

It’s a couple of weeks old now, but if you haven’t yet read the Sundance Institute’s report on the distribution of Columbus, I highly recommend it. It’s a must-read for anyone interested in indie film – marketing, distribution, even just how to make good artwork for your film, it’s all here.

My QuickTake: Anything that brings more transparency is needed, and this is a great report, all around. But whenever I read these things now, all I can think about is how much work it takes to release a film, and in this case, all of the help and discounts they got because of the Sundance name. It’s as much of an argument justifying a distributor’s fees as it is in favor of avoiding them, IMHO.

MoviePass partners with Landmark Theaters – Will MoviePass make it to December, 2018? That’s the question on everyone’s mind, and they keep trying to f-k it up, but this new deal with Landmark shows they have potential. You can select seats in advance, and not just from outside the theater, both steps in the right direction.

Branded Content:

The North Face launched a new series focused on “trail-blazing women and athletes” called Move Mountains. It features a series of films, a massive fold-out advertising section in print, a partnership with the GirlScouts (including new badges that can be earned); grants to women and a renewed focus on working with women in their supply-chain.

My QuickTake: Wow, great campaign. Full disclosure – I work with one of their biggest competitors and am thus biased against them, but I think The North Face has built a great multi-faceted campaign that hits at just the right time, with the right focus. I’m curious as to whether they worked with women behind the camera (I couldn’t find out yes or no easily before this post), which is a big problem in the outdoor film and branded content world, but kudos to them on the start of a great campaign.

WeTransfer launched a new web series called Works In Progress, and episode one features Bjork and Jesse Kanda. Check it out on YouTube and their WePresent branded content site.

My QuickTake: Closer to ads than short film, but an interesting way to promote the collaborative nature of WeTransfer, which I usually use myself when collaborating with other filmmakers, so this is a pretty natural use of branded content. At the time of this post, they have close to 50K views, which isn’t exactly viral, but it’s not bad for this kind of work.

SoundCloud has launched their new First on SoundCloud, with episode one featuring Taylor Bennett and future episodes showcasing artists who launched on SoundCloud.

My QuickTake: Now that Kerry Trainor has moved from Vimeo to SoundCloud, it’s no surprise he’s bringing video into the mix. Trainor was responsible for Vimeo’s brief foray into branded content, so he gets how this stuff works. While this still feels like a regular ad now, and views are pretty low, I expect to see more, and better, stuff here soon.

This Blog & Email Newsletter:

After my last two posts, a couple of people contacted me asking how they got on my email list. If you are receiving this blog post as an email, then you signed up for it – and confirmed it with Google/Feedburner – at some point in the past. If you want to stop receiving it, there’s an unsubscribe button in the email. I can’t add or remove anyone from this list. In fact, due to Google’s crappy take-over of Feedburner, I can’t even login to my account and manage it anymore. I am in the process of moving my blog/newsletter to Mailchimp now. You can now sign-up via MailChimp on Sub-Genre.com. I’ll discontinue Feedburner once I get control of my Google account. Sorry for any inconvenience.

For those of you who enjoy my posts, I’ll be posting more often now. My plan is to begin posting once a week, with one thought piece and links to news from around the web.
Breaking the “rules” to win an Oscar for Short Docs
- Posted on 5th Mar
- Category: Newsletter
Watching the Oscars last night was a little more thrilling than usual, because this year I was friendly with several of the producers and directors behind the documentaries up for Awards for Best Documentary Short and for Best Documentary Feature. Along with so many others in the doc community, I’m super happy for everyone who was nominated – even those I don’t personally know – and even happier for the winners of each award. I’ve seen almost all of the films and they were all deserving, but the short I had not seen ended up winning in that category – Heaven is a Traffic Jam on the 405 by Frank Stiefel. I watched it first thing today – you can too here – and in researching it, I found out it breaks a lot of the “rules” we think we know about success in documentaries. As such, it’s an inspiring lesson for doc makers everywhere.

Here’s the broken rules:

1. You need to premiere at Sundance or Cannes (or Toronto, or Hot Docs, or…)

This film premiered at the Austin Film Festival, not one of the majors. Yes, it won some awards there, and also won two awards at another prestigious film festival – Full Frame – but take a look at its laurels: Florida, Julien Dubuque, Sedona, Hot Springs and DocUtah. All of these are good/great regional festivals, but none of them are thought of as being as prestigious as the “big” fests. Which proves you don’t need their stamp of approval to succeed either, and also that good films will get programmed by good festivals, and these “smaller” fests can also lead to success.

2. Don’t make your film available for free

Heaven is available for free on YouTube. It’s not on HBO, Netflix or some other big broadcaster. And it’s not behind some paywall, or even for sale. It’s free. Anyone could check it out prior to its awards, and it was still a success. Free doesn’t mean bad. And I bet its views will soar post-Oscars… which wouldn’t be possible if the filmmaker had waited for some big deal before making the film available online for free.

3. You need to premiere on, and have support from, a big distributor/broadcaster

To my knowledge, this isn’t on HBO, or POV or even TOPIC. There’s no deep pocketed broadcaster paying for its Academy campaign (which ain’t cheap to do) and it still won. I’m sure they hired publicists and spent a lot of money to get to the finish line, but this proves that anyone can do it, not just those with big/connected backers.

4. You need lots of viewers/followers

In fact, as of the morning after the Oscars, the film had only been viewed 152,000+ times since it was published by IndieWire on Jan 2,2018. Most people think that you need millions of views online to be a success. The film also had just around 280 followers on Facebook at the time of the Awards. Clearly, you don’t need to be a viral/online or broadcast success to win the biggest award in film.

5. Success goes to super-connected filmmakers, with agents and lots of experience

This is the filmmaker’s second film, and while he’s had some success, he’s by no means super-connected or experienced as a filmmaker. Ok, the filmmaker’s first film was picked up by HBO, which is a big deal, but as he explained to EW during the release of that film, he wasn’t super connected then either:

“There wasn’t much of a plan in making this film. I was going to give it to my kids and that was the end of the story. Only, at the end of the editing process I thought, “Man, this is pretty good. I wonder if it is good?” I submitted it to the International Documentary Association and they had a competition and chose it as one the films that year. From there, it took off. I retired from being an executive producer at [production company] Radical Media and traveled with the film to festivals around the world. Then HBO bought it. But there was no plan. I don’t have an agent. It hasn’t been flogged by anybody to anyone. I guess I should probably take it more seriously in terms of that.”

Yes, he probably should have taken it more seriously, but you can clearly stumble into success with a good film, and you don’t need to have that super agent, or be part of the “doc-mafia” (getting grants from all of the usual suspects) to succeed.

6. Shorts should be short – 20 minutes or less

Heaven is just under 40 minutes long. That’s a lifetime for a short. Anything longer than 7 minutes long is an eternity online (people don’t watch longer shorts online); and festival programmers can tell you that longer shorts are often harder to program – every minute counts when you’re programming a slot in a 90 minute program. But I’ve seen this rule broken many times – in fact, it seems that while fests and online viewers prefer shorter shorts, the Oscar often goes to longer ones. As Richard Brody points out in the New Yorker: “Every winner this century has run longer than a half hour; all but a handful are thirty-nine or forty minutes long. All five of this year’s Documentary Short Subjects run at least twenty-nine minutes; two run forty, and they aren’t really shorts but featurettes…” But the real lesson here is obvious- make the film the length it needs to be, not what’s dictated by the market. In fact, the director has said the film started as a feature, but it worked best when it became 40 minutes long.

7. Keep your title short

You can’t get much longer than Heaven is a Traffic Jam on the 405. People always tell you to keep your title short and sweet – memorable, and if possible low in the alphabet so it shows up alphabetically in online queues. Didn’t matter here.

8. Know your audience

I tell my clients all the time – think about your audience when making a film. And you hear that question all the time on grant panels, applications, pitch sessions, etc: Who is the audience? Well, here’s Frank’s thinking, from an interview w/ Deadline: “I never asked myself whether anybody else would be interested. I just kept plugging forward because I found her incredibly compelling and just went with that.” What this proves – focus on good stories and good storytelling first (ok, we all knew that, right?).

9. Success goes to the young

Frank Stiefel is 70 years old. And he didn’t start directing until he was in his Sixties. There’s lots of age-ranges in the doc world, with award winners from their teens to their 90s, but I think everyone thinks of award winners as the “hot, up & coming directors.” Furthermore, he says he couldn’t have made this film when he was younger. As he told No Film School: “I could not have made this film 10 years ago, and that has nothing to do with experience or with knowledge. I’m much more emotionally available today than I once was. I also don’t want anything today. I’m past the point of wanting a career out of this. I want nothing, actually. And so I went into it without an agenda and I remain without an agenda.”

He’s also in his second career – having worked in TV commercials first. His Oscar proves there’s always second-chances, new artistic directions, and that it’s never too late to begin an artistic career (and succeed). That should be an inspiration to lots of people. Even if you aren’t 70, don’t give up, don’t be afraid to change, and perhaps the best path to success is “not having an agenda at all.”

10. There are rules

We all know that each of these rules aren’t really rules at all, but this exception proves it – ignore the rules. There are none.

+++

To my mind, all of the nominated films succeeded, and they all have lessons for filmmakers and other artists. But I’m glad Frank won, just so I could learn these lessons from him, and finally see his film. His story, and the one he captured – Mindy Alper’s – are both inspiring, and they both taught me a few things.

++++

Note: After posting this, I learned that the film was also picked up for distribution by the awesome Grasshopper Films. So you can now also rent the film for educational or other screenings – while it remains free on YouTube – another set of rules broken, as you can do all of the above, and still get distribution.

Watch the film below:

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The future is find – film curation & festival programmers
- Posted on 5th Feb
- Category: Newsletter
Just prior to Sundance and Slamdance, I conducted a very unscientific experiment and asked my Facebook friends – many of whom are programmers for film festivals who could all be expected to have long lists of “must-see’s” at the fest, and who are very opinionated when you speak to them in line for a film– what films they recommended at the festival.

I got back exactly what I expected – nothing. Now, there’s a chance that none of them like me enough to read my post and respond, and an equal chance that because it wasn’t about #metoo or Drumpf, they couldn’t be bothered. But I don’t think this was the issue.

When I was working with Ted Hope to build Flicklist (which failed miserably for other reasons), we encountered this same problem. We thought it would be great to showcase the greatest asset any film festival has – the expertise of their curators – as a way to help audiences find great new films. Who has a better handle on the films you should see in theaters and online? Who could better tell you to add that movie to your queue months before it gets written about? It seemed like a no-brainer – if I trust my local film programmer at the festival, I might trust their recommendations year-round, and take a chance on a film because of that – maybe even going to see a film at another film festival when I’m visiting another town, for just one example. And it would be a simple way to further the brand equity of those film festivals and their programmers, perhaps giving great curatorial “power” to the awesome programmer in Atlanta as well as the one at Cannes.

We approached a lot of film festivals and their programmers behind the scenes, and nearly every one of them said the same thing – oh, our programmers we would never share their real lists. They didn’t want to give away their possible programming choices, didn’t want to seem to privilege one film or filmmaker above another, especially early in the game, or didn’t want to be so public about their tastes. We made it clear they could hide their programming choices and only share other recommendations, but there was still concern. The lists of reasons went on and on – even when we suggested paying for the service. Programmers just weren’t accustomed to sharing their recommendations and favorites except in two places – in the festival selections, and possibly in end-of-the-year, best-of lists.

We gave up, but I’m convinced that part of our idea was a good one, and I’ve hoped for a long time that someone else would crack that nut and tap into the collective curatorial power of those festivals and give them a new type of relevance outside of the time of the film-fest taking place. It hasn’t happened. No one has built any kind of curatorial machine that takes advantage of actual film curators. Not only that – no film festival, to my knowledge, has done it on their own. Not even the ones with the most power – Sundance, Cannes, Hot Docs, SXSW, or anyone else.

It seems to me like a lost opportunity, and it seems like a big, gaping hole in the services that festivals should be offering their audiences – not to mention a potential revenue stream. As content proliferates online, consumers need curators to help them cut through the noise to find the best stuff. Critics are part of this, but so are festival programmers, and they have a lot less baggage and more good-will already. And you don’t have to be a rocket-scientist to figure this out – everyone talks about the importance of curators to the future of content online. And every festival seems to think their programmers are good at finding good films, or presumably they wouldn’t pay them.

I would pay them for this service, and many of my film-going friends would do the same. If I could get a weekly email of recommendations from trusted programmers at my local festival, with a mix of things that played their festival, but also things they couldn’t program that they liked, I’d add all of those films to my queue and happily pay for it. Or I might even become a member of their festival – and festivals need reasons to convince me to become a member beyond a discount on tickets at the festival and an email newsletter (…talking about their next festival or their next fundraiser). Turn this into an app, and I’d pay for that app, and I don’t pay for anything now. Everyone I know wants help cutting through the garbage to discover the best films to watch, and fest programmers could be that guide online, year-round. And they should be, because as I’ve argued before (in 2013, jeesh), in a world of super-abundance, film festivals need to think beyond their old missions of just bringing undiscovered films to their locale.

Right now, the leading websites for finding films are Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB. These are helpful to some extent, and I use them, but they’re not really curatorial or based on any curator’s knowledge. I can’t easily follow just the reviewers I trust, and none of these focus on curation, which is very different than criticism.

Yes, a few people have taken to Letterboxd to share the films they’ve seen, and for a long time, I hoped this would become the curatorial service that I think we need. Here’s my favorite programmer Tom Hall’s list of films he saw at Sundance, for example. But aside from Tom, I don’t find many actual curators telling me what to see online. Instead, Letterboxd seems mainly used by critics (here’s David Ehrlich of IndieWire posting his reviews and rankings as just one good example). But again, this is different than the curation a festival programmer could bring, and I think its lacking from the discovery process online.

But I’ve given up hoping for that world to come along. I think most of the fest industry is focused on their current model, not thinking about what they should be doing in a new paradigm. If they won’t take on that curatorial role, then we’ll need someone else to do it.

I suspect these new curators and curatorial services are developing now, being built, will launch, and they won’t include many of the experts or the expertise of these film festivals. The curatorial app of the future will probably be built on celebrity, an algorithm or some other system of trust. Once it launches, a few festivals will try to launch their own version, to jump on the bandwagon, but it will be too late. We’ll all get our recommendations from someone else – and in a world where almost any film ends up online eventually, I’ll have less and less reason to show up at the festival in person, when someone else will curate it for me in a more convenient form.

I’ve always argued that back in 2005, Sundance could have, and should have built YouTube. The technology and the need were there. The writing was on the wall, and everyone could sense what needed to be built, but nonprofits (which most festivals are) don’t think that way. They do the same old thing instead of the new. So we got a very different YouTube, and have no idea what that alternate one, informed by the curation, artistry and artist-centric thinking they had might have become. (To be clear, I’m only picking on Sundance here because they’re the most famous name, you could insert almost any other name; and Sundance has been plenty busy doing a lot of other good things).

This is another one of those moments. The need is clear. The history of the internet is search, the future is find – finding exactly what you need, hopefully with some curatorial help. I think we have just a few more years before someone builds the perfect curation system, and a short window where this could be done by the existing players in this space. I’d much rather have that service be built by those with the curatorial vision found in our film festivals than on the backs of some algorithm or the whims of some brand or celebrity (or both). And I’d rather that the money it makes benefits these festivals than some new version of Facebook, and that this data informs better art, not more advertising. The technology exists, and festival programmers have the expertise we need.Who will pick up the charge?
Net Neutrality and Film
- Posted on 29th Jan
- Category:
Kudos to Sonos (disclosure, a sometimes client) for taking a big stand this week pre-Grammy’s. That’s their website artwork at the beginning of this post, and this week, they closed their NYC and online stores to support Net Neutrality, and took out big ads in the NYT and WSJ (and many social media posts) in support of it as well. I hope some people in the film world do the same, and soon, but it also reminded me to post this little bit about the impact of recent net-neutrality decisions on the future of film.

I’ve been writing about the importance of Net Neutrality since I started blogging in January of 2006. There’ve been many close calls since that time, and many decisions that those close to these issues considered likely precursors to the end of net neutrality, but 2017 brought the official end of net neutrality, and it’s not hyperbole to say it’s the beginning of the end of the Net as we’ve known it. The changes will be gradual and practically imperceptible, but very real. We’ll wake up one day and find a very different internet unless we take some pretty radical steps, and soon.

But what does this mean for film in the short term? You can expect more deals to privilege certain content over others – get Netflix or Verizon Go90 or whatever other content faster and cheaper. That will be good for consumers when you want to watch stuff on the big guys – Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, etc. But it also means it will be that much harder for people like Fandor or Mubi to get traction, and even harder for new services to launch, as the costs to deliver quickly to consumers will become hurdles too high. That may not seem too bad, but as Netflix and Amazon buy/license less indie and arthouse fare, these alternate services are crucial to those wanting to find and watch the multitudes of films not on these larger services. And those viewers wanting to experiment might be discouraged when a “Classic,” or “experimental” focused service is slower to load or costs much more to access.

It will also mean less relevant alternatives like Vimeo, and over time, fewer opportunities for truly independent work to reach an audience. Right now, if your film doesn’t get picked up by one of the major services, you can always fall back to using a Vimeo to reach your audience, but that could become more expensive, slow or difficult quite easily.

But in a world of super-abundance, where I can barely keep up with the content coming over the transom, this will be imperceptible to all but those stuck behind, trying to break through, and I suspect very few people will care. That’s one reason why it’s even more important to fight this trend now, before we forget why we’re even in the fight.

But the more important concerns are the loss of possible futures we can’t even imagine now. It’s hard to believe, but we’re at the very beginning of the revolution(s) brought about by digital, and what movies you get to watch are in many ways the least concern. Perhaps artists will come up with entire new artforms, utilizing new technologies still to be built, but they cant get them out to an audience because they’re made harder to find or censored from the web altogether?

And speaking of censorship, that becomes much easier under a non-neutral net as well. Incumbent powers who might be threatened by new competitors to their services, or regimes who don’t want certain voices heard already have it pretty easy, but the loss of net neutrality makes it even more assured that alternative voices, business models and visions of the future will be that much harder to find.

Want to join the fight? I recommend Public Knowledge and Free Press as two great places to find out what’s happening and how to fight back.
FAANG and Film
- Posted on 15th Jan
- Category: Newsletter
FAANG

In the business world, people refer to Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google as FANG – also known as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. This has been widened by many to include Apple, and while Google is now “Alphabet” the acronym has stuck as FAANG – the big companies that are changing all business through their digital prowess, market capitalization and stock performance. They are also increasingly impossible to compete against – just starting a real competitor to Netflix today would probably take a starting investment of maybe a Billion dollars.

For the film world, this is especially true – and its why Disney and Fox are merging, why AT&T wants Time Warner, and everything else you see happening. In the future, you need to own the content and the pipes to even have a chance at surviving. While everyone continues to underestimate Facebook Watch, and yes they’ve launched like amateurs, they will one day rival Netflix for where you find, watch and talk about content (movies, TV, news, likely music and everything else). Amazon, Apple (via iTunes) and Google (via YouTube) are close behind, and no one else stands a chance.

We can already see a real impact in the film world – when it comes to stellar offers for film, you’ve got Netflix and Amazon offering beaucoup bucks, and literally everyone else in the business is a second thought. Increasingly, if you aren’t on Netflix or Amazon Prime, you don’t exist to a substantial portion of the potential audience (iTunes and YouTube Red remain far behind here, and while Hulu is spending more, their subscriber base is still paltry). And bad news –while Amazon Prime takes almost anything, Netflix is buying less and less indie and doc content.

Meanwhile, nearly every OTT service that could fill the void in offering content NON (not on Netflix) struggles to gain attention or traction. Why pay for another service when it seems like you have more than enough content on Amazon Prime and Netflix, and can augment it with one-off purchases from iTunes?

Things are still shaking out, but my bet is that by 2020, FAANG will be the only names you think about when watching films (studios will still make films, and indies never quit), and it might possibly be just FAN (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix alone).
KodakCoin is worth watching
- Posted on 10th Jan
- Category: Newsletter
KodakCoin

Yesterday (Jan 9th) Kodak announced the launch of KodakCoin, their new Bitcoin/Blockchain offering for photography, and their stock price jumped on the news. Why? Not because it’s a brilliant business strategy (which it is), but because investors go crazy for anything related to Bitcoin right now. But beyond that hype, this is something to watch.

The general idea of KodakCoin is that photographers can use it to get credited and compensated appropriately for their work in a digital world. This has been a big problem in the digital realm because a copy is the same as the original and as any other copy, and attribution and payment for use has been pretty hard to handle (or easy to skip). With KodakCoin and the Kodak One system they announced, there will be a ledger-based system to more easily track photographic images, and in theory, give them proper attribution, get paid, and (if they’re smart), photographers could also tie-in licenses for use not unlike Creative Commons – letting people use images for free in some situations, pay in others, or possibly even be paid based on future consumption instead of paying a license fee up front.

This has great implications for film as well. As I’ve written elsewhere, Blockchain could revolutionize how we do business in film, and this is a great first step. Most of the press just chalked this up to Kodak “trying to capitalize on the current cryptocurrency mania,” (The Verge), and the trades ignored it, but this could be a big deal. If Kodak knows what they’re doing, and does it right, this could be the future of how we deal with rights and consumption of images both in photography and film. Blockchain will work best for film if it’s tied into everything from capture to consumption – and Kodak is weirdly well positioned to capitalize on all of these areas.

Only problem, as I’ve seen others ask in comments on the announcement, why didn’t they call it KodaCoin, like Kodachrome, instead of KodakCoin? Missed opportunity.

Update – January 31, 2018 – Some news has come out in the NYT since I wrote this, and it seems that while the underlying idea of using blockchain to manage image rights is good, the way Kodak has set this up is a little wonky and that makes it possibly a lot less interesting. I recommend reading the article, and keeping a skeptical eye on how this develops.

Ed. Note: I haven’t blogged since July, 2017 and my output has been slow for the past year or two. I plan to write more often this year. If you’re receiving this via email subscription, and don’t want to anymore, there should be an unsubscribe button in your email. Otherwise, you’ll hear from me more regularly.
Distribution & Discovery Ideas
- Posted on 26th Jul
- Category: Newsletter
After my last two posts on IndieWire (and here) about the need for more distribution funding and the problems with the algorithm ruling film discovery, several people asked me in the comments, on Facebook and offline for some ideas. So here’s a more positive post about five ideas for better funding of distribution and discovery. They’re five easy to think about, hard to implement ideas, and I’m not claiming them as just mine or as ground-breaking, but I hope this kick-starts some conversation.

via Ambulante

1. Plain ol’ distribution funds – Ok, the easiest route to helping with both distribution and discovery would be strategic offerings of distribution funds. They should focus on smart, tried and tested models; new ideas that show promise; projects to increase the diversity of what’s being distributed and big initiatives that might have impact beyond one film (slates, curated programs, regional strategies, etc.).

Personally, I’d be open to the idea of funders backing the distributors themselves. In many countries, government funds already do this, because they support culture beyond the marketplace, and that’s what foundations should be doing anyway (some do support public broadcasting). But in the short term, it would be great if the money goes straight to producers/filmmakers, and the funds could be used to augment a distributor’s campaign (with extra grassroots outreach, for example) or for service deals, “direct” distribution, etc.

Importantly, I don’t think these should be focused on impact. We have a lot of impact funds already, and while they’re great, I’d love to see more funds supporting work finding its audience even when “impact”- read social impact – is not a goal.

As mentioned in my recent post, Sundance is already doing some distribution funding, and there are a few other funds, but more foundations should offer this support, as should more nonprofits, festivals and venues.

2. Transparency – I am biased here, as I helped on the pilot Transparency Project for Sundance, but I think this is the biggest need in the field. It’s impossible to build comps, speak honestly with investors about potential returns, plan for distribution, evaluate offers, etc. because there is no transparency as to what is being made where beyond box office.

We need data, perhaps anonymous and grouped by genre, budget and release strategy. But we need more than just VOD numbers. Festivals should be required to report attendance numbers for your screenings. Theaters should do the same (they do to distributors, but these numbers rarely make it to filmmakers). We should have transparency on diversity numbers – behind the camera, in the curator’s office, on the screen, how well films perform based on diversity…the list goes on.

A quick side-note, festivals and screening organizers should also share photo and video documentation to filmmakers. I’ve used this as evidence to secure better deals, and it can also be used for marketing.

We’ll probably never succeed in getting more transparency into Netflix, but we can start with the easy stuff, and work together – we need a transparency movement, and quite frankly, it needs to be forced on the field by filmmakers and their funders, because the nonprofits and even the distributors are stuck in the middle here, with little political capital to lead this fight. I bet some incentive grant money could open some windows, as could some requirements for numbers in grant reporting as a condition of funding.

3. Network Building & Data Sharing – We need funding to help build more direct connections between film festivals, theaters, nonprofit programmers and even alternate venues on an ongoing basis, to help them build audiences. What does that mean?

A few ideas – Building systems where the film-lover in Sarasota can track a film from Sundance to the Sarasota film festival and maybe not just buy a ticket in advance, but someday even let the programmers know how many of them want to see it. Systems to let regional festivals better triangulate artist and guest travel. Sharing of audience data, even if in aggregate, to help build databases of where the fans for certain types of films reside, and how to best reach them.

Why can’t I subscribe to indie horror films, black directors, LGBTQ films or indie docs, and get updates via email or app of what’s playing at 10-20 festivals around the country and add those films to my Netflix queue? Let’s go further – if I like Lucy Walker’s films, and see one at the New York Film Festival, they should let me know her new one is playing at BAM CinemaFest (an ostensible competitor), and vice versa. In the long run, each venue will win, as will Lucy.

Let’s build a ScreenSlate for every town, and get some foundations to fund it. But let’s broaden it, and let me subscribe to filmmakers I like (a la BandsInTown) and be notified whenever they play in town, whoever is programming the film. And let’s go further and remind me when that film is available on Fandor, or Netflix. How about when BAM shows the new Jim McKay film, they also link to his past films, or similar themes, for further perusal, even if it doesn’t hit their bottom line immediately? Again, in the long run, we all win as we’ve built a better culture of film discovery.

These are just a few ideas, and I’m sure other programmers can think of more.

4. Empower our greatest assets – the Programmers – Film festivals don’t take advantage of their greatest asset often enough – their curation via their programmers. In many smaller cities, they’ve practically taken the place of critics as only local voice on film, but far too often, their voice is only heard by a small crowd (those who know them).

I trust Tom Hall’s programming more than almost anyone in the US. It would be great if Montclair was promoting his curation throughout the year, on other films, not just festival films. And to continue to remind me of films that played Montclair (or even a rival fest) that are now online. But for this to be done, fests can’t literally “take advantage” of these programmers, meaning more work for no extra pay. They’d have to build a financial model, which could include grant or sponsorship funding, but would more likely work in aggregate – as a tool built by multiple fests with a business plan and revenue model that supports all of them.

Let’s also take the programmers out from behind the curtain and hear their opinion a bit more. I know most are resistant to this, but I want to see a public list of the five films they rejected that they wished they could have programmed that are now available across town or online. Tell me your opinion, because you actually have one worth listening to (usually) and I trust it, and you can help build a better culture of discovery beyond your fest or venue (And yes, I know you already do a lot and with three jobs, like I said, let’s build financial models around this). One last note – I think a foundation should make a genius grant for a programmer/curator every year. Give them a ton of money and let them do something cool with their skills, or just pay their bills.

5. Touring support to organizations and to individuals – Yes, digital rules the world now, but the best way to get enough buzz to get people to know you exist online remains real-world screenings, be they full theatricals, or one-offs. Touring can be profitable for filmmakers and audiences alike, and it keeps the notion of watching a film in a group, together, alive. There are a few great tours out there (I know of Southern Circuit, which I used to run, and Ambulante in Mexico and now California, but am sure there are others), but there used to be more.

We need funding to support more tours of films, in multiple ways. For the individual filmmaker to take their film on tour, even if they had a theatrical, let’s get them in towns without a arthouse cinema. For groupings of films – let’s curate a package of films with similar themes and have pop-up festivals around the country. Hell, there’s enough films about minimalist living to fill a couple of weekends.

Let’s fund film festivals to take their top films around their state, outside of the blue cities they reside in, to the neighboring red ones (oh how we need this). Let’s pool resources between a few festivals and take the best of one fest in each region (NE, NW, SE, SW for simplicity) to the others, perhaps Camden’s favorite in Albuquerque? Perhaps the best of the American Black Film Festival as a side-bar at, oh, every film festival?

Let’s take a series of human rights films to 300 public libraries around the US (we used to do that at NVR way back when). Let’s put some of these films in churches, or bars, but not just one or two, an entire tour of them. And let’s get sponsorship and grant funding for it. These are just some quick ideas, I’d leave it to smart curators (with genius grants) to build even better ones.

6. Bonus idea: Funding for fest websites and outreach – As I mentioned in my recent post, festival websites are notoriously horrible (mine may be worse, I know). That’s because few of them can afford to build a proper website, and they’re harder to build than you think. Back in the day, B-Side was helping with this, but now we have a hodge-podge of solutions, and I’ve yet to find a good festival website or app, meaning one that actually works. Even the best festivals in the world tend to have horrible web interfaces.

I still think an enterprising company could build this for multiple festivals and build a business on the data alone, even though this didn’t work for B-Side (but they tried to build a distributor instead of a data broker, which I think was a mistake). Regardless, it’s an area in dire need of funding, and if we can help festivals, theaters and other venues build better sites, we can encourage discovery and eventually build even better tools (like some suggested in 3 above) more easily.

I’m not even sure we actually need more money. Festivals have no problem building big bulky print catalogues with tons of sponsor ads and words of wisdom from the executive director and the governor in the front pages. But beyond selling sponsors a fancy print ad, their print programs are worthless (usually), and are mainly a library badge of honor of your attendance. Many surveys show that audiences do use the print materials to find films, but I’d argue this is just because your website is such crap. This is the same dilemma the newspaper business is facing, in a way. To disrupt your print ad model with a better website is hard to justify when sponsors want ads. But we need to focus on discovery not just sponsors (we need both, to be sure), so those budgets should shift to digital. Heck, your sponsors would be better served by better in-person activations anyway. So let’s get creative.

So there’s 6 ideas (5+1) for a few ways to better fund distribution and creativity. I’d love to hear more ideas from the field.
We are Fucked, or: Art Films in the Age of the Algorithm
- Posted on 12th Jul
- Category:
Note: This article/post was originally published in a slightly different form on IndieWire as “Why Netflix and Amazon Algorithms Are Destroying the Movies”

A long time ago, I thought that the worst interface I had ever seen – after most film festival websites, that is – was to be found on Time Warner (now Spectrum) cable. But today, what could be worse than Netflix and Amazon for finding movies?

Think of any new documentary, American or foreign arthouse film that you’ve heard of recently and go look for it, but don’t search for the title. Browse, you know, like 99% of customers do when they turn on their internet connected TV. Odds are good that you’ll not find that film until you’ve swiped, or toggled or (depending on your device’s interface) clicked through 10-20 screens.

Last night I decided to look for the Grateful Dead documentary Long Strange Trip, which Amazon released last month.It was an acquisition; the company wanted to make money from it. It was a long, strange trip indeed (sorry), as it took me 20 screens or so of swiping before I came upon the movie. I came across numerous older documentaries, a shit-ton of crappy docs about blenders, ex-porn stars and other junk, and then the Dead.

In fact, if I wasn’t dead set on finding it, I would have given up and ordered something else. And that’s a problem for any video/film content that isn’t a blockbuster or a TV show. This doesn’t bode well.

Whether it’s Netflix or Amazon, the problem is the same: It’s the algorithm. Silicon Valley will tell you the algorithm is god. Bullshit. Amazon knows my entire purchase history — not just films, but books and, well, everything else. But none of the titles their algorithm was pushing at me had any relation to anything I’ve ever watched or wanted to watch. (There was a documentary about a stand-up comedian; I’ve watched one of those.)

But the algorithm is supposed to be smart. It’s supposed to know what I want before I want it. But it never does. Same with Netflix. Judging by their algorithmic offerings, I only like TV shows, stand-up comedians (ok, I’ve watched at least two), and I don’t want to go anywhere near subtitles, documentaries, or american indies.

But it isn’t true. Not only is that what I like to watch – I’ve watched them more than TV shows on Netflix unless they count every episode of House of Cards as separate movies (actually, I bet they do). iTunes isn’t much better, although if you type a genre into them (instead of browsing), you do get some diversity, and I think more people go to iTunes with a film in mind,while people browse more on Netflix and Amazon Prime. Vimeo’s discovery interface is horrendous too, but I won’t pick on them because they’re way smaller and they also just have more indie content by the nature of their business model. I’m not mentioning other VOD services because, well, no one uses them.

Shut up, old man, you might say. But this is a huge problem for quality films whether they’re docs, indie, foreign, or classics. If the algorithms can’t serve these up to me, I guarantee they aren’t serving them up to anyone else. Netflix, in particular, seems to be pushing them further down the list — and, in the process, making it hard to find movies at all. As we all know, arthouse films, especially docs, are bombing in theaters if they make it there at all. Many go straight to digital, maybe with some touring. But most film watching these days is online, and if you can’t be found there, well, you don’t exist.

Sure, you can do your own marketing, send your fans there, and they can find you via direct link. But most humans sit down, scan and buy. And they tend to watch what’s on the home screen or within a few clicks. I know this because I’ve spoken with staff at some of these places off the record, and they admit that their data shows that people don’t search too far (they also barely use their queue, and tend to put aspirational films there that they hope to watch but never do).

Setting aside the fact that Netflix and Amazon are buying less films overall (that’s a problem too), and less documentary and arthouse films every year, as told by every sales agent, these guys aren’t even trying to push the ones they do buy. And when the algorithm buries those films,it becomes a vicious cycle, with Netflix deciding they don’t work and let’s buy even less of them. As filmmakers and film lovers, we end up just where we were with cable pre-Netflix – the illusion of choice that is so vast we don’t realize how much we’re actually missing.So, where I used to always worry that this whole net thing would end up with just giving me a better TV, now I’m worried I won’t even get that. Forget jet-packs…

Last week, I posted about the need for more funding around discovery. Kent Bye, a very smart man who mainly works in VR now, posted this comment, which I quote in full. It’s about YouTube, but it’s interesting for this too:

YouTube has 300 hours of video uploaded every minute, which amounts to about 49.28 years of new content per day. Here’s a really insightful video from a popular YouTube creator breaking down the recent changes of the YouTube algorithm to preference new daily videos over older and more higher quality ones. Content creators who depend upon that algorithm for revenue are at the whims of YouTube’s changes, and those who create content optimized for the algorithm produce shoddy, low-quality, clickbait that has a monetary incentive to figure out new ways to game the system, produce glossy and deceptive thumbnails, and keep people hooked in a loop of the latest drama. The current system is producing a lot of empty calories.

As Ken points out, we are fucked, we are fucked, we are fucked (WAF). WAF1 is superabundance. Your film is not just up against other films. It’s up against every video being uploaded. Heck, if we stick just to film, there are estimates of 50,000 unique titles (or more) being submitted to festival submission sites annually.

WAF2 is the algorithms are not set up to help me, or you, find the content we want; it’s designed to glue us to each service. House of Cards is great TV, and Netflix knows snacking on that addictive in-house production will bring you back more often than The Turin Horse.

That’s WAF3: Expect more episodic TV and less worrying about quality films (much less esoteric films). Another time, we can argue about how episodic series have supplanted film in the public conversation and whether that’s a good thing. (I watch a lot of it too.) But WA4 is we can’t sustain independent or fringe voices if the only two buyers who matter anymore aren’t buying our films. The problem will move from one of discovery to one of absence.

That’s why I think we need to focus more money on discovery now, and less on creation. This is some dire shit, and my hunch is that solutions have to come from outside the system. The disruption won’t come from a competitor to Netflix (you’d need a billion dollars just to begin to compete). Just like the indie doc world has built a support network for funding (Britdoc, Sundance Doc Fund, Just Films, pitch markets, forums, etc.), we need to come up with solutions to help curate better, help people discover and remember films (since they often hit Netflix 90-180 days after theatrical), and help them to find a diversity of films.

I hope to have more thoughts on that soon, and hope to hear them from you.

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Wither the pull quote? On Ratner and Rotten Tomatoes
- Posted on 8th Jun
- Category: Newsletter
Brett Ratner hit the news this past week, saying: "The worst thing that we have in today’s movie culture is Rotten Tomatoes, I think it’s the destruction of our business." He went on to say: “But that number is an aggregate and one that nobody can figure out exactly what it means, and it’s not always correct. I’ve seen some great movies with really abysmal Rotten Tomatoes scores. What’s sad is film criticism has disappeared. It’s really sad.”

Now he's likely just upset that Batman vs. Superman scores so low on Rotten Tomatoes, which most articles pointed out, but he does raise a valid point about the industry that I've been pondering as well, but from a slightly different angle: the disappearance of critical reviews and pull-quotes from the marketing of films to audiences.

Working with Abramorama, I recently released a film I produced called Love & Taxes by Jake Kornbluth and his brother Josh. It's a little movie, with a small theatrical release, but we've gotten amazing reviews. We're happy to be at 100% for the critic's scores on Rotten Tomatoes, and have gotten heaps of quotes like this one from the NYT's Ken Jaworoski:"A Minor Marvel."

Love & taxes poster

It used to be that distributors would tell you that one of the reasons to show films in theaters was to get the critical reviews, so you can put them as pull quotes on your movie poster and then your DVD case (or way back, your VHS box). And they seemed to work, because everyone did this. And you still see it in advertising for movies in newspapers, etc.

But guess where you don't see them - online, where most audiences watch these films. Go to iTunes, Amazon or Netflix and look - no pull quotes anywhere. Each of these platforms requires film distributors to remove these quotes from their poster art. Heck, Netflix doesn't even really show your poster art anymore, mainly using images from your set of film stills. Click on a film on these platforms, and you get some extra synopsis, and some cast and above the line credits, but mostly no reviews or reviewer's quotes.

Heck, Netflix doesn't even show the Rotten Tomatoes score anywhere. You have to try hard to even get to a details screen where you can see a few member reviews - and who knows how valid their opinions are anyway. Amazon Prime shows the aggregate IMDB score and customer scores, but you have to link away to even look at IMDB, and there's no RT link at all. iTunes does show the RT score and does include the top four critics reviews. But even then, we can see that the majority of the marketing of films on the platforms is very limited.

And that's a problem for smaller indie movies. If you're a blockbuster or larger film, you can rely on your own marketing spend to gain awareness for your film. You can run that pull quote thousands of times in print and digital and try to get the word out. But for most indies, the majority of their marketing spend has been around their theatrical release and sometimes the beginning of their digital life. And almost all of this marketing goes into building word of mouth and discovery, so that someone seeks out your film, and perhaps helps it to land on the top ten on iTunes, which makes it get streamed more - because most people look on the home screen for their films.

But we have always hoped people would find our films through browsing as well, and might see the critics reviews, and maybe even a great pull quote and take a chance on our films. But that doesn't work anymore. And even if they heard about our film from its theatrical release, or elsewhere, they might be further persuaded to take a chance when they read a great pull quote. But that's not possible if it's not even there at the buying site. Few people are going to go look it up on your site, or in the NYT or on RT.

Now I'm almost ready to blame the platforms for removing the critics or reducing them to a Tomato score, but... they wouldn't have done that if it didn't work. They have more data than any of us can imagine, and if showing pull quotes sold or rented more films, they'd be pressuring us to get more of them, and would be displaying them properly.

Or maybe they do work. iTunes after all needs you to spend money and rent or buy the film, and they make a few of them available. Netflix doesn't care if you watch a title - it just cares that you keep subscribing. And just by having a good inventory of TV and films, you'll probably keep subscribing even if you don't read the reviews or watch my film. You don't need a conspiracy theory about lessening the role of critics to see why it may not matter to Netflix at all.

But it matters to us indie filmmakers. And it means we have to start re-prioritizing our marketing. Your thumbail images need to be that much better. Your poster design (and its pull quotes) matter less. Your marketing spend, especially on Facebook, should emphasize your best quotes even more. And for some people, they'll have to debate whether a theatrical run predicated on getting reviews even matters for their film anymore - perhaps that four-wall or service deal money would be better spent on other marketing. Lots to consider in the digital age.

All that said, I think Rotten Tomatoes is not the problem. If you go to their site, you can access a lot more reviews now. But Ratner is right that our reduction of these reviews down to one score, and even worse - the cutting of pull quotes from online sites - is a problem.
Contrarian Views on Artist Support
- Posted on 5th Jun
- Category:
Artist Service organizations should stop serving artists

image:No Film School

Ok, I’m being hyperbolic here, but bear with me. Back in the ’70s, many nonprofits started to spring up to help filmmakers (and other artists). For film, the idea was simple – buying a film camera and equipment and then a Steenbeck to edit a film with was super-expensive. Band together, apply for grants and voila – you’ve got access to equipment. This is how IMAGE Film & Video of Atlanta, GA came together, an organization I used to run, and which still exists in a different form as the Atlanta Film Festival. In fact, that’s how many (but not all) film festivals came together – those same filmmakers thought, “geesh, now that I’ve made my indie film, where the heck can I show it?” So they started film festivals to show their work, and soon after the work of their sisters and brothers from around the US and the world. Nonprofit film organizations launched across the country – helping filmmakers through education, equipment access and training, screening venues, and then sometimes with advice and access to funding (re-grants) and market/industry connections. Whether big events like the IFP Market, or small,like bringing some industry vets to speak on a panel in Atlanta, these organizations could help connect these “disconnected” voices to decision-makers from NYC, LA and major international markets.

But today, filmmaking tools are cheap and ubiquitous, and you can find and audience and screen your work for free online. Heck, more people can watch it on their phone or on a connected large screen than even the biggest festivals can service. As a regional filmmaker, I can learn from websites like Filmmaker Magazine and NoFilmSchool or random bloggers about any aspect of the art, craft and business of film. Yes, we still have a problem with diversity and for some, access, but let’s admit – a lot has changed. The nonprofit sector? Not so much. An enormous amount of nonprofit money goes towards putting on artist development projects that can be better accomplished online, or that are obsolete in today’s marketplace.

The problem today is not access, but discovery. In a glutted marketplace of content, it’s increasingly hard to stand out from the crowd. Nearly every dollar spent on artist training and development should be shifted to audience development and helping to connect audiences to filmmaker’s work. And this will have the added benefit of still helping artists, by giving them a bigger audience which should lead to more money earned back from their films.

Yes, many artists will bemoan any decrease in funding for the creation of work. But we don’t face a crisis in the creation of good work, rather the crisis is in getting that work seen. The key here is to make sure that any new programs in audience development include some mechanism for positive cash flow to filmmakers for the screening of their work. Right now, too many programming efforts don’t reimburse filmmakers for their screenings. Organizations that program films, run film festivals and connect work with audiences will need to start paying filmmakers for these screenings. That’s a big hurdle for most film festivals – I know because I’ve run a few, but it’s a hurdle we need to conquer for independent film to survive and thrive.

The main concern I have with ending direct artist support for creation is the possible impact on diversity behind the lens – we need more diversity, not less. And the market – investors and studios – tend to still support white males. But plenty of diverse work is being made too, but not enough of it is being seen. This is a big problem, and I’d argue it’s mainly because so many festival and venue programmers, and acquisition executives, are white men, but again the nonprofit industry should build programs to address these issues. Let’s think hard about how to create innovative solutions to bring more diverse films to a wider audience instead of just focusing on the (relatively easier) part of just getting them funded.

What would this look like? I don’t know, but I’d like to see just as many new projects here as we have grant funds and markets/pitch forums. For every GoodPitch, we should have a GreatAudiences program. For every Hot Docs forum, we should have a new audience focused program, and the same for every Creative Capital grant. Note – these are all great programs, and I’m using them to showcase the type of excellence we should seek in audience development.

The first thing we should do is work towards every festival that is not a major market (meaning below the big guns like Sundance) starts working towards paying filmmakers for screenings. Second, we already have a pretty vibrant theater space – go to the Arthouse Convergence and you’ll quickly be dispelled of any notions that arthouse theaters aren’t doing great work to build audiences. That said, the nonprofit sector could be doing more to help them discover diverse voices and then work to ensure those screenings are attended. We can definitely help bring audiences to the work they program, and someone needs to build a tool that helps us find that work again when it finally makes it online.

We need more national screening programs, for films that may not warrant a theatrical. At Patagonia (my client) we’ve been having a huge success with getting audiences out to our tours, with our last film averaging 1500 people per screening. There used to be more film tours, but I believe Southern Circuit (where I also worked) is one of the few still around. I’d love to see a grant that allowed Thom Powers to take Stranger Than Fiction on the road, for example, with guest filmmakers in tow and being paid to attend.

We need more online curation – and no, that’s not easy. I launched a start-up focused on just this, and it folded. Nearly every online platform for managing one’s queue or sharing films has failed or is stagnant with no real consumer use. Perhaps that’s another thing nonprofit’s could tackle, and the foundations that fund them.

I admire the program Sundance just launched to help filmmakers with distribution, but we need more programs like this, and the foundation world needs to fund distribution and marketing more (and creation, and “impact” less).

Ok, like I said at the start, I don’t really want to disband artist support for creation. But I do think we need to start spending equal energy on what happens after the films are made.

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