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| 1099 vs W2 Thinking, via Mark Bradford |
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| | 1099 vs. W2 Thinking: Times are whack. We need advice wherever we can get it, and this weekend, I got it from one of the best – Mark Bradford, who was having a conversation with Michelle Kuo, MoMA’s curator of the exhibition Jack Whitten: The Messenger (on view now, go see it). As he put it, when he was starting his career, he had to really create most of his own opportunities. Perhaps there was room to hang his art in the bathroom stall of a nightclub? Fine, he would take it (he wasn’t exaggerating). Someone told him he would have to paint the walls for his own show at a gallery? His first reaction might be, “Not me, I’m a Yale graduate,” but …. “Uh, uh,” he said… “you paint those walls.” He always thought to himself – I am a 1099, not a W2 worker. You don’t have job security, you don’t have a regular paycheck. You have to make it work. And make your own opportunities.
He was raised with 1099 thinking by his family. 1099 thinking doesn’t come with the security of a regular paycheck, or health insurance, or comfort (for those of you not in the US, a 1099 form is used for independent contractors to report their income for taxes, where a W2 is for salaried workers). And he told all the aspiring artists in the crowd that they, too, needed to adopt 1099 thinking today. You won’t be invited into the club, you need to force your way into it. You need to create your career. Furthermore, it was only by taking the risks that he had to take as a 1099 thinker that he could create the career he has today, where he’s invited to sit on the stage at MoMA and discuss what he learned from and took from Jack Whitten’s art. 1099 thinking is what artists need to be doing today, especially filmmakers. The film market is in shambles – things were already very bad – films/shows can’t get financed, they aren’t getting bought by the major streamers (who own the majority of the audience), and breaking through the noise has never been harder. And then… the current administration cuts the NEA, the NEH, CPB (threatening all things public media related), and throws the economy into turmoil, which leads to even more cuts, as brands pull back advertising budgets, which leads to more cuts from the major streamers, and so on. And then you get a proposal for 100% tariffs for any film made outside the US, a proposal no one can make any sense of, just before the world’s largest international market takes place at Cannes. As a fox said, chaos reigns. Now is the not the time for W2 thinking; put your brain in 1099 mode. Beg, borrow, and steal to get your financing – or just go to your audience via crowdfunding. Think hard(er) about your audience, and find it and go to it directly with your distribution. Show your film in the local bar, or a friend’s basement. Build your fanbase on YouTube, the way the “creator economy” has already done – in fact, copying most of what they’ve done should have been in your toolkit for many years now. Don’t be too precious about anything. Nothing should be below your threshold – except making bad art. The safety net was never really there – it was a myth, perpetuated by the 1% who would get lucky and go to Sundance and sell their film for millions to Netflix. Everyone could walk around with W2 mindsets for the last ten years and think things were easy-peasy. But most of us knew that was a bubble that never really helped lift most filmmakers to the top, anyway. Now that it has popped, the artists who will succeed will be the ones who never stopped their 1099 thinking. If you haven’t already been in that mode, shift to it quickly, because this world – in more ways than one, and like it or not – is becoming one where all of us need to be doing more 1099 thinking. (Note: I have a new design for the newsletter today, and I am not sure why the formatting/font is switching a bit, and I can’t add images. Apologies - we’re working to fix all of this.) |
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| FilmUpcoming Talks: I’m about to hit the road for a keynote and a couple of panels at DOK.fest Munich, sponsored by the Documentary Campus. On May 9th, my keynote will be: Ten Trends Shaping the Doc Marketplace – Opportunities amongst the Threats. The documentary marketplace is undergoing major changes, and some people feel it is facing a crisis. But what if those challenges also represent opportunities? This presentation will focus on ten big trends impacting the documentary business, and artform, and propose ways filmmakers and the industry can use these same trends to imagine new artistic and business practices and imagine new futures for the sector. Then I’ll be on a panel called: Reimagining Documentary: Formats, Markets & Business. On May 10th, I’ll be on the panel: Funding Outside the Box. You can get more info and tickets here. Later this month, I’ll be at MountainFilm Telluride, where I’ll be speaking on a panel about the state of the industry. Then, I head up to WebSummit Vancouver, where I’m giving a keynote on What the Film Industry Will Look Like in 2030. More on those talks in a future newsletter. (BN)
The Popcorn List: A Discovery Platform For Indie Film Distributors and Audiences: The Popcorn List (TPL), an annual survey of acclaimed feature films returns for its second year with 19 film recommendations. TPL was founded in 2024 as a discovery and visibility initiative to amplify independent films that deserve to be seen more widely, highlight the discovery nature of film festivals and the craft of film curation, and respect audiences’ desire for story-driven movies. The result is an open-source database of acclaimed films without U.S. distribution (theatrical, VOD, self-distributed), as recommended by festival programmers across the country. This year’s list includes 19 films, with 13 narratives and 6 Docs (a shift from 2024’s list which included 14 docs and 6 narratives), 13 feature film directorial debuts, 11 films directed by women and two films coming in with double recommendations. Check out the full list at their site or directly on their spreadsheet. (GSH)
Help Secure a Home For Indie Cinema in San Francisco: Help the Roxie, one of San Francisco’s most cherished homes for indie films reach their goal of purchasing the building, investing in technology upgrades, and expanding their programming. They only have $1.5 out of 7 million left to raise and are calling on everyone who values the artform and the vibrant community spirit that surrounds it to help them secure the future of the Roxie. Find out different ways you can support here. (GSH)
Notes from Chicago’s Doc10: Problems and Solutions: In a panel discussion at Chicago’s Doc10 film festival, Academy Award-winning producer and Impact Partners co-founder Geralyn Dreyfous said that the documentary streaming boom is officially over: “The market for streamers is not coming back…. To go into these film festivals like Sundance and think that you are going to get a big sale is la la land (thinking). The numbers are just not there. One of 20 films is being bought out of Sundance…. We have to create new distribution models.” Many other panelists at Doc10 echoed Dreyfous and admitted that they couldn’t get their films in festivals (something that hadn’t been such an issue in years prior) or that sales were taking longer than expected to make. Solutions: Out of the box-thinking is required. For instance, Dreyfous helped launch Jolt, an AI-driven streaming platform “meant to give a literal jolt to indie docs that might have been a success at festivals… but have not found traditional distribution (Addie Morfoot, Variety).” At Doc 10, she also suggested the creation of a guild of loyal doc enthusiasts interested in original content and explained that filmmakers “need to start developing direct relationships with their audience through social media channels as they’re making their films.” And other Doc10 speakers still believe in theatrical screenings. For instance, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Heidi Ewing said “From a filmmaker’s perspective, going to these festivals is a lead-up tour to a theatrical… They actually become your evangelists.… People are really lonely and they want to gather. We have to reach them directly. So, I do believe in the theatrical. There is a way to get people to come.” Gain more insights into the conversations at Doc10 at Addie Morfoot’s article for Variety. (GSH) |
| Brand Funded Content
Clients Will Go To Meta, and Meta Will Do Everything Else: We all know that the advertising industry is getting upended by AI, but a recent statement from Mark Zuckerberg including this nugget — “you’re a business… you connect to your bank account, you don’t need any creative… targeting demographic… measurement, except to be able to read the results that we spit out”— reveals a vision that will totally decimate the ecosystem. As summarized by Nilay Patel in his piece for the Verge, “Mark is describing… a vision where a client comes to Meta and says “I want customers for my product,” and Meta does everything else. It generates photos and videos of those products using AI, writes copy about those products with AI, assembles that into an infinite number of ads with AI, targets those ads to all the people on its platforms with AI, measures which ads perform best and iterates on them with AI, and then has those customers buy the actual products on its platforms using its systems.” Check out Patel’s article for what brands and media execs have to say about his statement (hint: They’re pretty concerned about Meta positioning itself to optimize creative and spit out potentially untrustworthy results/data. (GSH) LinkedIn Emerges As A Significant Player In Creator Economy & Branded Content: LinkedIn is seeing a boom of influencers/creators and brands on their site for 5 primary reasons: (1) The rise of video on LinkedIn which has given brands greater opportunities to work with influencers/creators; (2) A potential TikTok ban and brand safety concerns on platforms like X have pushed creators and brands to establish or augment their presence on other platforms like LinkedIn; (3) LinkedIn pushed creators to try out their platform back in 2021 when it launched its Creator Accelerator Program. (4) Most recently, on May 1, LinkedIn expanded its Wire Program revenue share system to include individual creators and renamed the program BrandLink, enabling brands to purchase 15-second video spots and embed them within creators’ “Linkedin Shows”. Note: LinkedIn will announce these shows at NewFronts next week. The initial six have to do with executive leadership, AI innovation, female entrepreneurship and enterprise marketing and will be hosted by a multitude of creators; (5) Lastly, LinkedIn is successfully liaising between brands with publishers and creators: “Advertisers or marketers can choose to work with a particular publisher or creator, or they can choose to work on a particular topic, and then once they have decided that, then we do the hook-up to the right shows, right creators and so forth…. Once the hook-up is done, then the marketers can actually create campaigns using all of the excellent targeting that we have on the platform (LinkedIn VP of product management Abhishek Shrivastava).” Learn more at Alexander Lee’s piece for Digiday. (GSH) Brands To Enter Filmic World And Shape A Dystopian Story: SNTIENT, which launched about a month ago, is a new cross-media storytelling initiative created by creative technologists from the Fashion Innovation Agency and immersive digital specialists Dandelion & Burdock. Designed with Epic Games Unreal Engine, SNTIENT is a futuristic animated digital story about a society, not unlike our own, where humans live symbiotically alongside robots until they gain sentience… and start to fight back. Our real-world brands can participate and help shape this story: In the original film, brands don’t interact with fans or host experiences. It’s “an existing filmic world in which to add content – explorative storytelling onto which brands can imprint their ethos, direction, messaging and products… However… if desired, they can then transfer those stories into other brand experiences from printed media to mixed reality (XR) and/or AI-enhanced activations (Katie Baron, Forbes).” There’s a lot to unpack here, so check out the details here. (GSH) |
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