Or how I “invented” the two-month window and spent six months wanting to kill myself every day.
BY JON REISS
Here is part one of another brilliant recent article from the latest edition of Filmmaker Magazine on one filmmaker's case study in his own self distribution path.
- My story is not unlike that of most independent filmmakers these days. We bust our butts for years producing — in our minds — a great film, only to find the distribution landscape radically different from the one in our hopes and dreams.
For a number of years now I had heard a variety of filmmaker pundits declare, “Theatrical is dead, long live the long tail!” But until my own distribution adventure I refused to believe these pronouncements. Now, 18 months after the world premiere of my feature documentary Bomb It at the Tribeca Film Festival and six months after the launch of the film‘s theatrical release, I believe that while there still is a strong role for theatrical releasing in an independent film‘s distribution strategy, savvy low-budget filmmakers must be more creative in the ways they approach these releases. Theatrical is not dead, but the long tail is a lot longer and involves a lot more work than you might expect.
With the help of Cinetic, who repped our film at the Tribeca Film Festival, I had the fortune to secure a DVD deal with a company that has a reputation of paying filmmakers (!), Docurama/New Video, but the golden ring of an overall distribution deal eluded our film. “Too niche,” and, “we don‘t know how to get young people in the theaters” were the common distributor refrains.
Read the rest of the story here:
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