Just in case there is some confusion as to why certain filmmakers, including ourselves, are selling their DVDs early DURING their film festival run, here is a full breakdown from the producers of the Sundance official selection Children of Invention. This multi award-winning feature film, directed by Tze Chun and produced by Mynette Louie is already available on DVD via their website, and here they give a wonderfully detailed explanation of exactly why. Check out most of it after the jump:
"It may seem a bit unorthodox, but yes, we are indeed selling DVDs while on the festival circuit, and started to do so just two months after our Sundance premiere. As many of you may know, these are trying times for independent film. Many of the companies that have traditionally distributed specialty, indie, and arthouse movies have gone out of business or stopped acquiring films. As a result, fewer films are being picked up for distribution. And the deals that are being offered by the remaining distributors are smaller than ever before. A typical deal with a distributor now consists of a $0 to $50,000 advance, which is often the only return a filmmaker will see.
But all is not lost. Indie film has never seen so many intelligent and passionate people trying to fix the distribution model. People like Ted Hope and Peter Broderick, who pioneered the independent financing and distribution model that worked for most of the nineties, are trying to come up with a new model that will hopefully work for years to come. Websites like indieWIRE and Hammer to Nail have been helping as well to foster a dialogue about the subject. We’re trying to learn from the renaissance in independent music and adopt tactics that may fit for independent film. But we can’t really know how all of this experimentation will turn out until we have some case studies.
In the past few years, we’ve seen award-winning, critically lauded films such as BALLAST and MUTUAL APPRECIATION choose theatrical self-distribution over traditional distribution. We’re trying to go one step further by selling our DVDs at festivals and from our website while still on the festival circuit. Traditionally, doing such a thing would be taboo and relegated to the arena of shoddily made B-movies—certainly not award-winning films that premiere at Sundance. But because of technology, audience behavior has shifted and is continuing to shift dramatically. People are now consuming media in very different ways than they were just a few years ago.
In trying to change with the times, we’re thinking of our festival run as part of our theatrical run. This way, we can capitalize on the press coverage of our film to sell it on DVD—without the middleman. And what’s more, the festival circuit allows us to play in cities no distributor would even think to release our film in (we’re talking about you, Sarasota, Dallas, and Nashville!)."
Read the rest of this piece HERE.
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