1. When the truck is careening down the road and your partner is behind the wheel, which way will they turn?  If they are in America, you need the partner that will alway turn to the right, putting themselves between you and the truck.  Likewise, if you are not willing to do the same, you clearly do not value the partnership enough.  For producers, that truck is often a director, financier, actor, or distributor.  If you partner is not protecting the producer unit first, it will not last beyond that film.
2. Do you enjoy having dinner with them?  You better, as you will have to do it often.  Did you once, but no longer?  What changed?  I don’t think a partnership can last if you don’t enjoy each other’s company.  Once that slips, it is probably time to move on.
3. Can you argue and neither one of you needs to be right?  Both of you should only need to be heard, and should be confident you will be.  An argument is to determine the best practice, not to win.  Partners don’t need to win.
4. Does the partnership allow you to do more than just cover more ground?  Good partners not only complement each other’s skill set, they are dedicated to enhancing those of the other.  You should always be learning from your collaborators.  They should always want you to learn from them.  You should always want to share what you have with them too.  If that sharing is not a constant flow in both directions, the partnership is over.
5. Partners should always be building the trust and confidence between them.  Once suspicion or secrecy enters the picture, the partnership is doomed.
6. Good fences make for good neighbors.  Partners set boundaries.  Where are the limits?  Don’t abuse them.  Don’t let them abuse them either.  Keep up the fence.
7. Can you communicate openly and fully without judgement?  If you are biting your tongue, it will come undone. Do they set expectations as to what they want from anticipated event?  If they do not communicate expectations well, do you help them to unearth them, and they you?
8. If partnerships are not equal, they still need to be balanced.  People often want to collaborate because the other often offers something that you do not have.  But it still needs to be both a give and take. If one side feels the balance is off, the partnership is doomed.
9. Partners don’t sweat the petty and won’t fuss over forgetting to put the cap back on the toothpaste.  A partnership is a big picture solution.  Somethings will always be annoying.  A partner won’t mistake the trees for the forest.  The greater sense of purpose allows there to be cracks; that’s where the light gets in (thanks, Mr. Cohen.)
10. Partners inspire each other to do their best.  No matter how long you have collaborated together, you should want to impress the other.  A little competition should not hurt but actually help, but it should always be cooperation that drives your train.  No one wants to do something only for themselves.  We like to play on a team and one where we know we are wanted and appreciated.

What else makes a partnership work?  I need your help here, partner…

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That’s true, right?  That’s the deal.  That’s the deal in front of us every day.  The deal on the table, day in and day out.  But do people abide by it?

Most people exchange their labor for things they don’t care about and the money is supposed to make it all worth while.  And we know how well that works, how far forward that structure has brought us, right?  Money does not satisfy anyone — at least not those of character or substance.  Science shows that the money only drives people in regards to the most mechanical tasks.

I fully agree with Steven. But…

It is so puzzling to me why everyone in the film biz isn’t driven in the same way.  Is it that we get stuck on the first two true motivating pursuits — autonomy & mastery — and never get to the third: purpose?  We want to make our movie and to be able to tell it as we intended.  Is it that so difficult that we don’t then see that we need to make the good, the ambitious, the beautiful, or the memorable?  Or is that all are striving for that and we generally fall short, having to make due with the noble failure?

Or is more of a Catch-22 where the drive for the latter, for purpose, for the memorable, and the karmic debt repayment, is so COLOSSALLY FRACKIN HUGE that we sacrifice all, giving up financial security in the process, or know that we will have to later in order to just pursue it, that we are all caught in a financial trap, unable to pursue the dream we’ve been nursing unless we are willing to risk homelessness or emotionally devastation?  The indie film world often pushes themselves to financial ruin and debtors’ prison, to a place where none of us are able to extract anything close to the financial value worthy of the work that is paying off the karmic debt — all the while training our culture and industry to think they should get both the milk and the cow for free.

Filmmaking is a privilege.  Doing what we love is a gift.  But it is an odd one that ever when we recognize it, and do all we can to make sacrifices to the cinema gods, we also have to imprison ourselves under a mound of debt and the crushing blows of cultural indifference.

Is the equation that we have to work hard, leap into the unknown, risk it all, reach higher, give back and share our lessons, show thanks to the cinema gods, recognize our privilege and learn how to be content with rice and beans?

I think the math does not add up currently.  I think there is a way to directly reward the creators and their supporters for the work they generate.  I think if that goal can be achieved then the audience will be treated with a greater variety of more diverse work that is far more applicable to their wants and their desires than currently even dream about.

It starts with each of us voting for the culture we want with our dollars. It leads to us collaborating with those artists who inspire us to get their work seen and appreciated.  It is not passive.  It will not be smooth. It is worth fighting for.

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Before we rolled up our sleeves to start the practical, I warmed up the crowd with a series of short lectures focusing on what all filmmakers should know about the film biz, the current culture, and recommended best practices for themselves.  Last week I shared with you what we discussed about culture in general.  Prior to that, I shared with you what I felt we had to recognize and accept, at least for now, about the film business.

Today, I offer you my recommendations on best practices in times like these if you want to have a hope of a sustainable creative life as a filmmaker.  Don’t worry if it looks like there is more than you can currently achieve.  It is a process and you are not alone.  It gets better. We can build it better together.

1. Focus on developing Entrepreneurial Skills as well as the creative.  The corporate distributors don’t need your work to the extent that they will ever value it as much as you will.  If you want your work to last, engage, and be profitable, it is up to you to be prepared to use it to ignite all opportunities.  Armed with a good story and good storytelling skills, you should be able to profit if you know how to take responsibility for your creation.
2. The great challenge is no longer how to get your film made or funded, but how to get people to watch it.  All the tools and connections have improved.  Information is accessible.  You need to allocate time and resources to engage people with your work.  There is nothing harder in the filmmaking eco-system than this.
3. Aggregate audience.  Build those email lists.  Transition or lead folks from social networks where you don’t own the data (Twitter, Facebook, etc), to your own lists where you can directly connect and engage with your community.  You need to know how many people you can lead to action.
4. Go beyond thinking of whom the audience is that you make your work for, and start figuring out how your audience uses your work – and with that comes the shift from a passive one way relationship from a maker to a fan base, to an active participatory relationship between an instigator and the community they are part of.
5. Transition your passive audience to an active engaged participatory community.  If you know how people find your work, why people respond to your work, and what they use your work for, you can unleash their power and creativity to fully engage, and thus make the work a more critical part of their life.
6. Distributors are for the few; recognize though, that platforms are for the many.  Distributors have their pick of licensing films, but also have a limited bandwith as to what they can promote well.  Platforms need your work.  If the odds are those that you want won’t want you, shouldn’t you first figure out how to play well with those that want you on their team?  You have the opportunity to do well.
7. The only logical response for filmmakers to these Days of Too Much is to be more prolific and ubiquitous.  “How are you going to be more generative in more places?” you ask? This demonstrates both the need for radical collaboration – and the forum to do it on. Your work is how people will discover you.  You need to make it available in as many forms as possible.
8. You need others to be authentically incentivized to share and promote your work.  That means they must honestly appreciate it and understand what they have to gain by getting the word out about it.  The easiest way is for your work to share the same goals as they do.  This may mean it needs to be part of the same thing as theirs.  Think about that.
9. We have stop trying to reinvent the wheel every time we release a new film.  Currently, each new film is a new effort to gather audience, even when it is from the same director or story world.  We must start to remain engaged with our fans, and shift our focus from a single product business to one of an ongoing relationship.
10. The film biz lacks a way for the passionate fan to demonstrate their appreciation of a work.  People buy art both because they like it and because it elevates their status.  If you like a movie as a work of art, maybe you can find a foreign poster of it, or wait until Taschen publishes a book on the director.  There are few fetish objects to award the die-hards with.  What can you provide for those that love your work?
11. You are currently witnessing the end of feature film dominance.  The feature film form was born out of economic necessity and biological necessity.  People valued the time commitment it took to consume and could get through it with one bathroom break/stop at the concession stand.  This product length has been the basis of all media based financial decisions other than subscription fees – and even there it was the initial driver (along with sports and pornography).  Yet, feature films are a costly product to market with no easy way to initially engage an audience on an active level without giving away the cow.  In this connected age we can create an infinite variety of storyworld extensions, discovery nodes, and engagement forums. Time to start thinking broader and deeper.
12. Be responsible for your film, for no one has the incentives you do to do so.  Learn to strategize, schedule, budget, and predict revenues for the entire life cycle of your film.
13. Embrace rapid prototyping with multiple iterations. There is no current business model for indie film & there will probably never be a universe template for most films.  The goal is to determine a variety of “best practices” as soon as possible.  We need to work together.  This is the era of cooperation not competition. Each step brings us closer to a certain truth.
14. To increase your rate of success, fail twice as much. Experiment.  We have to get over our cult of success and speak more about the ongoing process instead of the rare result.
15. You are not discovering gold or creating a patentable process.  Determining best practices to have a sustainable & rewarding creative life is a group endeavor.  We can build it better together, but if we hide our failures and the powerful information we collect, we will not advance. Gather & share data.  Embrace transparency and an “Open Source” attitude to all you do.  This is a collective process to lift all of us up.
16. Don’t despair.  As much as art has always shown us where we are, we also depend on it to show us where we want to be.  The work you create moves us closer to the world you aspire to.

I am trusting you to let all of us know what I forgot. I look forward to the comments.

Previously:

19 Things Regarding Our Current Culture That Should Completely Alter Your Creative And Entrepreneurial Practice.

17 Things About The Film Biz That Should Significantly Alter Your Behavior

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By Reid Rosefelt

I have a Movie Actor Quotes Pinterest Board with 86 graphics and a Film Director Board with 65 graphics.   The Movie Actor Quotes Board is  #1 out of 40,700,000 other results on Google Search and  the Film Director Board is #3 out of 73,900,000.  I am ranked over the sites where I find my quotes, an irony I doubt they appreciate.  

These graphics were all created to drive engagement on my Facebook page, but  I figured  I might as well take a few minutes to put them up on Pinterest and some other social media sites.  I made each Pinterest graphic link to my Facebook page, as that’s my home base.

Pinterest marketing works by using content to attract people to your page, where they are exposed to other things you do, like links to products you sell or to your blog posts.  I always assumed that this process was limited to the closed world of Pinterest, and had no idea about the massive amount of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) it can provide.

The reason this happened seems obvious.  All the content on my two pages is original to me, as high a quality as I can make it, and, most important, similar.  If you like one movie actor quote, you might like others.   It’s not unusual for people to click five or ten times when they arrive at one of those boards.  That adds up to a lot of clicking.  As I add a new graphic almost every day, in a year I’ll have 500 of them.  I’ve been able to have the success I’ve had with less than a hundred followers, but I’m patient and expect to have thousands someday.

Now that I’ve been introduced to the power of Pinterest with SEO, I’m not going to be satisfied with merely bringing people to my page.   My next goal is to create boards that sell exactly what I’m about: coaching filmmakers and artists on using social media to promote their work.  If I’m successful, the names of those boards will come up near the top of searches when people are looking for what I have to offer.

Facebook will always be my foundation, but like Vegas, everything that happens in Facebook stays in Facebook.  While some Twitter posts become huge events, the large majority of tweets roll off the screen in seconds.   On the other hand, many posts on blogs, Pinterest, Google+, LinkedIn, and tumblr, among others, can find a lasting place in the online firmament.

Reid Rosefelt coaches filmmakers in how to market their films using Facebook, and lectures frequently on the topic.  His credits as a film publicist include “Stranger Than Paradise,”  “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” and “Precious.”

Blog: reidrosefelt.com

facebook.com/reidrosefeltmarketing

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Previously: How to Avoid Rejection

London Calling

I’m in London talking to most of the UK video-on-demand outlets. Being English myself doesn’t seem to confer any advantages. It may even cause suspicion — the Brit who abandoned ship and washed up in sunny California, and now he wants our business…screw him.  That’s still the attitude here, at least among some. LOVEFiLM (yes, that’s how they write the name) just told me that while they’ll happily ingest KinoNation films, they’re much more interested in — and focused on — television content. I like that level of honesty, and I’m not surprised. The lion’s share of VoD revenue on platforms like Netflix, Hulu and LOVEFiLM right now is being generated by TV shows, rather than movies. But movies on demand is still a big — and growing — business. Big enough for us to disrupt!

The Usual Objections

During this 10 day trip I’ve had meetings to get KinoNation films distributed — or at least start the ball rolling — with VoD outlets like Virgin Media, SkyMovies, BlinkBox, FilmFlex, Sky Movies, Curzon-on-Demand, HMV and Kinopto. Of course, no one signs a deal at meeting #1. It’s just the beginning of a process, hopefully fairly short, since the Kinonation offer is, essentially: here’s our catalog, it’s fantastic and growing fast, do you want in? But of course everyone is skeptical at first. They say: How can you possibly automate the encoding and metadata authoring? Can’t be done. Surely your films are all second rate? American indies don’t play well in Britain. You have to get every film rated. Bla, Bla.  The usual objections. Actually, in this sales process, I think it’s good to serve up some genuinely easy objections they can volley back — otherwise they get uncomfortable that what you’re proposing makes WAY too much sense!

£3 million Box Office or…?

What the UK outlets want — or at least what they say they want — is only films with £3m box office. That’s four and a half million dollars. Meaning they will only take films on their VoD platforms with a proven theatrical track record. I dug a little and found that they’re actually OK with £3m OR a six theater release — the latter being much less onerous, especially since Tugg came on the scene in the US. I dug a little more…and found a little more flexibility — but the bottom line is that (right now) UK digital outlets have the same mindset as US cable outlets: we only want the cream, and cream mostly rises to theatrical. I think (but I’m really no expert) this will change, once cable TV head-end capacity grows, along with cable TV user interfaces evolving, plus a growing perception among VoD outlets that ingesting and storing a really BIG on-demand catalog (like iTunes) makes better economic sense than a limited on-demand catalog (like Virgin Media.)

Artist to Entrepreneur (A2E)

Spent the weekend before London at the San Francisco Film Festival. Specifically the innovative and very productive A2E workshop. Think twelve impressive indie films, cherry-picked from various festivals — meeting Round-Robin style with 12 distribution platforms. The objective was to craft a distribution template for each of the films. KinoNation was one of the dozen tech companies or platforms. For me the biggest takeaways were: a) the opportunity for an indie filmmaker to self-distribute is now bigger and easier and genuinely more viable than ever — but it’s called self-distribution because the workload on “self” is massive. b) the video-on-demand ecosystem is so nascent, and so rapidly evolving, that the various VoD distributors feel much more like collaborators than direct competitors. KinoNation is a squealing infant in this family — yet treated kindly (and collaboratively) by VoD success stories Gravitas Ventures and Cinedign/NewVideo, and rapidly growing start-ups like indie four-waller Tugg, and indie film marketer TopSpin Media.

QC Failure

Feature films and docs in the KinoNation Private Beta are flowing to our beta partners Amazon, Hulu and Viewster. As the delivery tech is tested and improved, we’ll pick up the pace and widen the distribution to iTunes and the rest. But the Quality Control (QC) process takes a while. Gary Tarn’s BAFTA nominated documentary Black Sun failed Hulu QC this week because his poster art had his sales agent contact details. We had to fix, re-submit, then it passed. Not Gary’s error. Not Hulu’s either. Our error. This is an example of much more detailed metadata specs that KinoNation needs to publish — and also catch in our internal QC process before we deliver to outlets. Another example: Sky Crompton’s Asian-Australian feature Citizen Jia Li (set in Melbourne, but with Mandarin dialogue) failed an outlet’s QC because the subtitles file wasn’t “just” right. These files are machine readable — and thus error intolerant. Not Sky’s fault, again, it’s incumbent on Kinonation to write code that checks subtitles in advance of submission to outlets. Like all of this system we’re building, it’s complex, surprising, non-trivial…and challenging. And that’s why it’s fun.

Next Up: Post # 28: (scheduled for Tues May 28th)

Roger Jackson is a producer and the co-founder of film distribution start-up KinoNation. He was Vice President, Content for digital film pioneer iFilm.com and has produced short films in Los Angeles, documentaries in Darfur, Palestine and Bangladesh, a reality series for VH1 and one rather bad movie for FuelTV. You can reach him at roger@kinonation.com.

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The important thing for creative people to recognize is that the business of filmmaking is one of relationship with their community. Previously, we saw our business as that work product, generally the feature film, not the relationship of it. As a result, we reinvented the wheel time and time again. We built up the same audience each time that we did it, whether it was our own films, or films of a similar nature. We did not maintain—or even give room to participate—for folks from the outside world; but, the goal I think is that ultimately communities take responsibility for the things that they want. What that means is we move from being a passive consumer culture to an active participatory culture where part of being a community is also being a patron of the things that you care about, whether it’s in the film space or any other cultural/societal/social enterprise. We have to make the things that we want happen. We can’t wait for them to arrive. The beauty of the era we’re living in is that we actually now have the tools, the connectability, to actually make what we want happen. If you want this movie that you love to be seen in Thailand, your enthusiasm and passion with a little bit of effort can make that happen. That bridge that you built now can be reinforced and used by a whole bunch of folks. Soon those friends of yours in Thailand are seeing a flow of the movies they were denied before.

What’s really interesting for us folks here in San Francisco is that America—for whatever reason—doesn’t seem to want to let the outside world in. We build fences and barriers and stop the immigration of ideas, culture and individuals. But for fifty six years through the film festival, San Francisco has created a history of people coming together. So many different cultural diasporas in San Francisco have welcomed that and we have seen the benefit of what that does for our own ideas and our own individual communities. So if we start to be able to do that for a world cinema and start to build those bridges and expand its reach and allow it to start to have an influence? What a wonderful mission!

Read the whole interview here.

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Here’s the initial wrap of round one.  Much more to come:

Indiewire interview with me (Ted) on the future of film.

SF Examiner on How SFFS & Tech Community Are Going To Save The Film Industry

Indiewire notes on A2E OnRamp Workshop

Initial Announcement On The A2E Artist To Entrepreneur Program

 NoFilmSchool.com On Need For A2E

SFFS’ A2E Announcement

These quotes from participants:

“A2E was quite honestly a watershed moment for me as a producer regarding the way I think about financing and distribution.”
Tommy Oliver, Director/Producer of A2E film 1982

“This is an incredibly exciting time for filmmakers.  But it’s also unrealistic to expect them to wake up one morning, take off their creative hat and put on a marketing one, and know what to do next.  That’s why filling a room full of filmmakers, distribution experts, and technology innovators for a week seems like such a simple idea- after the experience, I think it’s borderline criminal it hasn’t been done until now.”
Dylan Marchetti, Variance Films and A2E Distribution Consultant

“A2E is a giant step away from the abyss into which the indie film business and culture of Cinema is rapidly slipping.  Kudos to everyone at SFFS.”
Adam Collis, Director of A2E film CAR DOGS

“A2E and SFFS share a sense of purpose for the future of independent film and I was honored to share the ground floor with other innovators helping to mold what can happen next in direct distribution.” – Nolan Gallagher, Founder and CEO Gravitas Ventures

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Before we rolled up our sleeves to start the practical, I warmed up the crowd with a series of short lectures focusing on what all filmmakers should know about the film biz, the current culture, and recommended best practices for themselves.  Last week I shared with you what we discussed about the film business.  Today, I offer you my rumination on culture in general.  Like the post on the film business, it is easy to dismiss this as generally negative.  That simply is not true; that is nostalgia playing havoc with your perception.  There never were good old days because back then people needed to find best practices too.  They did not know then what you know now, just as those coming down the pike will have full benefit of all your excavation tomorrow.  So be it.

If we want to move forward we need to access where we are currently standing, and adapt our behavior to the reality we encounter. So…

1. This is an Era of Grand Abundance.  There are more things to do than ever before. Everything is competing for increasingly limited available leisure time. As many of 50,000 feature film titles are generated on a worldwide basis annually. Good movies don’t get seen.
2. Movies are not the dominant option for leisure time activities for most people.  Physical & outdoor recreation, online & video games, live events, and many other wonderful options compete on an equal playing field for consumer’s available time and money.
3. The past competes with the present as never before.  We have better access to content created decades ago than those that were living when it was being created.  The past has been evaluated more widely or deeply than we can hope the present to be, making it easier to be discovered and connected with.
4. Content accessibility is no longer an inverted pyramid ending at a blocked spigot, but an open flow of rapidly moving particles with little to grab hold to.  The abundance of content is matched by a complete accessibility to it, anytime, anywhere, on any device.  The options are endless.  There are no barriers to distribution, only to awareness and engagement.
5. Audiences feel overwhelmed. Everyone everywhere is distracted, deafened by the noise, blinded by the glare.  Audiences no longer know how to discover work that they will most likely respond positively to. We could be digging ourselves deeper into a very deep hole, as we are prone to engage less frequently with that thing when we don’t get the results we desire.
6. Our available time is more limited than ever before. People work more.  They have more on their agenda.  They have more options than before.  Less and less becomes spontaneous.
7. The long tail is crushed by the weight of the herd of the new, buried under the tsunami of the now that is constantly being generated.
8. People crave the authentic.  In the age of both mechanical and digital reproduction, we tend to increasingly value that which can not be recreated.  In an overt consumerist environment, we also start to cherish that which does not need to be sold.
9. If most things can be time-shifted, delayed, and recorded for later consumption, events that are one-of-a-kind and fleeting are increasingly valued.

10. The old tools and practices no longer work, but we are prone to get in a rut of habit, doing the same things, expecting to get past results that stopped occurring long ago.  Newspapers and their influence have decreased, reducing cost effective options for audiences to discover movies.  Even email and social media seem to have less impact than they used to.

11. Although we have access to more, we discover less.  Online, we get stuck in echo chambers of community thought, and have lost serendipitous discovery of the past. We are expansive beings with diverse taste, but we get stuck in ruts of habit. The film business lost its year-round curators when the newspaper business collapsed and film critics lost their job.  Newspapers were engines of serendipitous discovery.

12. The vast connectivity we have — due to the internet and communication revolution — changes everything, including our art & commerce.  Information & opinions can spread faster than we ever imagined.  We don’t live in story beats the way we once did or even still dream we do.  The present becomes a spontaneous sensation as opposed to events with discernable steps towards it.  The narrative of daily life is growing more evasive.  The surrounding volume intensifies.  Do we have a choice other than adapting?

13. We are reminded of our vulnerability more often and more deeply.  Whether it was 9/11/00 or 9/15/08, terrorism and economic collapse influence our decisions and actions in more ways than we probably realize.  We expect something equally traumatizing on the horizon. It is not a land of plenty, but one where the precious might be taken at any juncture.

14. Art, audiences, technology, & business change far faster than markets or industry.  There is tremendous opportunity in this gap for new business and new forms of creation.  The First Mover Advantage is there for our taking.

15. People – and communities — generally only change their behavior when the pain of the present exceeds their fear of the future.  When it comes to the film business, it is reasonable to assume we have come upon a moment of mandated change.

16. People (i.e. Audiences) want greater return on the investment of their engagement than ever before. Americans in particularly expect to exchange their leisure time for intellectual capital, which transforms into social capital. We expect to improve ourselves by our consumption practices.

17. On a personal level, all industries are about people keeping their jobs.  They won’t do something that will risk them losing their job.  In the film biz, often the way to keep your job, is to not make a movie, particularly one that does not have universal support.

18. We have more ways — and thus more opportunities — that we can work collaboratively than ever before. We don’t have to be in the same place.  We don’t need to see or understand the results.  We can gather information that will be analyzed later.  We can all harness the power of many that once was only the domain of the super powerful.

19. Although we are working longer hours at higher level jobs than ever before, due to the nature of our available technology, we have more usable time that we can use to work together to get fast results. Even collaborating remotely, we can see the results quickly.

What have I left off?  Surely there are some things you can share.

Next week, I will offer what I feel we should do in face of the realities of the film business and culture today.  I feel that there are certainly best practices that enable us to have a sustainable creative life.

See also: 17 Things About The Film Biz That Should Significantly Alter Your BehaviorTweet

Music playlists are good marketing devices that are often ignored.  They are instantly consumable.  Much music is already available legally online so it is just a matter of sourcing it.  Promoting the music promotes the film but serves a community wider than the film community.  The musicians can also be called in to help push it out.  It can be a win/win.

And it is simple to do.

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As part of the lab, we have a first day of big ideas and case studies that hopefully will give the participants the foundation for a design for living and thriving on their art.  As part of that I have prepared three brief lectures focused on what every filmmaker needs to recognize about the business, the culture, and their practice if they want to have a sustainable creative life.  Split between the three categories, I came up with fifty things you should know.  I will provide them to you over the next week or two, but I wish you all could have been there.   It’s always different when you are in the room.

Today, I will unleash what I think it is necessary to recognize about our industry if you are a filmmaker looking to survive from the work you generate.

WARNING: taking any of these points out of context, could create unnecessary fear or depression. If you want to tackle reality, you need to know what ground you walk on.  Some truths are hard to accept but once you do, you can move forward and to a different place.  Adding Film Biz realities to Culture truths, and building Best Filmmaker Practices on those understandings could provide a Design For Sustainable Collective Creation.  Or at least that’s this Hope’s hope.

1. Filmmaking is not currently a sustainable occupation for any but the very rare.  It is not enough to be very good at what you do if you want to survive by doing what you love.
2. Presently speaking, artists & their supporters are rarely the primary financial beneficiaries of their work – if at all. Filmmakers are not sufficiently rewarded for their quality creative output under current practices.
3. The film industry’s economic models are not based on today’s reality.  They are predicated on and remain structured upon antiquated principals of scarcity of content, centralized control of that content, and the ability to focus the majority of consumers towards that content.
4. Film audience’s current consumption habits do not come close to matching the film industry’s production output.  America remains the top film consumption market in the world, and is thought to be able to handle only around 1% of the world annual supply – consuming somewhere between 500-600 titles of the annual output of approximate 50,000 feature films.  We make far more films than we currently know how to use or consume.  We drown our audiences in choices.
5. The film industry has not found a way to match audiences with the content they will most likely to respond to.  It doesn’t even look like this is a priority for the business.  Everything is spaghetti against the wall, marketed in the same way & only to the most general demographics of race, gender, & income.
6. In order to reach the people who might respond to a film, the film industry remains dependent on telling everyone (including those who could care less) about each new film.  It is a poorly allocated dedication of resources.  We spend more money telling those who will never be interested, than focusing on those who have already demonstrated support.  There is no audience aggregation platform exclusively for those who love movies, no place where all people who love movies engage deeply about films – if there was, marketing costs could shrink.
7. Digital distribution is an emerging market and will continue to evolve over the next decade.  The value for titles for the long term has not been specified for digital distribution; currently only short term value is derived – and as a result films are licensed without full understanding of future worth.  We are doing a business of ignorance.
8. Predictive value of films is primarily currently determined by an incredibly imprecise method:“star value”, a concept that grows less predictive by the day.  Ask anyone and they will tell you that people do not go to movies anymore to see specific stars but interesting subjects.  Granted, that is not a scientific method, but we know it to be true.
9. The “fair market value” of a feature film’s distribution rights in the US that multiple buyers want has dropped astronomically: from 50% of negative costs 25 years ago, to 30% 15 years ago, to 25% 10 years ago, to 10% today.

10. International territorial licensing of American independent feature films has dropped by approximately 60% over the last decade.  Major territories no longer buy product.  Most have given up on “American Indies”.

11. Everything that has ever been made, has also been copied. The logic of a business based on exclusive ownership or limited access to something can not sustain.  In the digital era the duplication of data is inevitable.  The unauthorized copy will never go away.  People can choose to try to avoid unauthorized versions but they will be made or shared.  This does not have to always be a bad thing either.

12. Competing options for film viewing have diminished the comparative value of theatrical exhibition. A consumer can not justify the cost of a movie ticket when that ticket costs more than the cost of a month of unlimited streaming.  Home theaters’ quality surpasses many theaters, and the seats are always better.  Soon 4K Televisions will be the norm while movie theaters are stuck in 2K.

13. The film business lacks a long range economic model for exhibition.  What is the business of movie going? Exhibition gathers people together to sell them a 15 cent bag of popcorn for six dollars.   We can profit from a large group’s interest in more and more meaningful ways, but the infrastructure is not yet designed to expolit this.

14. The film industry foolishly rewards quantity over quality.  Producers are incentivized to forever take on more and the films’ quality suffers as a result.  The best work is not rewarded.  Once upon a time, filmmakers got overhead deals and that made some difference, but those days are long gone.

15. Movies have a unique capacity to create empathy for people and actions we don’t know or have not experienced.  Science has shown that the imagined releases a similar chemical response to the actual experience.  If this empathic experience is virtually unique to film, can it be utilized more?  I think so, tremendously so in fact.

16. Movies create a shared emotional response amongst all those that view it simultaneously.  What other product can claim that?  As a unique attribute, how can you emphasize that more?  Shouldn’t that be the takeaway that your audience remembers and shares?

17. There has never been a better time for most creative individuals to be both a truly independent filmmaker and/or a collaborative creative person.  The barriers to entry are lower, the cost & labor time of creation & distribution are lower than ever, and there are more opportunities and methods that ever.  We just need to abandon the old ways and unearth the new ways.

What’s your response to these?  I personally think it would be great if the answer could always be: “I am going to do something about that.  And I am going to get a little help from my friends.”  Every single one of these can change; it may require a complete move from doing things the way we do them now, but they can get better.  If you want to make movies, and make your profession filmmaking, I think you will have a tremendous advantage if you recognize the world we are living in and the power you have to improve it.  I think these points are the obvious truths that we can use to drive us forward.  And there are more.

Next week I will share “19 Things About Our Current Culture That Should Influence Your Creative & Entrepreneurial Practice“.  Until then, keep producing.  We can build it better together.

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It should be mandatory watching & reading for all filmmakers.

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Films Are Flowing

The KinoNation tech team has now finished the automated delivery module for our three beta outlets — Hulu, Amazon and Viewster. Which means film packages are flowing — more rapidly every day — to those outlets. And it won’t be long before we add all the other video-on-demand outlets we’ve done distribution deals with. But with that success comes other problems — notably films that get rejected at the Quality Control (QC) stage, either at KinoNation QC, or at the outlet QC. So this post is about how to avoid having your film be a QC casualty. It’s like a theatrical distribution deal — there’s a list of deliverables, and they have to be exactly to the required spec, with zero wiggle room.

Assets

The movie “assets” we require are the master ProRes files for the film and the trailer, four images (2 x portrait & 2 x landscape), a very comprehensive set of metadata, and a subtitles file if the film audio is anything other than English. The tech specs for uploading these assets are simple — but very specific. The last thing you want is to assemble these assets, upload them to KinoNation (or anyone else) and then fail QC. Instead, take a little extra time to get everything right.

Here are some common reasons for QC failure:

Letterboxing

This is the #1 QC issue that we face, despite it being prominently at the top of the NO column of our upload specs. And that’s understandable. Most editors assume that a film looks better when letterboxed, so that’s how they export it. The problem is the VoD outlets have their own letterboxing issues — because they all have proprietary video players, and because films are played on a variety of devices — from PCs to tablets to phones to smart TVs. So they want the video “clean” — no letterboxing. No way around it — you’ll need to re-save that ProRes file without the black bars.

Images

Capturing enough images to serve every outlet’s needs — but without asking the filmmaker for two dozen different images — is a tricky balance. We ask for four images — 2 portrait shaped (traditional movie posters) and 2 landscape shaped. But it gets more complex. Hulu, for example, will fail an image with a press quote on it. Their position is that pull-quotes are tough to verify, so there’s nothing to stop someone fabricating a kick-ass quote from a big publication. So they just say “no quotes.” Understandable position. But — a pithy quote from the NY Times or Variety or JoBlo.com is a big selling point — so we had to figure out a way to avoid quotes for Hulu, while still allowing them for images going to other outlets. You’ll see how we handle it when you submit your film.

Titles and Text

One of the biggest reasons for films to stumble at Kinonation QC is bad grammar or syntax in the synopses. Or just plain poor prose. It’s challenging, because good vs. bad writing is pretty damn subjective. So I urge you to be hyper-critical of your writing. You hired a DP because you wanted a professional behind the camera. You may want to find an equally skilled prose writer for the all-important descriptions, which are definitely buy/not buy inflexion points for your audience.

Sound

Audio is tricky. How loud should a film be? The answer is “loud enough” — but that’s tough to measure. We’ve had to ask for several films to be re-submitted with a little more oomph on the soundtrack. Plus there’s stereo, surround sound, 5.1, etc. All have issues, and the last thing we want is to de-cipher the eight different audio tracks on a film. That’s why we simply say (in our specs) — Stereo PCM, single stream, 16 Bit or 24 Bit, up to 48 kHz. We’ll support surround soon, but not during our beta phase. Stay tuned.

No URL’s in Credits

This causes much knashing of teeth. Pretty much every VoD outlets says “no promotional url’s (website addresses) in end credits, or anywhere else in the film.” And pretty much every filmmaker thinks they have a God-given right to promote their site in their own film. All I can say is we don’t make the rules, but we do check and we will reject movies with urls.

Trailer

Your trailer is, obviously, a critical sales tool. We need it because almost every VoD outlets requires it. Bottom line is that it has to be the same quality file (ProRes) as the main film, and has to adhere to the same criteria. Think of it as a mini version of the main film. For many viewers, it will be the deciding factor in their watch/not watch decision for your film.

Pre-Roll

Most editors are used to delivering tapes with pre-roll stuff — color bars, audio tone, 10, 9, 8 …1 countdowns, etc. ALL will result in QC failure, because VoD outlets don’t want any of this. They want the ultimate cold open — the first second of the VoD video is the first second of the film.

No Burn-In

We get a lot of “foreign” films with audio in a language other than English. Which we love — Klaus and I conceived KinoNation to make it super-easy for non-English films to get US distribution — and vice-versa. But we need these films to be “clean” — no burned-in subtitles. Instead, sub-titles should be included as part of the metadata, so they can be served “on the fly” by VoD outlets according to the location or preference of the viewer.

Finally…

If you’re a filmmaker who uploaded to the KinoNation Private Beta — thanks for your support, hang in there, we’re working on it and we’ll get you out to Amazon Instant Video and other outlets soon! If you haven’t submitted yet, now’s a great time.

Next Up: Post # 27: London Calling

Roger Jackson is a producer and the co-founder of film distribution start-up KinoNation. He was Vice President, Content for digital film pioneer iFilm.com and has produced short films in Los Angeles, documentaries in Darfur, Palestine and Bangladesh, a reality series for VH1 and one rather bad movie for FuelTV. You can reach him at roger@kinonation.com.

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