I’m back now from my trip to the UK – workshop and consulting at the Edinburgh Film Festival as well as a workshop at the London Film School. What I love about travelling and doing these workshops is meeting people who are really helping change the lives of filmmakers, creating tools and resources to help them release and monetize their films!
First – in Edinburgh:
I had dinner with Peter and Andy from Distrify which I think is an incredibly powerful Broadband VOD platform. The most significant aspect of it is that it not only allows your audience to share your trailer (with a direct ability to buy) but it also incentivizes your audience (and others) to do this via a built-in affiliate program. You can also set different price points in a number of different currencies so that you can adjust pricing for local financial circumstances (eg different prices for first world buyers and third world buyers). In addition: you can take your money out whenever you want, you can sell different combinations of streaming, download and DVD (only on-demand currently – but they are working on fulfillment) and their user interface is very simple. I strongly suggest checking them out.
I also spent a fair amount of time with Michael Franklin from Creative Scotland who is very eager to develop new models for film coming out of the north. One of my meetings that he arranged was with the Scottish Documentary Institute who are in the process of hiring a Producer of Marketing and Distribution for the institute to work with all of their films and filmmakers. Of course I love that idea. I’ve heard of other government funds considering this action – but this is the first one that I know of that will be put into place.
In London, I had a nice chat with James Collie who produced and released Beyond Biba and is currently distributing Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo in the UK. He told me about an accessible digital rights and VOD aggregator in the UK called Re:Fine that is a bit of a cross between Distribber and a conventional aggregator. For 300£ they will aggregate your film to iTunes and then take 19% in addition to the standard iTunes take of 30% – so filmmakers end up with 51%. A pretty decent deal. According to James, they also aggregate to other platforms.
At my London workshop, James gave a great presentation about booking theatrical in the UK and revealed two significant resources. The first is Launching Films which for 30£ they will list your film in a schedule used by most film reviewers and bookers in the UK along with all the major releases. He indicated that through this listing he was called up by all the major reviewers in London for Beetle Queen. In addition, included in the fee, they will also set up your press screenings in London (you have to pay for the screening room).
The second resource is The Independent Cinema Office which lists contact information for most of the independent theaters throughout the UK – giving you direct access to the people who program theaters.
VOD seems to still be in its formulative stages in the UK with only 2 major players: Skynet and Virgin. I heard that you needed to have a very significant theatrical campaign (over 1 million spend) to get on Virgin although this was just something I overheard – but didn’t strike me as odd.
Finally I met with Terry Stevens who runs home video at Dogwoof (Dogwoof is releasing Bomb It July 25th in the UK). At my LFS workshop he spoke about the Ambassador program they are setting up – coordinating with community groups and community screenings venues to create a network of alternative screening locations to host live event/theatrical screenings. Initially this will be for Dogwoof films, but it seems that eventually the goal is to open up this ability to all films.
Let me know if you have any questions or comments.
And a heads up – the book that I am writing with The Film Collaborative and Sheri Candler: Selling Your Film Without Selling Your Soul (link to fb page) is launching at IFP Week in September! Stay tuned.