Jon Reiss

Join It Session Tonight with Gregory Bayne

I’ve been doing “Join It” sessions approximately once a month since last October as one of my Kickstarter rewards for Bomb It 2. In these sessions everyone who selected the Join It perk can dial in for a monthly conference call and ask anything about filmmaking and distribution and marketing. These sessions have been a mix of discussions, presentations by me and at times my doing mini consults with the filmmakers who were online. We then record these sessions (all but one) and post them for those who couldn’t attend (unfortunately the majority). I once experimented with not recording the sessions because I wanted to promote the live nature of the sessions and encourage participation – but with everyone’s far flung schedules I soon realized that this was not possible and those that want to be there will be there and those who just want to listen in will just do that.

But last month everything changed when Mark Stolaroff was online (one of the Join It members) and I commenced to interview him about his recent experiences in the landscape. It was so much fun that I decided for the time being that all of the future Join It sessions will have a special guest at least for the first half hour and then the 2nd half hour will be questions – which not only I but the guest will be involved in answering.

This month I chose Gregory Bayne because I got an email from another Join It member concerned about the broken business model of independent film distribution and marketing and wanting figures about how all these films turn out. As you may know – its very difficult to get filmmakers to reveal these numbers and usually all one hears about are the successful outliers. So I thought a better avenue would be to talk to a filmmaker who has had great success utilizing the new audience engagement landscape to foster a career in film – Gregory Bayne. He started with the ultra low budget Person of Interest and was one of the first to crowdfund for distribution and marketing. He then crowdfunded his next more ambitious film Driven and is exploring both transmedia and episodic. Can’t wait.

Heading to the UK Next Week and Upcoming Releases

The first segment of the IFP Filmmaker Labs were very fun and exciting this year.  A great group of docs and narrative.

Next week I will be in the UK. First doing a one day TOTBO workshop at the Edinburgh Film Festival on June 22^nd then I’ll be doing a Keynote for Short Sighted presented by BAFTA and Shooting People on the 23^rd.   I’ll also be doing one on one consultations with films on the 23^rd through Creative Scotland.

Next I’m doing a 2 day workshop at the London Film School June 25^th, 26^th, so if you are in London I hope to see you then.   For this workshop we have the some excellent special guests lined up:  Terry Stevens from Dogwoof,  Chris Jones, filmmaker and author of the Guerilla Filmmaker’s Handbook Series and via skype we’ll have Sheri Candler, filmmaker Gregory Bayne giving tips for a successful crowdfunding campaign and Peter Gerard of the exciting new DIY distribution tool Distrify.

And some other previews of upcoming releases:

Dogwoof will be releasing the multi language PAL version of Bomb It July 25^th.

In September, The Film Collaborative, Sheri Candler and I will be releasing Selling Your Film Without Selling Your Soul Presented by PreScreen – Case Studies in Hybrid, DIY and P2P Independent Distribution.  This is a series of case studies that dives deep into independent film distribution.  There will be much more information on this in the coming months – if you would like to know more – check out (and like) the Facebook page for the book.  We’ll be launching at the IFP Week in NYC where I will also be for part 3 of the IFP Filmmaker Labs.

Jon Reiss giving Keynotes at IFP Prodcon 2011 and Idaho Cineposium

I will be the keynote speaker at both the IFP Media Arts’ Producers Conference (PRODCON 2011) in Minneapolis on April 16th, and the Idaho Cineposium on April 17th.  If you live in either of those two states–or know anyone who does–I hope to see you there!

Also in Minneapolis I will be on the documentary panel with the incredible  Amy Dotson (Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo), and Jon Garon (author, The Independent Filmmaker’s Low and Business Guide), with Melody Gilbert (Fritz: The Walter Mondale Story, Disconnected: A Documentary) moderating.

Special thanks to Gregory Bayne for hooking this up for me.   Also appearing will be Jerome Courshon, Aaton Cohen Sitt of Jungle Software and Kenny Chaplin from the Production Assistant Training Program.