Tag: michael medaglia

Putting Chilean Film on the Map

On Thursday and Friday of this week (Oct 20-21) I will be at the Flyway Film Festival, presenting my two-day Think Outside the Box Office workshop on the ever-changing world of hybrid distribution and marketing. Today, though, I am thrilled to share a guest post from Chilean filmmaker Bernardo Palau whose first feature film ‘Saving You’ had a small theatrical release in Chile in November 2010 and is now available on iTunes.  Here is his post:

PUTTING CHILEAN FILM ON THE MAP

By Bernardo Palau

I live in Chile — a long and thin land at the end of the world — at the southernmost point of South America. Chile is a country mainly known for its wines, the variety of its landscapes and its writers and poets like Isabel Allende, Pablo Neruda and Vicente Huidobro.

I say “mainly” because every day Chile is getting more and more known for a different kind of poet/storyteller: its filmmakers. Over the last few years many Chilean films have navigated the A-class film festival circuit, which has placed Chile on the map of world cinema in the eyes of the press.

Leaving aside the recently deceased Raoul Ruiz and his prolific filmography, many directors, including Sebastian Silva (‘The Maid’), Matias Bize (‘The life of the fish’), Pablo Larraín (‘Tony Manero’), Gonzalo Justiniano (‘B-Happy’), Sebastian Lelio (‘Christmas’), and others have created a lot of buzz at various international film festivals. But is that all there is to Chilean cinema?

No, actually. There are still a lot of Chilean films out there that the world doesn’t know about yet.

Allow me to explain: In Chile we have two major kind of films, the Public (or State) co-finance films, which have big budgets for our industry (normally between $500,000 and $2,000,000), enabling them to have a great festival presence around the world. On the other hand, we also have micro-budget guerrilla / garage films that work with small budgets, small crews and a lot of good will.


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TOTBO Tip of the Day 9 Create a Dynamic Website

Posted on by Emy

Create a dynamic web site and do it long before your film is done. Old-style film web sites are out — blogging and a constant flow of information are in. Blogging and tagging is what the little bots out in cyberspace will recognize and bring you up in the rankings. Thanks to my wonderful friend and web site savior Michael Medaglia and a lot of great blogging by producer Tracy Wares, we were near the top of Google search on “graffiti documentary” even before our world premiere at Tribeca. A great web site also helps you cultivate your niche audience and further allows the theatrical to fuel your DVD release.

My live workshops are coming to London on May 8th-9th and Amsterdam on May 12th-13th. Hope to see you there!

I want to know what you think! Comment here or on my blog, or @Jon_Reiss on twitter, or on the TOTBO Facebook page. Check out the book Think Outside the Box Office. I look forward to hearing from you.

HTML Help

Posted on by Jon Reiss

I’ve been revamping my blog page – making it more of a front page and my wonderful web manager/co-producer Michael Medaglia gave me this site:

http://www.w3schools.com

as a resource if you need to find any html code. You’ll need this as you get further into wordpress to make your blog more of a front page. Chris Hyams from B Side says that all of their film sites are done in WordPress – and they are very clean and focused on specific audience actions.

Web Marketing and DIY Filmmaking Article in Filmmaker Magazine-

Filmmaker Magazine has featured an article that I wrote about DIY web marketing, drawing attention and self distribution for Spring 2009. You should check it out, here is the article.

HOW TO MARKET YOUR DVD ONLINE PART 3
In this installment, Jon Reiss looks at DIY Web marketing.
BY JON REISS

So you’ve authored your DVD and perhaps even replicated it. You’ve found a fulfillment company that you are happy with. Now, how to get people to buy it?

In the last installment of this series, which appeared in the Winter 2009 issue of Filmmaker, I outlined how to maximize your DVD release strategy and before that in the Fall 2008 issue I discussed ways in which filmmakers can get their movies distributed through DIY self-distribution methods and hybrid strategies, all of which are based on my own experience self-distributing my graffiti doc, Bomb It. For filmmakers who are extending this DIY thinking to DVD retail by selling their own discs through a Web site or online store, this article will explore some of the ways you can cost-effectively publicize these releases, draw in potential customers and create revenue for your film.
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