Saving Jake Behind the Scenes

It was a cold, wet shoot for all our present day scenes.  The cast and crew were incredible!  Working in tough conditions and never complaining.  So excited to see this footage.

One Hell of an Angel Production Stills

 

Local Filmmakers Screening

I had a short excerpt from "One Hell of an Angel" screen at the Fine Arts Theater along with other local filmmaker's work.  It was a wonderful evening!  The audience was fantastic and they laughed at all the right places.  It was a good piece to tease the movie with.  Right now I'm slowing collecting the last of our digital FX from our awesome FX guru.  Our composer is about to send me the rough score to listen to and our Foley artist is working on getting all the sound FX we need created.  Once all these elements are completed and added to the cut, it will go off to our sound designer and hopefully we'll manage to get some color correction in there. Then we can call the movie finished!

Picture Locked

We are officially picture locked! This is a huge milestone for "One Hell of an Angel."  This means there will be no more cutting of the image part of the film. Now our sound work, music and digital FX can move forward. Cheers everyone!

Free Pre-production Documents to Download

CALL SHEET

BUDGET

CREW CONTRACT

PERSONAL RELEASE (for actors)

SIMPLE PERSONAL RELEASE

How to Distribute an Independent Film in 8 Steps

Self-distribution used to be a sad term for people who made movies so bad no one wanted to pay money to see them.  Today it’s not shunned the way it used to be, in fact there’s great potential for the artist making the movie to cut out the middle man and go straight to audience members.  Everyone wins right?  Well sort of.  Most artists make terrible businessmen and vice versa.  There’s a ton of media available on a ton of different platforms, how are people supposed to find your little film among the fray?  If you’re going to self-distribute, you the artist are now responsible for getting your film to audience members.  Most filmmakers study shot composition and acting.  We’re storytellers not story sellers.  So how does it work?  I don’t know yet.  This is my first foray into being a story seller, but here’s a candid break down of what I’m doing with my first feature film, My Toxic Backyard

Click the Links to go more in depth.

1. Film Festivals

Feature films fees average about $50 per entry.  Then if you make it in, you want to be able to attend and network.  The costs can add up quickly.  Did you remember to budget for it?

2. Marketing

You have to spend money to make money right? 

3. Limited Theatrical Release

Having a theatrical release seems really lofty, but it’s totally doable.

4. Broadcast

Because I had a documentary film, it made sense to broadcast it over the air for free on TV.  This might not make sense for most projects, but I’ll tell you why I did it.

5. Scheduling Releases

With multiple ways for people to view your movie, you can make it available only one way at a time and maximize your revenue and announcement process.

6. Traditional distribution

This used to be the only way to go, but now with alternative distribution you have choices to make.  Traditional distribution has both advantages and disadvantages.

7. Self-Distribution

What do you need to have together to get your movie ready for distribution?  How long will take?  I went with Createspace.  I'll tell you why I did and what I learned through out the process.

8. See the Film Referenced Here

I keep talking about this film My Toxic Backyard that I am in the process of selling.  Check out the actual film and see how it looks on Amazon and in my official store set up through Createspace.

Everything you read here is just my opinion and my personal experiences going on this crazy roller coaster ride.  If you're not a filmmaker, I hope you gained a little insight into what it's like as an independent artist trying to make it in the world.  If you are a filmmaker, hopefully you'll have a little more knowledge after following my film's journey and maybe it'll save you a little frustration with your own work.

Katie

Traditional distribution

This used to be the only way to go, but now with alternative distribution you have choices to make.  Traditional distribution has both advantages and disadvantages and a lot of how you choose to proceed will depend on the kind of deal you’re offered.  Going with traditional distribution may not be the best way to get your movie seen and sold...

But it never hurts to try.  The advantage with traditional distribution is that established distribution companies have experience and will market your film and get it seen places that you might not have thought of.  The downside is they take a huge cut out of the profits to do this and many times the filmmaker hardly sees a dime.  Another downside is that there are many small distribution houses that will take your film and sometimes your money and do nothing with it.  You have to do your research and be really careful who you trust.  One good rule of thumb is don’t give them any money up front.  Look at their library of other work and see if your film is a good fit there.  And ask what their marketing strategy is for your film and how they plan to sell it and reach audiences.

You might be able to use multiple distributors for different markets.  There’s domestic (US) and foreign sales and you might strike one deal with one distributor and have a different deal for a different region with another. You can find distributors online through web searches.  The search method I've used is to find a film similar to mine, see who the distributor is and look up the contact info and just cold call.  You'll stand a better chance of getting through to someone if you have a sales agent.  They can be expensive though and your film will probably be one of many in their roster, but they have connections that you don't.

If you can't afford a sales agent and want to have a better chance of making a connection with a few, well researched distributors you might consider a trip to a film market.  The Cannes Film Market (Le Marché du film) is the largest market in the world and The American Film Market (AFM) is the largest in America.  You'll want to set up multiple meetings well in advance and do lots of prep work on who you want to meet, your pitch and your business card.  Attending a market is an expensive endeavor and you definitely want to do your homework ahead of time.

For My Toxic Backyard, I’ve been approached by a few acquisitions people.  These are the people that look for new films to add to their company’s inventory.  You’ll find them at film festivals and film markets and when you win awards, they’ll start to find you.  I’ve sent screeners to them, and I even followed up to see if they’d had a chance to see my film but it never went anywhere. 

Being a documentary with educational value, my next step will be to approach companies that distribute educational copies to college and university libraries.  Media copies are much more expensive than personal copies (like what you would buy or rent at home) because with media copies you get licensing to have screenings in classrooms full of kids and it can be checked out and seen over and over without additional fees.  Media copies can run anywhere from $100 to $500.  And since it’s a completely different kind of licensing and audience, it won’t interfere with distribution for home use.  Next I'll talk about self-distribution.

Limited Theatrical Release

Having a theatrical release seems really lofty, but it’s totally doable.  First, find a small art house movie theater and see if you can get them to give you a screening, maybe at an odd time, maybe for one time only, but see if they’ll split the ticket revenue with you.  Usually the theater keeps 60% of ticket sales and the distributor (in this case that’s you) gets 40%.  You might think, yea of course they’ll go for it, I’m the one giving them my movie, but keep in mind that you’re a risk to them from a business standpoint.  You are responsible for getting people to buy tickets, not them.  You have to advertise your own screening and fill up those seats.  They’ll post the time your screening is happening and maybe they’ll have a marquee or something, but you have to do everything else.  That’s what traditional distributors do, that’s why that system is still in place.  It works.  Distributors buy airtime and ad space.  They screen trailers and get posters out there and seen so people know there’s a movie at the theater that they need to go see.

If the theater doesn't want to take a chance on you, that’s totally understandable and you can still do a screening, just rent the theater.  You can rent a small movie theater at anywhere from $300-$500.  Now there’s no risk to the theater and let’s say you sell tickets at $10 a pop, if you rented the theater for $300 that’s only 30 tickets you have to sell to break even.  Anything over 30 is 100% profit going straight to you.  You might actually make money.

One thing you'll have to get together a head of time is a DCP of your film.  DCP, or Digital Cinema Package is the format you'll need to have your film in so it will play in a professional digital projector.  That can be an expensive endeavor if you have someone else do it ($1,500 to $3,000) but I made one with Open DCP.  It was a pain, but worth it.  I have more info on how I did it here.

 Another advantage to a theatrical release is a film critic might now review your film, since it’s available to the public.  You might be able to do this at the film festival stage with local critics in the area the festival is happening, but there are lots of films for them to write about and it’s harder to get a review.  In your home town, you stand a better chance.  Reviews give you free advertising, an unbiased opinion that people are more likely to trust and critical reviews show that your film is of interest to the public.

My Toxic Backyard screened at a fantastic local arts theater, the Fine Arts Theater, for a week, which was unprecedented and awesome.  There was never a sold out screening, and audience sizes varied greatly from day to day.  I was a little disappointed at my own inability to fill the theater.  Even with extensive community outreach weeks before the screening, a story on the local news, radio interviews and magazine articles it wasn't enough to generate as strong of a turn out as I would have liked.  I was able to split ticket sales and still made some money.  I also got two movie reviews in local papers.  Both were really positive!  It was definitely a worth while venture, just not something to take lightly.

Marketing

You have to spend money to make money right?  Sadly, that’s true especially if you see your time as having a monetary value (and you should.)  If you’re like me, you’re working a day job to pay the bills and making your movies on the side with the dream that you’ll be able to one day leave all that 9 to 5 madness behind and just make movies for a living.  But until that day comes, remember that just because it’s called free time, that doesn’t mean it comes without a price.

So where should you spend the precious little money you have for this venture into independent film marketing?  Well you can start with a solid poster and trailer.  Those are your main selling points.  People will look at those two things and decide in an instant whether or not they want to spend their time and hopefully some of their cash watching your movie.

Then there’s your website.  That’s a showcase piece as well.  You might hire someone to make yours and optimize it’s performance.  I thought about that, but I ended up going with wix.  I tinkered around with the design for a while before I decided to spend any money and I like the ease with which I can update and change things.  There are other similar sites, squarespace comes to mind, Weebly, maybe you’re a Word press person.  There are lots of options.

Getting reviews and press about your movie is extremely helpful.  I'll talk about doing a theatrical release in the next post and how you can get movie reviews, but in the mean time get to working on a press kit, you'll need that.  You can google articles on how to make a good press kit for your film, but briefly you'll need: contact info, a short, medium and long synopsis, bios for your cast and crew, photos, and you might want to include a director's statement.

You’re not likely to make the nightly news with your big DVD release, but after you’ve gotten the accredited critics to review your film, you might find some smaller online places that will give you a fresh review just before your online release.  You’ll probably want to do a google search for these wonderful, lovers of movies who are willing to take the time to not just watch your work, but also write about it.  I got a review from Rough Cinema.  In the past I’ve had reviews from Film Threat, they charge a small fee, but honestly I’m surprised anyone will do that kind of work for free.

Mail Chimp is a real thing, it’s not just something you hear about on podcasts.  It’s pretty awesome too.  You can have multiple lists of people and send out customized “campaigns” which are just a way to mass email people on your list.  Hopefully lots of people have signed up to get these, which means they’ve expressed an interest in what you’re doing and won’t see these email updates as spam.  It’s free up to a point.  There’s no reason not to start using it.  I think if you get to the point where you have so many subscribers that you have to pay a fee, it’ll be well worth the money.  They do automation, but you have to pay for that too.  So if you don’t mind doing everything manually, it’s a great way to reach your target audience.  Want to subscribe to my email list?  Click here. See how easy that is? 

Traditionally feature films would spend as much on P&A (Prints and Advertising) as the budget of their film.  Make a million dollar film, spend a million to market it.  But if you don't have a million laying around, here's a range you might be able to work in from very low to very high:

Marketing Budget Breakdown

Poster design: $300 to $2,000
Website hosting and design: $120 on a DIY platform to $4,000 for pro design and SEO
Trailer: $100 canned music and you cut it to $15,000 for a trailer house to do it all
Business Cards: $20 for small batch free template to $2,000 for a custom design
Social Media Guru: $0 and just your time, if you do it to $25-$50 per hour
Advertising: $1 on google ad words to infinity
Publicist: $3,000 to $10,000 per month (usually with a 3 month minimum)

Film Festivals

Feature films fees average about $50 per entry.  Then if you make it in, you want to be able to attend and network. That can cost you $650 to$1650 per person per weekend (my breakdown at the bottom.) A regional festival within driving distance is really the only way you can do it on the cheap.  You have to make a very well researched list and budget for all that.

Let me preface this by saying you don’t have to go this route, it’s expensive and if you have something that you think is sellable, but maybe not a good fit for festivals, skip this one and go to the next step.  That said, you only have one year of exclusivity to hit as many film festivals as you can and try to rack up some laurels.  My Toxic Backyard screened at 9 festivals (one of which was an amazing film tour) and won 2 awards.  Done and done.

 
The cost was high though.  I spent about $1000 just in submission fees (I submitted to a lot more festivals than I got into.) It’s more fun to talk about the places you get accepted, then all the places you’ve been rejected from.  It can be really disheartening to get all those rejections, but you have to develop a thick skin and learn not to take it personally.  Sometimes you don’t even get rejected because the screeners and programmers of the festival didn’t like your film. They might love it, but aren’t able to find a place for it with all the other films they have programmed.  Maybe it just doesn’t fit time wise and/or theme wise.  If you really want to get an idea of what film festivals have to go through to choose the films they’ll go with, volunteer to be a screener.  It’ll be good experience and film festivals need all the help they can get. 


Then there were additional costs in traveling to some of the festivals.  Keep in mind staying in NYC for a festival is a lot different than staying in a small town in Texas.  Sometimes you might get help with room and board from the festival.  They might offer free hotel rooms or at least discounts.  It never hurts to ask, if you’re planning on going. Couch surfing is a thing.  I've hosted and been hosted and had good experiences.  You also might look at youth hostels.  I've done that before too.

So what do you get out of all that?  It’s fun.  I love traveling and I love movies and this is the best possible mash up.  Your film finds audiences.  Festivals are great places to have your film showcased.  You can engage the audience, generate some buzz, and have a lot of people see your work on the big screen.  You might find some distribution for your film.  Then there’s the laurels.  Laurels say: this film was chosen with a select few out of the hundreds of other independent films made that year because someone thought it was worth seeing.  Film festival acceptances and awards say to the average viewer that someone thought this was better than the rest.

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Festival Travel expense breakdown:

Plane ticket: : $300 to $1,200 (overseas)
Accommodation for 3 nights: $80 at a youth hostel to $500 hotel
Travel: $0 if shuttled by festival staff to $100 for train/bus/shared taxi fare to $400 car rental
Food: $100 to $300 you gotta eat something
Drinks Entertainment: $60 to $300 you gotta meet people
Miscellaneous: $100

Marketing Materials are in a separate blog entry.  You want to have all that together before you even submit.  Don't forget to budget for that too.  Why would you spend all this money to submit to festivals, if you don't have a poster, trailer, website and business cards?  Why also would you submit, if you had no plans to attend any festivals?

 

Film Festival Run Down

You pretty much have a year to show your film on the film festival circuit.  Most festivals won't let you release your film to the public before it screens at their festival and most don't want movies more than a year old.  So a year is about all the time you have for that.  Why?  It's hard enough getting people to attend a film festival, but they keep attendance up by giving cinephiles something different than the mainstream, something new and fresh, and something exclusive.

My Toxic Backyard has had a great run. It's been accepted to 9 different film festivals and even won best film at one of them, which makes this year a great success.  Whenever possible a filmmaker should attend the festivals where their film is screening. I've chronicled my experiences at the Thin Line Film Festival (plus a video here) and on the Southern Circuit (and a radio interview.)  I couldn't make it to the Greenpoint Film Festival but, I was able to send my associate producer, writer and editor Jaime Byrd to accept our award there.

Here is a run down of all the festivals and awards My Toxic Backyard has garnered in the past year:

Winner: Best Documentary Feature, Greenpoint Film Festival
Winner: Best Film, Mountain Express Best of WNC 2014
Nominated: 4 Emmys Including:
      Best Documentary: Katie Damien, Jaime Byrd, Michael Klatt, Bob Peck
      Best Cinematography: (Non-news Photography) Katie Damien
      Best Editing: Jaime Byrd, Katie Damien
      Best Audio Post: Bob Peck, Jaime Byrd, Katie Damien 
Official Selection: Southern Circuit
Official Selection: Thin Line Film Festival
Official Selection: Twin Rivers Film Festival
Official Selection: Reel and Meal
Official Selection: Utopia Film Festival
Official Selection: River's Edge Film Festival
Official Selection: Wild Goose Festival
Official Selection: Compress Fest (trailer)
Official Selection: AAAC Creative Sector Summit

The Cleveland International Film Festival

I just wrapped up a whirlwind weekend at the Cleveland International Film Festival. What a great experience! I can't recommend this festival enough. Not only where the theaters packed, but there were huge crowds waiting in standby lines to see films, the staff were all wonderful, the festival was well organized, and they treated filmmakers very well. I got to speak on a panel, see my movie beautifully projected on the big screen and do a Q&A with the audience after.

I met so many great filmmakers, like the very funny and charismatic Marvin Solomon from LA with a fantastic comedy short "Tug" in the same block as my film. The enigmatic Nic Balthazar from Belgium with 2 feature films at the festival (I got to see "Time of My Life" and was blown away by it, great writing, acting, everything, bring tissues if you get a chance to see it.) There was Valerie (international short film winner) and Fabrice from Paris who were both charming and easy-going. Mike "LJ" Littlejohn who was working at the festival and always made our evenings out even more entertaining, though he had been working all day and I'm sure he wasn't getting enough sleep. And so many more. I have made great connections at this festival. I cannot say enough good things about it. If you ever have the chance to go, do it! Stay tuned for the video.

Katie

P.S. - I've now heard back from all the festivals I submitted films to and Cleveland is the only one I got into.  I spoke to a filmmaker who suggested I submit to more LGBT fests and he would give me a list.  So I might do that now.  As always, I'll keep you posted.

Making a Film Festival Run

Film Festivals are tricky business.  As an independent filmmaker with short films, there aren't that many more venues out there to get work seen.  With that in mind, I sent my movie, "Second Parent" out to 6 major film festivals:

South by Southwest

Cleveland International

Atlanta International

The Florida Film Festival

Aspen Shorts Fest

and Nashville Film Festival

In addition, I also sent it out to two smaller fests: the Seattle True Independent Film Festival and Inside Out Toronto LGBT Film Festival.  Most of the festivals I've had my shorts play at in the past have been smaller, niche festivals where my work stood a better chance of being accepted.  So just getting in to one of these six major festivals is a huge honor!

So far I've been rejected from South by Southwest....but I made it into the Cleveland International Film Festival! http://www.clevelandfilm.org   I'll let you know if my movie makes it into any others.

Katie

On the Cover of Scene Magazine!

Photo by Matt Rose/Asheville Scene

When my short film "Second Parent" won first place here in Asheville, the local paper decided to interview me and take pictures for their scene magazine insert.  It was so hard being on the other side of the camera.  Now I realize why people need so much reinforcement when they are modeling.  The whole time I was just thinking "Did you like that?  Did you get it?  Should I try something else...oh... no?  Keep doing what I'm doing?  Soft smile?  Is this soft? How about this? What do you mean relax?  I am relaxed..."  And that was just some of the inner monolog running though my head.

On the movie web page I've linked below, you'll find the pictures from the article and an except from my part in it:

http://2ndparent.blogspot.com/p/press.html

Katie

My movie in Google+ Film Festival

This is the 2nd Film Festival my movie "Second Parent" has made it into!  And unlike most festivals which only take place at a particular physical location, this one is happening as an online event.  So you can all finally see my movie!  It will be playing in a block of shorts on Saturday December 1st at 8pm (Eastern Standard Time) 5pm for my West coast friends and family.

Go to: https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/c3e426r5u1pv0knk8vhge1gj9ok for the event info.
And for more info on the festival: http://www.ugpff.com

This is the only time you'll be able to see my movie this year.  I can't make it available on youtube or any other site like that because I'm still submitting it to Film Festivals.  So if you want to see the movie along with some other great short films, follow the links above and mark your calendars.  I'll be available online for a Q&A after the films.

Katie

About This Blog

I call myself a filmmaker first, a director if you want to get specific. But that's not the only thing I do. Actually I do other work to pay for my filmmaking habit. Someday I'm confident that I will be paid to make movies, that day just hasn't arrived yet. So in the meantime I work as a photographer and Broadcast Tech on cruise ships (person in charge of all the programming that goes out to the TVs on board: satellites, computerized programming, tape decks, etc.) I'm in the process of fulfilling one of my other ambitions in life, to be a world traveler. I work on cruise ships sailing the globe for half the year and the other half I spend on land working as a photographer and making independent films.

Some of this blog will be about travel and ship life, some about making movies and working on independent films, and some about photography, commercial work, weddings and more. Please feel free to make comments and ask questions, but know that if I'm on a ship I have to pay for my internet access by the minute and I might not get back to all the questions asked until I'm back on land.

Disclaimer: This is part of a bigger email list where more pictures are attached. In this blog I can only attach a couple pictures per post so I might sometimes make references to pictures that aren't attached here. I'm a hopeless optimist. I'm one of those people who can't see problems coming because I'm just blind to most bad things. I tend to present an idealistic version of reality. I make ship life and film work look fun and easy…it's not always that way.