My Toxic Backyard for Sale

My Toxic Backyard is available for sale on the webpage and at Amazon.  

Rent it on Amazon!

You can buy DVDs directly on the webpage. Click "purchase" and it will take you to the official store here: https://www.createspace.com/433956  If you'd rather go through Amazon here's a link for DVDs: http://amzn.com/B00UGJCPYE. You can get free shipping with orders over $35.  

If you haven't read about how I messed up my first project with Createspace you can go back and see why there's a separate page and project that I manage for VOD (Video on Demand.)  That link is here: www.amazon.com/dp/B00U7UVE1W


UPDATE: After about 14 weeks, the VOD option is now live on Amazon.  I was bringing a retired project back out of retirement and was told it should take about 2 weeks.  I think this long wait was a fluke.  The staff was very helpful every time I reminded them that I was still waiting.  My main takeaway is, make sure your project is live and available on Amazon well before you want to announce it.

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.

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.  I’m planning more than one release.  First, there were film festivals, then a limited theatrical release, then broadcast.  After that comes the opportunity for people to purchase the film on a DVD and finally it will be available as VOD (video on demand, both rental and download.)  

The reason I’m doing it that way is, I’ll be able to do more than one release announcement blasted on social media and I’ll make more through DVD sales than VOD so I’d rather most people that are interested purchase a DVD.  Making that the only option for a while, will get impatient people to do just that.  I don't want to miss out on sales though, so shortly after the DVD release will be VOD so that the documentary is widely available to as many potential audience members as possible.

Make sure you have a plan for how you want to release your movie, before you get to that point.  You don't want to miss out on a chance to have your movie in a film festival because you released it online too early.  And you don't want people buying a copy at home before you do a theatrical release, if you want to go that route.  Timing is important.  Make the most of it.

Broadcast

Because I had a documentary film, it made sense to broadcast it over the air for free on TV (I should say free for anyone to view, not free for me to play it.  Buying air time was actually pretty expensive.)  This might not make sense for most projects, but I’ll tell you why I did it.

First and foremost, I wanted to make sure that everyone in the area had an opportunity to see the documentary without having to purchase a copy.  I think it's important information for people to have no matter where they live, but most especially in Western North Carolina where the documentary was shot.  Having it broadcast also made it eligible for awards like the Emmys and I wanted to have a chance to enter it.  I should hear if it's nominated in May.  Keep your fingers crossed.

In order to have it broadcast, it had to be closed captioned.  There are multiple ways to close caption a film both in how you create the captioning and how you deliver the film with captioning.  I used Adobe Premiere to caption and I ended up needed 2 types of files for delivery.  For broadcast I had to embed the closed captioning in a quicktime file.  Later for selling on Amazon I had to create a separate file called a scenarist closed caption or .scc file.

After having done the work myself, I now know that I'll probably hire someone next time.  It's not that expensive to have a company do it for you and it's so worth the money.  Captioning was long and extremely tedious, but I'm glad for the experience and for gaining a better understanding of how it all works.

I had some difficulty finding a local station that would air my movie because it's a point of view documentary.  Here's a link to a previous post with more on that. 

Warning the follow is boring technical information.  Only Read this if you want more info on captioning in Adobe Premiere CC:

1. You can import a file into premiere or do it from scratch.  I made mine from scratch.  Right click in your project window and choose "new item - closed caption" (bottom right of the project window.) The default is CEA-608 and CC1.

2. You won't be able to see any captions until you go to the upper right corner menu in your program and source monitors and click on "closed caption display - enable."  But that alone isn't enough. You must make sure you are enabling CEA-608 (the default on the monitor was CEA-607 for me. You won't see the captions unless the type you are making matches what you've set to display!)

3. To edit your captions go to the "window" menu and click on "captions" to see the window you'll need to edit in.  Click on the add a new item in the bottom of the project window and choose "captions." (make sure you have selected the caption file in your timeline to see it in the captions window.)

4. Hit the plus button to add a caption and start typing.  You can see the in and out in the timeline, but to change the in and out you have to adjust the time code in the project window.  Text doesn't wrap, so you have to do a hard return at the end of each line.

Those are the basics.  If you have an specific questions leave a comment. Hope that saves you a little frustration in your captioning endeavors.

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.

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?

 

My Toxic Backyard on TV

My Toxic Backyard finally had it's broadcast debut.  It aired on the local CW channel here in Asheville at 5:30am on a Sunday morning (because that's what I could afford.) I ended up buying air time to have it broadcast and with Diamond Brand as an associated sponsor that really helped defray some of the cost.

I submitted My Toxic Backyard back in July to our local PBS channel, but they turned it down.  They sent a letter telling me how much they liked the documentary and that they thought I was a talented filmmaker, but because it was a "point-of-view documentary," they said they did not "have a place in [their] schedule to broadcast point-of-view programs." They went on to say, "for complex issues, like the topic you tackle in your film, we look for a more balanced representation." I can see where they're coming from.  I could have argued that both the EPA and CTS refused to comment on the record, or grant an interview, or even release a statement to me, but I decided to let it go. 

I also tried to buy air time on another station before I went with the CW, but was turned down by that station for pretty much the same reason as PBS.  They bring up an interesting point about documentaries that I've discussed at length with many filmmakers: does a good documentary have to present both sides of an issue or story?  My answer is not necessarily.  While there is always a desire to represent events and people truthfully, sometimes (like in my case) you can't always get all sides.

If all you had to do to make a documentary is make a non-fiction film, one could argue that a gas station owner who has video surveillance is making documentaries.  Certainly it's possible to make a documentary from surveillance footage, but I don't think anyone would call the footage on its own a documentary.  There must be some selection of shots, some choices on what is presented and once that happens, no matter how objective the author of that content is, you are presenting a version of reality. You are manipulating events. 

I think the key is to acknowledge that you are altering information to create a compelling story while also working to present that information as truthfully as possible.  If you are able to present different perspectives in your documentary, I do think that can make the piece stronger, but I also don’t think a documentary should be abandoned simply because you weren’t able to present multiple viewpoints.

Katie

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

Radio Interview for WRLN Arts Radio

While on the Southern Circuit I was interviewed at a public radio station in South Florida: https://soundcloud.com/katiedamien/arts-radio-interview-with-katie-damien

Katie

My Toxic Backyard Wins Best Documentary Film at Greenpoint Film Festival

My Toxic Backyard just won the highest honor a film can win at a film festival: Best Documentary Feature!  I'm so excited!  What an honor!

http://greenpointfilmfestival.org/

Jaime Byrd (second from the left) speaking on a panel at the Greenpoint Film Festival

A news article about the festival

News article continuted

Winner Best Filmmaker in WNC!!!

Thank you to everyone who voted for me as best filmmaker for 2014 in the Mountain Express Best of and also My Toxic Backyard for best film of the year!  Wow! I'm so happy for the attention this brings to the community living around the CTS site and long fight they have had for safe drinking water. I'm so honored!

Katie

http://bestofwnc.com/category/arts-entertainment/locally-made-film/
http://bestofwnc.com/category/arts-entertainment/local-filmmaker/

My Toxic Backyard in Southern Circuit

So excited to have My Toxic Backyard accepted to the Southern Circuit film screening tour. http://www.southarts.org/touring-arts/southern-circuit/  This documentary is 1 of only 18 films that made it in!!!  I'll be traveling across 5 states to host screenings at different universities and art collectives.

My Toxic Backyard has it's Theatrical Release

 
A special limited theatrical release of My Toxic Backyard.  The poster is up at the Fine Arts Theater in downtown Asheville and check out the markee! Available to see on the big screen for 1 full week! May 8-15th at 7pm.  Get out and see it while you can.

Thin Line Film Festival Video

Here's a little video I put together of my trip to the Thin Line Film Festival.

World Premiere of My Toxic Backyard

My Toxic Backyard had its first screening at the Thin Line Film Festival in Denton, Texas and I was able to attend.  This was my first time in Texas.  Denton is about 30 minutes North of Dallas.  Sadly I didn’t meet any real cowboys on my short visit. I had been expecting to see horses, holsters and hats everywhere.  The cowboy hats I did see a lot of, but Texans are not all cowboys.  In Denton everyone happen to be friendly and welcoming.  The land is flat and scrubby, but the sky is huge.  I know the sky seems like the kind of thing that should be the same everywhere you go, but it’s not.  In Texas the sky is just bigger.

There was a great line up for documentary films at Thin Line.  The festival covered room, board and transportation while there.  The staff was fantastic.  They were on call 24 hours a day!  The greenroom was stocked with food and drinks and was a great place to network with other filmmakers and VIP festival goers.  I met some great people there.  The town square is really cute and full of musicians.  I think over half the population is in a band.  My screening was at the Campus theater, which was a wonderful historic theater in the middle of town.  This was my first time attending this wonderful documentary film festival and I tip my hat to the festival organizers for putting on such a great festival.

Press: Watered Down

BY DOROTHY FOLTZ-GRAY, Bold Life Magazine

Katie Damien surveys the Superfund site, that is the subject of her documentary, My Toxic Backyard, from across the street. Photo by Rimas Zailskas

Five years ago, filmmaker Katie Damien searched for a home to buy in South Asheville off Mills Gap Road. "Prices were so much lower than in other places in Asheville," says Damien, a five-time Southeast Regional Emmy winner. "But my friend said, 'Don't buy there. There's something wrong: People are getting cancer.' I stopped looking, but I couldn't stop thinking about the people living there. It haunted me."
The haunting resulted in Damien's first feature-length film, My Toxic Backyard, an hour-long documentary about the South Asheville Superfund site leaking toxic chemicals into the ground water surrounding the area.

CTS Corporation, a global manufacturer of electronic components, purchased the site in 1959, closing it in 1986. But the Environmental Protection Agency did not name it a Superfund site until 2012. The Superfund was established in 1980, when President Jimmy Carter signed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA, or Superfund) into law. The law enables the EPA to clean up hazardous waste sites.

The EPA first assessed the Asheville site in 1985, finding no evidence of contamination. In 1991, CTS itself notified the state of contamination, but EPA again signed off on the site. Residents believe that 74 cases of cancer have occurred with a mile of the site. And residents' complaints have kept EPA returning, each time finding more evidence of toxins in the ground water.

Damien's film focuses on several affected families: Aaron Penland, who opens the film by pointing to family members, victims of cancer appearing in a family movie, "a death video," he says; Tate MacQueen who moved his family into a tiny apartment to get them away from the water; and Shannon Mead whose constant illness forced her to miss the first seven years of her first child's life.

As the film proceeds, Damien highlights community meetings with EPA officials who appear puzzled by the residents' anger. She alternates such scenes with alarming pictures of toddlers running in sprinklers or drinking from icy water glasses.

Damien toiled on the film for five years, completing it in December 2013. "I thought it was going to be a one-year project," says Damien. "But I was shooting, editing, and doing the research and audio by myself."
For the final year, she was joined by others, including the film's editor, Jamie Byrd, also a filmmaker. "I was so tired, and I had collected so many interviews and so much information," says Damien. "Jamie breathed new life into the project. I was trying to pack in information, but she is more about heart and telling people's stories."

Damien invested more than $10,000 of her own to buy equipment she needed. And she raised $5,000 through Kickstarter, an organization that allows supporters to pledge money for creative work in return for small rewards such as a free ticket to a screening.

Now, she's busy submitting the film to festivals, accepted so far by The Thin Line Festival in Denton, Texas. And she's sending copies to state legislators who are deciding whether to loan Asheville the money to connect affected families to city water.
Damien wants the film to stir up questions about what's happening in our own back yards. "I feel like the society is so concerned about the economy, saying 'We'll deal with the environment once the economy comes back,'" she says. "But the longer we wait, the worse the environment will get."

Damien doesn't begrudge the money she's spent on the film: "Everyone contributed more than they were paid," she says. Besides, she didn't get into filmmaking to make money but to fuel her early passion. "I started when I was 12, making plays with my sister and cousins. And then my uncle gave me a movie camera. My first film was so bad I erased it, but I had so much fun. I thought, 'This is what I will do for the rest of my life.'"

After high school, the Fort Lauderdale, Florida native headed to the University of Central Florida, a place where film students can direct their own projects. Her first documentary — a film about Florida cowboys, Cowmen — won third prize at the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival. "I knew the cowboys probably wouldn't be around long, and I thought I should tell their story," she says.

Later, for five years, she worked in broadcasting on cruise ships, traveling the world. Then she followed her parents to Asheville, taking a job at WLOS, where she is Creative Services Producer.

Her next film is a comedy, One Hell of an Angel. "It's about an angel and demon forced to work together to help a washed-up rock star write a song to save the world," she says.
The theme's not surprising: For Damien, teamwork — and perseverance — are key to good filmmaking: "Asheville's great for independent filmmakers. People here open their doors. Still, it can be daunting and frustrating. So many films never get finished. You have to make an investment in yourself and trust your own work. And the end goal is to do the story justice."

My Toxic Backyard
Coming to Asheville
this spring
www.mytoxicbackyard.com