Grassroots Movie Theaters- Concluding Idea Series, #3

In previous posts, we have explored how grassroots and DIY exhibition could be a viable way for filmmakers to distribute their films instead of relying on conventional distribution deals.  However, many of the filmmakers we have interviewed have noted how exhausting it can be to spend time and money to both make their film and distribute it on their own. Before the digital age of film, it was easier for new filmmakers to get discovered since fewer movies were being produced.  With the influx of films that get submitted to festivals along with Hollywood's growing tendency to only distribute blockbuster movies that appeal to a global marketplace, it is increasingly difficult for independent filmmakers to distribute new and original films.

Since studios are taking less of a chance on distributing independent films in movie theaters, a potential solution is for independent filmmakers to create their own movie theater circuit.  In a previous post, we interviewed Jay Craven, who successfully distributed his films by creating his own screening circuit in rural New England towns. Jay was successful at screening his films this way by targeting the same rural New England towns where many of his films were set.  He was able to then tap into an audience that would be interested in the cultural aspects of his film.  He also targeted small rural towns where locals were more interested in attending major events in their hometown instead of going to see blockbuster movies in a theater that could be over a half hour away.

What if a collective of independent filmmakers and community organizers created their own distribution circuit, based in towns that are likely to have a strong base of independent movie goers? Not only would this help films that slipped through the cracks on the festival circuit get noticed, but the films that did well on the circuit would get publicity that could help attract a deal with major distributors by showing there is a demand for the film at the local level.

However, finding the right locations to establish these grassroots movie theaters would be key, along with an effective outreach strategy on the ground to publicize film screenings at low costs.  From our background working on the Obama campaign, organizers played a key role in building relationships with supporters and community leaders through one-on-one meetings and cold calling. Similarly, organizers could be hired to build relationships with people in a community to determine the best places to screen films and recruit volunteers to help publicize the screenings. Another key strategy in the Obama campaign was collecting contact information from supporters at rallies, house parties and other events so they could email and call supporters to get involved in future events.  Similarly, a grassroots distribution collective could collect data from audiences at the screenings to better target and market their films in the future.  The data could be shared among the collective so every time a new film is distributed the filmmaker won’t have to start from scratch.

In one of our previous posts, we interviewed Kate West and Jacob Perlin who manage Artist Public Domain and Cinema Conservancy respectively.  The objective of both companies is to enrich culture through finding new venues for independent film.  Jacob suggested one thing that could help independent filmmakers would be,

“Some type of affiliated network where there is someone representing different regions who have more knowledge about it. Like for instance, if you have a [certain kind of] film in New York the goal is Film Forum because it gets the biggest best audience.  But what happens if your film doesn’t get in there? Well the traditional thing was always you open your film in Manhattan because Manhattan is better than Brooklyn but that isn’t the case anymore. Also, do you open your film at BAM or Nitehawk?  Someone outside of New York is not going to know the difference…there are so many iterations that only someone here could know and advise a filmmaker.””

What if there were a group of organizers who worked to distribute a slate of films in the non-traditional venues Jacob discussed in the quote above?  If done effectively, the films could attract buzz for independent films that big studios would never take a chance on since they lack the big stars and the special effects that appeal to a global marketplace.  Furthermore, running local campaigns for independent films based on word of mouth and grassroots strategies like cold calling and one-on-one meetings, might be a cheaper and more effective way of reaching the niche audience for an independent film compared to running a traditional movie theater P & A campaign, which is often expensive and targets audiences that are more interested in seeing blockbuster movies.

There is no doubt an effort for independent filmmakers to create their own screening circuit would take a tremendous amount of time, money and resources.  However, in the long run, it could have a greater impact than Kickstarter and other crowd funding sites that may help a movie get made but often fall short in helping an independent film get seen by a major audience, which after all is the most critical step for gauging whether or not a film is successful. A collective of filmmakers that create their own screening circuit and use grassroots organizing to target their audiences locally may be the secret weapon independent filmmakers have been looking for to help balance the recent tide of blockbuster movies flooding the theaters.

Grassroots Film Collective- Concluding Idea Series, #2

As we get closer to the end of our fellowship, we are publishing a series of blogs that propose would-be final project ideas related to our research on grassroots film distribution. Although we have decided not to turn these ideas into our final project, we hope the series will spark a conversation about possible grassroots tools that will help independent filmmakers distribute their films.  Part 1 of our series was a site that would serve as a Pandora for movie trailers, offering users the ability to type in their favorite movie and instantly watch trailers that relate to that film.  You can read more about our idea by clicking here. Our second CRI final project idea is a Grassroots Film Distribution Collective.  In our study we have found that many independent filmmakers, especially first time directors, feel overwhelmed when they distribute their films.  One of the many directors who we interviewed that felt this way is Marcia Jarmel who co-directed and self-distributed the documentary, Speaking in Tongues.  Although the film had a successful distribution run, Marcia commented, "I started out thinking I could do everything myself, and made myself pretty nuts for a while. It is much, much easier to have an army of people helping you. I think most filmmakers do not have that.”

This lead to us wondering if a film collective could be formed so that when audiences 'opt-in' to a film project--i.e through a crowdsourcing site like Kickstarter, or if they give their information to a volunteer at a community screening, the information is shared and passed on to a group of filmmakers that later use the data to target their audiences in future campaigns.  The mission of the group would be to build one big audience for a slate of films by sharing distribution information and resources with like minded filmmakers.  This is different than the normal distribution plan to build a big list for one film and then never use it again or wait to use the list for two to three years later when the director makes another film.

Unlike other non-profit consulting, this would be a group of independent filmmakers who pool together resources to distribute their films. The group would focus on developing a volunteer structure similar to the neighborhood team model, in which Jeremy Bird, former Obama National Field Director, discussed in our interview here. In the interview Bird suggested community organizers could help distribute films by connecting with non-profits, recruit volunteers to help set up community screenings and call through consumer data to identify target audiences for certain films.  This is similar to an approach that filmmaker and political activist Sandi DuBowski, who we interviewed in a previous post here, adopted to distribute his film, Trembling Before G-d.  Building a grassroots film distribution collective would take significant time, but overtime, if the films did well the data and grassroots resources pooled together by the collective could become invaluable and possibly compete with the publicity campaigns of major studios.

We look forward to your feedback on our second CRI final project idea in the comment secant below. In Part 3 we will discuss an idea for a website that enables filmmakers to plug in information about their film and find out which campaigns would be most effective to distribute their film.

A Conversation with the Filmmakers of Four Eyed Monsters- Does Digital Mean Distribution No Longer Matters?

Following our case study on the independent film Four Eyed Monsters, we decided to interview the filmmakers themselves, Susan Buice and Arin Crumley.  Four Eyed Monsters paved the way for DIY and online/grassroots distribution.  After the film premiered at Slamdance in 2007, the filmmakers found themselves in territory familiar to many independent filmmakers, a successful festival run followed by no distribution deal.  Susan and Arin then decide to market the film themselves by using innovative online tools like a videocast that documented their struggle to distribute the film.  They also created an online petition where fans could sign up to show their support for the film in order to convince local movie theaters to agree to screenings. Eventually Four Eyed Monsters successfully grossed a total of $129,000, $100,000 of which came from online sales. Below is some select excerpts from our interview with Susan and Arin, followed by our key takeaways.

MG: With Four Eyed Monsters it seemed like where you succeeded was on your own and not with the traditional gatekeepers of independent film.  When you look at the big picture of the independent film industry, how do you guys characterize what you did and how it's different?

SUSAN BUICE: A lot of what we were doing was a reaction to the feedback that we were getting on the film festival circuit…We ended up talking to distributors and they said “We like your film but you’re not famous and we can’t really sell a romantic comedy with no famous people in it to an audience; it’s too hard to market.’ And so we were like: we’ll become famous.  We’ll make people 'like us.'  We’ll make this video podcast; we already have this footage. And it wasn’t like ‘Oh we’ll get in this for fame,’ we [said to ourselves] we’ll make something so people have that connection and want to watch a film about whether these two people end up together or not together… So we knew we had this content that was leading into another project and we figured that other project would just be a continuation of Four Eyed Monsters because it was documentary stuff as opposed to narrative stuff.

We were telling distributors ‘we still want you to distribute the film but we’ll just take care of the marketing’ and they [told us] 'That’s not proven, let’s not do it.'  And after we got kind of shut down we [asked ourselves if] we still think it’s a good idea, do we believe in the idea enough ourselves that we would distribute it ourselves if it works. And that’s when we decided to move to my parent’s house and start making video episodes.

MG: You guys got an audience actually in the wake of trying to put out a film and then it ironically allowed you to put out a film in a profitable or break even way. Let’s say I'm not making that film whatsoever [a comedy\drama about online dating]; how do I structure my campaign in a way that uses the takeaways from you guys?

ARIN CRUMLEY: There’s this kind of dream that there’s this social medium button you press and it all works…The difference I believe is the volume of additional content.  Like how much extra stuff other than the movie exists.  And in our case we had more media than the film itself.

You need to create a story world, story universe. And that is maybe not something the filmmaker has planned for. They were hoping they could just get a consultant to come on in and read a little manual and then they’re going to get all the answers and they just have to do that and they’re all set.

For people who love the cinema medium there’s this resistance like “I don’t want to go design video games, that’s not what I do. Why do I have to do that?” No one said you have to do that. I mean in our case we got to make a video podcast that we wanted to make and other documentary media that was really fun to work on. So I think that should be the design challenge. What would be cool that relates to your project that you can make and create a media presence around it?

[For example:] create a trailer that is similar to a Kickstarter or crowdfunding campaign that creates a campaign to distribute the film.  It shows the trailer and then the director pops up on camera and says, “I can’t release the film; sorry, but I would love to… If you can simply request and tell me where you guys are we can do this and we can bring the film to your town”…And they did this with Paranormal Activity after we did this with Four Eyed Monsters and they got like a million people to request local screenings which gave the studio confidence to spend money on a wider release.

MG: Cause that's sort of the magic of Kickstarter, though you're technically raising money what Kickstarter also does is identify an audience. In a way what you're basically saying is you don't need the actual funding part you just need to manifest demand for it?

ARIN CRUMLEY: We are now in an era of post-crowdfunding explosion. So what does that mean? Crowdfund everything? Not necessarily. I think it means something else as well.  There are phases to your production, and different phases that previously wouldn’t have involved marketing of any kind now might.

And this is the idea of [Arin’s website] OpenIndie and other sites like Flicklist -- an app that lets you list films you want to see.  And they're working on a bookmark where on any page any filmmaker could put this universal button [that communicates] “People, hit this button -- this is the only way we’ll know what platforms to put this on or what cities to put this in or what countries this should go to”... Just ask, who are the people who want to see this thing.

MG: Because you were one of the first pioneers to build an online audience, do you think you will distribute your next film by yourself and possibly skip the film festival route? Or do you still see value in those gatekeepers and possibly getting a distributor?

SUSAN BUICE: I still see value in film festivals but it's different than I initially thought. Pre-Four Eyed Monsters I thought you could go to festivals to prove your worth and get picked up.  Now I look at going to film festivals as a way to generate buzz and as a way to meet people for your future career.  Not even to help your film necessarily, but to help you get a job on another film or to help you make your next movie.  I think if we go to film festivals with our next project that is going to be our goal.

ARIN CRUMLEY: It's like a non-event to distribute something. You will, in the process of authoring a film, distribute it; you will put it in a format that is distributable and that is distribution -- you're done. [With] digital, it's invisible.

The conversation about distribution should really just stop. It's so easy. There really should just be a conversation about marketing… The question really is marketing. And I think the answer is… media brand. Sundance is a media brand, HBO is a media brand.  And I think the opportunity right now is to create those media brands.

Key Takeaways:

In conclusion, our interview with Arin and Susan brings up the possibility that distribution has become so easy through digital and online tools, that the process of trying to get a "distributor" to pick up your movie could be more about branding. For example, getting your film distributed by Sony Pictures Classics isn't meaningful in terms of the actual practice of distribution -- ie delivering the film itself to the theaters.  Technology is increasingly making service they provide look more and more overvalued. The P & A costs spent by the distributor often means the filmmaker never recoups. However, the advantage of having a distributor like Sony Pictures Classics is that your film has been validated by the SPC brand. Just like your film playing at Sundance is kind of an award-like validation -- it helps legitimize and market your film but doesn't actually have anything to do with your distribution. Eventually anyone could have the power to digitally send their film to a theater. So what is a distributor left to do? Marketing. Something else that can be increasingly done on the internet.

However, when more and more people have the ability to market, brands mean even more because they help a customer make sense of the chaos of the marketplace.  This explains why festival submissions have increased over the years and major studios still dominate the marketplace.  Since new technology has made it easier and cheaper for people to make movies than ever before, there is a growing need for studios and festivals to act as the curator to the influx of independent films produced over the years.

Nevertheless, Arin highlighted the potential for filmmakers to build their own brands through creative online content like the video podcasts they created for Four Eyed Monsters. The Obama campaign was able to adapt a similar strategy to supersede the conventional news and media markets by generating its own media channels through YouTube and online listservs.  This enabled the campaign to communicate with its supporters efficiently at inexpensive costs and successfully build its own identity. Could filmmakers gain more creative and monetary control of their films by designing their own marking campaigns online instead of relying on studios and conventional movie theaters to brand their films?

However, the Obama campaign was only successful at moving its online community to action through a massive offline effort through phone calls, one-on-one meetings and door to door canvasing on the ground. Recruiting such a large grassroots team for distributing a film does not seem feasible.  Still, the success of the Four Eyed Monsters' videocast reminds us that we should not underestimate how creative online content can be used to build relationships and loyalty with an audience – just like the creative videos of the Obama campaign contributed to a feeling of community and loyalty. Furthermore, with film, it is likely there may be less of a need for as much on the ground organizing as that which is required by a political campaign.

In future posts we plan to further explore creative and resourceful ways filmmakers can build their audience online without relying on the traditional gatekeepers to brand their film.

“Trembling Before G-d” Director Sandi DuBowski Discusses Organizing Around Film

Following our conversation with Obama guru, Jeremy Bird, we interviewed activist and independent filmmaker Sandi DuBowski. Sandi is known for directing and producing the award winning documentary, Trembling Before G-d.  The film tells the compelling story of several gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews who are trying to reconcile their sexuality with their faith. Trembling was very well received on the festival circuit and at the box office, winning seven awards including at the Berlin Film Festival and Chicago Film Festival, and broke the Film Forum’s opening day box office record by grossing more than $5,500 on the day of its single screen New York debut. Sandi later took the film on a town hall-style screening tour to schools and synagogues across the country to spark a conversation about LGBT issues among Orthodox Jews.  Similar to how Obama veteran Jeremy Bird gives consulting advice on grassroots organizing for political campaigns through his firm 270 Strategies, the success of Trembling has resulted in Sandi becoming one of the leading consultants for “issue” organizing around film. The distribution campaign for Trembling focused on the act of screening the film itself instead of an external action like passing a law or signing a petition.  This is a different approach than other issue-based films we have studied in our research like Participant Media’s film, The Visitor, which attempted to engage its audience in a number of external action campaigns on its website, i.e. offering free legal seminars to lawyers to learn how to defend immigrant detainees.  In contrast, Sandi decided to focus the campaign on distributing the film itself because, “Trembling was something that had a lot of resistance, so it really was about building a conversation as opposed to something like having the court law come in and change how the U.S. military deals with rape…” Sandi was able to channel the enthusiasm of LGBT community towards the action of distributing his film by focusing the goal of the campaign to break the silence of a community that many people felt needed to be more vocal. Sandi then formed metrics to gauge the progress of distribution and translate the success of the film to supporters and investors.  Sandi reflects,

“There is a whole growing field in  ‘How do you evaluate this? How do you measure it?’ And for me it was like, if I could create a conversation in a public institution that never had a conversation before, that for me was like a statistical marker of success. If I could get a school that never discusses homosexuality to really have all the teachers have a conversation about it with the principal and social workers, that was a victory.”

From our perspective working on the Obama campaign, metrics for canvassing, phone calls and fundraising played a critical role in giving supporters an understanding of how their time and money contributed to the campaign’s success. Similarly, Sandi shared the stories about people who went through transformative experiences at Trembling screenings to translate the success of screenings in Jewish Orthodox institutions.  These stories helped motivate supporters to contribute money and time to the distribution of the film.  As Sandi states,

“We consistently had a proven track record.  Were able to tell the story of the success about how people’s lives were really changing. It was very much turning a movie into a movement… That strategy for fundraising was throughout the whole process of the film, so it just felt like a continuation of the way I had worked.”

Instead of waiting on a distributor to support his screenings financially, Sandi raised funding on his own so that he could hire a network of outreach directors that helped organize screenings throughout the country.  Sandi discussed, “Everywhere we went, I would hire outreach directors.  I got my distributor to pay me to be an outreach director.  I hired in New York, I hired in Boston, I hired in L.A, I hired in San Francisco, I hired in Chicago, so I built a whole team nationwide, as well as in Canada.”  This is similar to how the Obama campaign hired organizers during the primary.  Sandi would hire organizers 6 weeks before a new screening so they could build publicity and work with different organizations to plan for the event.  He was able to sustain his team of outreach directors by tapping into various financial sources during the distribution process through grants, private donors, grassroots emails and donations.

Sandi also touched on the recurring theme in our research that new technologies make it even more critical for filmmakers to build a team that help manage the many tools available for distribution. Sandi observed,

"Now there’s such a menu of options to mobilize an audience…I think capturing the audience is really important, capturing the data in that room. And really being able to record that data, and having someone on board who can actually do all that social media work and that data recording and that data basing is what we all forget, and then we’re all flooded with information, flooded with data and we have no way of organizing it….I think team building, capacity building is so important right now, and it’s really important to think about how we’re going to run like a mini NGO with our film.”

Sandi’s example proves that filmmakers can build their own distribution team by being nimble with financing and embracing a grassroots structure. We wonder if Sandi’s successful distribution strategy of hiring outreach directors to organize community screenings could be expanded even further through empowering a team of volunteers.  In our recent interview with Jeremy Bird, he highlighted four key grassroots principles that emphasized the importance of data and sharing real responsibility with volunteers. Bird mentioned that what separated the Obama campaign from other grassroots operations in the past is the inherent sense of ownership and trust built into the core of its volunteer structure which is named “The Snowflake Model.’ In the ‘Snowflake Model’ volunteers were assigned to neighborhood teams and given specific roles like Phonebank Captain, Canvass Captain and Neighborhood Team Leader that each played a significant role in the historic turnout efforts of the campaign.  Could a similar model be adapted to empower audiences to get more involved in the distribution of film?  We plan to explore this question in future posts.

Jeremy Bird, 2012 Obama National Field Director, Talks Grassroots Organizing and Film: Part 2

In our previous post we talked to Jeremy Bird, the former National Field Director of the Obama campaign in 2012, and discussed best practices from the Obama campaign that could help filmmakers distribute their films. In this post we will discuss our takeaways and conclusion from the interview. Takeaways

From our interview with Jeremy Bird, it is clear that filmmakers have 3 main disadvantages compared to political campaigns: 1) In film it is hard to access data and it is not clear what data sources will be most effective for targeting audiences, 2) You need experts that can interpret and use data to create models and 3) Models have to be customized to a specific campaign and this takes a lot of money and resources that independent filmmakers do not have.

However, Bird also recalled that when he first worked for the Obama campaign as the Field Director of South Carolina during the primary, they had to build their network and entire operation from scratch like many independent filmmakers when distributing their films. Bird went on to highlight 4 best practices from the campaign that filmmakers could adapt to distribute their movies.

1) Empowering volunteers by sharing access to more data and giving them real responsibility. Bird stressed that volunteers form the foundation of any true grassroots organization and need to be motivated through a sense of trust, responsibility and ownership. One of the major reasons the Obama campaign was able to effectively collect data and target persuadable voters was because organizers recruited an army of volunteers to call and knock on doors to figure out who in the universe were supporters. Without volunteers on the ground to collect information about voters, the data team would have had a far less accurate model of targeting persuadable voters.  This can only be done by giving real responsibility to volunteers and making them understand they are an integral part of the campaign.

2) Organizing consumer data to target potential supporters of a film. This can be the starting point for creating a data set of supporters for a specific film. For example, Bird mentioned the Obama campaign was able to look at consumer data and determine that someone who drove a Prius car is environmentally friendly and therefore a likely Obama supporter. The same type of modeling could be helpful for independent film, i.e. someone who liked the cult film Blue Velvet might also want to see another cult film like, Donnie Darko.  Examining consumer information further, someone who subscribes to Filmmaker Magazine or the Sundance Channel are avid indie movie goers and far more likely to want to see your independent film compared to the average consumer.

3) Creating multiple narratives about your film that market to both broad and niche audiences. The Obama campaign was very creative in forming many sub constituency groups like, Students for Obama, Latino’s for Obama and Veterans for Obama just to name a few. These constituency groups helped attract a diverse range of supporters by making them feel included. At the same time, the Obama campaign used messaging like “Change We Can Believe In” to appeal to a broad audience. In contrast, filmmakers often limit themselves by trying to decide if they should market their film as a story that appeals to the masses or only small niche audiences. The example of the Obama campaign suggests filmmakers might not have to chose and should market to both mainstream and specific groups. For example, filmmakers could cut multiple trailers of their film, one that appeals to the mainstream and other trailers that focus on certain themes that appeal to specific niche groups.

4) Using commit cards to motivate audiences to opt-in to watching your film at home. The Obama campaign increased the turnout of sporadic Democrats, people who have a poor record of voting; by asking them fill out commit cards that were eventually mailed back to their house to remind them they committed to voting. The same strategy could be used to motivate audiences to watch a film at their home. Filmmakers could create a sense of urgency around signing commit cards by sharing goals for number of VOD rentals, or hits on YouTube. For example, “commit to watching ‘Glory at Sea’ March 30th, and help us break our goal of 10,000 views.” Once someone signs an online commit card to watch a film on a certain date, it would then be sent back to them in an email to remind them of their commitment to see the film.

Conclusion

At the end of the interview, Jeremy Bird explained that with digital media the Obama campaign was trying to

“Create our own channel. When you have 20 million people on your email list, you’re no longer reliant on the establishment. We weren’t scared of things that were said about us in the bubble world because we had our own mechanism to distribute information.”

We have studied many independent filmmakers that have created their own distribution channels in order to overcome the established marketplace of Hollywood. However, many of these filmmakers are at a huge disadvantage from the start since there is no organization that can provides them with the necessary data, resources and knowledge they need to run an effective film campaign.

In contrast, political candidates can hire companies like 270 Strategies for consulting advice, and organizations like OFA and the DNC already have large voter databases and email lists they can tap in order to build their campaigns. This makes us wonder if a similar consulting firm like 270 Strategies or an umbrella hub like Organizing for Action, might be helpful for the film world.

However, how would the organization build its email lists and tap into data sources that independent filmmakers could use to grow and target their audiences? Would the organization consist of mostly of people in the film industry, or people from the non-profit and community organizing world? We plan to explore these questions in later posts.

-Michael, Josh and Carl

Jay Craven: Cultivating Your Film Audience

Background & Context This week we interviewed Jay Craven who has developed his own grassroots screening circuit in the specific New England region whose culture, history, and stories take center stage in his films, which often take place in rural Vermont and New Hampshire. For screenings, Jay focuses on small towns, some of which have populations as small as 300. These towns are so small they typically can’t support a movie theater, and so locals typically look to church theater productions and high school sporting events for entertainment. This provides Jay with a unique opportunity to cultivate his own audience instead of competing against big budget films at the box office.

Key Takeaways

Jay has used three grassroots methods to establish a circuit of town screenings: 1) engaging the audience early on to grow a list of supporters 2) turning town screenings into a community event and 3) using offline and online sign-ups to grow his audience.

1) Jay was able to build an infrastructure of grassroots supporters that later helped finance and distribute his feature films by screening short student films in New England towns.  He came up with the idea of using grassroots organizing methods to distribute films during the Vietnam War. Jay explains,

“In 1971, I helped to make a Vietnam War documentary that was called Time is Running Out. We made 50 prints and took it to colleges and communities across the country--to help organize a big civil disobedience demonstration in Washington, DC in May 1971, where 14,000 people got arrested for committing civil non-violence disobedience… It was initially through this experience that the idea of mission-driven filmmaking appealed to me.”

When Jay joined the faculty of Marlboro College, his productions became educational opportunities for his students. He made a regional comedy series (WIndy Acres) with mostly students and he set up internships for ten students on his feature film, Disappearances.  In 2012 he took this idea one step further.  Two-thirds of the crew for his latest film, Northern Borders (2013) consisted of students from a dozen different colleges who came to Malrboro College for a film intensive semester that included literature and film study along with hands-on production classes, visiting artists, and six weeks of feature production, where students worked in substantial positions ranging from script supervisor, boom operator, associate editor, and location manager to assistant directors, costumes, props, and production coordinator. For Northern Borders, half the budget would be provided by Marlboro. This is a great example of the prominence and potential of academic institutions as points of intersections for grassroots ideas and industry tools (what with their shared resources) — a recurring theme we plan to explore later on in our study.

After Where the Rivers Flow North screened at Sundance and other film festivals, Jay activated his grassroots network of supporters in rural Vermont towns to do another round of regional screenings before its theatrical release. The film ultimately grossed a million dollars theatrically.

This is another example of how filmmakers can establish their contacts and audience through other means besides screening their film.  Similar to how B-Side was able to grow its email listserve by providing an online service that people opted into at film festivals, Jay was able to cultivate his own audience in rural New England towns by first organizing a touring film series to small towns where he showed classic, foreign, and indie films, along with his films and his students' shorts. Also similar to how B-Side was able to later use their listserve to distribute Super High Me locally, Jay was able to distribute his future feature films by gradually growing the network of supporters who originally attended his short film screenings.

2) The audience Jay seeks to attract to his town screenings may or may not be consistent movie fans, but they take an active interest in major events in their hometown.  Jay recognizes that,

“half my audience at least does not go to the movies very often except if I bring something to them… The theater is pretty full, and so the audience is reacting together, and there is a kind of chemistry that forms and there is an electricity that comes off the event that is like a performing arts event."

Not to mention that Jay enhances the appeal of the screening by being present himself to hold Q & A’s afterwards at nearly 80% of the events. Furthermore, by making screenings more accessible to residents in rural towns who have limited options for live entertainment, Jay is able to trigger a word of mouth campaign within the community. Jay notes that, “If my movie were playing 25 miles away at a movie theater, people who were motivated and into it would go. But when the movie is in their town or the town next to where they are, and their neighbors and friends are buzzing about it they will go because it is an event.”

From our perspective working on the Obama campaign, making campaign events more accessible played a critical role in expanding the campaigns’ volunteer base.  Similar to how Jay turned church basements, school auditoriums and libraries into town screenings for his film, the Obama campaign transformed barber shops, supporters’ homes and storefronts into phonebanks, voter registration drives and canvasses.  The effort to make the campaign more accessible led to thousands of volunteers to get involved especially in rural areas where supporters would have had to travel 30-60 minutes to reach the closest field office to their town. The accessibility and word of mouth campaign from Jay’s town screenings lead to an average audience of 80 in towns where the population size averaged 300. That means Jay was able to attract 26% of a town’s total population to the screening of his film.

3) Jay also grew his list of grassroots supporters by establishing a solid sign-up process at screenings and through offline postcards. Jay discussed,

“the standard that we have used a lot is postcards because for small and even medium sized towns you can mail a post card to everybody in town… when you go to larger areas you start working with mailing lists… and we have are own [email] lists. I have a solid list that is probably 4,000 people.”

Jay has people who attend his screenings sign in so he can add them to an email list he uses to advertise his screenings locally.  This allows Jay to continuously build his audience through every screening on his tour. In addition to sending emails to advertise screenings, Jay sends offline postcards to residents in small New England towns. Postcards add a personal touch that help Jay advertise in rural areas where people might not have Internet or are not frequent uses of the web.

Conclusion

The main question Jay’s town distribution model raises is whether independent filmmakers are better off trying to reach a demographic beyond indie and blockbuster audiences through local or regional screenings.  Not only is this method cost effective, but it also provides filmmakers with an opportunity to tap into support from people in small towns that are not lured into high budget Hollywood movies and more likely to appreciate the regionally specific cultural aspects of independent film.

However, Jay’s town circuit is dependent upon a very specific region of northern England where the setting of most his films take place.  Could town screenings for independent films be effective in other rural and medium sized towns across U.S? Should independent filmmakers consider making screenings more accessible to people in small towns where the cultural themes and setting of their film resonate? By knowing that his film will connect with a specific audience that he knows he’s going to target, Jay can avoid the problematic bottleneck “gatekeepers” of independent film festivals. We plan to explore how Jay Craven’s town screening model might be applicable for distributing independent films with different cultural themes in future posts.

-Michael, Josh and Carl

Online Distribution & Grassroots Distribution: Notes from a fellow CRI Fellow's Symposium

Claire Harlem’s CRI symposium on community and online distribution reflected a year of hard work and offered new insights into how the Internet is changing production, financing, and distribution. Claire’s program was especially relevant to our study since the Internet is a key tool for grassroots self-distribution. Here is a link to Claire’s fellowship blog from last year. During Claire’s symposium, several entrepreneurs spoke about social media sites they designed to help filmmakers raise funds and distribute their movies. The first presenter was Emily Best, the CEO and President of Seed&Spark.  Seed&Spark has a similar platform to Kickstarter with project pages that display a trailer, summary of the film, and prizes for donors. However, the Seed&Spark website also includes a wishlist where donors can contribute money or loan supplies that a filmmaker needs to make their movie. This feature seeks to tap into the “higher sense of service to others” that we discussed in our previous post Giving vs. Taking here.  Basically, creating a sense of service to others can be more effective than offering monetary rewards in motivate people to contribute since people have an inherent desire to help others in need.

However, Seed&Spark supplements the altruistic spirit presented by the wishlist with various material incentives and prizes for people who contribute. Similar to Kickstarter, Seed&Spark offers people who donate or loan supplies to a film project prizes such as DVD’s or movie posters. In addition, “sparks” points are awarded to people who sign up to follow projects, spread publicity for other films or watch films through the online cinema feature on the site. “Sparks” can then be used to watch movies offered on their cinema site or to get discounts from Seed&Spark partners, such as Film Independent and Big Vision Empty Wallet.

The Obama campaign applied an approach similar to that of Seed&Spark by having wishlists at field offices that displayed everything local offices needed, from food donations to cell phones and computer supplies. However, in contrast to "Seed&Spark," the campaign did not offer rewards or incentives to volunteers who donated. Instead, supporters were given more access to and ownership in the campaign, which motivated volunteers to believe that they were an integral part of a movement. See our post on Motivation and Transparency here.

Another speaker named David Geertz, discussed how his social media website Sokap seeks to create a community-based distribution system through a monetary relationship between the filmmaker and audience. Non-profits and individuals are incentivised to purchase the right to screen films in a town or city for a flat fee and then reap a certain percentage of the profit whenever someone buys the DVD in their area. This motivates people to advertise the film locally since they will receive a percentage of the revenue every time the film sells in their region. The amount of each commission varies between projects and is set by the filmmaker or production company. This model seems best suited for social issue films that relate to non-profit organizations with local chapters.

In contrast to Seed&Sparks, Sokap is focused on motivating audiences to help with the distribution of films locally rather than contributing resources for the production of the films. Furthermore, Sokap incentivizes audiences to get involved in the distribution of film by creating a monetary relationship with the filmmaker and audience, whereas Seed&Spark offers material prizes and “spark” points to motivate audiences.

All the speakers expressed the importance of filmmakers tweeting, facebooking and blogging in order to build their online audience. Although it is important for filmmakers to lay the groundwork for any future film by using social networking sites, we wonder if there is a ceiling to how much new filmmakers can accomplish when they do not have much work that is well known or at least can be shared and linked to on the internet. This is one place where a grassroots approach focused on offline outreach (cold calling non-profits, advocacy groups, etc.) to create relationships would probably bear more fruit in the early days. If no one is aware of who you are, tweeting a lot won’t magically build your audience. However, creating face-to-face or at least telephone relationships with people who have similar interests could result in people feeling more connected to you personally and later becoming more invested in your projects.

Social media platforms like Seed&Spark and Sokap that attempt to help filmmakers fund and distribute their films raise questions about what motivates people to donate their time, money and efforts to a project. Sokap attempts to motivate people to promote films by offering a percentage of the revenue.  Seed&Spark tries to motivate people through a sense of altruism offered by the wishlist and by offering material prizes. However, part of the success of sites like Kickstarter is the simplicity of pressing a few buttons and knowing you've contributed to a film's success. We found on the Obama campaign that when we tried to convey the power of donations in terms of what the amount of money could buy for the campaign, people were less incentivized to give. For example, giving $25 to a presidential campaign is more appealing than the explicit knowledge that that $25 will buy lunch for three organizers. In some cases, people seemed to prefer not knowing precisely how their monetary contribution would be used.

Furthermore, millions of Obama supporters were willing to donate their money without the promise of material rewards largely because it was the ultimate example of giving to a very large cause that they believed in. The campaign built personal relationships with supporters and volunteers, and organizers met with local supporters one-on-one to connect their interests to the goals of the campaign. Through these personal relationships, supporters became more connected to the grand cause of getting Obama elected and driven by indirect prizes that would come from his administration like passing healthcare reform, middle class tax cuts and bringing soldiers home from Iraq. People were inspired to get involved because they felt included in a movement that gave them hope for the future of their country.

Perhaps if filmmakers ran more of an offline campaign to build relationships within a community, audiences would be more willing to donate and loan supplies to film projects, whether online or offline. The Obama campaign was able to create a personal connection with supporters by setting up field offices and deploying thousands of organizers across the country. Obviously, a film campaign is much smaller in size. But perhaps a more narrow and focused approach to offline grassroots organizing would help independent filmmakers grow a deeper and broader connection with audiences online.

-Josh, Michael and Carl

B-Side and “Super High Me” (Interview)

In this post, we present our conclusions from our interview with the former Marketing VP of B-side Entertainment, Liz Ogilvie. Although the company went out of business during the recession, it was a top priority for us to learn about B-side, given their apparent success in using grassroots outreach and community screenings to distribute the film “Super High Me,” which grossed over 3 million dollars with almost no marketing budget. The Start of B-Side

The inception of B-Side Entertainment came from Chris Hyams who previously worked as the V.P. of Engineering at the software company Trilogy. Chris became interested in exploring new ways to distribute independent film when he noticed that his brother John Hyams would screen his documentaries at sold out film festival audiences -- but then the theaters would be empty when studios distributed his film at large. Liz explains: “Chris decided it must have something to do with the audiences that is going to the festival and the experience the audiences are having at those festivals. Is it the element of discovery; is it the fact that the filmmakers are there? … Chris decided that he was going to find a way using technology to seek that answer.”

The Data Behind B-Side

Chris formed B-side in an attempt to use digital tools to discover a more effective way to monetize and distribute independent film. It began by offering an interactive, online festival guide that allowed audiences to plan their experience by organizing their own schedule and then reviewing films. In this capacity, B-Side became an invaluable resource for festival organizers and goers alike, eventually partnering with 245 film festivals, representing the largest online audience dedicated to film festivals. The company did this for free in exchange for the email addresses and other information collected from the audiences that used their program. Liz explains how the data process at festivals worked, “you would go in and be able to do recommendations, comments and reviews and see who else is buying tickets and see how popular the films are … And behind the scenes Chris and a group of tech engineers would be looking at all the data that was coming in.” This gave B-Side valuable information about what films were drawing the largest audiences and what kind of audiences were going to what kind of films. Chris and his team were then able to mine through data to find undervalued films to distribute. Also, half of the more than 3 million people that used the B-Side program opted into their email list, which resulted in B-Side collecting a massive online community they could tap into to help them distribute their films.

The Distribution of “Super High Me”

In 2007, Red Envelope, the distribution branch of NetFlix, decided to partner with B-Side in an effort to distribute the documentary “Super High Me.” In order to avoid the expensive cost of conventional film advertising campaigns, B-Side created their own “Roll your own screening” website that empowered users to host a screening on the celebratory marijuana holiday, “4/20.” Liz explains, “Everybody felt that this was really special and the fact that they were being allowed to do this. They just thought it was the coolest thing imaginable. And the website that we created was really funny… I think people thought that they were involved in a movement that only they knew about and I feel like that is the reason we got so many people talking about it.”

B-Side used its massive email listserve of over 1 million festivalgoers to spread the word about the “Roll your own screening” campaign. Just as B-side built its email list from audience surveys taking at film festivals, the Obama campaign gradually built its massive listserv though offline sign-ups at events, field offices, or canvassing, and by offering things like bumper stickers to supporters on their website. From taking advantage of “opt-in” moments like these, the self-fulfilling cycle of data collection helped both the Obama campaign and B-side grow huge online communities, which in turn made it easier to publicize anything occurring at the community level, with almost no expense. To complement this outreach, B-Side contacted and built relationships with the top pro-4/20 organizations to further publicize the screenings offline.

The diagram below explains how B-Side would identify and target the passionate supporters of a film, and empower them to spread the word of screenings to others through grassroots tools on their website.

You might notice that the graphic resembles the Obama campaign’s Snowflake Model we mentioned here. The Obama campaign similarly empowered volunteers by giving them more access and ownership of the campaign, that made them want to reach out and engage others.

The Success of “Super High Me”

Social media and digital marketing tools helped ignite a word of mouth campaign that equaled the impact of traditional film advertising. Ultimately, the “Roll Your Own Screening” campaign lead to over 1600 screenings on April 20 (the highest number of same-day screenings for a documentary ever) and cost only $8,000 (paid mostly for DVD’s) in print & advertising. For a point of comparison: that is significantly less than what one full-page ad in the New York Times would cost. As word of mouth spread from the screenings, the film sold 85,000 DVD’s in the first year of its release according to Rentrak, resulted in 650,000 NetFlix rentals and grossed a total of 3.4 million dollars. To date it is the second most watched title available on NetFlix Instant.

Lessons from “Super High Me”

B-Side was able to successfully distribute “Super High Me” while avoiding expensive marketing costs by combining three key ingredients: data, social media and grassroots organizing. 1) B-Side gathered data and contact information from audiences at festivals, 2) they created a social media site where fans could easily sign up to express interest in hosting or attending a screening of the film 3) B-Side staff met offline with pro-4/20 organizations to convince them to help publicize the screenings.

B-Side sets an important example of how innovative social media and grassroots methods can save filmmakers millions on marketing costs while at the same time organically build their audience at the local level. In addition, building for local events open up new revenue opportunities for filmmakers. Similar to how bands sell their CD’s and other merchandise when on tour, filmmakers could sell their DVD’s, t-shirts and other merchandise at community screenings to gain more revenue. For example, in B-Side’s distribution proposal for the documentary “Under the Great Northern Lights” about the band The White Stripes, they proposed a t-shirt contest and DVD sales at their “flash” screenings.

Although B-Side folded, Liz was confident that if they had stayed in business for six more months they would have been out of debt and making money for their investors. This leads us to wonder if another company could further develop B-Side’s model of distributing independent films in crowdsourced, locally organized supported screenings to effectively avoid spending millions on advertising for conventional movie theater distribution runs. Additionally, the experience of B-Side begs the question of what other ways start-up distribution companies – not to mention filmmakers individually – can access the kind of similarly huge data set that B-Side was working with? Is it necessary to create technology that has an altogether different use entirely (as they did) in order to gather such information?

-Josh, Michael and Carl

A Study in Film Campaigns, Part 1: The External Action Campaign

To follow up our post on Immersive vs. Inclusive campaigns, we will take a closer look at how three different kinds of film campaigns differ in their focus and engagement strategy. Through this endeavor hopefully we'll discover which works best, depending on a filmmaker's goal. The first film campaign we will explore is that of the Academy Award-nominated film, The Visitor, which drove awareness of unfair deportation processes for immigrants. The Visitor is an example of a film campaign that seeks to motivate its audience to take social action to create change beyond just distributing the film. After the film had been released in theaters, the distributor, Participant Media, launched an action campaign on their social advocacy website Take Part. The website offers a variety of tools to translate a desire to help into clear, actionable next steps.

The main menu of The Visitor website offers “5 Things That You Can Do Now:” 1) Watch interviews of immigrant detainees, 2) write letters to detainees, 3) connect to a virtual immigrant experience 4) learn how to represent detainees if you’re a lawyer, 5) learn about the deportation process. By clicking on the “If you’re a lawyer, connect with experts” tab, you go to a page where lawyers can sign up to attend a free legal action seminar conducted by the O’Melveny and Myers law firm. Interestingly, this not only leads the audience towards taking action but also provides clear goals and metrics that help measure the impact of the film’s campaign. In the podcast, “The Business,” one of the producers reveals that signups through the portal trained roughly 2,500 lawyers, who later represented more than 10,000 detainees. This metric gives The Visitor campaign tangible numbers to show that it was a success, which in turn helps build more of a movement around the film and its social goals.

Clicking on the "Virtual Immigrant" tab leads you to another website called “Iced” that immerses you in the world of immigrants in America who often endure unfair laws that result in their deportation. Once on the “Iced” website, you can download a video game where you walk around a neighborhood and have to make decisions in order to not be deported. Interestingly, the game is similar to the Django video game we explored in our previous post on Immersive vs. Inclusive campaigns. However, playing the game as a virtual immigrant leads the audience to gain a deeper understanding of the real life struggles of immigrants in America. In contrast, the Django game immerses you deeper into the fictional world of its characters. The Django game uses immersion to entertain and motivate the audience to buy the DVD or merchandise, whereas The Visitor action campaign uses immersion to educate and lead their audience towards taking action in the real world.

The campaign for The Visitor is of a kind that has as its goal for the audience to take action external to the film; in other words, the film is positioned as a tool to create change. Even the immersion methods are put into practice to transform the audience into active agents, not passive consumers. A characteristic specificto this kind of campaign is that because it is tied to real-world, tangible action, its impact can in fact be measured -- not in ticket sales, but in statistics like the number of lawyers trained. These social action campaigns are more measurable than social awareness campaigns, which often lack the numbers to prove that they are effective. However, it should be noted that any audience energy that social action campaigns direct towards tangible change is by definition not being directed towards advocating for the film itself; in other words, it's good for the world, but insignificant to the film's life in distribution. To put it bluntly, the number of lawyers that The Visitor campaign trained likely had no effect on how far the film went as a product in the marketplace. However, an actual political campaign can benefit from a "sense of service to others” because its social impact goal and its endgame are one and the same. (See our post on Giving vs. Taking here.)

That's not to say there aren't lessons learned from The Visitor that any campaign can put into use. All kinds of films could do a better job of tracking how many volunteers they engage, how many phone calls they make, and how many groups are reached out to, to help spread the word about a film. In our next post we will look at how the film campaign for Beasts of the Southern Wild focuses on engaging audiences to help with distribution instead of social action like The Visitor’s campaign. What metrics can grassroots film campaigns like Beasts gather in order to gain a better understanding of their audience and help market their film?

-Josh, Michael and Carl

Motivation and Transparency

In our previous post, “Data and Metrics in Film,” we discussed how filmmakers could gain a greater understanding of how to market their film by applying the same data and metrics methods commonly used by political campaigns. However, in order to gather information from audiences, people have to be motivated to participate in a campaign first. In this post we will look at how the Obama campaign used transparency to motivate people to participate in its campaign and compare how transparency in film can empower fans to get more involved in the distribution process. In both the 2008 and 2012 election, the Obama campaign pioneered efforts to be transparent about process and goals from the top down. Early in the 2012 election, Jim Messina shared the campaign’s strategy for winning the election in the video, "Paths to 270 Electoral Votes." Here is the link.

In the video, Messina uses 6 different electoral maps to make the campaign’s intended path to victory in battleground states completely transparent. Messina then makes a clear and direct ask for supporters to get involved. “We fund this campaign in contributions of three dollars or 5 dollars or whatever you can do to help us expand the map, put people on the ground to build a real grassroots campaign that is going to be the difference between winning and losing.” First, Messina makes the campaign strategy easy for supporters to understand then he provides clear direction for how they can get involved. The video empowers supporters to become active participants in the campaign by making them feel like they are an integral part of its success.

Similar to the Obama campaign, filmmakers are pioneering new efforts to make the goals and process for distribution transparent so fans can get more involved. For example, the filmmakers of the romantic comedy Sleepwalk With Me released a list of targeted IFC movie theaters that they wanted the film to play in, thereby being entirely upfront with their distribution goals for the film. With these targeted venues totally public, they enlisted fans to call, tweet or facebook message to request a screening of the film in the theater in their neighborhood. The website reads, “If your town isn’t on the list…you don’t have to take that lying down. Below is a list of theaters that run indie films, with their phone numbers, email addresses, and twitter handles. Call them, email them, tweet at them with the hashtag #BringSleepwalk.” Similar to how Messina empowered supporters by illustrating which battleground states they need support from volunteers to win, the filmmakers of Sleepwalk With Me were 100% transparent about their goal to have the film screen in targeted movie theaters. Also like Messina, the filmmakers make a direct ask for fans to get involved by calling, facebook messaging or tweeting their local movie theaters. Sleepwalk With Me was able to transform their fans from being passive consumers of the film to active distributors by being transparent about their goals and making a direct ask to their audience.

Whether a campaign is for a political candidate or to distribute a film, being transparent about strategy and goals is the gateway for making people feel empowered. What other parts of the filmmaking process can be made transparent to empower more fans? This will be a theme we explore in future posts.

-Josh, Michael and Carl

Data and Metrics in Film

Hollywood is historically risk-averse; marketing-wise it will always want to use what has been shown to work before, even if it might not be the right fit for a certain film. They would rather attempt a tried-and-true set of tricks than take the time to do some research & development (like the Obama campaign) and get the numbers right. What if independent filmmakers used the same data collection and social media tools that have been proven to work for political campaigns? Would this help filmmakers engage their audiences the same way Votebuilder and My.BO helped the Obama campaign communicate with volunteers and voters – and without the bottom line costs of a major Hollywood marketing campaign? It is well known that the Obama machine was entirely built from data. In the BuzzFeed article “Messina: Obama Won On The Small Stuff,” Messina points out that, "Politics too much is about analogies and not about whether or not things work…You have to test every single thing, to challenge every assumption, and to make sure that everything we do is provable." The Obama campaign had an intricate data collection process that occurred both online and offline. Data was collected online everytime a new volunteer pledge their support on the website, through My.BO or gave a donation from an email blast.  Organizers and volunteers also used a database called Votebuilder to collect data about supporters and undecided voters offline through canvassing and phone calls. This cycle of online and offline data collection played a key role in helping the Obama campaign adapt its strategy to the always shifting political climate. The more you know about who you are reaching, how you are reaching them and why they are interested the more you can figure out what outreach methods are working.  Also, using offline canvassing and phone call methods to follow up with supporters who showed interest online added a personal touch that motivated many supporters to do more than just pledge to vote or donate money.

Could filmmakers engage more effectively with their audiences by using a data and metrics system similar to the Obama campaign? In the article, “Why we should build our own nations,” Ben Kempas observes, “It was during last year's election campaign of the pro-independence Scottish National Party that I first came across powerful software called NationBuilder, geared towards political use but flexible enough to be used for all sorts of campaigns, including outreach to those niche audiences of documentary films.” NationBuilder provides nonprofit, government and political organizations tools to create volunteer sign up pages and online feedback forms, similar to the U.S. digital agency Blue State Digital (used by the Obama campaigns of 2008 and 2012.) As Kempas points out, filmmakers could also use these tools to interact and collect data from their fans. Even before a film is completed, filmmakers could engage with fans to grow their audience and gain insight into what methods would help distribute their film. Similar to the Obama campaign, filmmakers would then be able to shift resources and change their outreach strategy to best distribute their film.

However, the Obama campaign was able to collect its data through a massive team of organizers and volunteers that were doing non-stop voter contact -- to find out who in the voting populace (what places, and what demographics) were swaying their way, and to use their resources accordingly. These organizers and volunteers were able to be marshalled because they recognized and were energized by the urgency of electing the next president. In contrast, the cycle for a film’s distribution is often uncertain, much less nationally urgent, and, with independent films, certainly lacks the hefty "war chest" of resources that the campaign had. This leads us to ask, what can independent filmmakers do that is the equivalent of a voter contact program, to gage what kind of support it has amongst various communities of people? And when to start this: pre-production, production or after the film is made? What strategies could filmmakers use to keep their audience engaged before their film is completed? Does a film need to have a distribution plan before production, or like Four Eyed Monsters, can the filmmakers benefit from clever improvisation & properly pivot their campaign when the film’s process takes them in unexpected directions?

-Josh, Michael and Carl

Giving vs. Taking

Does embracing a sense of service to others move people towards action more effectively than material rewards? That is one question psychology professor Adam Grant explores in his new book, Give and Take, that sheds light on a new form of motivation that focuses more on giving than taking. In the New York Times article, Is Giving the Secrete to Getting Ahead, Susan Dominus writes about how Grant discovered that creating a culture of giving leads to productivity at a call center. “Given that one of the center’s primary purposes was funding scholarships, Grant brought in a student who had benefited from that fund-raising. The callers took a 10-minute break as the young man told them how much the scholarship had changed his life…A month after the testimonial, the workers were spending 142 percent more time on the phone and bringing in 171 percent more revenue.”

This reflects the power of a principle that was practiced effectively on the Obama campaign that originally comes from the President’s original mentor in community organizing, Marshall Ganz: sharing your story. Every community organizer was taught the importance of letting potential volunteers and voters know why he or she was personally motivated to work for the President’s campaign, in the form of a story. Volunteers were encouraged to share as well. Online content would reflect this emphasis on personal stories. Online and offline, the Obama campaign was able to install a “higher sense of service” in order to grow their grassroots army of volunteers and set historic fundraising numbers. Here is a video the campaign sent in an email blast to supporters during the 2008 campaign.

In the video, a donor named Greg Smith starts to get teary eyed as he explains how his mom left for Jamaica and almost was not allowed to bring Greg and his sister to America because of immigration laws. Greg explains, “Mr. Obama’s stance is that you can’t separate families… I think my fulfillment as a human being is only coming into play because of that fact that I was reconnected with my mom and able to now take part of the American dream.” Greg’s sincerity is very moving and turns the action of donating to a political campaign into the greater idea of investing in the American dream.

This leads us to ask if you can make a movie that is more than just a film. Similar to how the Obama campaign became more than just a campaign by inspiring supporters to remember the importance of community and empowering others. Can a film campaign also start to embody an idea greater than itself and motivate people to act? Are only issue related films able to spark a movement, or can non-issue films also go beyond just being a film? Already, those at Kickstarter will encourage potential fundraisers to do the equivalent of “share their story” in their videos.

This lessons of the campaign and the experiment mentioned in the Times could lead us to two possible answers to these questions. 1) If filmmakers shape the message of their fundraising efforts towards a higher purpose related to the issue or themes in their movie they are more likely to motivate people to contribute. 2) If filmmakers don’t have a higher purpose to their film, just being upfront and personal with why he or she wants to make that film (and what it means to them) can be a powerful tool.

-Josh, Michael and Carl

Four Eyed Monsters- What didn't work

What Does not Work Although the majority of the Four Eyed Monsters’ profit came from online sales, its theater run played a critical role in fueling its online support. Other websites like “Prescreen” have tried to emulate the Four Eyed Monsters model but have only focused on online outreach and sales. In the blog TechCrunch, Leena Rao explains Prescreen’s distribution model, “Prescreen offers users the ability to subscribe to a daily email alert, which will inform them of one Indie film per day. The user can then visit Prescreen to view trailers for free and if interested, can rent movies to stream on demand for up to 60 days.” However, prescreen was recently shut done since it was unable to attract enough subscribers.

Mass emails and trailers are simply not enough to effectively grow an online audience that will purchase the film. Prescreen did not have enough of an “active” campaign that utilized both offline and online organizing tolls like Four Eye Monsters.  See our post on "Offline vs. Online Organizing" here.

Ideas for Improvement

What if the Four Eyed Monsters’ “tipping point” distribution model could be applied to other independent films? If enough people purchase a ticket to see an independent film in their city, the film is screened in theaters. The distributor can ensure people will see the film, and the filmmaker gains an exponential amount of publicity for their film that leads to future DVD and merchandise sales.

The Obama campaign was fortunate enough to have its own database called Votebuilder, which contained massive amounts of information about supporters and voters to determine which regions in battleground states had enough support for a field office. Filmmakers on the otherhand would have to create their own metrics system to determine which cities have enough support to screen their film. However, the makers of Four Eyed Monsters have proven that by complementing online data with offline theater screenings, it can be done.

The “trapdoor” theory also played a critical role in Four Eyed Monsters late blooming success. The "trapdoor" theory is based on the idea that you need to get each person in the organization motivated to their furthest level of involvement. For example, the Obama campaign used the trapdoor theory in the following way. Someone starts off as a voter, picks up a yard sign, signs up to support Obama online, is contacted by the campaign to volunteer, becomes a super volunteer, then may even work on staff. Four Eyed Monsters applied the trapdoor theory to get their fans to opt in to the film after they failed to get it distributed. You like the webseries? Opt-in to see the film in your area. You like the film? Donate to get us out of debt. This step by step process is critical for building a relationship with your audience so they get more and more invested in supporting the film.

Four Eyed Monsters also utilized the "collective buying power" theory that websites like Groupon use to offer consumer deals on products. The "collective buying power" theory focuses on selling products and services at a discounted price if a minimum number of consumers are willing to buy the same item. Four Eyed Monsters used collective buying power to convince movie theaters it was in their economic interest to distribute their film.

This leads us to ask, can the Four Eyed Monsters’ distribution model combined with the "collective buying power" theory help distribute a slate of independent films in movie theaters?

-Josh, Michael and Carl

Four Eyed Monsters: What worked

As with many independent films, the distribution process for Four Eyed Monsters got off to a shaky start.  After going through the normal festival circuit, filmmakers Susan Buice and Arin Crumley walked away feeling that Film Festivals "suck."  Their takeaway was that you can spend all your resources and energy touring around with a film, but unless you’re in the high profile festivals, traditional distributors are not going to see your film.  However, instead of giving up, the filmmakers launched one of the first online DIY distribution campaigns that eventually brought in a profit for their film. Can Four Eyed Monsters’ DIY distribution model help independent filmmakers today? What Worked

The filmmakers of Four Eyed Monsters employed four online grassroots organizing tools to successfully distribute their film: 1) Producing a Four Eyed Monsters web series 2) Creating an online petition for theatre screenings 3) Investigating the metrics involved in how manifested online support translated to actual ticket sales 4) Selling DVDs and merchandise on their website.

1) Producing a “reality TV-style” web series about the filmmakers’ struggle to finance the film helped grow their online audience by making the film more personal to their fans. Here is a link to the webseries: http://foureyedmonsters.com/. The web series helped give background about the cast and crew, making the project more engaging and relatable. This in turn, led to more attention from online blogs and reviewers like the New York Times.

The filmmakers tried to put their movie out through the normal festival channels but it led them nowhere.  However they happen to document their struggle when new online formats were emerging like videocasts, youtube and facebook. Similar to how the Obama campaign would later use online video to persuade voters and encourage volunteers, the supplementary material from Four Eyed Monsters helped the filmmakers connect with fans and motivate them to become more invested in the film.

2) Creating an online petition to see the film in theaters channeled the support of their online audience towards theater distribution. Below is a picture of the Four Eyed Monsters Theater sign up page.

The filmmakers promised to screen the film in cities that obtained 150 or more sign ups. This helped create a concrete goal and sense of urgency that motivated fans to encourage their friends to also petition to see the film. Ultimately, Four Eyed Monsters received over 8,000 online requests to see the film in theaters. The hearts on the map helped signify geographic “posts of support” that enabled fans to connect and build momentum for the film at a local level.  The Obama campaign applied a similar strategy though the online organizing tool Mybo and Dashboard, which displayed dots on a map to signify new field offices. This gave supporters a visual understanding of the support in their neighborhood and where they could go to volunteer.

3) Translating petition signatures to ticket sales convinced more theaters it was in their economic interests to screen the film.  The filmmakers compared the number of online sign ups to ticket sales and determined 1 sign up led to 1 ticket sale. This led to 31 theaters across the country agreeing to distribute the film.

Metrics systems are common in political campaigns, but rarely utilized by filmmakers to distribute their film.  The Obama campaign used a wide array of metrics for calculating what emails and call scripts effectively communicated the message of the campaign to voters and supporters.  This helped the campaign adapt quickly and shift resources amidst the rapidly changing political climate of a presidential campaign.  The filmmakers of Four Eyed Monsters also used their own metrics system to focus theater distribution to cities with the highest level of support for their film.

4) Allowing audiences to buy DVDs and merchandise online helped direct enthusiasm from the film in theaters towards making a profit on the film afterwards. Interestingly, the film made more money from people interested in buying shirts, DVDs and other merchandise online than on ticket sales in theaters. However, theater screenings helped the filmmakers mobilize support offline, which later led to them raising money through sponsor websites like sprout.com which paid the filmmakers $1 for every new who signed up.

The film eventually grossed a total of $129,000. Over $100,000 came from online sales.

Conclusion 

The Four Eyed Monsters distribution model is a reminder that not every film can use the same distribution methods and expect to succeed.  In a way the Four Eyed Monsters Distribution model was a happy accident.  The distribution process worked, but in reverse to the normal process. The filmmaker made the movie, then they produced behind the scenes material (via a new medium - videocasts), that built interest in the film, leading to the effective release of the film in theaters and finally the Kickstarter-esque campaign to actually pay for the film.  This is as opposed to the normal distribution process of raising money for the film, making the film, finding a distributor and releasing behind the scenes promo material to promote its release.  Although there may be no cookie cutter way to distribute your film, the DIY distribution campaign for Four Eyed Monsters proves that if you are flexible and innovative  you can find creative solutions that lead your movie towards its target audience.

In our next post we will analyze why other online distribution models have fallen short compared to Four Eyed Monsters. We will also look at how new theories like "the trapped door theory" and "collective buying power" could be applied to independent film distribution.

-Josh, Michael and Carl

The Snowflake Model

In the 2008 and 2012 elections, the “Snowflake Model" was used by the Obama campaign to empower millions of volunteers across the country.  In this post we will introduce its basic idea for further contemplation about its relevancy for grassroots film distribution. Before the Obama campaign, many organizations had attempted to create vast volunteer networks through grassroots organizing but fallen short.  In the Huffington Post article, "The New Organizers, What’s really behind Obama’s ground game,” writer Zack Exley explains that, “Other recent attempts have failed because they were either so "top-down" and/or poorly-managed that they choked volunteer leadership and enthusiasm; or because they were so dogmatically fixated on pure peer-to-peer or 'bottom-up"'organizing that they rejected basic management, accountability and planning.”

In contrast to other grassroots campaigns, the Obama "Snowflake Model" offered an unprecedented amount of responsibility and ownership to volunteers, which in turn motivated supporters to reach their furthest level of involvement on the campaign.

Below is a flowchart that illustrates the Obama neighborhood team model, which is built out of the Snowflake Model.

"The Legacy Project," which was conducted by the Obama campaign in order to analyze its best practices from the 2012 election, defines the volunteer roles that consist in each snowflake.

“Relationships among team members held the snowflake together and ensured the team was communicating frequently and working toward common goals…In the center of the team snowflake was the Field Organizer, who managed multiple Neighborhood Team Leaders. In addition to the NTL, each team ideally consisted of at least three Core Team Members, or CTMs: a Phonebank Captain, a Canvass Captain, and a Data Captain. Many teams had at least one other state or turf-specific CTM, such as Voter Registration Captain, Digital Captain, Youth Captain or Faith Captain.”

Leadership titles like Neighborhood Team Leader, Canvass Captain and Phonebank Captain etc, helped delegate responsibility among volunteers.  The "Snowflake Model" also encouraged supporters to become invested by offering more responsibility and access to volunteers who demonstrated they were committed.  For example, someone could start off just as a voter, sign up online, volunteer, become a Neighborhood Team Leader and then work as a staff member on the campaign.  This created a sense of ownership and trust that cultivated thousands of neighborhood teams across the country that canvassed undecided voters, registered voters and ran its massive voter turnout operation on Election Day.

This causes us to wonder if the "Snowflake Model" can also be used to channel the enthusiasm of movie fans towards distributing film. What is the equivalent of a voter in the film world? The equivalent of a volunteer? Neighborhood Team Leader? Do these positions exist in the film distribution already, in different forms? If not, could they be created?

Throughout the year we will explore ways the Obama Snowflake Model can be applied to film as well.

-Josh, Michael, and Carl

Online Vs. Offline Organizing

What is the difference between Online vs. Offline Organizing? Online organizing uses the web to motivate people to get involved in a campaign, whether it is through email blasts, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or an interactive website with a blog that features. These serve as tools to focus on a certain action item, or to make a certain “ask” of the supporters. In contrast, offline organizing focuses on motivating people to get involved through human interactions that take place outside of the web, i.e. one-on-one meetings, canvassing, phone calls etc. From our background working on the Obama campaign, we saw firsthand how both offline and online organizing methods worked best when they complemented each other. Filmmakers and producers however rarely consider offline organizing tools when talking about grassroots film distribution. In the article “Independent Film Distribution IQ,” Angelo Bell discusses the importance of developing a niche audience; however he focuses mainly on using online, instead of offline organizing tools. Angelo advises independent filmmakers to “develop and cultivate our fans and audience relationships through rich teaser content on mediums such as YouTube and Facebook.” Although online teasers may be helpful for promoting a film, their impact could increase exponentially if used properly through relationships fostered in person (See our previous post in which we mention the misguided tendency to use the term “grassroots” as a euphemism for merely any action taken through Facebook or Twitter – mediums that are par for the course for any distributed product these days).

In contrast to Bell, Bajir Cannon’s dissertation “The United States of Unscreened Cinema,” suggests that filmmakers using offline organizing tools are able to significantly increase their online audience. One of the filmmakers Cannon interviewed was Tom Quinn who made a film that is set during the Mummers’ Day Parade in Philadelphia. Quinn recalls that to distribute his film he “went around to a good chunk of the Mummers clubs, and talked one-on-one with them about how we were going to donate part of the proceeds back to the parade, and the Mummers organization got behind the film doing press as well, which was huge. I think our Facebook fans went from 200 people to 2,300 people in one week.” The irony here is interesting: offline organizing led to a rise in online metrics. But we can see this as a success because we know that that increase in “likes” (a metric that by itself one should be wary of) reflects a community that was actively engaged in a deeper way. They felt the personal touch of the campaign, and “liking” the film on Facebook is just one reflection of that.

Similarly, the Obama campaign deployed thousands of field organizers to meet one-on-one with local supporters to connect their interests in the community towards promoting the message of the campaign. The personal contact of one-on-one meetings helped give a face to the Obama campaign, motivating people to sign up online and get involved further. The new media director of the Obama campaign, Joe Rospars, explains “The relationship that Obama built with individual supporters and between them was the unique part. Our tools were sort of the glue for the relationships, but if you’re not running a campaign where people understand that those relationships are central to winning, they don’t care about tools on your website.” Joe is not suggesting online organizing is not effective, but instead highlighting how offline organizing plays a critical role in making the online components of the campaign more relevant to the public and personal. Although the offline organizing techniques for film will obviously differ greatly from the standard canvassing and calling done by political campaigns, filmmakers like Quinn are proving that the combination of offline and online organizing methods are very effective for distributing film. The leads us to ask, what specific combination of offline and online organizing techniques are most effective for distributing film?

-Josh, Michael, and Carl

Introduction, Context and Goals

It is our intention to spend our year with a CRI fellowship studying and testing methods to combine grassroots political organizing techniques with film distribution. And here’s why. Most independent films are given a narrow one-way avenue towards finding their audience. So many times, a film over which a group of people has slaved for years, is pushed through the film festival circuit, only to come out with no distribution deal, no path to a bigger audience, and no way to recoup costs. These films may receive praise at a handful of venues, they may get glowing reviews, but they’re still relegated to an extremely limited audience, rarely even given the opportunity to see if they could play to a more diverse audience. We intend to explore a variety of grassroots tools and methods to explore how this audience wall can be pushed, if not even completely broken. First, it’s essential to establish what we mean by a “grassroots” organization before we talk about how it could be used in film (we’ll be revisiting this definition throughout our findings). No matter what its strict definition, the thoroughness of a grassroots operation depends on how each entity or person involved is respected, empowered, included, and in turn, takes ownership of their part in expanding the movement. The motivation derives from the sense of importance, urgency, and necessity felt within personally, rather than from top-down leadership that uses a financial incentive for those “below” them in the hierarchy. The organization subverts any standard corporate structure of power; no one dictates the specifics of what is done at every level, and everyone owns and determines what their responsibility is. How could this translate to independent film distribution? In short, it’s worth considering whether independent film fails to find its audience because it relies on a system that was developed for only certain types of films and was generally developed in a different financial and technological atmosphere. Essentially, we are interested in figuring out how to mobilize an audience through grassroots methods such that a film’s reception is not solely dictated or confined by gatekeepers such as film festivals, traditional venues (“arthouses” or otherwise), film reviewers and advertising. The goal of a grassroots operation with a film should be to use and facilitate the enthusiasm and advocacy of an already existing audience so that their support expands outwards, to then reach new audiences that may not normally be inclined to see independent film – but who are actually a good audience for that film.

The type of operation we are exploring should not only be a means to getting more humans in seats, but also a way to have a more meaningful relationship between the film/filmmaker and audience member. Grassroots models depend on enthusiasm and a shared feeling that this “thing” – be it a candidate or a film – is important and needs to be shared. Additionally, through outreach efforts, a person seeing a film can feel like they are closer to a filmmaker and be part of the film team much more than they would had they just seen a movie because of a trailer or New York Times review. Therefore, in not just one way, grassroots distribution also has the potential to drastically alter the relationship between audience and film. The audience is empowered to become part of the film, which does no less than escalate them beyond their status as merely the audience. Essentially, the audience, instead of being targeted solely as a “consumer” that purchases the film as a “product,” becomes part of the “project” (or, campaign) of the film. They are not only consumers of the film, but also potential advocates of it. There is not just creation and reception; a film’s exhibition and viewers become an essential part of its life instead of the end of its life, and therefore extend its life.

The attribution of the term “grassroots” to independent film distribution is not new, but we believe the tools, strategies, and processes we are interested in exploring have often not been implemented in the realm of film, and when used at all, tend to be applied towards so called “issue films” and are not known by many other filmmakers who could benefit from them. If done correctly, we wonder if a grassroots operation can increase both the volume of people that experience the film, as well as their variety, thus greatly expanding the scope and reach of the film and increasing the level of enjoyment and engagement an audience has watching the film. This increase in audience could open doors, not only for that specific film, but also for those new audience members to be receptive to whole new categories of film in the future. Our idea is not so much to design a cure-all method for all independent films to follow. It is, in fact, incumbent on any grassroots movement to not be formulaic at heart, as we believe these movements rely on a personal, genuine, and nuanced touch to be effective. But even so, much can be learned from the techniques of one campaign that could translate to the next, and if we were able to create a grassroots toolbox and set of best practices for filmmakers to utilize on their films, we could provide an invaluable resource for the indie world.

-Michael and Josh

Political Campaigns vs. Film Distribution

To continue our discussion on the relationship between grassroots political campaigns and grassroots film distribution, here is an interesting blog on an independent film called, Grassroots. The blog compares the process of distributing an independent film without major studio support to running a grassroots campaign to elect a political candidate. Similar to a political campaign, the production team tries to form partnerships with organizations that resonate with the social issues in the film. The film Grassroots is about an underdog candidate that runs for city council in Seattle, so outreach was done to colleges to screen the film and talk about the importance of young people running for political office. Although a studio eventually purchased the rights to the film, the distribution run for the film was shorter than expected. Part of the reason could be that vague goals were set for school screenings, social media hits and ticket sales. In contrast, the Obama campaign had a very complicated and precise matrix system put in place to calculate the number of TV ads, doors knocked and calls needed to persuade someone to vote for Obama. The Washington Post article, “Obama’s ‘Moneyball’ campaign,” reveals the depth of data the campaign used to target voters and raise money for the campaign.

This article reveals the data and concrete goals set by the Obama campaign served as a road map to victory for organizers and media teams in all ten of the battleground states. Clear goals gave the campaign direction, helped keep thousands of political operatives and volunteers accountable, and allowed the campaign to shift resources to states that needed help.

This leads to our third question for this blog. Can the intricate matrix system created by the Obama campaign also be applied to grassroots film distribution or is the data needed to do so too abstract?

-Carl, Michael and Josh

‘Veronica Mars’ Phenomenon

In our recent post “What is grassroots?” we began the larger question that we’ll explore throughout the year: “What kind of grassroots methods work for which kinds of films?” In our second post, we will examine the unexpected success of Veronica Mars Kickstarter campaign, which raised close to four million dollars in less than a week. The film does not seem like a normal candidate for grassroots donations since it was on a network television show owned by a major studio.  However, through effective messaging, the filmmakers were able to set a new fundraising record on Kickstarter. Here is a link to the kickstarter page that is still going strong. Rob Thomas, the creator of the show explains in the Kickstarter page that after meeting with Warner Bros, “Their reaction was, ‘If you can show there’s enough fan interest to warrant a movie, we’re on board.’ So this is it. This is our shot. I believe it's the only one we've got.” With this quote, Thomas is turning his struggle with the studio Warner Bros into a grassroots cause that creates a sense of urgency for fans to contribute to the film. We learned in the last blog post about the important role urgency plays in the film distribution campaigns We Were Here vs. Henry’s Crime.

The Obama campaign in 2008 used a similar tactic to fuel its grassroots campaign by building the narrative that he was a party outsider running against the Washington establishment. This gave Obama’s candidacy a higher purpose, particularly among young, anti-establishment voters, that inspired his supporters to not only vote for Obama but also volunteer.

The question deserves to be asked: what is the equivalency between Kickstarter supporters and the supporter of a political campaign, in this instance? Is it a literal equivalence – ie the donor towards the Veronica Mars campaign is the equivalent of a donor to the Obama campaign? Or rather is it that this Kickstarter campaign has created a moment of “opting in” that the studio needed to see in order to know it could move forward with development? The moment of “opting in” is key on political campaigns because in lieu of the actual vote which comes later, it is a vote of support and of commitment, that can be used to extract valuable information from a supporter (email addresss, contact info) that can be capitalized on for later campaign initiatives. Similarly, by “opting in” to the Veronica Mars campaign, supporters’ contact information will be put on a listserv that the producers & Warner Brothers are sure to use to their advantage during distribution.

However, unlike the Veronica Mars Kickstarter page, many Obama supporters volunteered without the promise of receiving a material reward for their work. Instead, the campaign was able to motivate volunteers by giving them an unprecedented amount of access to the goals and campaign strategy, which made volunteers feel like they were playing an integral part in making history. In short, the Obama campaign inspired millions of people to volunteer by giving them a higher purpose that added meaning to their lives and not by offering a material prize. A lot of people wanted health benefits or an end of war in Iraq for example. People felt they would be getting something for their work, even if it was not as tangible as a t-shirt. The “return on investment” for Veronica Mars supporters is the existence of the tangible film itself, which will be given as a reward to those that give a certain amount of money.

This raises a more troubling element to the Kickstarter phenomenon, as far as how it intermingles with studio-backed projects. Are the fans who are opting in right now paying for the ability to pay again to see the film in a theater when it comes out? Or will they be content with the copy delivered to their (physical or digital) doorstep, and thereby the campaign is a way of “pre-selling” the film to its fans (ie using guaranteed distribution to pay for development).

What’s clear is that the Veronica Mars campaign has been successful because, to a certain extent, it was able to turn a potential film into a movement. This leads to our second question for this blog. How do you make your movie a movement, even if it is not about social issues?

-Carl, Michael and Josh

What is grassroots?

What is grassroots? After the success of the Obama campaign in 2008 and 2012, the term “grassroots” has become a buzzword in both the political arena and in the realm of film -- both in its production and distribution. But what does the term grassroots really mean? In their article, “’A Tree Falls in the Forest’ and Other Ruminations on Social/Community-based Marketing,” film distributors Orly Ravid and Jeffrey Winter of the Film Collaborative assert that these days “every person with internet is a distributor”; this is undeniably true. But it’s precisely because of that fact that the “grassroots outreach” plan they prescribe to filmmakers feels pretty par for the course. It goes without saying that one would strive to use social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to spread word about a film.

Are these platforms truly “grassroots” tools? In our study, we aim to parse out the current discourse about grassroots distribution to separate the signal from the noise. With our background in electoral politics, we will approach this conversation with particular consideration towards the potential of the methodologies and structures of the Obama campaigns of 2008 and 2012 when applied towards film distribution. We aim to discover what paths are effective, and for what kind of films.

In that vein, Ravid and Winter’s article becomes more useful as it turns toward a particular case study between two very different films.

The article suggests that films about social issues create a sense of urgency that is crucial for igniting grassroots film distribution campaigns. The article compares two different films to illustrate this point: We Were Here, a documentary about HIV awareness, and a romantic comedy titled Henry’s Crime. Although both films apply similar grassroots methods by reaching out to core constituency groups to help promote the film, We Were Here had a much more successful distribution run. This is because the issue of HIV awareness generates a sense of urgency that motivates supporters and advocacy groups to spread the message of the film. In contrast, even though Henry’s Crime tried similar grassroots tactics like reaching out to the fans of stars in the movie to help promote, there was less urgency surrounding the romantic comedy, and the film flopped.

A number of questions result: could Henry’s Crime have succeeded had different grassroots methods been used for it than were for We Were Here, given that they’re very different films? Can you create urgency around a film that isn’t rooted in issues? This is just the beginning of what’s sure to be a long and interesting conversation. We look forward to hearing your thoughts.

--Carl, Michael and Josh