Josh & Michael's Blog: Grassroots Distribution
Michael Gottwald, Carl Kriss & Josh Penn
Institutional support and a distribution machine behind you does not describe the vast majority of independent filmmakers out there -- perhaps especially some working in the social issue documentary space. The challenge for these filmmakers is to look at what tactics the ones who have the privilege to be able to do complementary social change with their film, and use them for a different goal. If I am a struggling filmmaker, with no distribution, and no goal for my film beyond getting it further out to the public, it should not be uncalled for for me to approach the same community groups that did their own self-generated, more change-based outreach for films like "Bully" or "The Invisible War" with my film, so long as I think there could be an interest in it. I guess what I'm calling for is a disentangling of "grassroots" tactics with "change-making" goals.
New Day consists of "member-owners": filmmakers who become part of the group to have assistance in distributing their film, but in return also assist other filmmakers with their distribution. "As part of the co-op," says Frankenstein, "all active members volunteer time to run the business, from acquisition to promotion, website to finance." This idea of having a responsibility to the group, and even the language of "member-owner" is akin to how the Obama campaign would empower volunteers by instilling the responsibility they had with titles like "Neighborhood Team Leader." In a grassroots organization, this is par for the course. It upends the hierarchy and makes everyone accountable to everyone else.
Mr. Coffman is of the opinion that the Google findings spell good things for independent filmmakers, because (as accessible data tends to do) it levels the playing field. The idea is that with a properly timed and named trailer -- one with a title that gives it solid SEO (search engine optimization) and that comes out a month prior to release (where attention is found to be the highest) -- the only variable factor in competing with the big studio fare is the quality of the trailer. It's my opinion that the deck is stacked against truly low budget independent filmmakers as far as creating the kind of "quality" in a 2 minute spot that can compete with the gloss and music licensing budgets of studios, but Coffman's point is a fare one: your trailer will be judged just on the interest it generates.
