It’s been a few years since I submitted a film to a festival, but I remember it being a miserable process. It’s hard enough to deal with deadlines, trips to the post office (do people do that anymore?) and all those fees (a nasty debate in itself), but I found the premiere requirements practically crippling. Since then, I’ve attended many festivals and have even helped program one, so I have a different understanding of how these things work.

Below, I examine the issue from the perspective of different groups involved and see how each is affected by premiere requirements. I encourage anyone with more experience or a different take to post a comment.

Filmmakers

At a minimum, premiere requirements limit the number of times and places you can have your film exhibited. If you include restrictions on other media, it also eliminates opportunities to build an audience or earn money by having a film available online with advertising revenue or for sale as a download or DVD. But it can stop a filmmaker even before getting to festivals. Filmmakers often have to adjust their post-production and release schedules to the annual cycle of festivals and their deadlines. Premiere requirements can force a producer to pass on one festival in favor of a later, more prestigious festival. If they don’t get accepted to that first choice, they’re forced to wait a whole year to try again at that second choice. By that point, they’ve lost time, audience, relevance and money, and they’re submitting year-old film.

It could be good for filmmakers in that it keeps more screening slots open for more films, but I’m afraid this is not always the spirit in which these rules are in place. And it doesn’t help at all in the case of platform exclusivity.

Festivals

In a short-term way that doesn’t involve too much thinking, premiere requirements are great for festivals, which is presumably why they are still in effect. It can help attract press and industry to a festival, assuming these people are already convinced that the films in question are worth the trip. More simply, the requirements give festivals a lot of power over filmmakers. Lots of other companies use exclusivity as well to raise their negotiating power. (More on that here.) When a filmmaker is forced to put all their eggs in your basket, you can make them beg, and it’s harder for them to ask for concessions like a screening fee or help with a flight and hotel room. The top festivals can use this as a tactic to affect a first-look right for themselves.

Having been a programmer, however, I’ve observed first-hand that great films are precious, so it seems silly to turn away a good film because it’s playing a thousand miles away the week before.

Also, if festivals are to stay relevant, and I believe they can, they need to improve upon and emphasize the value they add as social events. Relying on exclusivity is decreasingly effective and distracts from that.

Audiences

I’m hard pressed to think how premiere requirements are anything but bad for audiences. In my experience, most non-industry festival attendees are local. Very few people can afford to take a week off and spend money on travel for a film festival if it’s not for work. Even locally, film fans don’t have time to run out of films to see. While it is nice to know you’re seeing something before everybody else, you can retain most of that experience knowing that you’re seeing a film in advance of a wide release (if it even happens at all) and with the director and actors in attendance.

Gen Art is an example of a festival that consistently fills theaters with a local, non-industry audience without a strict premiere requirement. They even host year-round screenings of films the week before wide release, adding the value of an after-party and a post-screening discussion with the director and actors.

Newman speaks about the importance of curation. People have more entertainment options than ever. Acceptance into a prestigious (or not) festival is no guarantee that you’ll love a film, and even if it were, many festivals keep attendees too busy to see everything. Prior festival screenings give films time to build a track record of reviews, buzz and community that can help audiences do their own curation and even heighten the experience.

Press and Industry

For the most part, I think premiere requirements are pretty good for press and industry. I assume they were mostly put in place to attract these people. Distributors, festival programmers, journalists and bloggers go to a lot of festivals, so they don’t need to see the same films over and over again. But many of these people have access to screener copies of all these films anyway. While it does make a difference to see a film with an audience, that is not the way most people will see these films.

It appears that premiere requirements hurt more than they help, and they are helping the wrong people. Distributors are not acquiring many films right now, at least not for enough money to cover a production budget. Professional reviews are great, but they are not the best way to reach audiences. And industry professionals have other reasons to attend festivals – networking, panel discussions and free drinks. Film festivals are great at creating social experiences, and they are best suited to serving audiences first, filmmakers second and everybody else after that.

Premiere requirements seem to be based on the idea that a film starts with a certain value and then shrinks from there on out. This is the same idea that holds up the old model of windows, where a film starts with a big opening weekend, followed by decreasing box office and a chain of platforms, each offering lower cost and lower quality. I believe this model is obsolete, and that producers, audiences and the industry can benefit from giving films a chance to grow.

To see the relevant part of Brian Newman’s talk, go here, click on the “menu” button in the upper-right corner of the video player, and select the fourth section, titled “Conversation.”

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You can listen with the embedded player below or download the full mp3.

The other panelists were:

1. Scott Kirsner (moderator) is a journalist and all-around smart guy. He’s the author of two books, Inventing the Movies, which I frequently cite as a defining analysis of how the film industry falls behind on innovation, and Fans, Friends & Followers, an excellent collection of interviews with artists who build their own audiences and distribute their own work. He also writes the blog Cinematech.
2. Chris Holland Director of Festival Operations at B-Side and author of Film Festival Secrets.
3. Sean Flynn producer and cinematographer at Principle Pictures.

We discussed a range of topics, including:

1. Benefits and pitfalls of social networking (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.)
2. Strategies for reaching audiences before, during and after production
3. Crowdsourcing to build audiences as well as help production
4. How much of your content to post online for free
5. Ad revenue models
6. Distribution formats (DVD, download, streaming, theatrical, etc.)
7. Applying all the above to other media such as music and art

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I’m looking forward to attending IFFB for the first time. I’ve heard great things about the festival, since Four Eyed Monsters played there in 2005, and the festival’s Program Director Adam Roffman managed the very successful Boston release of the film in 2006.

Here are the Details:
Sunday, April 26, 2009 @ 12:00 pm
Somerville Theatre
55 Davis Sq
Somerville, MA 02144
(617) 625-5700
map

The other panelists are:

1. Scott Kirsner (moderator) is a journalist and all-around smart guy. He’s the author of two books, Inventing the Movies, which I frequently cite as a defining analysis of how the film industry falls behind on innovation, and Fans, Friends & Followers, an excellent collection of interviews with artists who build their own audiences and distribute their own work. He also writes the blog Cinematech.
2. Chris Holland Director of Festival Operations at B-Side and author of Film Festival Secrets.
3. Sean Flynn producer and cinematographer at Principle Pictures.

Update: I recorded and posted the entire panel here.

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I’ve also been invited to speak on a panel about short films. The panel is on Tuesday, March 11 at 11am, in room 15 of the Austin Convention Center. Friends Jigar Mehta and Brent Hoff are on the panel with me.

Is it the Golden Age of Short Film? People keep saying it is, but I doubt many filmmakers have felt the gold yet. Some short films are bringing in more money than most award winning documentary’s are being sold for. Find out what is the best way to capitalize on these new potential revenue streams as Filmmakers and industry experts discuss if this will really finally elevate/free shorts to become an art form and not just a stepping stone to features.

If you’re in Austin, come find me.

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Brian’s a smart guy… we mostly talked about the importance of collecting information about your fans (and who’s a super-fan versus someone who’s just mildly interested in your movie). We also touched on the deal that ‘Four Eyed Monsters’ did with YouTube and Spout, where YouTube offered the full movie for free, and Spout served as a sponsor, paying the filmmakers a buck for every new member who joined after watching the movie on YouTube.

Check out Scott’s original post and take a minute to look at some of the other posts on his site.

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If you’re going to be at Sundance and would like to meet up, drop me a line or find me by following me on Twitter. Have fun and remember: carry your phone charger at all times, and be careful opening the toothpaste that first time.

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The video is also available in higher-bandwidth Flash or as an AVI download on my blip.tv channel. Please comment here and/or on the YouTube Watch page, where you can rate it as well. As usual The Film Panel Notetaker has notes.

Peter Goldwyn and I disagreed on a few things, which made for a fun and interesting discussion. He seems like a smart guy, and it was good to hear from Peter and Clémence, who have very different sets of experiences.

Correction: In our discussion, I compared the theatrical film industry to the bottled water industry. I mis-stated some figures. Upon further research, I realized that the global bottled water business generates $50bn, whereas the U.S. market is closer to $10 billion (source: ResearchBuy MarketWikis). However, this is still more than the annual U.S. theatrical gross of $9.49bn (source: MPAA). So I think my point is still valid.

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• Aaron Levine (moderator), Film Division Manager at Gen Art
• Peter Goldwyn, Vice President Acquisitions Samuel Goldwyn Films
• Clémence Taillandier, Head of Theatrical Sales, Zeitgeist Films
• Erik Davis Managing Editor, Cinematical.com

Details

I’m looking forward to this panel, because it’s a new batch of panelists for me, different from the usual suspects at Vancouver, IFP Market and London. We’ll be discussing some of the same topics as past panels: on-demand theatrical booking, content discovery, the up-scaling of the theatrical experience. But the added perspective of the bigger-budget, older-school Goldwyn and Zeitgeist representatives should be interesting, and if we’re very, very lucky, maybe we’ll see another showdown. Aaron will also ask us about how the writers strike ties into Internet distribution. One of the greatest consequences of Internet distribution is a shift in power, so we should have a lot to talk about.

See Erik’s post, and check out the Facebook Event to RSVP and see who else is attending.

A little help?

Would anybody be willing to volunteer to shoot the panel so we can get it up on the web? Thanks.

Update: I posted the video of the full panel.

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