"I just think that the young filmmakers today should take advantage of the opportunities and technology that they have now, that I didn't have, or the generations before me. 'Cause now you have no excuse.... If you want to be a filmmaker, there it is."
-- Spike Lee, interview with Digital Camera Magazine
The means of production and promotion are in the hands of filmmakers in ways they have never been in the medium's history. As Spike Lee, director and tube-sock salesman (anybody remember the campaign for "She's Gotta Have It"?) has said, there are no excuses anymore. If you want to make a movie and get it seen, the tools are right there at your disposal. You don't need massive studio resources and hundreds of thousands (or millions) of dollars; all you need is a video camera, a computer, some software and access to the Internet and you've got a whole vertically-integrated world at your disposal: production, marketing, exhibition. A few well-targeted e-mails, some YouTube clips, a Facebook or MySpace page -- even an old-fashioned web site -- and suddenly thousands of people know about you and your film. A service like Withoutabox allows you to enter film festivals all over the world in a jiffy, right from your keyboard -- without so much as a trip to the post office until you know if you've been accepted or invited.
Over many years of interviewing filmmakers I've often asked them how they have the energy to make a film once they've managed to raise enough money to go into production. And I've wondered how they have enough stamina to work on getting their films seen once they're finished. Specialized film publicist extraordinaire Reid Rosefelt is amazed by the power of new technologies, but asks: "What Happens to the Filmmakers Who Can't Market Themselves?" At his blog, Shake Your Windows, he writes:
I admit that I am also ambivalent about marketing, because I am someone who loves movies first and promotes them second. I don't want a director to tell me what a movie means. I don't want to be saddled with the director's insistence that the reason they made the film defines what the movie is. In a lot of ways, the reason that a director thinks he or she made a film is irrelevant. They may not fully understand themselves as human beings, let alone understand their movie. Mysterious things come into play that they don't understand. That's the miracle of it, really.
Some filmmakers are very skilled about how to play the game of talking to the media. They have a natural facility for giving great quotes without giving away the store. Some, like Jarmusch, have a strong image that works into the way you perceive their movies, expanding and not contracting your reactions. Some are a hoot, like Almodovar, and draw you in with their high spirits. Some invent their own myth out of whole cloth, like Herzog. Many of the people who last the longest in pop culture are shape-shifters, like Dylan, Madonna and Robert Redford--they are omnipresent, hiding in plain sight, and the more you think you know about them, the less you do.
But there are many great artists who lack this gene. With conventional distribution, if you don't have a talent for self-promotion, you can walk away and let the distributors and the publicists do the heavy lifting. You can have the benefit of advice, if you are willing to listen to it.
The question in my mind is whether Web 2.0 will increase the distance between the filmmakers who can sell themselves and those who can't.
Rosefelt is right that some filmmakers aren't good at promoting themselves, but that's always been true. Some don't know how to talk about their work, and some just aren't interested. Some are wary of consciously analyzing their own creative process, or detest the idea because they don't see it as anybody else's business. The film is the film and that's all there is to it. As Rosefelt writes:
Many of the best filmmakers are allergic to the idea of selling their films. They feel it somehow diminishes them as artists. They want to create; they don't want to be hucksters. They want their work to speak for itself. They sometimes act like they don't want to be successful, that there is something actually distasteful about success. Many have told me flat out that they are proud of their film but doubt it will reach much of an audience.
I worked on three films with a director long ago. His movies were funny, witty, stylish, and had a dazzling visual style. There were so many reasons why all kinds of people could enjoy them. But every interview he gave made them seem dry and boring; he cut off the possibilities for the way different kinds of people might perceive them. He was effectively an anti-marketer. It was pointless to talk to him about it. If I had run the distribution companies, I would actually have canceled all his interviews and appearances, but distributors want to see a sheaf of articles--that's what they pay for....
Web 2.0 technology isn't going to change anybody's personality. Filmmakers who can't sell their films -- and themselves -- one way or another are probably going to have a harder time finding an audience unless somebody else (publicists, critics, word-of-mouth) do it for them.
Not everybody can speak about their work with the passion and eloquence of, say, David Cronenberg or Ramin Bahrani or Werner Herzog. But not everybody has to. Do people really want to hear what Michael Bay or Uwe Boll or McG have to say about their work? I don't know. But if you're Michael Bay -- not that he needs more publicity -- you have other options, like appearing as a parody of yourself in TV ads. Or if you're Boll, you can challenge your critics to a publicity-stunt boxing match. Whether it's giving interviews (to Entertainment Tonight or Charlie Rose, RottenTomatoes or IndieWIRE, Cineaste or Rouge), appearing at film festivals, or parking an ambulance in front of the theater showing your heart-stopping horror movie, it's all showbiz, whether you like it or not.
UPDATE: To state the obvious (oh, why not?): We're talking about access and opportunity here. Whether in an interview, or in the film itself, there's no guarantee that a filmmaker will necessarily have something worthwhile to say. All the technology does is give her an unprecedentedly easy way to say it and make it available to others.
There have been times when I've felt that Quentin Tarantino might not have been as big as he is without his abilities for self promotion. That man loves to talk. Put him in front of a microphone, on a talk show, in an interview, press conference, or on the moon, and I doubt he would shut up. This quality of his is fascinating and completely grating at the same time. I don't know if I'd ever want to hang out with him, but his personality makes so much sense after you've seen his movies.
I don't know how much of what I'm saying really adds to the article you've written, but...
It does seem that these new distribution models won't change too much in the long run. If you weren't good at selling yourself before the invention of the internet, why would you be so now? If anything, maybe the web can help people to promote themselves. Most filmmakers shooting digital films, and attempting to put them into festivals, have grown up on the internet and are familiar with it's ways. Being familiar with the territory might be half the battle. I guess it would all depend on the individual. Even as I write this comment, I admit that I'm not terribly comfortable with internet culture. I also know that I find it very difficult to talk about the screenplays that I've written. Sometimes I think it's just easier to say to someone, "Read it".
Wow...this post is sort of scattered. I ought to be in bed.
http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0077.html
Kubrick explains it well:
Q. You feel the real question lurking behind all the verbiage is "What does this new movie mean?"
A. Exactly. And that's almost impossible to answer, especially when you've been so deeply inside the film for so long. Some people demand a five-line capsule summary. Something you'd read in a magazine. They want you to say, "This is the story of the duality of man and the duplicity of governments." [A pretty good description of the subtext that informs Full Metal Jacket, actually.] I hear people try to do it -- give the five-line summary -- but if a film has any substance or subtlety, whatever you say is never complete, it's usually wrong, and it's necessarily simplistic: truth is too multifaceted to be contained in a five-line summary. If the work is good, what you say about it is usually irrelevant.
I don't know. Perhaps it's vanity, this idea that the work is bigger than one's capacity to describe it. Some people can do interviews. They're very slick, and they neatly evade this hateful conceptual- izing. Fellini is good; his interviews are very amusing. He just makes jokes and says preposterous things that you know he can't possibly mean.
I mean, I'm doing interviews to help the film, and I think they do help the film, so I can't complain. But it isn't...it's...it's difficult.
-------------
He was allegedly planning on some TV interviews during the release of Eyes Wide Shut (10 year anniversary coming up).
Whoops, hit the wrong button.
I meant to ask, in light of Eyes Wide Shut's 10th anniversary coming up, when are you going to post a full analysis of the film?
JE: I gotta get to work on that. It's something I actually look forward to re-watching in Blu-ray...
What's weird is that I currently go to film school, and I've learned a thousand and one ways to make feature length films on a dime, but not a single way to break into the industry. I learned more about that farting around on the Internet than I have in the thousands of dollars I've spent on education.
I mean, there was a zombie movie at Cannes that cost something like $70. Jonathan Caouette's "Tarnation" cost $218 and was one of the best reviewed films of 2004. Your article is quite interesting in the way it talks about this stuff, and honestly, more informative than some of my own college professors. Which is kind of sad.
All I have to say to this is watch David Ives' play Sure Thing in the style of Tom Goes to the Mayor.
No matter how cheap a movie is to make, you still need at least a couple of people to give hundreds of hours to getting the film made. While tape has become cheaper, time is now more expensive than ever.
I think young film-makers get mixed up into thinking the reduced cost of a film means there's a reduced amount of effort required. It still takes a hell of a lot of talent and determination to get a bunch of ideas from a script into a decent movie.
The primary argument of the article, how the advent of the internet can both hinder and aid a filmmaker in the promotion of his or her film, underscores a larger questions about the commercialization of the cinematic art-form. Unlike most art forms, a filmmaker most utilize an immense amount of resources so his or her vision can reach fruition. The monetary necessities of a production relegates what should be an artist's personal expression to a mathematical formula where investors exert an influence over the material so it can achieve the utmost profitability. As a result of this comodification, filmmakers most concerns themselves both with their aesthetic paradigms as well as how best to market their film. Art becomes product.
Eyes Wide Shut provides a cogent example of this phenomena. Warner Bros. infamous insertion of digital figures into the orgy scene (yes there's a pun there) to avoid an N-17 rating destroys Kubrick's meticulous vision. Warner Bros. comprised the artistic integrity of Kubrick visions solely due to their desire to maximize the film's profit potential. I recently rewatched Eyes Wide Shut sans Warner's butchering. Although the new footage amounts to no more than a couple additional shot, these shots transform the entire tone and impact of the film. The viewer's knowledge about the depths of depravity Bill Hartford witnesses imbues genuine terror into the subsequent scene of his confrontation with the master of ceremonies.
Emerson brings up valid point about how modern technological advances aids young filmmakers in the consummation of their artistic vision but cannot instill them with the appropriate skill set to render their art as a product for consumption.
Part of me doubts if the so-called "Digital Revolution" and "Internet Marketing" has changed anything for filmmakers. It's just slapping "Digital" on the front of something.
Now that everyone with a camcorder and an iMac can make a feature-length movie, the enormous competition just means that filmmakers have that much harder of a time getting anyone to SEE their movie.
Now instead of filmmakers learning how develop film, or print dailies, or work hand-powered editing machines, they have to spend their time and resources learning HTML and stupid marketing techniques that many of them feel are manipulative, deceptive, a waste of their audience's time, and have nothing to do with filmmaking. Artists tend to be introverts and now they're supposed to turn on a dime and become extroverts?
I once heard a struggling filmmaking say he used to work a job he hated 11 months a year so he could make a movie 1 month a year. Now that he's a little more successful, he spends 1 month a year making a movie, and 11 months a year doing a job he hates: marketing the movie.
Exactly how many gripping feature-length dramas have come to light because of YouTube? None. Not when people can watch 30 seconds of exploding soda bottles or the "Benny Hill Theme" played on tuba. Does any sane person think "The 400 Blows" could be released for the first time today and become a big hit on the internet?
Web 2.0 technology may not change anybody's personality, but it sure does stimulate entrepeneurship. I'm an introvert at heart and not much of a salesman, but I try to be more openly passionate about the things I create. Cinema only exists when it is seen, you know.
Which reminds me... Thanks Jim, for JOINING my upcoming short film's Facebook page at http://tinyurl.com/q7mb37 . "OUT OF SYNC"--remember the title, folks. It's gonna change cinema forever!
(Noticed how I sneaked that bit of business in?)
I feel like this same argument can be made for the explosion of the film blogosphere. Write enough, get some already established people to give it a look, and you've got readers (even if no income). Its interesting how it changes the entire art landscape as you mention. And speaking of marketing and getting names out there, an exclusive sneak at Out 1 of Wikio's new film blog rankings!
http://www.out1filmjournal.com/2009/06/exclusive-sneak-wikio-film-blog-top-100.html
JE: You don't need massive studio resources and hundreds of thousands (or millions) of dollars; all you need is a video camera, a computer, some software and access to the Internet and you've got a whole vertically-integrated world at your disposal: production, marketing, exhibition.
Okay, I'm going to state the obvious. Yes, these things are more readily available but what an aspiring filmmaker really needs is IDEAS! No amount of technical resources will change that. And, any film worth seeing, will be seen.
I'm readily reminded of Sam Raimi's early career with the Evil Dead films. I saw Drag Me to Hell last night and was absolutely bowled over by how many clever things Raimi did in that film that were completely new to me, or extremely funny/creepy extensions of things I had seen before (not to mention the fact that countless pieces of information were conveyed through visual storytelling rather than dialog - he's a great director). The outlandish elements of the film were reminiscent of his Evil Dead 2, a film made for a couple million bucks. For both films, the success was built on the creativity of the director. The extent of Evil Dead 2's marketing was a few photos in Fangoria, a cheap but effective poster, a trailer attached to horror films, and the fact that it was released with an X rating (literally; it was before the advent of NC-17 or the modern notion of releasing films unrated).
Cronenberg is also a fantastic example. Not only were his early films made on the cheap, but he's always been fantastic at talking about his films. It's one of the thing s I greatly admire about him: he doesn't have any fear in talking about what his films mean to him. So, if you had any interest in horror films in the 70s and 80s, you couldn't help but be aware of the new Cronenberg film because he was always talking about them somewhere. And of course, the big thing is that his films were worth seeing.
Okay, so both these guys had a little more studio help than zero, but you get the idea. Even with the opportunities available now, the vast majority of low budget film is probably going to be dreck. If I made a fantastic film and didn't do much to promote it, well, I bet my friends and family would tell their friends about and it would go viral. Anything worth seeing will find an audience.
Perhaps the modern world actually makes it harder to get noticed; now there's even more dreck out there getting in the way of your low-budget masterpiece.
JE: Absolutely. I doubt the ratio of dreck to non-dreck has really changed that significantly, but even if has, the good stuff has a much better chance of getting noticed. That's what I mean, and that's what Spike Lee means. No more excuses. The barriers to opportunity have fallen dramatically in the last ten or twenty years. But these amazing tools are just that: tools, like a pen or a paintbrush. What you do with them is what counts. (BTW, remember the story of how the Coens and Barry Sonnenfeld invented the 2 x 4 unsteady-cam for Raimi's "Evil Dead"? They mounted the camera on a piece of lumber, a guy grabbed each end, and they ran through the woods with it!) Just think: Only a few years ago, even if you could make a film (say, in 16mm), the only way you could get it seen would be to make a print ($$$), rent a theater or a projector, and show it one screening at a time. You'd have to make flyers or place newspaper ads (also $$$) to get the word out -- no desktop printing, no Internet, just lettering on a piece of paper, a trip to Kinko's, and a lot of work with a staple gun. Now you can show your film to anybody with a DVD player -- or make it available to the whole world online. And it costs almost nothing compared to hosting and publicizing a screening the old-fashioned way. That doesn't mean it's going to be any good, or that anybody else is going to like it. But you can get it made and get it out there. In the past, the odds against making it that far were astronomical compared to what they are now. The odds of making a good movie are probably still about the same.
I'm really tired of filmmakers of yesteryear talking about how much easier it is today for filmmakers to break in. It's absolutely false. Spike Lee would not (notice the lack of words like "maybe" or "perhaps") have even gotten She's Gotta Have It into major film festivals today, let alone made a career off of it. The market is so swarmed with little DV and HD films, yet audiences, even festival audiences, demand quality of image and sound today more than ever. All the clutter, all the poor films in terms of both story and execution, make it much more difficult to be taken seriously. The fact that Lee simply MADE a movie was impressive. Not any more. I like a lot of Lee's films, but every time he opens his mouth I just wish he'd shut up.
I'm really starting to hate this "all you need is a camcorder and a computer to make a film" mantra used to pimp the brave new utopia of film making we're entering (or have we entered? I can't keep track...)
And while it's true that the new tech is cheaper and more accessible, since when is art purely tech? The basic building blocks of film, a good script, good actors, a good crew, good vision, persistent drive, and (as stated above) good ideas, are still as elusive as ever.
So great, the cameras are cheaper... If I remember correctly, a Bolex wasn't exactly expensive.
JE: I don't know what the cost of renting or buying a Bolex in the '70s or '80s would be, adjusted for inflation, to the cost of renting or buying a good professional or "pro-sumer" HD video camera now. But that's just one tiny part of how the game has changed. Lighting, film stock, editing equipment, sound, lab work, prints, shipping, promotional materials, projection costs... those really add up.
The point some are missing in this thread, I think, is this: It's no easier to make a good film, or a film that is successful, or a film that makes you rich and famous, now than it ever was. But it's much, MUCH easier to create a film and have something to show. Nobody may want to see it, and nobody may like it, but you have the opportunity to make it.
I'm dubious. I notice no one's naming names of little indie movies that have become big smashes thanks to plucky web marketing. Because, aside from "Blair Witch" TEN YEARS AGO and "Sita Sings the Blues," effective internet marketing is still mostly done by, you got it, the big studios. Or people who know how to do something really stupid really fast.
What new talent has come to light thanks to the internet? Let's say Joe Nussbaum, director of "George Lucas in Love" (which only appeared on the internet AFTER circulating around Hollywood and premiering at the Toronto Film Festival).
Can you imagine Trekkies crowding around their computer to catch the new David Gordon Green flick? No, of course not, because the internet is for "George Lucas in Love," an 8-minute fanboy masturbation. And Nussbaum followed up that success with "Sleepover."
The internet is for making moderate successes out of clowns who can cram something stupid into 3 minutes (which is undeniably a skill). If he had to get his start on YouTube, Spike Lee wouldn't stand a chance against "The Whitest Kids U Know" and Andy Samberg.
And before anyone mentions it, I would hardly call "Tarnation" a "viral success." It was a success because Caouette sent it to a guy who was friends with GUS VAN SANT, who had already been nominated for an Oscar and directed Sean Connery.
Hey, if anyone wants someone to score their film on keyboard with found sound and noise music as well, I'm available. You can check out my teaser trailers over these next three months at my blog to hear my work. Also I'm a damn fine actor. And writer. And a hell of a director. But I have four kids, financial problems and about 17 seconds of free time at night and on the weekends so please, Spike and everybody else, stop telling me I don't have any more excuses. I do. I'm a responsible adult who would love to make a feature length film but have neither the time nor the desire to abandon my family to do so. Sorry Spike.
I finished making a short film back in December (shot on MiniDV using just a consumer camcorder) and decided to use only the internet to "market" it. I entered it in several online film festivals, including Babelgum. I put it on every free video site I could think of. I'm not a huge fan of social networking sites, but I wish I had at least put it on Myspace. I'm not sure if it would have fared any better if I did, though.
For example: on a site called Film Click (http://www.filmclick.com/index.php?section=film.index&filmid=13701233622614) its gotten about 2200 views.
On Youtube, by comparison, its gotten 80.
For example: on a site called Film Click its gotten about 2200 views. On Youtube, by comparison, its gotten 80.
Daniel, take that as a sign of your film's quality. It means your movie's good. YouTube is infamous for putting the dreck at the top. My "Frames of Reference" has about 4,000 views after being promoted on around thirty blogs and websites, including this one here, but my montage of drowning deaths from the movies for an October post that I threw together in about an hour, didn't promote at all and titled suggestively "Killing Me Wetly" has around 14,000 views. It'll hit 20,000 well before "Frames" hits 5,000.
I have a couple of YouTube sites and on my personal one some effing home movie footage of my cat, my freakin' cat(!), has gotten like ten times the views of "Frames." YouTube blows for promotion. YouTube is where teenyboppers and mediocre adults all gather round and watch really "funny" videos of people's drugged up kids biting each other and the latest celebrity junk. I still put my stuff up but I no longer have any expectations that any of it will be widely viewed.
You just have to realise what YouTube is, and use it accordingly. Look at these 2 virals for the aussie flick Black Water.
A really clever and creative fake stunt garners 30,000 hits:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSjPa9WiXTM.
Not bad, but a simple, short and and dumb clip for the same movie, that works with a form that is already popular on youTube (ie see someone get hurt), clocks over a million.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-ymcIVPcTQ.
No obituary for David Carradine? How about Bound for Glory as an overlooked DVD next week.
Just as a frame of reference, I had to shoot on 16mm for my junior year student film last fall, and each roll of film, once processed, workprinted, transferred to mini DV, and edited, cost about $100. And that's for about four minutes of film, and since the odds of all four minutes of that film turning out, being properly lit and usable, that certainly adds up quickly if you're making something feature length.
What I find funny is that many filmmakers still use the old fashioned ways of getting their films made. Michael Davis hand drew a bunch of scenes for Shoot Em Up to present to the New Line heads and on the basis of that, got his film made.
Sorry y'all - re Black water virals. Delete the period "." from the urls if the links don't work.
Great article. Am now going to Rosefelt's blog because of it, and Withoutabox is a great resource. I bought my camera last July, and I'm on my fourth short film -- which, since we're talking about marketing one's self, you can find out about at http://www.trailerthemovie.com/ -- and one of the biggest hurdles is exactly what you talked about. I have a Facebook group, I've got a website, I'm on twitter, and I write a blog. It may seem like overkill, but you never know which avenue will prompt someone to turn and look at another one. The biggest one I've avoided up till now is YouTube, and that's what prompts the following question. Since Spike Lee is right and so many people have access to filmmaking equipment and can throw up any trash on youtube, isn't the downside to this new wave the fact that a lot of talented people get lumped in with a lot of hacks? I don't want to be known as one of those guys who puts up youtube videos. It's like a website devoted to not being taken seriously. I know there is a lot of talent on there too, but how much of it gets recognized, and how much of it isn't as easy to find as yet another video of a guy getting hit in the junk by his pets?
Now, Greg, tell us how you REALLY feel about YouTube. I haven't seen you string words together so angrily since someone brought up "I Can Haz Cheezburger" over at Cinema Styles.
I really don't think the "legitimacy" of a YouTube or a (what is it?) Film Click is any indication of marketability, especially when the requirements are a computer and a streaming video. Barriers are put in place for a reason, and page views and hits only amount to a few clicks on a keyboard and a mouse - the laziest kind of interface imaginable.
I don't know, Dan...is Carradine on Jim's "Life's Too Short" list?
JE: I did recently feature "Bound for Glory" as an Overlooked DVD of the Week after that bizarre dust-up between Carradine and Haskell Wexler at an LA screening a while back. But I'm not really qualified to write about David Carradine, anyway -- although I'm a fan of Paul Bartel's original "Deathrace 2000." I'm more familiar with Robert's work, actually. But I never saw "Kung Fu" (or at least I don't remember seeing it) and I haven't seen either of the "Kill Bills." Never got into martial arts movies.
The tools are there to make films and get them seen, but actually selling a movie is still difficult. Sure, you can promote yourself by putting your films online for free, for everyone to see, but the "free" part of it means it won't make a dime. Ever. Youtube, Myspace and Vimeo are places to show what you can do - they're great places for demo reels - though Youtube is still craptastic quality.
For anyone seriously thinking of making a feature and selling it, I think it would be wise to do what the studios do. Make a dedicated website, or use one of the many blogsite templates available. Look at how commercial or professional directors set up their sites.. Make a teaser trailer and promote it without giving it all away. Link to shorts or a demo reel showing what else you can do, and inform as many people you can who may have good connections. The more professional you look, the better the odds. That's what I would take seriously, wouldn't you?
If someone serious with big bucks happens to take an interest in your film, odds are it would have to be made all over again from scratch with big name actors. Unless of course it is so extraordinary it can get a distributor. Odds are slim for that.
In addition to well-planned web promotion, I still think a phone call, a handshake and a nicely-packaged DVD make a stronger impact than tossing your work into the vast ocean of Youtube like some message in a bottle.
JE: I agree it's probably as tough to get a distributor now as it has ever been. Creating something to show, and showing it to people, is what's easier than ever. That's not to say you'll ever make a dime, but you can make a film -- a finished piece of work -- without having to run yourself into potentially ruinous debt.
Don't forget about Keith Carradine (Dexter).
I am not a filmmaker. I am a musician. It's just as hard for any artist as it is for filmmakers. I was under the spell of Spike Lee's comments for a few years there with the advent of MySpace and YouTube and Facebook and I was determined to get as many "fans" as possible in order to help my music get the attention I felt it deserved. My focus in the last two or so years has been on saving money to make the most professional product as possible and then to simply present it online in a professional manner. I have been luckier than some with the opportunities that have come my way as a result of my online presence, but it was through no effort of mine except creating a professional demeanour (I look more professional than I am). And the thing is, I have no guarantees that these opportunites will develop into anything. I'd rather be on the radar of major record labels, sorry to say. I believe one can create popular product without selling out and that is my intent. The product really does have to be sellable, but I just KNOW now that I do not have the personality to sell my product. I am not built that way. Any budding filmmaker with the same personality should realise this and create a great online presence. And then get a job for a few years.