Category: Creative Distribution Initiative

As the spiritual closing of Sundance Institute’s Creative Producing Summit, Sundance Film Festival director John Cooper wrapped up the weekend with the “One Word Challenge.”Cooper’s challenge to his three keynote guests was simple: “It is 2011, and the most important thing a producer needs to survive is …” Panelists were given this one-word task by email before arriving in Utah and told to bring their best thinking to the audience of creative fellows and advisors. The experiment is both simple and profound, and audience members were invited to play along with cards of their own.

In part one of this interview, In Reality writer/director/star Ann Lupo and producer Holly Meehl shared how they got their anti-romantic comedy feature off the ground. In this second and final part, we explore how they navigated self-distribution.
Were you building an audience along the way? How did you keep people engaged?
AL: During post-production I took on a side project editing a short for Casey Neistat called “Filmmaking is a Sport,” and it completely changed my perspective on YouTube.

Liz Manashil is a filmmaker and former manager of Sundance Institute’s Creative Distribution Initiative.
A few months ago, before I had a baby, I encountered the anti-romantic comedy feature film In Reality, which I immediately fell for. As I told the filmmakers later, it was the movie I needed when I was in my early 20s.

Editor’s note: This story was originally published in January 2019, and a few updates have since been made to reflect changing distributor names and offerings. I’m a writer/director, but because I’m in the micro-budget indie feature world, I take on a lot of producing duties as well. As with a lot of my colleagues, I looked at all the films that had inspired me and assumed a lot regarding how they got out into the world.

Want more stories from Sundance Institute’s Creative Distribution Initiative? Head here.This is not hyperbole: Nearly every person who has watched our new documentary, The Devil We Know, has vowed to toss their Teflon pans. Viewers often ask us what cookware they can use that doesn’t contain the chemical PFOA, which is at the heart of our film.

Michael W. Pannell is a writer and one-time filmmaker based in Georgia.I wondered if I wanted to spend my Saturday at a workshop on how to creatively raise money to make movies and then ingeniously promote them and get them in front of an audience.

After eschewing traditional distribution offers following their run at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, the team behind Columbus opted to self-release their feature film with the support of the Sundance Institute Creative Distribution Fellowship (more on that here). The ongoing shifts in distribution, including new digital opportunities for film and television, have led creators to take a closer look at their options before jumping at the first distribution offer. And where a traditional deal may lighten the load on the filmmaker, it also calls into doubt the team’s creative control with the film moving forward.

It’s that time of year when more than a hundred filmmakers hit the mountains of Utah to showcase their work in hopes of landing a dream distribution deal. The Sundance Film Festival is unique compared to other festivals in terms of acquisition offers: last year close to 95% of the films that played the Festival ultimately received distribution (more than 20% of which had distribution going into the Festival). The likelihood of receiving some kind of offer, whether all-rights or split-rights, is extremely high.

Throughout the process of making a film it’s nearly impossible to do everything yourself. No matter how big or small, you assemble a team for every phase of production. The ability to assemble a hardworking, supportive team is crucial to the efficiency of making your art.

It’s been nearly a year since First Girl I Loved hit theaters and we embarked on our journey into self-distribution. We’ve worked hard and learned a great deal — but having gone through it all now, I wouldn’t have done it any other way. The biggest takeaway is this: know what your rights are worth and do your best to maximize your return.

In our last article, we discussed the importance of data for filmmakers and provided some key analysis and digital marketing terms to know. Now I’d like to contextualize these terms by explaining the practice of analyzing data through the use of feedback loops and providing examples of these systems found in the independent film industry. Let’s start with a production feedback loop example: Dailies.

In today’s independent film industry, data analysis is the unknown for many and a superpower for the elite few. For giants like Netflix and Amazon, data analysis permeates their overall strategy and acts as a key driver of success. However, the information flow stops there; there’s an iron wall between indie filmmakers and the proprietors of this data.