1. How do deliverables impact distribution?

2. What Myths exist in terms of film distribution?

3. What paths are production companies taking today in terms of distribution?

4. What should I know about alternative distribution?

1. How do deliverables impact distribution? Digital video cameras and video editing applications such as Final Cut Pro make it possible to perform such minor technological miracles as creating entire feature-length "films" without ever leaving one's home. Watching a film on VHS is about as satisfying as looking at a photocopy of an oil painting, so for the past few months I've been keeping my eye on the new generation of DVD-authoring software and disk recorders with the hope that I might soon be able to put my old VHS deck to rest in a New York landfill. Until very recently, burning your own DVDs at home was prohibitively expensive. A DVD burner could cost thousands of dollars, and recordable DVD disks sold for about $30 apiece. Fortunately all this is changing. DVD burners that can create home-player-compatible video DVDs are selling today for well under $1,000. Recordable disks now sell for about $6 each, and these prices will continue to drop. Authoring software is getting cheaper and more plentiful as well. This past month I tested two excellent new tools that enable filmmakers to author and burn their own movies onto DVD disks: The Que! DVD burner (approx $750) and Apple's DVD Studio Pro DVD authoring software ($999 SRP). The limitation of most currently available DVD drives for personal computers is that they can't create disks compatible with home DVD players. These drives play video DVDs, but they can only write to DVD-RAM disks. DVD-RAM is a good storage format, but you can't play the disks on home DVD players. (Apple's DVD Superdrive was an exception, but you could only get it by buying one of their higher-end G4 computers.) The point is, don't run out and buy a DVD burner assuming you'll be recording video DVDs. You have to know the format it's capable of recording before you buy it. The Que! is one of the first recorders available in the U.S. that will write to DVD-R format disks, a disk format compatible with almost any home DVD player. The Que! is actually a Pioneer DVD drive packaged in an external housing, and it connects to your Mac or Windows computer via a FireWire cable. Here's the good news: video files burned on DVD-R disks and played back on my home DVD player were markedly superior to VHS copies of the same material. If you see your work on DVD you'll never want to send out another VHS tape again. Visit the QPS Web site - www.qps-inc.com - for a full list of compatible formats. Another strength of the Que! is that it's compatible with a myriad of DVD and CD formats. In addition to DVD-R disks, I was able to write to DVD-RW disks, which manufacturers claim can be rerecorded up to 1,000 times. DVD-RW disks will generally only play on home-DVD players manufactured in the last year, however, so they are not yet an ideal way of distributing your movies. The disks are reusable, though, and can store almost 5 gigs of data, so they make good backup media. I was able to burn CD-R and CD-RW disks as well. This is useful because it means you can burn both DVDs and CDs without needing to keep two different drives around. The Que! ships with a case that holds the drive, power supply, FireWire cable and disks. This is a reasonably portable, well-designed unit that would make an excellent addition to a DV editing system. Basic DVD authoring software for Windows computers is included. For Mac users, Que! includes a program for burning CDs, but not for authoring DVDs. For DVD authoring on a Mac you'll need to get a third-party software application, and Apple's DVD Studio Pro DVD authoring package would be an excellent choice. Though the $999 price tag seems high, it's quite reasonable considering that hardware-based authoring systems can cost thousands of dollars more. This test of DVD Studio Pro was my first experience with DVD authoring. Though the application is quite complex, it is well designed and within a few hours I was able to master it sufficiently to create a professional looking DVD that would play back three of my DV shorts. A useful preview function allowed me to constantly check my progress and watch for mistakes while I was working. My finished DVD included custom menus that I created in Photoshop that allowed viewers to select which short to play, and to view slideshows of production stills from each short. I was able to label each movie with chapter markers and encode the audio to the Dolby Digital standard. The application is quite powerful, and in my trial I only had enough time to scratch the surface of its capabilities. Each DVD track can have up to nine video streams (or angles, as they're known in DVD jargon), eight audio streams, 32 subtitle streams, and 99 chapter breaks. Language settings allow the construction of multi-language DVDs - each disk can hold up to 16 languages. DVDs can be regionalized to play back only in designated geographical areas, and they can be copy protected with industry standard CSS (Contents Scrambling System) and Macrovision. When you've finished designing a DVD, you can either burn it directly to a DVD-R disk for immediate playback, or you can save the data to an external storage device so your video DVDs can be burned by a DVD replication service. An extremely comprehensive application, DVD Studio Pro is likely to do just about anything indie filmmakers will need to build a high quality DVD showcase for their work. But don't throw away your VHS recorder just yet - the cost of burning disks at home is still a bit too high to replace tape entirely. But the enormous quality advantage of DVD and dropping prices spell the inevitable demise of VHS. Good riddance. DISCLAIMER: The information provided here is intended to provide general information and does not constitute legal advice. You should not act or rely on such information without seeking the advice of an attorney and receiving counsel based on your particular facts and circumstances. Many of the legal principles mentioned might be subject to exceptions and qualifications, which are not necessarily noted in the answers. Furthermore, laws are subject to change and vary by jurisdiction.

2. What Myths exist in terms of film distribution? If you're like most low-budget filmmakers, the word "deliverables" probably ranks somewhere at the very bottom of your List of Major Concerns, below "Outline my next film" and above "Pay back Uncle Mort's $1,000 loan." And rightly so; when you're consumed with worries about scraping together cash to buy stock or about getting through the mix before the festival screening, what's the point of worrying about abstract future concerns like E&O Insurance, Chain of Title documentation, and internegative checkprints? But unlike Uncle Mort, deliverables will come back to haunt the unsuspecting independent filmmaker like a hidden line item threatening to dwarf the rest of the production budget. As producer James Schamus says, "When you've finished your film, you're just about halfway through." In other words, after the rude awakening of deliverables, you might find yourself crawling back to Uncle Mort to beg him for another $30,000 to $80,000 to provide you with the means to actually sell and jrelease what used to be your miraculously produced no-budget film. Creation of deliverables is a huge and consuming process that accompanies any film lucky enough to get any level of sales or distribution. From the distributor's perspective, a timely and high-quality delivery is the backbone of a film's release. But from the producer's perspective, delivery can make the difference between a film's profitability and further debt. And for the low and no-budget filmmaker who has already plumbed the depths of fundraising and charity, the creation of deliverables can be a desperate struggle. "The filmmaker always expects the distributor to pay for all the delivery items, and it becomes the biggest area of friction," says Marcus Hu from Strand Releasing, which has released the low-budget art house films Crush and Grief. "But on a borderline film, if the filmmaker balks at creating necessary delivery materials, we may decide not to distribute the film at all." Unfortunately, there's no way around delivery, no El Mariachi-no-budget shortcut, but there are a few hints about how to cash flow the process and juggle the elements so that a producer can ensure that the film does get delivered, and maybe with a few bucks left over afterwards. Deliverables Defined Simply put, deliverables are the materials that a distributor needs in order to release a film. Without a negative of some sort, the distributor can't create theatrical release prints. Without a color-corrected video version, the distributor can't broadcast it on TV or release it to your local video chain. Without a legal trail proving that the producer in fact owns the film and all its elements, the distributor won't undertake the legal risk of releasing it. And without a good many color slides, black-and- white prints and quirky anecdotes about the shoot, the distributor won't have the means to publicize the film's release. Deliverables fall into those three categories: print materials, legal documents, and publicity materials, and the bulk of the expense for the deliverables process lies in the first of them. Print Materials Print materials are the means for the distributor to create theatrical release prints, the trailer, television and video versions, soundtracks, and other methods for people to view and listen to the film. Exactly which and how many print materials are needed will depend on the scope of the film's release, but at the very least, print delivery will include access to the original cut negative and optical negative, a number of release prints, and a color-corrected video transfer of the film. For release in a foreign country where dubbing is required, print materials will probably also include M&E tracks, which have cleanly separated music, effects and dialogue tracks. Keep in mind that the most efficient way to accomplish this is to record each character's dialogue and location effect separately, otherwise, you will have to re-record every effect that tramples on dialogue and re-record each character separately when their dialogue tramples on the others in the production track. And for a release involving more than a small number of prints, a producer will probably choose not to endanger the original negative and will create an internegative which can travel more freely and which can strike large numbers of release prints safely. But the creation of an internegative calls for the creation of an intermediary element, the interpositive, as well as a checkprint (combined cost for the three is typically $25-30,000), and the creation of acceptable M&E tracks can involve an extra sound edit and mix which can easily run $5,000 or more. Since pretty much any territory sale will include video and television rights, a filmmaker will be required to create a D1 or D2 color corrected video transfer, which for a typical feature can take from eight to 30 hours of transfer time at anywhere from $300-800 an hour. A filmmaker may also have to provide what's known as a spotted dialogue list. This form lists the film's action and dialogue in feet and frames for dubbing and subtitling purposes. Professionally done, it can cost in the thousands of dollars. Some smaller distributors without in-house editors might require the filmmaker to come up with the trailer, but for the most part this would be the limit of the major print delivery expenses. The remaining print deliverables merely involve giving the distributor access to already existing materials the filmmaker utilized to make the film: from original location sound and erstwhile useless negative cutouts, to sound mix cue sheets and copies of the original score, to the optical overlays of the credit sequences and the negative of the textless credits sequences. Everything you thought you'd never need again might return to your attention as the crucial linchpin of your distributor's deliverables list. Legal Materials Like print deliverables, the amount of legal paperwork required to release a film will vary from distributor to distributor. In general, though, legal deliverables are less expensive and less complicated than print deliverables, so long as the process has been anticipated from the very beginning of the film shoot. Well-conducted production legal work will include signed releases and contracts for every cast and crew member who worked on the film, for every poster and labeled bottle appearing in the frame, and for every song played on the soundtrack, and copies of all of these licenses and deal memos and releases must eventually be delivered to the distributor. Additionally, filmmakers should expect to provide the distributor with a Chain of Title, which is a set of documents that trace each step of ownership of the film from the original screenplay through the producer and sales agent right up to the distributor, and which include copyright certificates, title searches, and certificates of origin. Though Chain of Title documentation can be complicated enough on its own, expect it to vary from territory to territory as each country's bureaucracy grapples with its own idea of authenticity. However, there are two additional legal deliverables which are invariably expensive though not always required, especially by the smaller distributors. The first of these is an MPAA ratings certificate, the cost of which is pegged into the annual sales of the company submitting the film. As such, it is invariably cheaper for a small producer to submit the film for the rating than it would be for a larger distributor with sales in the millions. The cost of an MPAA screening, even if the rating is not ultimately accepted or used by the distributor, will be upwards of $2,500. Errors & Omissions Insurance, another costly legal deliverable, is an insurance policy which protects the distributor from any potential lawsuits looming in the future. Smaller distributors may not require this until they make a video sale. but larger distributors will want this immediately. A standard policy is $3 million worth of insurance for 3 years, and this can run between $8,500 and $10,000. Most of the remaining legal deliverables are relatively simple and straightforward - short form transfers of rights, access letters for lab materials, statements of dubbing or editing restrictions, etc. Publicity Materials If you've already prepared for a festival, you probably have a good base for all the publicity materials you need: photos, slides, pressbooks, synopses, biographies of key talent and creative crew, and sometimes poster ideas and electronic press kits. Most important on this list is the photos and slides: a filmmaker should be prepared to hand over all production slides and color transparencies to the film's largest distributor (which probably means the film's U.S. distributor), but should remain cautious because the smaller distributors will also require a smaller, but complete selection of these materials. Generally, the best scenario is to give your U.S. distributor a chance to see everything you have, and then ask them to duplicate the materials they prefer. From their selects (60-200 color slides, 15-100 black and white photos), you choose a smaller batch for selects for all the other territories (20 color slides and 10 black-and-white photos). No matter how astute and intelligent you are when selecting slides, all the distributors will latch onto one single image that they love. Because most of your European distributors will want to follow the U.S. campaign, they will often choose the same image. The point is, don't make 300 copies of your favorite slide; trust your distributors to know their market and your film, and supply enough materials for them to do their job. Other publicity materials include biographies of all key crew and cast, a summary of the film, and a few pages of material about production. Any information that can help your distributor fashion a "hook" to entice publicity is helpful. If the entire process was a miserable one, invent something. Often, press will not have seen your movie before interviews and will ask questions solely based on the notes you or your distributor have provided, so make sure your notes open up platforms to speak from and address issues that are enticing and marketable. Keep in mind that the El Mariachi hook of how low the production budget was is no longer interesting. Most independent films are made on a shoestring, and moviegoers don't plunk down $8 to see how thrifty and ingenius you are anymore. Delivery Shortcuts The best shortcut to inexpensive and efficient delivery is anticipating the process from the very start of the production. While some of delivery expenses are unavoidable, many of the horror stories from the front lines of delivery involve inadequate preparation during the shoot and postproduction. Other shortcuts involve ways to handle the deliverable process itself. Following are a few basic mantras: Never use anything you haven't cleared. The cost of reshooting a scene with a different extra or in front of a different billboard, in the few instances where it's even possible, can be enormous. More common, but no less damaging, is the inclusion of musical tracks in the mix before obtaining proper clearances. Clearing only the right to exhibit the film at festivals could be a great way to gain a bargaining chip with the record companies, but it can also be the producer's worst nightmare. In the best cases, having a certain song in the film may attract the distributors' attention, and the possibility of having the band's music in a motion picture with a committed P&A budget may appeal to the record company, too. But an easy worst-case scenario is when the distributor loves the music, the director loves the music, but the music is only cleared for the festivals and the record companies will not negotiate a rate low enough to clear all media for the distributor. The moral is anything that isn't cleared before exhibition is a gamble. Pay attention to what's happening on set. Careful attention on set will save a lot of headaches when time comes to obtain an errors and omissions policy. Be wary during production of any recognizable name, and keep in mind that recognizable doesn't always mean famous. In one case, a producer needed to track down residents of a suburban western town who had the same name as the character in a movie. The producer's lawyer asked them to make sure that the real people could not claim harmful similarities if their story was similar to the fictional character's story. (The irony was the writer had crafted a name hoping to be completely generic.) Other things to be wary of: casting aspersions on trademarks by associating them with unpleasant activities. For example, don't have your serial killer eat a McDonald's Big Mac before a killing spree or your E&O carrier may exclude that from the coverage. Remember, what you don't notice on set, a hungry lawyer will notice at a movie theater. Hold onto everything you can. Never throw away anything. Never lose anything. Unused shots, failed foleys, recordings of the musicians rehearsing, letters from disgruntled caterers, keep 'em all. The most unlikely materials may eventually be required by a weird and rapacious distributor. And in such a case, the cost of recreating materials will most certainly outstrip the cost of a storage facility. Hire a professional, reliable stills photographer. Unfortunately most producers learn the hard way just how important it is for a professional still photographer to be on set. "At Strand, we ask now before the deal is signed to see the selection of stills. It's the single most important publicity item distributors need. Creating stills after the fact is usually impossible and pulling from a frame of the film is disastrous." Oftentimes, unit publicists working on big-budget Hollywood films will read the script before production and identify major scenes where a good still will be an evocative selling tool. The unit publicist will then identify those scenes to the producer and unit photographer. Planning, professionalism, and attentive logging and care of the materials are all incredibly important during production. Make sure your key scenes, lead actors, and shots of the director on set are all covered. Juggle the deliverables. Plan international releases carefully so that not all items will be needed everywhere at the same time. Very often, distributors around the world will release a film around the same time; that being the case, it's very important to coordinate the international journeys of the film's elements so that it doesn't become necessary to create multiple internegatives or M&E tracks. The interpositive of a film will be used to create the trailer, the video transfer (unless you make a low-con print, which some transfer houses prefer), and the film's internegatives; these activities must therefore be spaced out well in advance. A key to successful delivery is in evaluating everyone's needs and concerns and crafting a solution everyone can live with Use the organic deliverable - the Director. It may not appear in any contract, but the time demands made on the director will be enormous. After you sell the film, it will take your distributor at least three to six months to prepare for release. Many independent films are platformed, meaning they open in a few major markets and then expand to a wider audience. The European markets will generally follow the American release by a few months. This means that from selling the film to putting the film to bed can take about twelve to 24 months to get the film out to all territories. The primary selling tool for an independent film is the director. Interviews, by phone and in person, will continually occur. Most distributors will want the film to participate in a festival in their territory and will want the director to attend and do press. The director should be ready, prepared, professional and pleased, even though they are being asked the same questions day after day for months on end. Distributors remember who works a film and who can't be bothered. You'll never know how much your visit boosted ticket sales, but when you come knocking on the distributor's door with your next film, they will remember. It's good for the film, and good for the director. Be wary of distributors creating the deliverables. Larger distributors might offer to create the materials themselves, often at lower base prices than you can because of the relationship they have with their own labs. On the other hand, they will add a service fee of 20-40% to the cost, which will be subtracted from the income the distributor makes on your film. On the third hand, if your film has only been sold for a modest advance, you may want the distributor to create as many of the materials as they are willing to, the logic being that you may never see any overages beyond your minimum guarantee, anyway. On the fourth hand, if your North American distributor (who generally needs the most delivery items) creates all the materials, who will service your international distributors? Will they charge a fee to the foreign distributors for access to the interpositive and internegatives they create? Go for a Gross Corridor deal. If your distributor can't offer you an advance to help defray the costs of delivery, ask for a gross corrider deal with your distributor, which essentially means that a portion of money received from the box office and ancillary markets will revert directly to the filmmaker. This allows money to come back to you more quickly in order to pay for materials. The downside is that less money is going to your distributor, who may need it to publicize and distribute your film. And if you're feeling lucky... Smaller distributors may only want an initial run of four to seven prints, which is a number that seems high to run off your original negative, but not large enough to warrant the expense of an internegative. An intermediate solution would be to create an interpositive of the film and then run prints off the original cut negative. If damage occurs, the interpositive can be used to create an internegative, and additional prints can be struck. The drawback of this method is that it's still a tremendous gamble: Without creating an internegative and a checkprint, there's no way to make sure that the interpositive is any good. The Myth of the Seven-Thousand-Dollar Film "A film without delivery items isn't quite a film yet," says Samuel Goldwyn's Tom Rothman, which leads one to wonder whether deliverables should be a part of every film's production budget, just as essential to a film's creation as actor fees, equipment costs and music licensing. While deliverables are not strictly part of the script-to-answer-print process, they are definitely a part of the equation of how and whether a film breaks even or makes a profit, and their exclusion from a production budget can be somewhat misleading to a potential investor. On the other hand, it's wildly inaccurate to predict the extent of a film's release at the time of budgeting, so it would be difficult to anticipate how many of which deliverables a film might need. It would probably be safest to include one full set of deliverables in a production budget, but it's even more important for producers to be aware of the cost necessary to create delivery items and weigh those costs during production. It is, for example, crucial to recognize early on that a 16mm film is virtually impossible to release theatrically anywhere outside the United States, and as such will probably have to be blown up to 35mm (a process which involves interpositives and internegatives as well as a substantial blow-up charge). It will also keep you from cutting corners by letting your cousin Sara, who takes pictures for the high school yearbook, from being your part-time, afterschool unit photographer. It will make you insist that production sound tracks be as clean as possible. And it will make you track down that charming street musician who sold your director a homemade tape in the subway, one of whose tracks has somehow worked its way into the production track. DISCLAIMER: The information provided here is intended to provide general information and does not constitute legal advice. You should not act or rely on such information without seeking the advice of an attorney and receiving counsel based on your particular facts and circumstances. Many of the legal principles mentioned might be subject to exceptions and qualifications, which are not necessarily noted in the answers. Furthermore, laws are subject to change and vary by jurisdiction.

3. What paths are production companies taking today in terms of distribution? As one of the newest names on the British distribution circuit, Going New Pictures has set itself some challenging goals: to bring high-quality foreign language films to a UK audience, and to convince the notoriously foreign film-shy British public to get out and see them. Kevin Miller discusses the company's aims and aspirations with Liam Melveux, director of Going New Pictures. How did the idea of Going New Pictures come about? It came from a genuine passion for film, and the desire to bring UK audience good films. What are the main problems you see in the current UK distribution setup, especially with regard to foreign language and arthouse cinema? There are many problems, but one of the main ones is that unfortunately what is shown and where it's shown is regulated by very, very few people. If to that you add that these few people have been working very comfortably with the same people for years, you can imagine how difficult it is to try to find a little gap to squeeze in. There are a number of independent distribution houses - notably Tartan, Artificial Eye and to a lesser extent the BFI - who are already distributing foreign language films in the UK. How does Dogwoof aim to be different? We aim at being very good distributors, as I'm sure the ones you mention are, but we are different because we are different people, and come from different backgrounds. We are fresh and new and still have that touch of naivety that I guess gets lost somewhere in the way to success. What's the main market you're seeking to tap with Dogwoof's releases? Foreign language films notoriously struggle with mainstream UK and US audiences, partly because of the language barrier and partly because of a popular aversion to "unfamiliar" styles of filmmaking. The main market is already there; it's a similar audience to the one for independent films, I'd say. We believe a universal story marketed the right way does crossover. We just have to find the right film, which is the hardest part. Why are English-speaking audiences so averse to foreign content? One of the main reasons other nations are so amenable to English-language cinema is, fundamentally, because they've got no choice if they want to watch the latest Hollywood film - but UK and US audiences don't grow up with that culture, so are far less receptive to foreign films. How do you plan to go about changing that? This is mainly because languages are a very small unimportant part of British early education; it's a logical consequence of not learning other languages and hence not being familar with them. There is a significant foreign film audience in the UK, and there's an "in between" audience that would not usually go to see foreign films, but would if the film is appealing enough and marketed properly (i.e. Amélie, Amores Perros...) We aim to target these audiences by finding universal stories with characters with whom anybody could identify, and to market these films by focusing on their universal appeal, rather than the language in which they are spoken. We're also very interested in English-language independent films. You had recent success with Don't Move, an Italian language film starring Penelope Cruz, and your distribution network is currently geared towards Germany, France, Italy, Spain. Was this a conscious decision or a commercial necessity? Are you looking to open up to other national markets? Absolutely. We are looking for good stories with a sensible commercial appeal, regardless of where they come from. We are also establishing very good relationships with Asian and South American sales agents/producers. With all the exciting world cinema around at the moment, it makes the domestic UK film industry look even more depressing. Why do you think the British film industry can't get on its feet? Is it a funding issue, a lack of homegrown talent, an over-competitive marketplace, or something else? Personally, I don't think there's lack of talent at all. I've met so many talented British people in the film industry, most of them at the very bottom of the unreachable UK film industry ladder. When a country's film industry has not been successful for a while, it may mean that there's something wrong with the actual system, in other words, that either the people giving the money or the people receiving it are the wrong ones, or both. It seems to me that unfortunately the system is ruled by power/money, rather than a genuine interest for good story telling and the art of cinema itself. One of Dogwoof's ideas to promote foreign-language film in the UK is the "Fête de Cinema". Can you explain how the idea came about, and what you hope to achieve with it? Fête de Cinema has the aim of getting as many people as possible to the cinemas.For that over 3000 cinemas across the UK will participate in the cut-rate ticket scheme, which allow audiences to see films for £1 following the purchase of one full price entry. The ultimate objective is to promote independent world cinema to the general public. It's hard to resist £1 cinema entry, even if it's not the film you'd ideally want to watch, don't you think? Maybe we'll even get "don't-do-foreign" people to see some foreign films...who knows? You've set yourself up as a distribution company, but do you ever see Dogwoof moving into the production side of the film business? Yes, if we come across a very interesting project, a brilliant piece of story telling, we'll do our best to back it as much as possible, whether it is distribution or getting involved in production. What else have you got lined up for UK release in the near future? A Spanish comedy, Football Days, a kind of Spanish Full Monty, and a brilliant Danish political thriller, King's Game. DISCLAIMER: The information provided here is intended to provide general information and does not constitute legal advice. You should not act or rely on such information without seeking the advice of an attorney and receiving counsel based on your particular facts and circumstances. Many of the legal principles mentioned might be subject to exceptions and qualifications, which are not necessarily noted in the answers. Furthermore, laws are subject to change and vary by jurisdiction.

4. What should I know about alternative distribution? Let's get real. Theatrical distribution, in its current form, is no longer a realistic possibility for the vast majority of independent, specialized, cult, underground or art films produced today. Specialized theatrical distribution as we know it only reaches the standard art-film audience, which is graying by the day, and the "urban sophisticates" who follow like lemmings the popular wisdom of today's newspaper critics and television tastemakers. It takes serious ad dollars to reach these folk and put their butts into gear. And because spending this kind of money requires hopes of large returns, standard distribution is predicated upon crossover dreams. Unless the means are created to reach new, untapped film-going niches and supply them with cinematic satisfaction on a regular basis, audiences had better resign themselves to a pretty bland diet. And if we, the independent film community, remain loyal to antiquated distribution systems, we are digging our own graves. How many indie films were submitted to Sundance this year? One thousand? Up from 750 in 1996. How many do they screen? Seventy-five? How many of these actually find broad-scale distribution by one of the larger specialized distributors? Five or six? And maybe another six get more limited distribution from the smaller specialty distributors. These numbers remain more or less the same year in and year out. Relatively few theaters in this country are devoted to indie fare. The rumored new Angelika and Sundance chains have yet to appear. Most multiplex bookers would rather add additional shows of the latest blockbuster than take a chance on an indie gem. Meanwhile, the studios continue to increase production, reportedly by as much as 40% this year, making it even more difficult for small indies to find a screen. Theatrical exhibition is fast becoming the impossible dream. And this dismal situation is not restricted to the Amerindie scene either. How many foreign -language films find theatrical distribution in the U.S.? How many even screen in a major U.S. festival? How many make it to cable? So why do we filmmakers continue to make these celluloid trophies? Apparently just to put "filmmaker" on our business cards or tax forms because we certainly aren't getting our work seen. The "indie boom" has doomed us. Over the last few years, we've made a surplus of features for an industry ill-prepared or unwilling to exploit them. If we want to continue making films touched by "independent spirit," we must think hard about how to get these movies to the audiences that will respond to them. We've got to find distribution methods that align themselves with the content of the films we want to make. And if those distribution systems don't yet exist, let's create them before we make our next films. When I look at the diversity of the music- buying public with all their eclectic tastes, I see hope for independent filmmakers. In film too there's a core of folks who want the hardest, loudest, most shocking stuff available yet don't know how to get it. Likewise, there are others out there who want quality films, regardless of the language they're spoken in, but can't find the time to get to them during the one week they play at the local arthouse. Will any of these folks remember these films once they hit video - that is, if their video store stocks them? My answer and cry to all of this: Bring The Films To The People! Over the last few years, there have been two films that aligned their content with their method of distribution. Not surprisingly these two films reached a more diverse audience than any other indie films I know of. These tapes were on every gift list. No dinner party was complete without a critique of these works. Of course I'm speaking of The Motley Baywatch Honeymoon/Vacation Boat Cruise Shag Session (better known as the "Pamela and Tommy Lee Tape") and Trey Parker and Matt Stone's The Spirit of Christmas. These two videos offer lessons for each and every one of us (and I'm not just talking about how to steer a boat when...). In case you were stuck in some darkened edit suite dreaming of Sundance and a three-picture deal with the Big Brothers and somehow missed these video wake-up calls, the tapes I'm referring to are Pamela Lee and her Mayhem-inscribed, soon-to-be-ex-husband Tommy Lee's home recording of their nuptials, honeymoon, and various shag sessions in moving vehicles, and the five-minute holiday corporate gift that introduced the film industry to the "South Park" cartoon kids. If you haven't seen these tapes, ask your friends for them now! When it comes to distribution, here was real innovation at work. Both tapes were initially distributed on the clandestine back-channel swap circuit (similar to the way Deadheads swap bootlegs), where possession signifies "coolness" and also serves the social purpose of cementing new friendships. (In fact, you're not a bona fide member of the entertainment industry if you don't already possess one of these classics.) Their predecessors are equally informative, be they Todd Haynes' Barbie-doll, Super-8 melodrama Superstar or Robert Frank's illicit Rolling Stones doc, Cocksucker Blues. While countless more people have seen Pam and Tommy Lee's shag session than Parker and Stone's hilariously crude animation, The Spirit of Christmas has nonetheless redefined an important indie genre - the "calling card" film. A gag video Christmas gift commissioned by a studio executive, the film's initial distribution was limited to the executive's close friends. But the tape's blend of blasphemy and cute cartoon kids generated the word of mouth that made everyone want a copy. As the tape got repeatedly dubbed, its calling card value grew. Clocking in at five minutes, the short easily fit within the framework of an executive's leisure time. Skipping the festival circuit altogether, it wasn't competing with the ski slopes. And, by carrying with it the mystique of contraband, it avoided the doomed fate of a "To Watch" pile. It made for perfect lunch-time screening for the whole office. And since it was made as a gag gift, it also carried with it a declaration of budget consciousness: it would be cheap to turn this into a series. It had to be, or else how could someone have afforded to make this their Xmas card? The Pam & Tommy Lee tape, however, has redefined the release window pattern and marketing methods for the independent feature (even if the project itself didn't ultimately ensure happiness for its stars). Built around a claim of mythic weight (Did their house painters actually steal this private work from their home?), its origins are almost as interesting as the footage. Granted this folkloric marketing angle has worked for many a distributor (the p.a. who worked weekends on his feature and went on to win Sundance, the bartender who got Harvey to buy the bar as part of the development deal, the 18-year-old ghetto kid who raised his budget by pleading for funds on the radio), but the marketing power of contraband - stolen goods - intrigues like no other. In fact, the tape hit pay dirt only on its second try; it initially surfaced over a year ago but soon vanished. It was then put up on the Web by an enterprising internet marketer, Seattle's Internet Entertainment Group (IEG), and was downloadable for a fee of $200. It was in this second wave that home dubbers took hold of the footage and the Lees made it across this great land. It's one thing to view a celeb's naughty bits, but to get something with a hefty price tag for free - even the most chaste among us can't resist the temptation. And when it comes to the complex interplay between desire and marketing, the Lees grasped the lesson of Japanese pornography's fabled blue digital dot (people want most what they can't see or have) and added the critical suffix for these days of late capitalism: "or can't afford." Publicity escalated when Pamela Lee went on the Howard Stern Show to denounce the theft of the tape. This Stern appearance was then cited by a judge who threw out Pamela and Tommy Lee's attempted injunction against the Internet marketer; the judge claimed that the couple diminished their right to privacy by commenting on the contents of the tape on the radio. The Lees then reportedly reached some unspecified settlement with IEG, which now continues to sell the tapes, advertising them as "The Only Legal Version." The truly mind-blowing thing is the story of Pam & Tommy Lee didn't stop there. Once hepcat bootlegging hit the saturation point, IEG announced a series of sequels and "director's cuts." In the coming months, the curious can first trade ducats for a 60-minute highlight tape (carefully programmed to include 15 minutes of never-seen-before footage), enhanced both visually and aurally from the original 45-minute "trailer". A month later, the artists' uncut three-hour version will hit the streets. There's also talk of a "prequel," documenting Pam's passion for her previous lover, Brett Michaels from the band Poison, as well as a threesome tape featuring two babes and another member of Motley Crue. From Pamela Lee's initial dance in the buff comes long-term boffo box-office. Check out this marketing strategy. The initial bootleg window led first to a Web broadcast followed by a wider bootleg proliferation which initiated a press frenzy used to sell a video premiere which advertises a collectors' edition "director's cut" which leads into a series of sequels. Why can't art film distributors be this innovative? The distribution of Shag Session and The Spirit of Christmas achieved the five objectives that any filmmaker could hope for from the theatrical release of a specialized film: 1) The releases created want-to-see-desire on a mass scale. 2) The releases generated considerable newspaper, television, and radio publicity for the products and their creators. 3) The releases lead to new deals for the filmmakers. 4) The ancillary market value of the films were increased. 5) Critical praise - and general awe for the filmmakers' unique attributes - were created. You don't have to be a Playboy centerfold model or a well-endowed rock star to reap these kind of rewards from independent distribution. Filmmakers must simply rethink their fetishistic lust for theatrical distribution. What new ways can be created to release and publicize films? What about cable premieres? Face it, only precious filmmakers and short-sighted exhibitors care if a film was on TV before it shows up in theaters. The fact is, the cable audience barely intersects with the art-film audience. This fetish for antiquated systems is mirrored in the creative community's reluctance to embrace video - digital or analog - as a format for cost-conscious production. Faced with a limited audience, filmmakers must adopt a production ethos of limited means. And why do filmmakers and distributors rely on Sundance and other festivals to generate buzz on their films? Aren't there other ways? The illicit quality of the Pam & Tommy Lee extravaganza gave an urgency to the viewing that most films can only covet. The real story behind Bean, The Full Monty, and Trainspotting wasn't how well they did here but how well they did on their home turf before they hit our fair shores. The fact that they conquered elsewhere first gave them a notoriety here that other films lacked. Perhaps it' s time to take another look at distribution release patterns. Just when popular wisdom says the platform release pattern - in which a film opens on a small number of theaters and slowly "platforms" to larger numbers of screens - is dead, The Full Monty proves otherwise. When the Fuel Tour films showed in small towns and cities, audiences flocked to see what this traveling film festival and their filmmakers had to say; outside of the top media markets, people are always looking for something new to do and see, and it doesn't require massive ad dollars to draw them in if you've got a unique product. How can the Internet be used more effectively by indie filmmakers? Or at least as well as Pam & Tommy Lee's team utilized it? We have to find and link together people of similar tastes. We have to actively champion the work we believe in and make sure as many people as possible not only hear of this work, but have access to it. Where is the indie filmmaking community's equivalent to Factsheet Five (a fanzine dedicated to reviewing all indie music releases), something that champions and critiques the 1,000 indie films a year that are made but never seen? Viewers are still relying on festivals to bring them their daily serving, yet the aforementioned tapes prove there are stronger ways to feed the public's appetite. Filmmakers are doing new things out there. Yet we won't see them or know about them until we abandon our reliance on doing things the same old ways. Change or die. DISCLAIMER: The information provided here is intended to provide general information and does not constitute legal advice. You should not act or rely on such information without seeking the advice of an attorney and receiving counsel based on your particular facts and circumstances. Many of the legal principles mentioned might be subject to exceptions and qualifications, which are not necessarily noted in the answers. Furthermore, laws are subject to change and vary by jurisdiction.