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A week of good reads

Been busy editing Indie Film Blogger Road Trip, have not had much time to blog this week, but did read a few interesting articles, posts about the changing world of indie film distribution. A lot of the ideas presented in these linked articles are not new to DIY/self-distributing filmmakers; however, it looks like that new combinations of DIY + working-with-several-companies distribution approaches (with publicity coming from fests, the web) may soon be tried out by regular indie filmmakers - the kinds that formerly relied or tried to rely solely on distributors for getting their work out. The end goals are (or should be, if you want to build a catalog of work that can be released through new avenues, have some say on how work gets marketed, make money) distribution AND holding on to long term control & ownership of projects, and simple paths for achieving those goals will probably appear after this current period of experimentation. Here are the links (if you haven't read the articles already) to some perhaps useful ideas; old & new:

Ted Hope at Filmmaker Mag blog

Peter Broderick part 1 at indieWIRE

Peter Broderick part 2 at indieWIRE

Anthony Kaufman at Variety, about VOD revenue

(This article is a little older, but shares similar concerns with the ones linked above) Manohla Dargis at New York Times

As some of these veterans of the indie biz are thinking up & looking into new solutions to the distribution obstacles, feel free to come up with your own also. In many cases I am sure each indie filmmaker & film's situation is very different from those of others (motivation for making movies, economic situation, long term goals, etc.), so most likely each filmmaker will have to come up with their own unique combination of approaches in order to publicize, distribute, and generate revenue from their work. Sounds like a lot of fun :)

- Sujewa

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