Skip to main content

The concept of Individual Filmmaker Projects - a path to cinematic liberation

This is a new way of making and distributing movies that I am practicing with my new movie The Secret Society For Slow Romance - a comedy that had to be made in a very minimalist way during the pandemic of 2020.

What was caused by necessity may actually be an interesting and effective way to make and distribute a movie. I call it the Individual Filmmaker Project method.

Basically we bring the entire filmmaking and distribution, marketing, sales operation down to one person - primarily - the filmmaker.

So it is similar to an artist making and selling a painting, a writer writing and publishing a book - so on...

The method - the filmmaker produces, writes, shoots, edits, directs the movie.  And in my case I also acted in the movie - as one of the two actors.  And the filmmaker submits the movie to festivals, comes up with a distribution strategy - carries it out - working with interested festivals, indie theaters, getting the film on VOD, making and selling Blu-rays, and working with other distribution entities, if desired, to get the movie out worldwide.

Backed by a TON of advertising, marketing, promo carried out by the filmmaker for 1-2 years, using all available means possible.

Cost of the project spread out over two years - using money from whatever means available - from donations to money from day job work to any other means that can be used.

So it is an extremely DIY method.  But it can be very effective.

Perhaps it may work for you for a project.

Here is a part of the production results of this method - the teaser trailer for the movie:


New teaser trailer - The Secret Society For Slow Romance (2021) movie - from 3.6.21 from Sujewa Ekanayake on Vimeo.


- Sujewa

Full Movie - SNEAK PREVIEW - Cosmic Disco Detective Rene And The Mystery Of Immortal Time Travelers

NEW - COSMIC DISCO DETECTIVE RENE (2023) - TRAILER!

The Secret Society For Slow Romance (2022) - available to rent as a new release starting January 1

Werewolf Ninja Philosopher at Vimeo VOD

Popular Posts

Godard's GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE - watch and commentary live - off of Metrograph At Home copy of film

Let's take a closer look at Mike Tully's negative review of IFBRT & see if we can clarify some things

Mike Tully (presently inactive filmmaker who is not a fan of shooting on DV, who is now running things - as far as I know - at the review site Hammer to Nail, who also blogs at indieWIRE, & who wrote a brief & positive review of Date Number One in '06, & a fellow Marylander who generally seems like a cool dude) attended the World Premiere of Indie Film Blogger Road Trip and wrote a review of the doc . There are several items in that review that I'd like to comment on. So here we go: "At its best, Sujewa Ekanayake’s Indie Film Blogger Road Trip is certain to go down as one of the more bizarre time capsules of life on early-21st Century Earth." Cool - life on Earth in early 21st century - right now - is pretty bizarre, so a film dealing with a new, early-21st Century thing like film blogging/a film blogging community, should reflect that reality. The doc, however, is very simple & conventional in its form & content (shots of people talking). It is i

This is no way to write a movie review

Cynthia Rockwell's "review" of Hannah Takes The Stairs is depressing not because she didn't like the movie but because after reading the entire thing, 6 small to medium sized paragraphs, I can't figure out the following: the plot of the movie or the situation or roughly what happens for 70 - 90 minutes, the main characters & any significant minor characters, who plays the characters, ideas that may have been expressed in the movie, similar ideas and situations that may have been explored in other movies or other art/entertainment and how those compare with the film being reviewed, the reviewer's opinion of the technical craftsmanship of the movie, how real life compares to the world being depicted in the movie. At the very least I would like to learn a few of those things about a movie from a review. (and yes, Rockwell does consider her post re: Hannah a review, as noted here , not just a blog entry reflecting on the lack of female participation in indie

Reading Material

Indie Film Blogger Road Trip