Yesterday I proposed: So given all of these new truths, and what we seem to know about the new realities of how the web works, how video online works and where things seem to be headed it would seem we can make some guesses as to ways in which film fests might innovate, and quite possibly help both filmmakers and audiences in the process. Today, here are some thoughts and ideas:
First, curation matters. Yes, we all profess to know this…because we all think we’re curators. But we’re not. Curators are a rarefied breed who would never define curation as the act of bringing something someone else curated somewhere else to their own town. That’s programming. It’s valuable. But we need curators. Attempting good curation is as much as a risk as making good art. You might fail miserably, and you can’t blame it on someone else. Curation is a statement that stands out from the crowd. I can count the festival programmers who are also curators in North America and Europe on 10 fingers while holding a pencil. I am not qualified outside of that limited purview, but I bet my toes will suffice for the world. We need risk, experimentation, new ideas and you should count on pissing off as many people as you please. Not an easy task for a small fest selling tickets based on the reviews of some asshole who majored in journalism or film studies because other options weren’t open to them (I count myself in this group, life is harsh). But hey, you have one life to live and none after, so get to work.
Second, what matters now more than even curation is authenticity and experience. Festivals should refuse to play any film where the director, subject or someone important from the film can’t be available for a Q&A, panel or other experience; unless that film is so ground-breaking, controversial or mind-expanding, or small AND (this is crucial, and not or) it will never play in your town or on tv or on-demand unless you bring it. It will disappear to anyone of average intelligence in your community if you don’t support it. I hate to admit it, but Hollywood blockbusters count positively in this experience. If you can bring Iron Man Twenty to town with stars, or a director or even the f-n gaffer, you have an experience that will open your donor’s wallets. If you don’t, there’s no excuse to show it anyway. In spite of programmer’s protestations to the contrary, no one has ever stumbled out of a Hollywood film and discovered that avant-garde gem. Ever. While we’re at it, unless your festival is a major market, you should spend zero dollars bringing in industry reps, and reallocate those to filmmaker travel and services. Pick your keynote speaker and panelists from filmmakers and producers you bring in. Let the industry take care of itself, they aren’t that valuable to your local filmmakers, who they avoid like the plague at every party, and they are getting plenty of value from you showing their films anyway.
Next up, and related: instead of continuing to suck up to the industry that is extracting all of their value, festivals should focus more attention on those artists who, like festivals, are building their own audience. Yes, this means reaching out to Freddie Wong instead of sucking up to that foreign sales agent who might deign to give you their foreign film with no real audience for a rental of $1000 vs 50% of your box office. Forgo the meeting in Cannes and get on Skype with someone who really matters instead.
Fourth, as you might have heard, data is the new gold. I’d add to that audience aggregation. Knowing who the audience is, where they are, what they like and having a means by which to reach them. Festivals excel at getting good audiences, and good ones have built them over time. Back when B-Side existed, they ran Festival Genius, which powered the websites of numerous festivals and gave them that golden data. Perhaps they were ahead of their time, as they’ve now disappeared, but most festivals haven’t replicated their model of getting and holding onto that data. Festivals should put some effort into data aggregation – with all the proper privacy controls, of course – and they should share what data they can with the filmmakers who attend their festival. Audience award ballot scores are a good place to start. Every festival collects them, but most throw that data away after determining the winner. Geo-location of ticket buyers – hey, guess what, 90% of your audience came from Kalamazoo, perhaps you should do a screening there in the future. There’s a lot of data that could be helpful without getting too icky or breaking any privacy taboos.
Fifth, we need new business models. For at least twenty years, every festival has had the same business model and the most radical suggestion of all is that perhaps they pay filmmakers for the privilege of showing their films. I’ve come out against that proposal, because if the best we can do is offer a percentage of sales to a small audience, why bother? I could name a thousand new models, and I’m not too bright, but here’s one: how about you let filmmakers sell popcorn outside on the curb with their DVD inside the box for $10 bucks. You may think I’m joking, but truth be told, more money is made at any single screening from popcorn sales than from ticket sales. A lemonade stand may make more sense than a DVD offering at most festivals. But wait, that would take away another revenue stream from someone other than the filmmaker. Still, that would be $8+ of profit per customer! Know what the problem with that one is? Tell a filmmaker you’ll show their film to 100 people for no profit, and they’ll show up on their own dime and go to the bar during their screening. Tell them they can sell a 15 cent product for a 1000 times margin during their show and they’ll complain that you want them to work. Can’t win here… so, okay, yes, I jest. But only to show how pathetic our attempts at thinking about new business models are at this point. People talk about VOD offerings, DVD sales, ongoing curation, new fandangled shit. I won’t run the numbers, but if I had to bet on a future for indie filmmakers, it would be in fancy popcorn monopolies. Point is: there are thousands of possible ways to re-think the business model. Let’s try just one sometime.
Here’s a few more business model ideas to think about:
- Extending the online connection through year-round curation. Help your local fans discover new content year-round, not just the films that played your fest (and that’s a start for most fests), but by recommending films you love throughout the year. Help filmmakers re-connect to their audiences, push digital sales, feature regional filmmakers on your site. Perhaps you can help filmmaker with pre-sales, while selling tickets to their films. An audience member could pay one price for a fest ticket and a DVD or download and you could keep a small percentage (5%) of that sale, pushing the rest to the filmmaker. As more and more people discover and watch their entertainment online, festivals would do well to build a more interesting online presence. Few, if any, have a good year round presence and this is a golden, currently wasted, opportunity.
- Build more festival partnerships. This always gets talked about, but it’s hard work, so very few people do it. Sundance does it a little bit with some regional fests and theaters as well, but we need more festivals working together to bring filmmakers on tour, to share expenses of rentals, to share data, to build regional audiences. Help filmmakers turn a regional festival play into a tour that can actually return revenue. Heck, five fests could agree to all show the same films, one chosen by each, and let the filmmaker keep a cut, sell DVDs, etc.
- Experiment with on-demand screenings. Tugg, Gathr and others are building interesting on-demand models. Too few fests do this. I’d love to see a festival have a few slots that don’t get programmed until the last minute and it’s based on online demand, or even just switching theaters based on such demand. I know how hard slotting can be, but I still see too many films play to small audiences in a big theater at the same time that another theater is overflowing across town.
- Show more work that originates online. A serialized feature with thousands or even millions of views can still fill a theater if you get the filmmaker in attendance. Tribeca did a great job with showing Casey Pugh’s “Star Wars Uncut” this year, in a new, interactive format. This should be traveling around the country. Vimeo has done a great job with their festival of online work, but we need more of this.
- Build in more participatory experiences. People want to be part of content today. You can see it in everything from remix to machinima to the Harlem Shake. Not every festival can come up with something that isn’t too gimmicky, but it doesn’t have to be high-touch. Just helping encourage greater interaction among your audience can help. Instead of cutting off that Q&A after two questions, line-up a coffee talk next door where your filmmaker can talk in depth with those who want to hear more. Suggest local businesses where a local expert on a film’s subject might be continuing the conversation over dinner. These can be volunteer run, done through meet-up and a lot of them will fail, but we do need to give more opportunities for further engagement to those who want it.
Look, I’ll admit that none of these ideas are ground-breaking, and many aren’t going to work. I don’t have all the answers, but I think we all need to be asking a lot of questions. I see plenty of people suggesting how filmmakers and distributors need to build new business models, but fests need to do it just as much, if not more. There are a lot of really good festivals, both big and small out there, and many are doing tons of great work for very little money. Many are volunteer run, and it’s very hard to innovate when you’re just trying to break-even. I understand that, and I’m not denying here that many fests are doing a great job. But that doesn’t mean we can’t dream up new models that may work better for everyone. Our number one goal should be two-sided: helping filmmakers by better connecting them to a well-served audience. Festivals are best positioned to help move this forward, if they think creatively about these new models.