We've lucked into something good in New York, I think. The time for splashy debuts at big-time established festivals is gone for this film--we had Slamdance, SXSW, Taos, the big award at Newport... you don't get into the New York Film Festival after getting attention like this for over a year (not that they would have found this film to suit their program anyway), so that was never our focus with regard to the Big Apple.

The strategy now is to focus not so much on getting the kind of attention that comes with a major festival screening, but rather a more long-term strategy for getting this movie in front of audiences for more than just one or two showings. Despite our reviews, distributors don't want to handle this film, so the traditional way into the standard indie theaters isn't terribly likely for us.

Along comes VideoTheatre NYC. Operated by Dan and Cynthia Bianchi, VideoTheatre is a "never-ending festival" that will begin July 21, 2003, with the New York debut of Nothing So Strange. The Bianchis' plan for VideoTheatre, which is New York's only DV-dedicated venue, is for it to fill that missing spot between big-time cinema distribution and home video. They're trying to solve a problem created by the DV revolution.

The production part of the DV revolution has been pretty easy: Get a cheap camera, get a Mac--now you're a filmmaker, with better-quality equipment than even a certain Cannes-winning film had. Simple. For the average person without access to a film studio, filmmaking has evolved from nearly impossible to eminently possible over the past decade.

But the distribution part of the DV revolution is far from easy. The pipelines haven't gotten any bigger. In fact, with consolidation, they've gotten smaller. It is not significantly easier to distribute a film today than it was ten years ago.

Dan and I have been talking about this via email the past several days. Here's what he wrote me recently:

The problem with video/film is that it lacks a sort of hierarchy of venues the way theater has Broadway, Off Broadway, Off Off Broadway, Regional and Community theaters. Filmmakers have only the Hollywood system and so they all try to head toward that, even if they make $50 movies. Meanwhile, a recent Variety article quoted those distributors saying that they don't want anything even shot on DV, it must have known actors, and, if it's under $20 mil, don't bother them.

If there were a system like theater, then, vid/filmmakers who create low budget works will have a legitimate venue, perhaps a whole network, just for them. They can prove successful in that venue in many ways. They don't HAVE to go to Broadway/Hollywood. People who create Off Off Broadway shows don't do it with Broadway in mind. It is what it is. I've found that filmmakers haven't been given that option. They know only one way to sell a movie and it's the old way.

As microcinemas proliferate in hometown communities, I believe that someday someone will come along and begin to network all of these places into an ongoing road show for indies that have been traditionally bypassed by the current system. That way, a DV film like NSS can hit one town this week and build up steam hitting the rest on down the coast, etc. Indie exploitation giants like Roger Corman learned that technique a long time ago. Hey, that's how the motion pictures industry began 100 years ago with its new technology. They set up projectors and screens in vaudeville houses and storefronts and the race was on.

It won't be long before someone invests in an alternative microcinema chain showing DV/HD films. The high tech, highly expensive George Lucas' dream of converting America's cinemas into video is a long way off. In the meantime, we can't wait that long. The DV revolution has produced thousands of DVmakers. The reality is that there aren't many places to show all that work. Weekend festivals are about it. The traditional distributors don't want it. The revolution won't be complete until we tackle the task of creating a whole new system of getting these works to the people.

Skeptics, of course, will point out that 90% of that work being created on DV is crap. And they're right. That's always true. The DV revolution has not done away with the need for filters. However, there are only a few filters at present, especially compared to, say, music or theater, and there are precious few with any particular personality -- the majority are geared toward a lowest-common-denominator mentality, even in the indie distribution realm. We need MORE filters.

How many filters are possible? Well, as an extreme example, there are roughly 380,000 blogs tracked at Technorati. Each of these blogs (and there are literally millions more -- I believe these 380,000 are just the ones that get some degree of traffic and linking) serves as a filter for the people who visit it. Visitors to InstaPundit go there because they like the kinds of links proprietor Glenn Reynolds provides to them every day. They like the way he filters. On the other hand, visitors to The Reverse Cowgirl's Blog go there to get a different kind of filtering by Susannah Breslin. These are just two of the more popular blogs on the web, both with distinct personalities.

The blogs I visit regularly are listed on the right column my blog. I go to each of them looking for a different kind of content filtering -- they are distributors, in a way, of web content.

My point is this: Somehow, even with hundreds of thousands of individual publishers, blog content manages to filter itself. You find the stuff you want to find; the stuff you want to find finds its way to the filters you visit. Everyone out there is creating content, and it is neither chaos nor a cesspool of mediocre content -- the nightmare scenario envisioned by skeptics of the DV revolution.

We need the major distributors, the skeptics say, because they filter. They're wrong. We need filters, yes -- but we don't ONLY need those few filters that evolved in a very different economic environment. When it cost a million bucks, minimum, to make a feature film, it made sense to have filters designed to let through only content with wide enough appeal to recoup that cost. But now production cost for a DV feature can be next to nothing. The film doesn't really need THAT big an audience to recoup its cost.

So where are the filters to match up these smaller films with their small audiences? Theater has a great filter system for the small play/small audience model. The musical I co-wrote, Bat Boy, started in 1997 at a little 43-seat theater in L.A. called the Actors' Gang. The budget was miniscule, but we had a venue and we found our audience. On the strength of the reviews and word of mouth from that run, Bat Boy went on to two staged readings in New York, then ultimately to an Off-Broadway run in 2001. It is now in small productions all over the place. The system worked -- but it wouldn't have had not that first small venue been there to show our work to the small audience that wanted to see it.

Where is the venue for the indie-film equivalent of Bat Boy? This question didn't used to matter -- five or ten years ago, there were no indie-film equivalents of a little play with a $10,000 budget. But now there are. I have one (well, okay, the budget is a little higher). Where is the little theater like the Actors' Gang where this film can open for a short run, with a possible extension if it gets good word of mouth, and a possible step up if it gets really good word of mouth?

The typical indie distributor does not fit the bill. The stakes are too high for even the smallest indie release--the most minuscule marketing budget for an indie film still dwarfs what we had for Bat Boy in its initial production (probably about $1000). Traditional exhibitors simply don't like taking on films without major advertising budgets--they need to fill up a lot of seats, several times a day, every day of the week.

The festival circuit doesn't fit the bill, either. There is roughly zero opportunity to build word of mouth in a specific geographic area at a film festival. You get one or two screenings, that's it. Any word of mouth is largely within the highly political realm of festival insiders (I don't say this bitterly; Nothing So Strange has done very well in this realm, and I was a festival insider -- a programmer -- for this year's Slamdance fest).

A good film can prove itself in the arena. The festival circuit is not the arena. A run that depends on good word of mouth from paying audiences is the arena. And unless your film meets certain minimum requirements, some of which have little to do with quality, you don't get access to the arena in today's film exhibition environment.

Although Nothing So Strange is scheduled only for its Opening Night screening at present (working on more), I think venues like VideoTheatre NYC could present a possible future for DV cinema exhibition. Small (100 seats), so the stakes are lower to start out. Neighborhood-based (East Village in this case--a great audience for this film). Flexible--so schedules can be tweaked, like small legit theaters do, when they extend or bring back a play that is connecting with audiences. And the ticket price is $5 (ticket prices similarly descend as you go Broadway--> Off-Broadway---> Off-Off-Broadway---> Regional). Dan and Cynthia Bianchi both have extensive experience in theater, so they are well-equipped to explore this new territory.

Of course, marketing and publicity techniques will have to change to accommodate this kind of run, and Dan and I are working on that right now. There is, needless to say, no budget. If you happen to be in the New York area and wish to participate in the grass-roots effort to promote Nothing So Strange, please email me. We could use all the help we can get.

Best,
Brian Flemming
doc@nothingsostrange.com
Brian Flemming's Weblog

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.