You made a great film. Now give it a great run.
Angela Watercutter, writing for Wired:
From crowd-funding to the visual language of online video, internet culture is slowly but surely seeping into independent film.
Nothing illustrates the web’s growing influence on filmmakers more effectively than Me @the Zoo, a feature-length documentary that premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
Christopher Kelly for the New York Times:
Then there’s the story of David and Nathan Zellner, filmmaker siblings from Austin, who prove that starry-eyed Sundance still embraces deeply idiosyncratic work made on a shoestring budget. After screening some of their short films at the festival, the filmmakers introduced their eccentric debut feature, “Goliath,” there in 2008. A comedy about an aimless thirtysomething (played by David) whose life begins to come unglued after his cat goes missing, “Goliath” received encouraging reviews and eventually secured a video-on-demand and DVD release through IFC Films.
But the brothers didn’t immediately book one-way tickets to Los Angeles. Instead, they chose to remain in Austin, where they continued to make shorts and direct music videos for their favorite local bands.
John Anderson at the New York Times:
a wormhole has opened up between Sundance Past and the Online Present. Through it, films seemingly lost in time — or swallowed up by the gaping maw of bad distribution deals, or no distribution deals — might find commercial redemption.
Thanks to a recent arrangement between the Sundance Institute, which operates the festival, and the Manhattan distributor New Video, six Web homes — Amazon, Hulu, Netflix, iTunes, YouTube and SundanceNOW — are making Mr. Noonan’s movie, and any other eligible Sundance film, available for streaming online. The option is open to every film ever shown at the festival, or brought to a Sundance lab, or given a Sundance grant. Filmmakers don’t surrender their rights. They (17 so far, with thousands of potential participants) can opt to go with any or all of the half-dozen sites. They have, in essence, a guaranteed means of distribution.
Read Sundance Offer New Video Streaming for Films – NYTimes.com.
A rare glance behind the scenes at the Sundance Film Festival from Roger Tinch. If this wall works anything like the scheduling walls I’ve seen at other festivals, each sticky note represents a film in a particular venue at a particular time. Unsurprisingly, this one is a bit more complicated than most of the others I’ve seen.
Film Festival Secrets: A Handbook for Independent Filmmakers
Written especially for people trying to navigate the film festival circuit. Start reading now or buy a copy of your very own.