by Adam Dawtrey.

Time and again, independent filmmakers around the world claim that without Michael Barker, Tom Bernard and their team at Sony Pictures Classics, there would be no market in the U.S. for their work.

Barker and Bernard are known for being frugal in buying and marketing their movies. With a tiny but long-serving staff, they have made consistent returns for 20 years in the toughest arthouse niche, which has kept them in the game when others have come and gone.

Their low-cost model gives auteurs from home and abroad not just an aud, but also a real chance of seeing profits.

Read the rest of this article from Variety.

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by David Geertz.

So you’re planning on producing an independent film — good for you, join the club. You are now officially a Slave Driver.

Before I begin this post I’d like to state that this post is mainly precursor of a series of posts to come for filmmakers and backers who see film as both an art form and an enterprise. An enterprise that pays skilled people a living wage, and provides an opportunity for those who fund those endeavors a chance at seeking a return on their money, while providing the needed funding for best and the brightest to continue to push boundaries within the moving image.

Let’s play a numbers game first before we dive into this post. Here are some assumptions that I am going to make on your behalf about your unmade film stuck in development hell.

Read the rest of this article from Hope for Film.

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by Jason Brubaker.

Times HAVE changed.  In many, many ways.  But what we call Indie Film is an era gone by.  The opportunity to create and connect has never been greater—and it means other changes are afoot.  Jason Brubaker reached out to me with what I felt was an important idea, but like many I encounter, I was too busy to participate unfortunately.

Jason recognizes that filmmakers no longer need “discriminatory distribution” and can reach audiences with their work in new and different ways.  But Jason also recognizes we need to share the info on how we do it.  Most importantly, he recognizes this is a community effort. He has done a great service to our community and deserves our thanks.  But I am going to let him tell you all about it with a guest post.  Thanks Jason!

Read the rest of this article from IndieWire.

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by Dorothy Pomerantz.

Thousands of people are converging on Park City, Utah, today for the start of the Sundance Film Festival, the biggest independent film festival of the year. Sundance is where films like Little Miss Sunshine, The Usual Suspects and The Blair Witch Project made their debuts.

For the past few years though, Sundance has been at the center of an industry in trouble. Like the rest of the economy, the independent film world got hit hard by the global crisis. Before 2008, Wall Street bankers with more money than they knew what to do with were directing extra funds into the film world in the hopes of turning a profit or at least getting to meet Scarlett Johansson.

Read the rest of this article from Forbes.

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This article was written by Eriq Gardner.

Anthony Millan knows how hard it is to make money in the independent film sector these days.

But after spending more than a decade as a financing consultant for Lionsgate, Relativity Media, Voltage Pictures and others, Millan recently took a major plunge anyway, raising nearly $10 million from associates and hedge funds to form Catch 22 Entertainment, his new full-service indie production, distribution and marketing outfit.

“It’s the Wild West right now in terms of financing a film,” says Millan, who hopes to invest in dozens of films with budgets ranging from $25,000-$25 million. “You have to look hard, but there are still great ways to find a nice reward, including making investments in small-budget films and gaining a profit from your own marketing and distribution.”

Read the rest of this article from Hollywood Reporter.

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This article was written by Chase Jarvis.

There’s some fun and evocative smack talking going on over at Uproxx.com that caught my attention:

“Granted, some of this is entirely the fault of the indie film scene itself, which is always rife with idiocy, and these days is basically celebrating incompetence because competence is just too Hollywood, man. The hot movement, mumblecore, seriously got its name from the fact that the filmmakers lacked the technical competence to point a microphone at an actor’s mouth.

And “The Room” and “Birdemic” are epic train wrecks well beyond just your standard bad movie, although they’re still better than anything the mumblecore movement craps out. But that’s the thing. You no longer need technical competence to achieve the two main goals of indie filmmaking: getting into the pants of disaffected hot people, or making boatloads of cash. And this is both a great thing and a problem.”

Read the rest of this article from Chase Jervis.

This article was written by Jeff Steele.

This article was written by Manohla Dargis.

“Last November inside a conference room at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, a film consultant named Peter Broderick was doing his best to foment a revolution. Mr. Broderick, who helps filmmakers find their way into the marketplace, was spreading the word on an Internet-era approach to releasing movies that he believes empowers filmmakers without impoverishing them economically or emotionally.

Mr. Broderick divides distribution into the Old World and New, infusing his PowerPoint presentation with insurgent rhetoric. He has written a “declaration of independence” for filmmakers that — as he did that afternoon — he reads while wearing a tricorn hat.”

Read the rest of this article from the New York Times.

The Ten Commandments of Filmmaking
How to Work (and Survive) in the
Film and Television Industry
by Peter D. Marshall

This article was written by David Theis.

“Time and technology march on. About 100 years ago, the movies came along to kill the novel, the theater, the opera and almost every other art form besides popular music, which itself killed the symphony.

So now it’s time for the cinema’s dirt nap. The movies are dead—long live the tweet.

By dead, of course, I really mean completely fractured. Good and great films are still produced, but mostly outside the United States (I just Googled “death of American independent film” and got more than 21 million hits.) The major studios have shed or radically downsized their quasi-independent arms, as in the case of Disney’s gutting of Miramax. Artistically ambitious directors here generally have to sneak their quality in through the camouflage of a Batman or a Bourne film.”

Read the rest of this article from Culture Map.

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This article was written by Marc Halperin.

The Sundance Film Festival is in full swing, some  films are being bought and others are not. Understanding the reasons for these decisions is critical for independent filmmakers.  Film Independent recently produced a round table that focused on indie distribution. It’s an offshoot from their Filmmaker Forum, which was held over an entire weekend in early October.

This discussion looked at the economics of distribution; traditional, DIY, and digital strategies. The panelists also addressed the state of film distribution: past, present, and future. Their goal throughout this series was to give filmmakers the unvarnished truth and to look at the industry as it exists.”

Read this article from Global Film Village.

“201 Things You Wouldn’t Know
Without Movies or Television!”