Sometimes I wonder if indie filmmaking is worth the hassle. Every Monday I do accounting, updating spreadsheets, tracking the business expenses and sales. Almost every week there are columns marked in bold and red — money still owed. Sometimes these owed columns don’t change for months. Sometimes years.
As I write this, I have been emailing IndieFlix since October 2023, chasing payments owed since 2021. These payments are pennies, under $100, but since their policy is to payout every quarter if earnings are above a $1 threshold, I think it is fair to expect the license agreement we signed to be honoured.
IndieFlix is a funny one. We have two films with them, Friends, Foes & Fireworks and Daughter, going back to the start of 2019. In the beginning they reported and paid on time every quarter and our films would earn a small amount on their platform, barely over three figures. But then one year into the deal a funny pattern would begin to emerge: every quarter like clockwork they would still send the reports but always forget the follow-up part… actually paying the money owed.
5 Reasons Why All Cast & Crew Should Promote an Indie Film
Any indie filmmaker knows what a struggle finishing and releasing a movie is. So imagine that you worked hard, single handedly sent hundreds of emails, knocked on doors for months to secure investors for your film or worked extra hours at your day job to be able to afford to pay your cast and crew a wage, only to have radio silence after the film is wrapped. Imagine that you’re the only one posting online about your film on release day and spreading the word at networking events and festivals.
Most of us filmmakers don’t have to imagine; it’s often a sad reality that many actors and crew members don’t promote the films they helped make.
Read MoreInterview with Noam Kroll: Making a Feature Solo & Embracing Micro-Budget Filmmaking
Noam Kroll is an LA-based filmmaker and a well-known proponent of micro-budget filmmaking. Ivan Malekin was lucky enough to interview Noam about his new feature, “Disappearing Boy”, which he filmed with no crew. In this interview Noam reveals exactly how and why he made a film this way, but also talks about the benefits of micro-budget filmmaking and his creative and work philosophies in general.
IM
I'm amazed that you pulled this off as a one person crew, I think it's a little crazy, to tell you the truth. We shot a feature late last year, and for most of it was myself and my partner Sarah were the only crew. Some days we had an production assistant as an extra pair of hands, but we were absolutely exhausted at the end of each day. When it was done, we were pretty much burnt out. So the fact you would have done this all by yourself is just amazing to me. Would you do this again?
NK
I definitely would. And I think it's funny because I totally hear what you're saying and like I've had those experiences too, where I've had small crews or done things just with a friend and then felt exhausted. And I think I've done it enough times that by the time I made this film, one of the intentions I had for it was that it would feel sustainable.
Indie Film Distribution: Why We Use Filmhub
Despite filmmaking being more democratized than ever before with readily available technology enabling almost anyone who wants to make a movie able to do so, film distribution remains somewhat obfuscated. They don’t teach you the business of selling movies in film school.
So many filmmakers are left naïve, confused on what to do with their completed film, and gullible to the sweet words and empty promises (and one-sided boilerplate contracts) of the many sharks out there also known as film distributors.
Here is a sad story we have seen play out time and again. Broke independent filmmaker finishes their first feature after many years of blood, sweat and tears. Broke filmmaker signs a contract with a shady distributor …
Read MoreAre Film Festivals Worth Your Time & Money?
In 2022 we have been paying attention to an aspect of film distribution we have largely ignored for several years beforehand: film festivals.
We have had rejections of course. With many festivals receiving thousands of entries, there will always be rejections. But we have also found some success. Machination has picked up several awards at film festivals for Acting, Directing, and Sound Design. Cats of Malta has been selected for the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival, New York Cat Festival, and other festivals we cannot reveal quite yet. Our latest Life Improvised film, The Dance, screened at Kinemastik International Short Film Festival in Malta last night.
But this handful of success has come at a cost of almost $1000USD so far in festival submission fees. Could this money have been better spent elsewhere? Like running Facebook ads for the release of Machination? Have we gotten enough return for our funds? In short: are film festivals worth the cost and effort?
Releasing an Indie Film During a Pandemic
In February this year, Sarah Jayne wrote an article about self-distributing our feature In Corpore. She talked about screening the film in a cinema in New York, one of the settings of the film, perhaps doing a tour of the country à la The Joyful Vampire Tour of America, and then doing cinema screenings in the remaining countries we filmed in: Australia, Germany, and Malta.
Well, none of that went ahead. The world changed, as we all know; a global pandemic brought everything to a standstill. And still we aren’t clear of the spectre of this virus, with different parts of Europe facing another lockdown, America still out of control, and Australia suffering too. The way films are distributed changed, perhaps irrevocably. Cinemas shut like so much else. The traditional release windowing model was scrapped, blockbuster films like Mulan streaming for free on Disney+ as a $200 million dollar experiment, while Tenet by Christopher Nolan stuck to its guns and became the first Hollywood tent-pole to launch in theaters following their prolonged shutdown, the bold move hailed by executives and media as the saviour of cinema.
It bombed. Studios were spooked. Cinema wasn’t saved.
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