BTS – How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Festivals
Tom Quinn reports – The morning after our grand jury prize was announced at Slamdance was crazy. I woke up sick as a dog and had to clean the condo before catching a shuttle at 11. The place was a mess and I was coming down with a Park City flu. In my rush to pack, I foolishly used dish soap in the dishwasher and suds began pouring across the kitchen floor. It was bad sketch comedy as I pulled out the washer trays and threw all of the bath towels in to sop it up. Meanwhile my phone buzzed over and over with excited text and voice messages. I heaved all 5 bags of luggage onto my back, did the 10 minute downhill shuffle to the bus stop, took a bus to the next lodge, and did a slow uphill crawl to the check-out office. I stopped every 5 minutes to wheeze, but got there just in time for the shuttle. While sick in bed for the next week I had a lot of time to process the past few months. I feel so incredibly fortunate for everything that has happened and I’ll try to share whatever I can about our first major festival experience.
WHEN TO SPEND: A big part of the stress between November and January was deciding when to spend. The dream is that you’ll spend a good deal of money going into Park City, sell the film for 1.8 million, and everyone ends happy. The reality for truly independent films is that distribution is a difficult road, and by controlling our budget we free ourselves up to take the best deal. I was at a panel on distribution in Philadelphia last year where the Sundance channel said they pick up roughly 200 films per year. However, they pay an average of 5-10 thousand for each of them.
In our case, the film needed a bit of sound work – some foley, ADR, and of course a mix. While Shooters Post and Transfer had offered an amazing price break to mix the film, we knew that most of our music was temp and that we would not have the time to do ADR or foley before the festival. We also knew that Slamdance has a wonderful facility at the Treasure Mountain Inn, but that it is not a dolby digital theater and that we could probably squeak by with a rough mix. While the rough mix was apparent it was not distracting and most reviewers and distributors we’ve talked to seemed to understand.
PUBLICITY: Another big cost concern heading into Slamdance was whether we should hire a publicist. There is no doubt that a publicist would have been a huge asset in Park City with so many films struggling for attention. However, on our modest budget we could not compete with the big dogs at Sundance and even the larger Slamdance films, who have the money for thousands of large posters and teams to hang them. We decided to go with two posters and a box of postcards designed by my friend Matt Hanemann. We had been short on high-res stills, so Greg flew home from LA in December so that we could take a wide variety, which became invaluable over the next month.
By midweek, one of the Slamdance staff members approached me and asked what we’d done to get such amazing press – even better than some of the high profile films. Of course we are very fortunate the writers responded so positively, but here’s what we did to grease the wheels:
Slamdance had kindly offered to send screeners to press in December, but we decided to hold off for a final cut. Meanwhile, I created a press packet detailing the filmmaking process, why I felt the story was important, and included cast and crew bios. We contacted press outlets we hoped to attract and included our screening times and press notes. In addition, we had printed copies of the press notes at Slamdance and gave their press office screeners. The press office was wonderful about keeping us informed.
We were fortunate that Filmmaker Magazine could make our screening and kicked off the positive press. Meanwhile, Indiewire and Variety picked up copies from the press office. The final reviews include many details from our press notes and many included the high res stills we provided. As we head to Austin, we’re targeting the next wave of press outlets – print, blogs, etc.
DEAL OR NO DEAL: I had my first power breakfast in Park City. Several distributors had expressed interest ahead of the festival, but of course there are many films to see and several could not attend. Those that did were very excited about the film and audience response. I had several meetings, including a breakfast with a respected distributor. What I learned over the course of this half hour was how quickly you can begin to second guess yourself, even when a deal is obviously wrong for you. The executives were very nice and offered a standard deal: Full rights for seven years, no advance, 60/40 split on the back end. For this I would get 1 or 2 day theatrical in a major market, possibly NY, and all other outlets (DVD, broadcast, VOD) were contingent on performance and reviews. Upon pressing, I found that this distributor did not have set theaters in place, nor did they have set avenues for the other markets. The rationale was that a screening in NY could get me major reviews, maybe Variety, and that by signing a deal in Park City I would raise my exposure – all true.
While this is a standard deal, I feel things are changing where we don’t necessarily have to take the ’standard.’ Because I did not spend beyond my means before Slamdance I am free to find the right deal for me. Fortunately, other distributors were already knocking. Even better, by the end of the week we had all three of the components of the deal: A ton of press due to the grand jury prize, a glowing Variety review, and a screening of the winning films at the IFC Center in NYC. All of this and we still own our rights – which is fortunate because the calls were going through the roof while I sopped up dishwasher suds….
Tom Quinn grew up in Bucks County, PA, where he directed his first feature, Lusting for Dust Words, several shorts, and freelanced as a camera assistant. His film, Via Bicycles, was a 2006 Eastman Scholars finalist and received a Motion Picture Association Award. His current feature film, The New Year Parade, was one of ten projects selected for the 2007 IFP Narrative Rough Cut Labs. He is currently working toward his MFA at Temple University.
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[...] Related: Is There A “Too Many” (When It Comes To Film Festivals)? How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Festivals [...]
wow, great post Tom. love the info you shared here.
Mike
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