"You want it, we've got it." At the simplest level, much of today's film industry is based around this simple come-on. Advertising creates demand for a product that can be only seen in specific, highly controlled ways. If you want to watch the latest blockbuster, you have to go the theater; you can't watch it at home. Or, if you're addicted to Big Love, then you have to subscribe to HBO to see the latest episode — you can't rent it at the video store. This logic extends down to film festivals as top and even mid-tier festivals demand premieres, forcing filmmakers to make strategic choices over where to debut their pictures while giving festivals bragging rights to having "discovered" the best movies of the year.
Of course, later on down the road, months after their release one can see films in many different formats and venues. The reason, the argument goes, is that by playing in heavily advertised, exclusive situations, a want-to-see factor is created that affixes to the film for the rest of its natural life. But for independent filmmakers, this logical premise isn't always so logical. Many indies premiere at festivals where interest in them spikes in the days leading up to the festival and then crashes when they're not immediately acquired. For these films and filmmakers, the eventual, small-scale theatrical release a year or two down the line is often a large-scale disappointment.
However the group of independent filmmakers who have created From Here to Awesome, a cross-platform, multi-venue film festival that exploits the internet and extends the logic of the open source movement to film exhibition, believes things don't have to be this way. Their festival aims to whip up a flurry of buzz around an exciting new group of filmmakers and then leverage that excitement into immediate sales via an assortment of online distributors and retailers.
The filmmakers are Lance Weiler (The Last Broadcast, Head Trauma), Arin Crumley (Four Eyed Monsters), and M. Dot Strange (We are the Strange), and they dub their event a "discovery and distribution festival." Significantly, all three filmmakers are well recognized for their efforts in do-it-yourself filmmaking and distribution, and, they say, the festival takes what they've learned with their own features and extends it to a larger group of artists.
Weiler explains, "The democratization of the tools of filmmaking has been a big success story in recent years, but it's led to a large surplus of films. Festivals are overtaxed with submissions, and the real hurdle for filmmakers today is not getting work made but the discovery and distribution of that work. There's a huge bottleneck [in the distribution system], so Arin, M. Dot and I decided to apply the ways we've harnessed audiences for our work to build as much virtual foot traffic as possible for other filmmakers."
That foot traffic starts at the festival's website, where for the past three months filmmakers have been uploading submission videos which are not the typical awkwardly-edited trailers but rather short video statements by the directors on why their films were important to make. The submission period ended on April 14, and From Here to Awesome is now in the middle of the audience selection period, during which viewers (and that means you if you head over to the site and sign up) watch and rate the various submissions. A final selection period follows during which the films are vetted for distribution and then the fest itself launches in July.
Where will the festival be? Well, everywhere, pretty much. "We decided to 'day and date' everything," says Weiler. That means that From Here to Awesome selections will be unspooling in live events in various countries around the world as well as be streaming and downloadable from a various digital distributors. Explains Weiler, "We are doing 'DIY days' in conjunction with Current TV and Our Stage. We are holding day-long events and film screenings around issues of sustainability — how to make [this model] work and find an audience. We have teamed up with Mob Movie, which has 165 drivers in different parts of the world, and we are also doing grassroots screenings with Brave New Theaters."
Game Over
For the home viewer, films can be seen via Amazon Unbox and Vudu as well as other digital distributors — "including cable and telcos," notes Weiler — through aggregator Heretic Films, which is providing Errors and Omissions insurance for the titles. Finally, says Weiler, Miro, an open source technology creator, in partnership with Blip TV is giving From Here to Awesome a branded video player so audiences can download films directly from the filmmaker's own websites.
Weiler says the festival's ultimate goal is to "let filmmakers know about the digital labyrinth and teach them that they have some degree of control over it. We hope people will be able to realize the value of aggregating their audiences and cross-pollinating with other filmmakers and realize the value of having their work available across multiple platforms." Continuing, Weiler remembers his early days in production when he was one of the first filmmakers using digital video to make movies. "Back then 'film versus digital' was a big debate," he says, "and now digital video is just a given. Our hope is that if we are successful with From Here to Awesome the festival itself will become obsolete because the things we are practicing will become commonplace."
So, head over to From Here to Awesome and be your own festival curator, giving the thumbs up or thumbs down to titles ranging from the porn industry comedy The Auteur; Game Over, a satire about zombies attacking videogamers; and a documentary on the barefoot preacher who has walked across 47 states and 13 countries and who is known as "the Jesus Guy."
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