I have spent the past few weeks researching the great, unchartered frontier of cross-platform, multi-media marketing and distribution. I am currently working for an exciting distribution and exhibition company, Future Shorts Ltd, which organizes monthly short film festivals across the globe, and also organizes the much-hyped Secret Cinema events.
In my travels I have come across some fascinating new platforms for film marketing and distribution. But perhaps the most fascinating story is that of Mdot Strange, an ‘amateur’ filmmaker from the US. I place the word amateur in inverted commas here, not because Strange is merely a pseudo-amateur, but because his very existence calls into question the concept of a divide between ‘amateur’ and ‘professional’ in the modern film industry.
Mdot Strange produced and distributed his debut feature ‘We Are The Strange’ without any help from ‘professionals’. His mantra is that there is no need to pay other people to do your animation, script development, DVD authoring, and distribution for you. As you sit at your computer (or iPhone or whatever else you are using to read this post) you are only moments away from a vast library of manuals and ‘how-to’ guides on every form of technology and software that you could ever come across.
Strange is a self-taught ‘professional’ who learnt animation entirely through free information disseminated through the internet (an 11 year old boy taught him how to animate atomic explosions!) When his film was finished he was left with the usual dilemma of how to put it out there and make people watch it. Blogs and youtube trailers are already old-hat and have been drained of their energy. Strange applied to Sundance Festival as a long shot, but was accepted into the festival by, one can only assume, some glitch in the matrix.
Strange then had a breakthrough when he invited youtube users to send pictures of themselves for him to photoshop into a crowd scene in his film. Nine hundred people sent in their pictures, but the important thing is that all nine hundred of them then posted about it on their blogs. And so Strange learnt his first lesson: Web 2.0 is a selfish and vain beast, and the only way to get people to publicise you is to give them an excuse to publicise themselves in the process. Suddenly Strange has a much larger following on youtube, around 500,000 people following his trailers, etc. He contacted Sundance constantly to tell them how well his film was doing on the internet, and subsequenty learnt his second lesson: if you find a group of people who are terrified that they don’t know enough about the internet (such as most festival organisers) and then tell them that you are the biggest thing on there… they are quite likely to believe you and pay you more attention than you deserve.
And so by the time Sundance came around, there was already a small buzz surrounding ‘We Are The Strange’. A small buzz was not enough to distract people from the bizarre and shamelessly odd nature of the story and animation, but Strange was once again quick to think on his feet and described the film as ‘Strangime’ (an self-proclaimed offshoot of anime). Within weeks the film was featured in Wired magazine as the flagship film in a new wave of animation called ‘Strangime’!
A distributor offered Strange $100,000 for the film, and proceeded to tell Strange that the film was dead because it only appealed to a demographic that didn’t pay for anything (i.e. young people who know about bit torrents.) Strange struggled out of his contracts and decided to go it alone again. He once again used the internet to learn the ins-and-outs of DVD authoring and distribution, and used filmbaby.com to distribute the DVDs that he authored himself. When the film was ripped and disseminated through Bit Torrents, Strange had two options: a) do what the ‘professionals’ would do and file a lawsuit or b) think on his feet.
Strange characteristically chose the second option and proclaimed to the world that his was the first ever ‘Torrential’ release (as opposed to the ‘Theatrical’ that he couldn’t afford). He personally entered the term on Urbandictionary.com and thus was born a new form of film exhibition.
Every step of the way, Mdot Strange has carved out a new path for film distribution (he refuses to take any credit for his maverick production skills, as he refuses to acknowledge the so-called ‘divide’ between professional and amateur in the 21st century.)
There may be no way of copying him, but Strange’s story surely suggests that there is an infinite number of ways to make and distribute films without the help of the ‘professionals’.
I read an article in the RSA journal in March or April (I can’t remember which, and I cant find the magazine now so the details here are a bit sketchy) about an American couple who made a film and uploaded it on to youtube. They had visions of becoming overnight celebrities, with millions of hits and news anchors clamouring for interviews to find out how they discovered such an innovative way of reaching an untapped audience. What this couple didn’t realise, of course, is that the youtube audience has now been well and truly “tapped”, and they are bored.
This couple then somehow managed to find out, from the youtube administrators, the IP addresses of the people that had viewed their film. They discovered that there were odd pockets of people in small geographical areas watching their film, and so they went to these areas, hired town halls and cinemas, and screened the film. They sold merchandise and are currently using the proceeds to fund their next film.
And this, I think, is where the key to the success of this new world of cross-platform marketing and distributing lies: in the amalgamation of innovative, web-based ideas and a firm basis in the tangible world. Youtube didn't work for this couple, but the idea of finding a youtube crowd in the real world and giving them a chance to see a youtube film in a quirky, local setting with like-minded people who they have never met was ingenious.
Mdot Strange may have created an entire film by learning on the web, but he needed the real, interactive elements (persuading people to send photos of themselves, and the various Q&As at Sundance) to generate interest and highlight the bizarre nature of his mission.
'Implementation' is a novel that was ‘published’ entirely on stickers around American cities. Sheets of stickers with sections of the novel printed on them were distributed to willing participants around the US, who then peeled of the stickers and stuck them in odd locations, from lampposts to bathroom stalls. This sticker campaign was accompanied by readings of the novel in clandestine locations, and Since its original ‘release’, it has been translated into Italian and ‘published’ around Pisa, and it has proved to be a major hit.
There are so many companies dedicating their time and resources to this fascinating new frontier of distribution and marketing. Christy Dena’s lecture at last year’s London Film Festival is an excellent introduction to this exciting new world of film.
But at the forefront of this new, innovative, multi-platform frontier of marketing and distribution is Liz Rosenthal, whose company Power to the Pixel has impressed the industry with its ingenious ideas.
Rosenthal was involved with Los Angeles-based New Wave Films, which specialised in ultra-low budget/ digital films. The company helped filmmakers like Christopher Nolan and Joe Carnahan to launch their careers, and Rosenthal has gone on to create eye-catching marketing campaigns for Nolan’s more recent, big-budget, caped crusades.
I am a dull, conservative cineaste and I rarely allow myself to get carried away by technology or that vast area of the film industry that occurs after principle photography. But even I cannot deny the exciting and creative possibilities that exist in this relatively unchartered new frontier of the filmic arts. The polemic between art and advertising really is wavering, and it can’t be long before Rosenthal et al demolish it for good.
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