Navigating the economically treacherous world of indie film, we are currently weighing the benefits of a) wide recognition or no money or b) some money and some recognition.

At present I am inclined towards a). I do not how to insert a graph here, so I will attempt to explain:

1. Fame for fame’s sake is stupid.

2. Obscurity is by default.

Corollary 2.1. One hopefully deserves one’s recognition.

3. Middle men and women do not directly benefit from your recognition. If their profit from getting you recognized is zero, then they have no incentive to do so.

4. Recognition economically only applies to future events.Corollary 4.1 A middle man or woman will only help if they have a long enough time frame to profit from your recognition.

5. I don’t care.

Conclusion:
6. I will release my debut film on bittorent for free, take out an ad in the New York Times and request donations for the next project.

7. Merry Christmas.


And to all, a good night.

–Per

6. I will release my debut film on bittorent for free, take out an ad in the New York Times and request donations for the next project.A very interesting concept! Does anyone know if this has worked before?

Well, Pirate Bay (a BitTorrent site) has a feature film up they made for free and are accepting donations for it. I don't know how well that's working though.

It's not a bad idea, but my only concern is that the majority of people who use BitTorrent are most likely not interested in supporting the vast majority of artists so the idea MAY backfire (I hope it doesn't). I don't have much trust in people to pay or support the people they download music or movies from.

Please keep us posted and let us know what happens.

Making money (as in getting in the black) from any of your current projects is the largest endorsement a prudent investor needs to greenlight your next picture. If you are successful, they would be much more inclined to step up.

I can see Bittorrent as a distribution form for zero-budget, microcinema (Under $1,000) or public domain films. No one will make money off a movie being distributed off Bittorrent if it had a 'Hollywood budget'. Then again, crack addicts always remember the name of their dealer because 'the first hit is always free'.

Filmscheduling, I wish you the best of luck and please give us a Bittorrent link! The more people see it, the more 'word of mouth' advertising and visibility it will get.

I am thinking that taking out an ad in the NYT or similar publication would help.
Daily NYT has about a 1M circulation:
http://www.nytco.com/investors-nyt-circulation.html
If one out of a thousand readers decides to donate $5, that makes.. er, $5000.
I guess it would perhaps cover the ad.
Hmm. Of course you could argue that just running an ad for a $19 DVD would be better.

There is a short called "elephant dream" from Holland which did a bittorrent/open source strategy and they've sold over 2000 DVD's at around $30/apiece. You can download their 1080/24p HD version for free! Plus, they are one of the first indie titles getting released as HD/DVD..

Well, what is indietalk for if not to think of the thousandth harebrained scheme to make money back on an indie pic :cool:

Well, Pirate Bay (a BitTorrent site) has a feature film up they made for free and are accepting donations for it. I don't know how well that's working though.



What is the name/director of the feature?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0478261/

I saw shades of gray this way, he released it on bit torrent. I found it when I typed "Legal Torrents" into google because I wanted to find out what it was about without stealing.

It's a great movie. All he got from me was a few e-mails back and forth unfortunately :), hopefully someone else was more generous.

Well, what is indietalk for if not to think of the thousandth harebrained scheme to make money back on an indie pic :cool:

Ok, here's what you do... make a bootleg copy of your film. Sneak it into a piracy shop in Chinatown and then try and buy it. It'll cost you $5, but whiles you're buying it back, hype it up and tell the guy you know some people who would want to get their hands on it. That way he'll try and get his hands on more copies.

Ok, now for phase two, using a fake Russian accent, call the pirate guy and offer to sell him copies of the film. Sell him like 100 copies (making a tidy profit).

Phase 3: Using a fake British accent, call in a tip to police that the guy is selling indie movies.

Phase 4: As yourself, the pining filmmaker, get a jounalist to write up a sob story on how indie artists are affected most by piracry.

Phase 5: When hollywood hears about how passionately pirating has affected you, they'll make you their new indie-anti-piracy-posterboy.

It's that simple. Create demand, supply supply, rig a bust, garner sympathy and rise above.

Spatula...that sounds like a business plan...you should seek some VC money for that :)

How does that old line go ... "That's so crazy, it might just work".

Spatula...that sounds like a business plan...you should seek some VC money for that :)

Actually, with that kind of plan, you'd generally want to harvest funds from shady places- like armed robbery.

Or art theft.

My plan to inflitrate the pirate world needs money, so in order to get that money, you'd have to hold a ming vase hostage or something. I'll leave crime to the pros, though. We'll just hold a good old fashioned car wash (and siphon their gas sell it to the black market). :D

What is the name/director of the feature?

That I don't know. Since they all work secretly on the BitTorrent site I don't think they use their real names in the credits. Haven't watched it all the way through though so I can't be sure.