A lot of the current and upcoming voices saying important things in movies won't have representation. I'm never going to casually turn money away unless there's a good reason, but I think we might be able to build an entirely new and better model for distribution, one that cuts out as many of the gatekeepers (read: agencies) as possible.
One model that's intriguing is what Shane Carruth did for Upstream Color, working directly with a theater booker. Though, I don't know how scalable/international that might be.
Interesting and logical take for how to fix a broken system. But my mind drifts in another direction. A Fire Hose of content driven into a bottle neck of a system, even with better sales representation, timing and integrated tactics, still leaves one with a bottleneck. 95% of that content will not go through. There is very clearly an opportunity in and a need for a second system. A Championship League to play against the big shot Premiership Teams and broaden the audience awareness and also motivate the top to pay attention. Just Sayin'...
You are totally right there. The amount of docs that will come to Dogwoof in the next week or two once they realised there isn´t a domestic offer. Unfortunately , we will need to pass as we did not have a time to position them for EFM. This year for the first time, we had docs from TIFF that did not sell domestically but have done sales internationally. Not happy about it, but we expect to see more of that from Sundance.
Insightful 👌🏿
A lot of the current and upcoming voices saying important things in movies won't have representation. I'm never going to casually turn money away unless there's a good reason, but I think we might be able to build an entirely new and better model for distribution, one that cuts out as many of the gatekeepers (read: agencies) as possible.
One model that's intriguing is what Shane Carruth did for Upstream Color, working directly with a theater booker. Though, I don't know how scalable/international that might be.
Interesting and logical take for how to fix a broken system. But my mind drifts in another direction. A Fire Hose of content driven into a bottle neck of a system, even with better sales representation, timing and integrated tactics, still leaves one with a bottleneck. 95% of that content will not go through. There is very clearly an opportunity in and a need for a second system. A Championship League to play against the big shot Premiership Teams and broaden the audience awareness and also motivate the top to pay attention. Just Sayin'...
very well said.
You are totally right there. The amount of docs that will come to Dogwoof in the next week or two once they realised there isn´t a domestic offer. Unfortunately , we will need to pass as we did not have a time to position them for EFM. This year for the first time, we had docs from TIFF that did not sell domestically but have done sales internationally. Not happy about it, but we expect to see more of that from Sundance.
For a future article, I’d love to see your insight on approaching the RIGHT talent agent for indie film. That would be incredibly useful. Thanks!