The House Next Door

My company's in the middle of the festival run, having shown a film at this past Sundance and booked at several more festivals throughout the year, and while it would have been nice to get a cut of the box office at Sundance (the Eccles sure has a lot of seats), I think we all agreed that we would have been happy if they'd just made getting accommodations easier (or cheaper). The irony is the bigger and more prestigious the festival, the less financial/accommodation assistance they give whereas a lot of the smaller festivals are often so happy to have you in attendance they throw hotel rooms and airfare and free bar tabs (I've heard Boston IFF is good like that) at you. Sundance has become so cut-throat at this point that by simply selecting your film, it's as though that's favor enough. They provided a small stipend which only covered a fraction of the director's lodging and travel costs (never mind lending a hand in putting up the producers, DP, or the cast) and we were pretty much left to our own devices to even find places for people to stay and getting everyone out there. At the end of the day, I was stunned at how much money an independent film had to shell over just to show at what is ostensibly an independent film festival, and I'm not even factoring in costs for things like food, parties, publicity, transportation for talent, etc... I guess it's all worth it; we haven't sold yet (fingers crossed) but we’d probably do it all over again. But it is the side of the "independent filmmaking dream" that's rarely written about. Considering how many corporate sponsors the festival has, it sort of makes you wonder where does all that box office revenue go.

Wow. That's amazing. I've never been to Sundance so I would not have known that. Cinequest and Boston were the biggest festivals I attended as a filmmaker, and those were pretty attentive to guests. They even supplied extra tickets and in some cases full festival passes to people who just happened to be there with me. That larger festivals aren't as attentive is depressing but not too surprising.

PS -- Nobody picked up a bar tab for me at a festival, but like someone said over on Sujewa's thread, the parties always seem to be sponsored.

All in all, though, things like this don't really make a dent in the cost of making a feature, which in our case has been somewhere between ten and twenty thousand dollars. If we hadn't been able to convince private investors to kick in for the second leg of shooting and for postproduction, the movie never would have gotten finished, much less submitted or shown. The more I chew over this, the more sense Sujewa makes -- particularly with regard to how a cut of ticket sales would motivate filmmakers to think of themselves as partners in the process rather than guests. (See his comment thread for a better explanation, I'm paraphrasing.)

Hey Matt,

Looks like the conversation continues here @ The House Next Door :) That Sundance confession in interesting. Yeah, bigger fests can set a diffrent tone on this issue if they wanted to, perhaps a lot easily, since they make more money from their events.

I posted the URL to this discussion @ my blog, & I posted a copy of your most recent comment ("[no bar tab picked up...]")
at my blog to entice readers to come visit here.

Very interesting discussion. I did not expect such a relatviely great amount of interest in this topic.

Sujewa
*******

Well, like I said, you opened a can of worms.

The legend of the independent filmmaker maxing out their credit cards to make a film, marching off to Sundance and being whisked of their feet by Harvey Weinstein is dead and buried at this point. If Kevin Smith were pushing Clerks in the year 2006 he would have had to mortgage his house just to afford a sales rep to get Miramax to even look at the film (not to mention the constant stream of glad-handling, courtesy phone calls and dinner meetings with festival programmers just to insure the film even gets in) and probably have to take on a third job to afford a good publicity firm just so the film will stay in the press and public's eye for the ten days of the festival. I know I'm sort of thread hijacking a bit, but as an independent filmmaker I was taken back at just how much it's expected for you to spend just to "do" Sundance. All told we probably spent three times what you did Matt on your ENTIRE FILM just to finance the Sundance "experience" and after asking around, we discovered that was on the lower end of the spectrum of what comparable productions were spending. But what are you gonna do? Not fly your cast out to promote the film (they're really the only thing they care about up there. By the way, you want to witness the decline of Western Civilization? Watch the feeding frenzy going on at the SWAG stations as certified millionaires grovel for shopping carts full of designer jeans, Ray Ban sunglasses, and plasma TVs). We actually were only given a handful of tickets to our own premiere, so pretty much everyone who wasn't an actor, one of the principle 6 production members (so that's leaving out all of our relatives, friends, and production staff) had to camp out in the will-call line for a couple hours. "Thanks for making the trip mom and dad. The line's around the corner, so bundle up."

I'm not saying they should cater to your every need or that they should pay for everything (it's nice for your family to be at your world premiere, but obviously this is an expense the filmmakers should incur) but considering the original question posed is should film festivals share ticket grosses and arguably the biggest festival in the U.S. doesn't even help out with stuff like this, should tell you how far we are from the days of revenue sharing.

anonymous writes, "All told we probably spent three times what you did Matt on your ENTIRE FILM just to finance the Sundance "experience" and after asking around, we discovered that was on the lower end of the spectrum of what comparable productions were spending."

In a word, wow. The system is even more fucked than I thought.

Anonymous is so right. When 51 Birch Street didn't get into Sundance this year (mostly because we'd already premiered at Toronto, then went to IDFA), I was very disappointed, at first. Then I thought about the thousands and thousands of dollars I was saving (not that I had it), and the air suddenly felt fresher, birds started tweeting and all was right with the world again.

The festival circuit is great in many ways - and for most filmmakers it IS their theatrical release. But for those (like me) who are using it to get the kind of critical and audience buzz that will make distributors come sniffing, it's expensive, time-consuming, and draining.

If you're lucky, as I've been, to be invited to a ton of festivals, it's like having 3 full-time jobs just to keep up, and none of them paying.

But it's also great fun, at times. After all, if you're lucky enough to get a theatrical release, you'll probably have the thrill of seeing 25 people show up for the afternoon screenings and maybe 60 at night, while having your ridiculously expensive sound mix compete with the crinkling sandwich wrappers and cell phone conversations. At festival screenings, I've had jam-packed 800 seat screenings in Amsterdam where NOT ONE PERSON left the room 'til it was over, not even to pee! I mean, holy crap, how good is that?!?

So, what am I saying? It's a mixed bag. Some festivals like Miami treat filmmakers really well and have little to no industry presence. Others like SXSW do very little for the filmmakers but have a huge industry presence. Sundance is a world of its own.

Okay, gotta go. My film is playing in 4 festivals this week (Sarasota, Philly, Quebec, Full Frame). It's Friday night and there's a shitload of work to be done.

Thanks for stopping by, and break a leg.