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Lights, Camera … Distribution!

You’ve had the brilliant story idea. You’ve cobbled together cast, crew and even some of the financing, and now you’re nearly done with your first film. What’s the next step? How do you get your films about queer women viewed by the lesbian and bi women who are hungry for more representation on screen?

Though it may not be evident by looking at box-office receipts or Nielsen ratings, there are more avenues for the distribution and consumption of films by and about lesbians and bi women than ever before. Which avenue a filmmaker chooses to explore depends on her goals for the film and how much post-filmmaking work she wants to do herself.

Many filmmakers think first about the film festival circuit, and indeed, having your film screened at a major independent film festival like Sundance, Toronto or Berlin, or one of the LGBT festivals like Frameline in San Francisco, Outfest in Los Angeles or NewFest in New York, adds prestige to your résumé – more still if your film wins an award. This can be a huge asset when you are looking for places to screen and sell your film in the future.

Then there is theatrical release – what Mark Reinhart, executive vice president of distribution and acquisitions for here! Films, calls “the holy grail for filmmakers, to see their film in theaters.” Lesser-known but additional ways to be seen by larger audiences are educational and other institutional rentals. Other options include cable and broadcast television airings and DVD releases – all targeted at the home viewer – and, increasingly, Internet streaming and downloads to mobile devices, such as cell phones and other PDAs.

How does a filmmaker get access to these venues? If the goal is to have a film accessible to as many viewers as possible with little work or effort, online resources are an easy way to go. Anyone can upload a file to YouTube, for example. But most filmmakers have put out a lot of money and time for their project and understandably have a desire at least to recoup expenses and, perhaps, make a profit, too, which can then help them finance their next film.

Madeleine Lim, executive director and founder of San Francisco’s Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project, calls filmmaking “one of the most expensive art forms that still exists, because of the buying of the film stock and tape stock and the processing involved, and the time involved, and all of the different hats you have to wear.” A number that commonly gets cited is $1,000 per finished minute. So, for example, a 10-minute short film would cost a filmmaker about $10,000 to make.

“And this is an independent estimate,” Lim adds, “where you get your cast and crew for free, [and] you might feed them, things like that.” It does not include potential costs like location rental, the purchase of computer systems, or marketing and promotion.

One way to get a film out there in ways that will provide some financial return is to contact all the film festivals, PBS stations, cable stations, DVD distribution companies and online streaming channels in North America and abroad. This takes a great deal of time, energy and hard work, especially if you don’t already know and have access to the people in the film industry, but it has the potential for the greatest financial return, because you’re not sharing any money you make with another company.

Another option is to sell the rights to your film to a distribution company. Each company has different contracts specifying what they will do, but generally, they might submit the film to festivals, sell the television airing rights, arrange for the DVD production and distribution, license the content for online streaming, and perhaps even arrange for a theatrical release. Traditionally, the distribution company keeps a large portion of the return from these deals, since they have the resources and do the legwork required to secure them, and the filmmaker gets a smaller percentage.

A combination of these approaches – DIY distribution and signing with a distribution company for some pieces of the puzzle – is also possible with some creative planning and strategizing. Networking with other LGBT filmmakers is one way to learn about what has and has not worked in particular situations. There are a variety of ways to find other filmmakers: at classes and workshops, LGBT and other film festivals and screenings, and online.

Jenni Olson, an independent filmmaker, LGBT film historian, founder of PopcornQ (one of the Web’s original LGBT film websites), and now Director of E-Commerce and Consumer Marketing at Wolfe Video, says, “The most important thing is to talk with other filmmakers and learn from their experiences. The LGBT filmmaker community is amazing for that.”

Olson created the PopcornQ Film & Video Professionals List in the mid-1990s for LGBT film and video professionals. Olson has compiled information about the list and other resources for LGBT filmmakers and posted it online.

Jenni Olson

 

Another valuable resource is Power Up, the Professional Organization of Women in Entertainment Reaching UP!, a nonprofit, all-volunteer run educational organization and film production company founded in 2001 by current Executive Director Stacy Codikow along with Amy Shomer. Power Up provides information, assistance and resources to filmmakers, in addition to producing films for others and their own recent Itty Bitty Titty Committee, released theatrically under their Pocket Releasing division.

Membership dues from filmmakers and others who support diversity in the arts fund the work Power Up does. “The real idea is to support the organization and then from that to gain back insight and information to help your own project,” Codikow explains.

“We started this company with no money and just relationships and resources,” she adds. “We’ve been going strong for eight years, we’ve produced 12 short films, we’ve helped finance and produce another 25 short films, we’ve helped people with their feature films, and we ended up producing our own feature film and doing the theatrical distribution.”

Like Power Up, other organizations serve the community in a variety of ways that can benefit LGBT filmmakers. One example, Frameline, home of San Francisco’s LGBT International Film Festival, offers post-production grants from their Film & Video Completion Fund, which can help filmmakers in the latter stages of making their film. They also have a division called Frameline Distribution, created more than 25 years ago.

Distribution Director Maura King explains, “[Then-Executive Director] Michael Lumpkin was finding films to show in the festival, getting prints into the country that might be the only English-language copy of that film. The film would come in, show at the festival and then leave the country again. So it was a literal recognition that this is important work, there are people in the U.S. who are hungry to see it, who need to see it, and by talking to the filmmakers and getting permission to circulate the print and book it around the country, we’d be doing this great service.”

Frameline Distribution began with a special emphasis on distributing films for rental to the educational and other institutional markets. In this way, Frameline, and other companies like Women Make Movies, combine social justice work with arts and entertainment. “The educational market is interested in seeing traditional documentaries that aren’t traditionally educational,” King said.

In addition to documentaries, Frameline Distribution now acquires short films. “It’s a lot of work to submit to film festivals, so we can take that on,” King explains. “We can also help bring the film to a wider audience … We do it with the aim of returning royalties to the filmmakers, so we can continue to support the work that they’re doing.”

As a nonprofit with limited resources, Frameline is able to work with only a limited number of films. Larger, for-profit distribution companies are important to increase the quantity of films that are available in the marketplace.

Wolfe Video, the company Olson is now with, is the largest and oldest distributor of lesbian films. Founder and CEO Kathy Wolfe began the company in 1985 when she saw that lesbian films in particular were not getting released. In addition to their retail sales arm, they handle DVD and theatrical releasing, broadcast and streaming licenses, and foreign (non-North American) sales. In 2007, they released more than 20 films on DVD. They also do a lot of festival distribution, like this year’s Butch Jamie, written and directed by Michelle Ehlen.

Like most distributors, Wolfe visits film festivals worldwide to look for films to acquire, but she also invites filmmakers to submit their work to Wolfe directly. “We like for people to send us their work, even before it’s done the film festival circuit,” Olson said. “We’re very active in communicating with all kinds of filmmakers and providing resources to be part of that ecosystem of LGBT filmmakers, film festivals and film journalists, being involved in facilitating access in all kinds of different ways.”

TLA Video, another large LGBT film distributor, also likes working with filmmakers early in the process. National press liaison Lewis Tice says, “We’ve been involved on several levels, from acquiring a finished film to script consultation for films in development. … We are pretty much accessible to the filmmakers’ needs and enjoy the process of being creative with the filmmakers to present their films.” TLA has recently begun producing films such as the recent Another Gay Sequel.

There are also independent distribution companies that don’t specialize in LGBT films but actively welcome them. Strand Releasing, for instance, recently distributed Maria Maggenti’s Puccini for Beginners. Company co-founder Marcus Hu says, “We are primarily a theatrical distributor, but we handle our own DVD releases, license many of our titles to Logo, HBO, Showtime, Sundance Channel, etc. … and we have already begun planning our streaming, which will unfold in 2009.”

Speaking of Logo (AfterEllen’s parent company), the company’s The Click List: The Best in Short Film has become a coveted destination for makers of narrative shorts. Through this program, Logo airs about 30 short films per season, so at the end of the current sixth season, they will have made nearly 200 short films available on the air and online.

Three years ago, when the program began, there weren’t as many avenues available for short films. Marc Leonard, senior vice president of multiplatform programming at Logo, says, “We went out and started buying short films from filmmakers with the hopes that giving them national exposure and having them be able to say in pitch meetings that their short film is on MTV’s national TV channel would give them the kind of boost that they need. It seems to be working out really well.”

Indeed. Although Logo’s shows aren’t tabulated in the Nielsen ratings yet, one measure of success of their shows is the online traffic accompanying each. Leonard says The Best in Short Film has consistently been one of the most popular shows Logo offers online, with a “tremendous amount of traffic.”

Here! TV has used short films as interstitials (content that appears between longer programs) and on their website since they began, but they are now putting the two together in a new program called Hot Pink Shorts, scheduled to premiere in early 2009.

The parent company for Here! is Regent Releasing, a full-service distribution company that works with both straight and LGBT films. Reinhart says, “We work with independent filmmakers in a wide variety of ways, in any way you can imagine, from developing original programming that will be produced and shot by Regent Studios for the (Here! TV) network, or from acquiring finished films to acquiring films-in-progress that need finishing funds.”

Logo provides a variety of distribution and licensing services to filmmakers. The company has also entered into an unprecedented arrangement with Netflix to make Logo’s content available online.

Joanne Jacobson, vice president of business development and operations at Logo, explains, “Our goal is to make our programming available as widely as possible. And this [deal with Netflix] is another way to do that. We also want people to enjoy our programming in the way that they want to enjoy it. Some people like to watch it online, some want to rent a DVD, some want to watch it on air. Like the rest of MTV Networks, we’re committed to letting our fans choose the way they want to consume our products.”

Logo has a marketing partnership with Netflix, in which Logo enjoys special positioning in Netflix’s gay and lesbian channel as well as their on page with all of their programming on it. In addition, Logo has provided Netflix with content from Logo’s library that is not otherwise available on DVD.

One example of this content is Curl Girls, “a series that was successful for us,” Jacobson says, “but that we did not put onto DVD, and there are a number of strategic reasons why, including that reality doesn’t tend to sell well on DVD. But it was very popular for us, and we knew there was a fan base. You can now access Curl Girls if you are a Netflix user. You can see every single episode – you can watch it electronically or rent a DVD.”

Jacobson notes that, “The lesbian programming has done the best on Netflix. [There are] a lot of reasons why that could be. As a lesbian myself, I suspect it’s because of the dearth of programming for lesbians, and they’re really hungry for it.”

Netflix and Logo also have a co-acquisition agreement, probably for a few titles each year, where, for instance, Logo will acquire the on-air rights and Netflix the rental rights. Jacobson says, “What that means is that there are some deals made that otherwise couldn’t be made because we have two companies coming together. And the filmmakers are going to get more exposure, because they’ll be on the Logo page [on Netflix]. We’re excited about giving a bigger voice to independent filmmakers.”

With both conventional distribution companies like Wolfe and Frameline to consider, and new markets like Logo and Here! providing distribution services, how does a filmmaker decide: self-distribution or sign a distribution deal – and with which company?

Ellen Huang, founder of Queer Lounge, says, “The film industry is tough already, so I recommend filmmakers continue to plug away and never, ever put all eggs into one basket.”

Power Up’s Codikow agrees. “The best way to make money is to hold your rights and sell them piece by piece by piece. That’s not always possible in the gay community, because there’s only four people who are buying movies, and they all know who each other is, and they’re all working together, and it may not always work that way for you.

“The difference could be from getting, say, $50,000 for your movie and that’s it, and maybe getting $350,000 if you sell it yourself,” she said. “I mean you hold your rights and selling one to home video, and one to TV, you sell Europe all by yourself, but you can’t necessarily do that as a filmmaker.”

Filmmakers need to consider their goals and how much time and energy they want to expend on the post-filmmaking process. If you don your business hat, go shopping for licensing deals with DVD distributors, broadcast and cable television stations, and streaming channels like iTunes, Movielink and CinemaNow, you’re not able to spend time and energy on more creative pursuits like making your next film.

And making that next film is important. There is an audience out there that’s hungry for more images of lesbian and bi women’s lives on screen, be it in a theater, on a television or computer, or on a iPhone. With the increase in distribution channels available to filmmakers, we viewers can look forward to seeing even more aspects of our lives reflected in film.

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