‘It’s irresponsible not to know how internet distribution works if you’re a filmmaker,’ Jonathan Entwistle
To the Curzon Soho for a Shooting People discussion taking in contemporary filmmaking, distribution and how to get your film seen. On the panel Jonathan Entwistle, director of The End of the Fucking World and Jordan McGarry, lead curator at Vimeo.
‘The most important thing you can do is cast someone famous,’ Entwistle said, acknowledging that having Craig Roberts involved had trebled the power of his project. He believes in the power of the internet to spread the word about your film. But it is no good just putting it online and thinking your work is done. Doing that, he said, was ‘…the same as putting it in a bin in Soho and hoping someone will pick it up.’ Although that’s not as unlikely as you might imagine. The End of the Fucking World is based on a comic that he original found – in a bin in Soho.
He is convinced that filmmakers should look to the net to distribute their films rather than the cinema, or even TV. He speaks from experience – a film festival screening of one of his films only reached a handful of people, yet when he released another film online it quickly received 55,000 views. A Channel 4 programme might get a seemingly impressive 4 million viewers, yet there are videos of cats falling off tables that have 23 million views on Youtube. That is not a call to make a film about a cat falling off a table, just a statistic to show how much potential there is for film makers online.
As a filmmaker, finding an audience is your responsibility, so even if you could get one, why hand over all the important decisions to a distributor? McGarry’s experience with vimeo shows that films by filmmakers who have spent time building up online followers do better than those that are just released without context or backup. You can build your own followers on Twitter, Facebook, Vimeo and Youtube and you don’t have to just tweet about what you had for lunch. Answer questions, offer advice, join the Vimeo community – people will soon be asking in the comments which camera you used. Send links to your films to relevant blogs and websites (and tweet a link to The Flaneur whilst you’re at it on @flaneurzine, we love indie film).
The previous financial model for filmmakers was to make a film, show it at a festival and hope you got a deal. This is still possible, but getting followers online and releasing digitally gives access to far more people and allows you to get paid per view. Also, companies like Film4 and Studio Canal spend hours watching online videos looking for potential hits, so distribution online does not preclude being picked up by one of the big companies.
The upside of internet distribution is huge – for example being chosen as a staff pick on Vimeo can get your film 50,000 views. But one big tip from Jordan: Make sure your thumbnail is bright and clear. Films with a clear, light thumbnail get more views. It’s a fact.
Unlike in the past the means to build an audience are now in your hands. You can retain control, but you can’t be passive. It’s hard work to make a film, but you have to work just as hard to sell it.
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