‘Ride the Divide’ a case in DIY http://tinyurl.com/2d3edl7
I love an article about a filmmaker that starts with:
Hunter Weeks went into his work on the feature documentary “Ride The Divide†with a solid sense of how to get the film out once it was done.
This is so important and yet so overlooked by most filmmakers. It’s a business and you have to think about the Return on Investment right from the start, because you’ll have to be creative about it.
They took on a corporate sponsor and encouraged participants to wear the corporate beanie (but not compulsory). They targeted a limited number of film festivals and when they missed the larger, more public ones, they went straight to distribution.
The film has screened at about 100 times in theaters, in about 70 cities in all, in shows we’ve produced ourselves – sometimes one night, or sometimes three nights in a row in the same place. We also had a licensing fee to screen the film for $295, and we tapped into these hotbed cycling communities – mountain-bike extreme groups all over the country, especially in the mountain region. We had these tremendously successful shows. And that helped sell the DVDs in a pre-release version over the last six months.
One other approach has been to offer 500 “Living Room Screening Packages†for $99, for which 50 percent of the proceeds go to cyclist Lance Armstrong’s Live Strong Foundation. The kit includes a DVD or Bluray in wood laser-engraved box by karvt.com, a limited edition t-shirt byMighty Karma, a SmartWool Beanie, Tony Hsieh’s Best Selling book – Deli