There is a good post from several weeks back on Spout "Five Thoughts on Independent Filmmaking from SXSW". There's a lot in it that merits further discussion, but one thing said by indie distrib Richard Abramowitz leapt out at me: “It’s always a delicate situation to talk to filmmakers about finding their audience beforehand,” Abramowitz said on a panel about self-distribution. “Presumably, you’re making art. To think about the end user in that particular way is kind of a corruption of the process. It’s the producer’s responsibility to work off the director and understand who the audience may be.”
This could be considered a nicely condensed version of Brent Chesanek's post(s) here several months back, and certainly captures the thoughts and attitudes of many I know and have heard. I get it. It makes some sense to leave art to the artists, business to the business types, marketing and distribution to the relevant experts, right?
I don't feel this attitude captures the realities of the time. In my humble opinion, and particularly for the independent filmmaker, you are not being responsible or realistic if you keep thinking your job is simply to build it (and then to trust that they will come). You need to build the paths and bridges to get the people there. You need to have the pen to keep them there once they have entered the field. You need to have the apparatus to help them tell their friends and family to join them.
You don't need to do it alone though. You just need to find the right people to collaborate with and a plan on how to get them to work with you (money helps). Sure it would be great to find a producer who knows all of this already (and yes this is what they should be teaching in producing programs at the "film schools"), but I have always found there to be far fewer producers than there are writers and directors who are looking for the help. Presumably all filmmakers work a very long time prepping their films. Unless they are working in the studio world, all filmmakers invest a tremendous amount of time without any promise of financial return. With all that energy and effort, doesn't it make sense to figure out how the work may actually reach an audience?
I am not a marketing expert, but my thoughts on marketing have helped get many of my films made. Before pitching the financiers, we try to come up with the different handles on how we will get an audience in to see our film. This effort is for naught if they don't respond to the script in the first place, but once they want to meet, I better have an answer to those standard questions of who is the audience and how do we reach them. If I can come up with ten or fifteen decent approaches, the financiers assume their marketing team can up with a host of even better strategies.
Every step in filmmaking and marketing is a collaborative effort; it is our responsibility to help our collaborators do their jobs better.
14 comments:
Great post - it's a constant struggle in my mind, but I'm coming down more and more on the think of the audience side. In the perfect world, we could just be artists - and for a lucky few, their artistic vision happens to overlap without such thoughts - but most people can't afford the luxury of ignoring the market. Unless you are rich, or live in a country that subsidizes art, this is reality today.
I am reminded of the Roger Corman quote where he figured out that he could have a message in his film, but that he wouldn't make a "message film."
And to know who you are speaking to and what you are going to tell them does not negate the artistic intent or craft. Knowing who you are planning on entertaining allows you to play upon their preconceived notions and actually surprise them with the "something more."
"I don't feel this attitude captures the realities of the time."
That may be right, and it's also why Paul Schrader was probably right when he said cinema, as a 20th century art form, is mostly dead.
Especially in the U.S., where there's very little government/grant support for filmmaking as an art.
Most "filmmakers" today might as well be making widgets.
Depressing, but true.
YESSSSSSSSSSSSS!
sure if a film is NOT ART but IS A PRODUCT
Unfortunately, I make films for people who stopped going to the movies long ago.
Without an audience, it's not art. Books, paintings, film, photography - all of it is just a thing until someone reads it or looks at it. You can suggest meaning in what you produce, but in the audience's reaction is the real meaning of the piece. The audience is as much a part of filmmaking as an actor is, and it's bizarre to think of that as selling out. Why would you want to make a film that wouldn't be seen? Why not draw on an etch-a-sketch instead?
I don't think film making for audience and film making for art are mutually exclusive...Like a gallery owner you need to know who should come to the exhibition to buy. we are the gallery owners and painters and the one should not dictate the other. It becomes a tug and pull to balance, a fine art if you will...
The point isn't that you don't expect people to see your film, or that you make your work of art and hope that nobody sees it. The point is that you don't tailor your film for the sake of an audience. You make the film to satisfy your needs and passions and, if you have an interesting point of view, people might be interested in it.
It's impossible to know whether an audience will like or dislike your film. Trying to please an audience is like a person begging to be liked: it's just not attractive. Even successful Hollywood filmmakers aren't aiming for the audience. I know that's hard to believe, but they actually think they are making good films. It's just that their tastes seem to jibe with a broad audience. When it doesn't, Hollywood stops hiring them.
"Knowing your audience" should not be analogous with "trying to please your audience." By all means, make what you want and make it how you want to but be aware of who might be interested in seeing your film. If that's no one but you, fine, you might still find an audience whether you like it or not (ever been to "Home Movie Day"?).
I would argue that most films can have some kind of niche audience applied to them - and the beauty of today's marketing technology is that you can actually find them. Of course, the challenge that remains is how to get them to leave the house.
Many, many terrible films are made under the misguided intention of making them appealing, and not just by the studios. The advantage to knowing your audience ahead of release (or even production) is that you can begin to build support before you are out of the gate – not so that you can tailor your material to appeal more strongly to that audience.
at what point then are we just drug dealers, or used car salesmen? And how does something original and new come out of always asking around what people want to see? I don't think people are always the best source for knowing exactly what will move them. And what's the point of building a bridge if its to nowhere?
This argument found its most extreme expression in French structuralist philosophy with notions of the 'readable' text and the 'writable' text. Readable texts were audience directed; readable because they conformed to structures which audiences had subconsciously learnt (been interpolated by) and these structures were thus an oppressive tyranny imposed on the author. In other words other forces were at work other than art, and thus the high points of literature were represented by the literary equivalent of 'art for art's sake', i.e. the undreadable couple of modernist text by James Joyce, written for his own amusement, and only made possible because patrons paid for his lifestyle.
For me this French philosophical position took to ridiculous extremes what is fundamentally the difference between literature on the one hand, and such as genre writing and works of adaptation on the other which are the product of craft.
We are all storytellers, maybe that's the only fundamental aspect of human nature: the turning of life into narrative. But we'd rather not be reduced to the level of hacks by the execs who run genre factories, be they in literature or in film.
On maybe a different note I must say an enormous thank you to you, Ted, for this blog. I'm part of a group of filmmakers based in the North West of England. On average 94% of the money spent on UK film production is spent 250 miles away in the London area. That's 6% for the whole of the rest of the country. But that's OK. No one tells us what to do, we get tremendous 'in kind' support, and just about all costs are deferred under profit share arrangements which leave nobody with a bad taste in the mouth.
It took us a while, but our experience of distributors - again all based 250 miles away - led us to the same conclusions as those perhaps best expressed by Peter Broderick.
The trouble is though that the self-distribution movement; and let's face it there's nothing exactly new about it, it's what fringe theatre troupes and indie rock bands have always done; does have its entrepreneurs keen to sell courses and advice on 'what the market wants', on 'what genres are hot', on 'give me money and I'll give you the secrets of internet marketing' and a whole load of other sickening bottles of snake oil too many to mention. And for anyone who values art that's all such a turn off.
But in you, Ted, we've found an entry into something we really connect with and which fortifies our spirits.
I'll just finish by saying I started out in fringe theatre in the early '70's. Putting a show together, rehearsing it and polishing it up, organising a tour and telling people about it, and then the high point of it all, the what it's all about, the going out and performing it to people who connected with what you were doing and couldn't wait for your next show. All of that, every part of it, was a real buzz. Until now, until digital, only a very few filmmakers were in a similar position. But not any more...
Regards
Jon Williams
Thanks for the kind words Jon!
What is art?---the argument.
Maybe it is a compulsion. Something entirely made from the nature of someone's being.
Or it is a display of one's emotions. A display with the intention of sharing a place from where someone comes.
A display requires an audience. A compulsion requires a creator. Both require tools.
Narrative form is about telling a story.
What other medium besides film would someone try to justify telling a story without consideration of the audience? In some ways, I think it informs the art. In some ways, I think it triggers the impulse to create something.
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