I’m Douglas Horn, a writer-director with two independent features and several shorts under my belt. Two completed features that few have ever heard of—that puts my career smack between “success story” and “cautionary tale.”
When IndieFlix and I discussed the idea blogging for their site, the thought was, I’m right in the trenches, fighting the same battles that a lot of IndieFlix filmmakers are or will be with their next film. I love reading advice from people who’ve made it, like John August’s exemplary screenwriting blog (www.JohnAugust.com), but let’s face it, the guy who writes Tim Burton’s screenplays is swimming in a whole different ocean than us indie filmmakers. I plan to write about working in the world of independents, low budgets, film festivals, and the art, love, and occasional commerce of independent film. And for readers who aren’t filmmakers themselves but fans of independent cinema, hopefully this blog will offer a peek into what filmmakers go through to bring you all those wonderful & amazing films that the studios would never touch.
Like everyone else paying any attention to what’s going on in the film world right now, I’m very concerned about how the business will continue to survive. However, I know that it will survive in some form, and I’m frankly quite optimistic about the place of independent filmmakers in whatever new model emerges. But I’ll save that for another post.
My IndieFlix blog is about how independent filmmakers can develop their stories, make their films, build an audience, and recoup money to finance their lives and future films. This is the only model that sustains film and filmmakers. As a guy who’s been through the distribution wringer a few times now, I know that it’s not just finishing your film, or even getting a deal that matters, what really counts is figuring out how to turn the films into revenue to keep the cycle going.
“Fade in to cash out.” That’s a good way of thinking about a movie’s life cycle for anyone who wants to make films and keep making them. It means a cycle of economically sustainable filmmaking. It’s not enough anymore to make a stellar film. The distributors used to seek out filmmakers because they could profit from a great independent film. But distributors are just trying to stay afloat these days. Today, it’s really up to the filmmakers to find their audience–and to do that successfully, we all have to start thinking more about our audience before we ever write the script.
So many exciting opportunities are emerging for independent filmmakers to build audiences and bypass traditional distribution. It’s scary because most of the traditional distribution machinery is going to be gone in a few years. Not “some” or “a lot”… most of it will disappear. Budgets will shrink, traditional avenues will fold. But hey, us scrappy indies already know how to make good films without big budgets, and the “traditional distribution avenues” always existed to screw us out of our share, anyway. So who knows, in whatever new distribution model emerges, we might just wind up on top.
Douglas Horn is a writer, director, and producer of independent films. His films include Entry Level, The No-Sit List, and Full Disclosure. www.DouglasHorn.com
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