Earlier this month (June 2009), B-Side Entertainment left its venerable offices on Brazos Street to more spacious and comfortable digs on Congress Avenue. Though the move takes us further away from our beloved capital building, it puts us closer to the Warehouse District, the convention center, and other important Austin landmarks. Change your address books to:

B-Side Entertainment, Inc.
327 Congress Ave, Suite 650
Austin, TX 78701

See a slideshow of photos of our new offices.

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This video tutorial explains how:

Festival Genius: Rating movies via Twitter from B-Side Entertainment on Vimeo.

If you’re a Twitter ninja and you’d rather not watch the tutorial, the syntax is as follows:

@festg title of film #rate4 #cv09

The first hash tag is the star rating (you may use #rate1, #rate2, all the way up to #rate5) and the second hash tag indicates which festival you’re attending (e.g. #cv09 = CineVegas 2009). The unique twitter code for each festival will be announced via the @festg Twitter account.

To associate your Twitter account with your Festival Genius account, log into the festival web site and click “My Festival” then the “edit” button on the far right side. Enter your Twitter name into the proper field as pictured below and save the changes.

Your Twitter ratings will now show up on the festival site about ten minutes after you submit them.

Questions? Visit our Customer Support Community at GetSatisfaction.

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B-Side: It seems like filmmakers have to do so much more marketing now, in terms of being on all these social networks and reaching out to blogs and posting clips on YouTube. Every month it seems like there’s a new outreach medium that you “must” keep up with, and if you’re a filmmaker who just wants to make movies, that’s not a very attractive prospect. Will these services just keep multiplying, or will some of the internet busy-work fall away over time?

Scott Kirsner: I think the pendulum is swinging right now, and filmmakers are going to have to get used to doing more marketing, more connecting with prospective audiences. In the old days, if your film was picked up by a distributor, maybe you spent 90 percent of your time actually working on the film and 10 percent promoting it. Where are we today? I think that if you’re not spending at least 30 percent of your time on building an audience for your film, there’s a good chance that it’ll just vanish — and the pendulum may be swinging toward something like a 60/40 filmmaking/marketing split. But you have to think about the marketing as part of your film, part of your art, part of what you do.

Your question about juggling lots of different sites and social networks is really good, because I think filmmakers can be overwhelmed by everything that’s out there. What I suggest is:

• Start with something simple and non-intimidating… like a Facebook fan page for your film, or a blog with a really simple, free service like Posterous.
• Pay attention to new places online where people are spending time. It may be worth your while, for instance, to join something like Twitter and give it a whirl when you hear everyone is talking about it. When your audience gravitates toward something new, it’s a good idea for you to be there.
• But while experimentation is important, if you don’t feel like you’re connecting with a significant audience through any of these channels — whether it’s your blog, a Facebook page, Twitter, or something new — drop it and spend your time on something that you think will have a better pay-off.

One of the people I profile in the book, a Bay Area comedian named Mark Day, posted his comedic rants on every new video site that cropped up. “Sometimes, a lot of people would see them,” he told me. “And sometimes, you’d go back and no one would have seen them.” Eventually, he focused his time on posting to YouTube, and driving viewership there. When that site started a “partners program” where it offered to share advertising revenue with content creators, Day was one of the first people invited to participate.

B-Side: This “filmmaker as marketer” model suggests a pretty significant shift from earlier days of independent film. While there were some gregarious “beat the bushes to find the audiences” practitioners of the craft, few filmmakers in decades previous even thought about marketing, much less planned for it strategically. Is there some danger that the overall quality of indie film will decline as filmmakers think increasingly about marketing potential and decreasingly about artistic merit?

SK: I don’t tend to worry about that. Clearly, more films are being made as the medium is getting democratized, and to me, that increases the odds that something will get made that is interesting to me — that has artistic merit to my eye. I know some critics may argue that in the era when fewer films got made, you had to be incredibly good to attract the resources to make a film, but maybe I’m a populist — I think that anyone with enough motivation should be able to make a film. People will get better over time, both as artists and as marketers. I think you need both skill sets today.

B-Side: In your book you suggest that filmmakers who can’t handle the technological or business aspects of marketing their films themselves should partner with people who can. If you’re not a social media whiz, how do you know when you’ve entered into a good partnership? What are the hallmarks of success for an online/social media marketing campaign?

SK: The hallmark for a good partnership, first, is whether you like working with the person and you think they understand what you’re trying to achieve. In terms of looking at the success of an online campaign, it’s a few things: how “findable” is your film on Google and other search engines … are people buzzing about it on Twitter … does it have people participating on its blog or Web site or Facebook fan page … is the trailer spreading to other sites, assuming it is “embeddable”….and are people rating it and giving it reviews. I think any filmmaker can easily get a sense for whether the film has momentum or not — whether people are talking about it or whether it is sinking without a trace. Then there are some basic things, like can people easily find out where to see the film or how to buy it?

B-Side: How can filmmakers use real-world events like festival screenings to further their online marketing agendas?

SK: I think so many filmmakers are racing to get their movie finished before the first wave of festival screenings that a lot of times they neglect online. Maybe they have a simple Web site set up, but that’s it. To me, the festival circuit is often where films get their most attention — and their first reviews. On your site, you want to have a way to capture peoples’ e-mail addresses (and possibly their ZIP codes, too) so that you can let them know when your movie plays their city, or when it’s available on DVD or as a download. Some filmmakers will also want to sell the film while it’s playing festivals — I think we’re going to see more of that. One other thing to mention, which comes up a few times in the book, is a tool called Eventful Demand, which lets people tell you where they are, and that they’re interested in seeing your film. So you might plan additional screenings based on the audience demand.

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B-Side founder and CEO Chris Hyams was in Cannes this afternoon to support director/producer Martin Scorsese’s announcement of partnerships and plans designed to further the work of the World Cinema Foundation (WCF). B-Side, along with The Auteurs and Criterion, will help the WCF distribute its restored films to the public. The films that the WCF restores every year will now have their festival premiere in Cannes and then begin their tour to the public via a network of other festivals and museum exhibitions. During the museum tour of the restored 35mm prints, the films will also now be made available digitally for the first time through The Auteurs. Shortly after, the films will roll out through the partnership with B-Side to universities and film clubs, and also will reach film lovers at home through B-Side’s relationships with platforms such as Netflix and iTunes. Ultimately, the films will be made available on DVD in collectors’ box sets through a partnership with the Criterion Collection, who will also select a few titles each year to distribute as individual special-edition releases.

Needless to say we are extremely excited about this new partnership and we’ll be bringing you the latest on these films as they roll out.

Read the official press release.

Watch the press conference.

Additional coverage at indieWIRE.

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Photo: New World School of the Arts, Miami Fl.

Last weekend, the B-side team headed uptown to Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC) where the 14th Annual Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band festival & competition was in full swing. From a whopping 1,500 high school jazz bands from around the country 15 of the finest were selected to compete. On Friday, students and band directors participated in a variety of programs including a Q&A session with Wynton Marsalis, sectional workshops, and rehearsals with professional musician mentors before they performed in an intense two days of competition. Prior to the announcement of the three top-placing bands, the film festival favorite CHOPS screened.

CHOPS (directed by Bruce Broder and the reason we were at JALC) is a film that follows a school from Florida in a previous competition year and played to an anxious but exuberant crowd in the lobby outside the Frederick P. Rose Theater. From the 15 bands that participated the judges, Wynton Marsalis, David Berger, Reggie Thomas and Gerald Wilson selected the three finalists that went on to play at Avery Fisher Hall with Wynton Marsalis as guest soloist. The three finalists were Garfield High School, Seattle, WA, Roosevelt High School, Seattle WA, and Eau Claire Memorial High School. At the awards, Wynton Marsalis presented prizes and cash awards to each of the 15 finalists – taking 1st place was the exceptional Garfield High School Jazz Band.

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B-Side partners with Virgil Films & Entertainment for DVD Releases.

Also: Liz Ogilvie joins the team as VP of Marketing; B-Side announces acquisition of “Visioneers.”

(From our April 13th press release.) In keeping with its mission to creatively and profitably distribute independent films, B-Side Entertainment and Home Video/DVD distributor Virgil Films & Entertainment have entered into an exclusive partnership for the release of B-Side’s films on DVD. This announcement comes on the heels of the launch of B-Side’s distribution arm, whose newest member is documentary marketing veteran Liz Ogilvie. Ogilvie, formerly of Indiepix and Docurama, joins the company as VP of Marketing. B-Side has also announced the acquisition of its first feature film, “Visioneers,” starring Zach Galifianakis.

B-Side Entertainment offers filmmakers a viable alternative to the highly expensive and nearly impossible world of independent distribution. Through innovative niche marketing and insight gleaned from festival audience data, B-Side has turned the industry’s model upside down to generate significant ancillary revenues at a fraction of the normal cost.

Virgil Films & Entertainment distributes DVD product in the theatrical feature film, documentary, special interest, and sports categories through partnerships with Sundance Channel Home Entertainment, ESPN, MLB Productions, and TV Guide, among others.

“Virgil and its president Joe Amodei are known for being smart, innovative and filmmaker friendly. Joe’s track-record of success – particularly in the documentary category – is unparalleled. We’re excited to work with Virgil to find new ways of achieving results in the tough DVD business,” said Chris Hyams, Founder and CEO of B-Side. “When it comes to marketing independent films and documentaries, there are very few who have as much experience as Liz Ogilvie. She has a creative approach to marketing films and has the utmost respect from the film industry. I can’t think of anyone better able to contribute to B-Side’s success than Liz.”

“B-Side offers a new exciting alternative to the age-old theatrical release of independent product we have lived with for some time now. It gives films a chance of being seen, something that is almost impossible to accomplish given the economic realities of today,” said Joe Amodei, President of Virgil Films & Entertainment. “In our business it is all about how many eyes get to view a film and B-Side increases those numbers dramatically. The extra exposure these films receive will help our DVD sales and rentals.”

Ogilvie will be responsible for bringing B-Side’s film slate to captive audiences. She was previously the Head of Marketing for IndiePix. Prior to IndiePix, Ogilvie was Head of Programming at Docurama Films®, an independent distribution company dedicated exclusively to releasing cutting-edge, critically acclaimed non-fiction films into the home entertainment market place. Ogilvie is a member of IFP, IDA, New York Women in Film and Television, and serves on the board of the New York Film and Video Council.

“I am delighted to be joining the B-Side team where the combination of technology, media and creative thinking has shown that independent film can be connected with audiences in a unique and fresh way, and I am looking forward to taking the next step toward expanding this model,” said Liz Ogilvie.

In addition, the company announced the acquisition of its first feature film, “Visioneers,” directed by Jared Drake, written by Brandon Drake, and starring comedian Zach Galifianakis. “Visioneers” is a one-of-a-kind dark comedy set in a futuristic society in which citizens are known to spontaneously combust from stress, and dreams are a thing of the past. At the heart of the story is George Washington Winsterhammerman (Galifianakis), a mid-level manager at the Jeffers Corporation who starts to reevaluate his mundane existence and decides to take matters into his own hands. D.W. Moffett, Judy Greer, Missi Pyle, and James LeGros co-star in this 1984 meets Office Space social satire. The film premiered at the 2008 Seattle International Film Festival and went on to play such festivals as CineVegas and the Austin Film Festival.

The acquisition is the second this year for the Austin-based distributor which plans to acquire, market and distribute ten films in 2009.

http://atlantafilmfestival.com/content/view/286/101/

Upcoming Fests – Scene: Brooklyn, LA United Fest

Plus many more festivals, coming to a city near you!

This spring, Brooklyn Arts Council launches Scene: Brooklyn, Independent Film and Media Arts, a new film series taking place from April 29 – May 6, 2009 that celebrates the borough’s thriving film community, and features a seminar for filmmakers, a panel discussion, and screenings. 19 films, from fantastical animations, to thought provoking shorts, and eye opening documentaries about local issues are brought to the screen, and filmmakers Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden, Tia Lessin, Cruz Angeles and Rahmin Bahrani discuss the state of indie filmmaking today. All events, aside from the Screenwriting Seminar on April 29, take place at Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO, Brooklyn. Visit www.brooklynartscouncil.org for more information.

Festival’s starting this week include:

Kansas City Film Festival (April 22-26)

Independent Film Festival Boston (April 22-28)

White Sands International Film Festival (April 23-26)

Fallbrook Film Festival (April 23-26)

On Location: Memphis (April 23-26)

Newport Beach Film Festival (April 23-30)

National Film Festival for Talented Youth (April 24-26)

Indie Spirit Film Festival (April 24-26)

Festivals coming up next week include:

Los Angeles United Film Festival (April 30-May 7): LA United kicks off with Last Cup: Road to the World Series of Beer Pong, which covers the fascinating and fast-growing underground sport of beer pong. Other selected titles include The Shark is Still Working, a captivating documentary about one of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters of all time and Super High Me, in which stand-up comedian Doug Benson documents his experiences with medical marijuana for 30 continuous days.

Scene: Brooklyn Independent Film & Media Arts Festival (April 29-May 6)

Sunscreen Film Festival (April 29-May 3)

Marfa Film Festival (April 29-May 3)

First Glance Hollywood Film Fest (May 1-3)

British Film Festival Los Angeles (May 3-8)

Understanding film festivals, part two

The 10 benefits of playing film festivals.

In the previous section of this article we covered what a typical festival year looks like. Now we’ll delve into ten benefits of playing the film festival circuit.

1. Distribution. The possibility of finding a distributor by participating in the festival process is real. Festivals are one of the main sources that distributors tap when looking for films to acquire. However, even for filmmakers whose films are outstanding enough to play in the top-tier festivals, finding a distributor — especially a distributor whose vision for the picture matches yours — can be a struggle. The good news is that the festival circuit’s usefulness in finding distribution isn’t limited to the big festivals like Sundance, Toronto, and Cannes. A successful tour of well-established, respected festivals will build critical buzz for your film through audience word of mouth and reviews in the press.

2. Networking. This goes hand in hand with distribution. Though you may not find distribution for your movie as a direct result of playing at a particular event, festivals provide an unparalleled opportunity to make those critical connections that may eventually sell your film. This is also a chance to meet your contemporaries — some of who may be able to help you in the future. Sometimes even festival staff members will take a shine to particular film and do their best to push it in the right direction. People who work at festivals are often the most well-connected people in the film industry. Why wouldn’t you want to know as many of them as possible?

Read the rest of this article at Film Festival Secrets by Chris Holland.

Photo by Andrew McFarlane.

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In this blog entry I’m going to go over the new features we’ve built for the Festival Genius, but you’re welcome to dive right in and play with it at the Festival Genius site for South by Southwest 2009. You can also check out the video tutorial at Vimeo that explains a few salient details (though this entry will be more comprehensive than the video).

Play the video tutorial now.

Grid View

One of the most requested features from festival directors and audience members alike is the schedule grid view. Though we still support the day and week list views as the more flexible methods of displaying large amounts of schedule data on one page, the grid view is a familiar method of visualizing schedule data at a film festival. If a festival (like SXSW) has too many venues to display on one page, you can click the “More Venues” link to expose additional venues.

The grid view also supports the same filtering that you can do with the list views – so if you want to see only documentary films from Spain, you can do that. If you want to further narrow it down to documentary films from Spain playing at the Paramount, you can do that too. If you’re logged in to your Festival Genius account, you can add films to your calendar from any list or grid schedule page.

Schedule Genius

This is the heart of the technical bad-assery in the Festival Genius. It’s an idea we’ve been kicking around for a long while and now we have it working. If you’re a hard core film fan, one of the of the least enjoyable aspects of attending a film festival is the mental workout of constructing your schedule. Which films should you see when, and what if you miss out on something really cool because of a schedule conflict? At a festival like South by Southwest where some films screen as many as three times, there has to be an optimal schedule that will let you attend (almost) every movie you want to see – if only you could figure it out.

Enter the Schedule Genius. Simply add the desired films to your schedule – don’t worry about whether they conflict or not – and run the Genius. Taking into account what days you’ll be attending the festival and even the average travel time between venues (we suggest 45 minutes for SXSW), the Schedule Genius will rejigger your events and present you with the best of all possible schedules given the events in question. Don’t like the results, or need to tweak it a little manually? Go ahead, the Genius will adjust around your overrides and even show you what the trade-offs are before you commit.

Download Your Schedule in iCal Format

Once you have your schedule created, you’ll want some way to take it with you during the festival. Sure, you could print it out or use the mobile-optimized version of the site (see below), but lots of people these days have a personal calendar on their computer, or on the web, or even on their phone. Wouldn’t it be great to put your festival events on your everyday calendar? Well so long as that calendar supports the internet-standard iCal format, you can.

Just flip to any schedule page on the Festival Genius site and click the “Download Schedule” link. You can download an iCal file of the entire festival schedule or your own personal schedule. If you prefer to subscribe to your Genius calendar events instead of performing a one-time import, just right-click (control-click for Macs) on the link of your choice and copy the link. Then use your calendar program to subscribe to the feed. (It’s different for every calendar system so you’ll have to look that up on your own.)

Print Your Schedule

This one is pretty straightforward, but we put some extra effort into creating a nice clean page layout that looks great when you hit print. Print the full festival schedule (30-something pages for SXSW 2009) or just your personal schedule. You can even print a filtered view of the full festival lineup. Go ahead, make a printout of all the Narrative Features from Mexico. You know you wanna.

Optimized for Mobile Devices

When you point your iPhone, Blackberry, Android, or other mobile web device at the Festival Genius site, it displays a special version of the site that takes best advantage of the limited screen space and internet bandwidth that mobile devices possess. That doesn’t mean we’ve skimped on features, though. With the mobile version you can:

• Browse the schedule in list view

• Add films to your personal calendar

• See the details page for each event, including a still image, the synopsis and other info

• Rate and review films

• Search films by title and/or cast & crew

• Watch trailers (linked from the details page) if your device supports the video format. (We’ve tested it on the iPhone and some Blackberries.)

Check out the slideshow below for some example screens captured on the iPhone. Your experience may vary on a different device.

That pretty much wraps it up for the Festival Genius for now. We’re always working on new features but we think you’ll agree that this will change the way film festival fans make their plans.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the Festival Genius; get in touch at help at bside dot com. Be sure to tell your friends and to use Festival Genius to make your SXSW plans. Come back and rate some movies when you’re done!

Go to the SXSW 2009 Festival Genius site now.

Update: Now there’s a Festival Genius site for Hot Docs 2009!

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Exporting B-Side calendars with iCal from Bside Entertainment on Vimeo.

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You do iTunes? B-Side does… and now our Choice Indies titles are available as part of the IFC, Movies Uncut iTunes channel.

Now on iTunes – B-Side Groundswell™ alum and music industry expose “Before the Music Dies” combines performance footage, industry insight, and humor to document the current mess that is popular music. Filled with interviews by well-respected talking heads like original riot grrrl Jenny Toomey and New York Times critic Jon Pareles, the movie does what all good documentaries should do — elicit dialog and (hopefully) action.

Also available on iTunes is the suspense drama “The Cassidy Kids” that weaves a clever tale of murder, memory, and Saturday morning television. It features “30 Rock” resident nerd-bot Judah Friedlander and 80’s sitcom star Kadeem Hardison — who’s seen a career spark since his “A Different World” days with “Bratz: The Movie” and “Made of Honor” co-starring that McDreamy dude. Yes!

Finally, look for B-Side beer and bro-fest doc, (and Choice Indies grad) “The Outdoorsmen: Blood, Sweat, and Beers” on iTunes later this month.

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B-Side raunch-fest selection “Phone Sex Grandma” recently surpassed a quarter million views on You Tube. Nine and a half minutes of pure profanity laced creep-itude, the short shows Grandma Opal (the filmmaker’s mother… no kidding) hard at work operating her in-home phone sex line. I never get offended as I easily have the foulest mouth of anyone at B-Side, but “Phone Sex Grandma” gave me a serious case of the “ickies” – a case that still reverberates over a year after my first viewing. That being said, it’s awesome and provocative and points a long ruby-red-fingernail-tipped-finger at sex line callers who truly believe that the babe on the other end of the line is a blonde 36-24-36 bombshell.

NEW: Dirt Road to Psychedelia: Austin Texas during the 1960s

New to B-Side is the Scott Conn-directed music doc “Dirt Road to Psychedelia: Austin Texas during the 1960s”. Examining Austin’s critical part in shaping the psychedelic scene of the era, “Dirt Road” provides historical footage and uncommon insight into the birth of the psychedelic music movement by way of folky Janis Joplin and purveyors of psych the 13th Floor Elevators (fronted by legendary rock hero Roky Erickson). Music fans, especially those of Janis and Roky, as well as popular modern neo-psychedelic band The Black Angels (who recently toured around the film) will dig the jams as well as the historical reference.

NEW: Shadow Company

Also new is the investigative doc “Shadow Company” that scrutinizes the modern day phenomenon of “Private Military Contractors” — more commonly known as mercenaries. With an estimated 20,000 contractors currently on the ground in Iraq and with last year’s Blackwater scandal, the film asks where do these people come from and what compels them to fight for money regardless of the side they are on?

Interested in distributing your film through B-Side? Contact Steph Layton in Acquisitions.

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New to B-Side is the stark and inventive documentary “Scouts are Cancelled” that uniquely documents the writings of Canadian poet John Stiles and visually interprets his commentary on small town life in rural Nova Scotia. Recently screened at celebrated B-Side partner festival Hot Docs, the film received a glowing analysis in the current issue of the critical film journal CineACTION.

CICADAS

Great news for Austin filmmaker Kat Candler — her beautifully sweet coming of age story “cicadas” will screen as part of WNET’s REEL 13 series on July 19.

BLOOD CAR

“Are gas prices killing you?” B-Side 40 Fridays* favorite “Blood Car” is back on bside.com after screening at the prestigious Edinburgh International Film Festival last week. Part social commentary, part B-Movie slasher flick, part beer-out-your nose ridiculous comedy, Blood Car has enough sex-crazed, bloodthirsty vegans and inappropriate humor to satisfy everyone — and as the CIA agent says in the film “killing people for fuel is not racist… it’s patriotic”. Celebrate your freedom… buy Blood Car!

*40 Fridays – proper noun 1. Research. 2. B-Side working stiffs’ excuse to start the weekend early, watch movies, and drink malt liquor.

Interested in distributing your film through B-Side? Contact Steph Layton in Acquisitions.

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Welcome to The Show by B-Side, a bi-weekly look at filmmakers, festivals, and audiences.

A few weeks ago, our intrepid Festival Ops Manager Chris Holland brought his Flip video camera to the 2008 Marfa Film Festival. He came back with some great stories about the festival, and some great footage to back it up.

So that gave us an idea.

With over 200 festival partners and counting, B-Side has an average of 5 new partner festivals taking place each week somewhere in the World. And with Flip cameras starting at $99, and fitting comfortably in your pocket, they are an ideal means to profile a festival from the inside. (No, we do not have a commercial arrangement with Flip — we just think they’re really cool).

The idea is this: each week, send a Flip camera to a filmmaker attending a B-Side festival. Have them shoot whatever they want, send the camera back, and we’ll cut together a brief festival profile. This got us thinking about all the other things we could do, and The Show was born.

In coming weeks, you can expect coverage of more festivals, but also profile of filmmakers, films, audiences — basically anything that fits within the ever-expanding B-Side universe.

So welcome to episode 1, featuring the 2008 Marfa Film Festival. In two weeks, our next episide will feature the 2008 Portland Women’s Fest. You can expect a new episode every two weeks (for now).

Let us know what you think. And if you have an idea for a segment, or you’d like to shoot something for us, just drop us a line at theshow@bside.com.

Check out the episode here.

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A nice little piece from G4 on our Roll Your Own Screening program for Super High Me:

Since this was a smaller, independent film with little to no advertising budget, the innovators over at B-Side Entertainment decided to approach distribution of the film differently. [...] If you had a projector, a DVD player, and a few friends you could order a copy of the movie on DVD early and host a screening at your house, apartment, or shady back alley. Thanks to this, Super High Me screened in 1,076 different locations on April 20th, surpassing the 868 theaters that Fahrenheit 911 opened in. Now yes, these weren’t all theaters, so technically no records were broken, but coming from a film with zero marketing expense and no media buys at all, this grassroots campaign appears to be a huge success.

Read the full story here.

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Mike Stuckey of MSNBC spoke to Super High Me producer Alex Campbell and I last week. His story published today on msnbc.com looks at the commercialization of 420. While the article takes a skeptical view of both pot-smoking and the varied attempts to cash in on the 420 phenomenon, we get a nice shout-out for our efforts.

Stuckey declares the B-Side Roll Your Own Screening campaign "the most ambitious 420-linked marketing campaign," directly contrasting it with the latest Harold and Kumar. He generously points out that Harold and Kumar distributor New Line Cinema is "a Hollywood powerhouse, a Time Warner company with over $1 billion in annual revenue and deals throughout the entertainment world that include NBC and Microsoft, msnbc.com’s parent companies."

Such devotion to 420 festivities has grabbed the attention of filmmakers with projects about pot, or featuring it. “Totally Baked,” a mockumentary written and produced by comedian Craig Shoemaker, premiered on April 20, 2007, and is being distributed on DVD just after 420 this year.

“Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo,” a comedy featuring John Cho and Kal Penn as a pair of hapless pot smokers, is being released April 25, and will be promoted with a prominent advertising campaign and other 420 content on the High Times Magazine Web site. “Harold and Kumar’s” maker, New Line Cinema, is a Hollywood powerhouse, a Time Warner company with over $1 billion in annual revenue and deals throughout the entertainment world that include NBC and Microsoft, msnbc.com’s parent companies.

But the most ambitious 420-linked marketing campaign belongs to the makers of “Super High Me,” who are giving away DVD copies of the film to anyone who promises to air a public or private showing of it on April 20. The documentary parody of the fast-food film “Super Size Me” follows comedian Doug Benson as he first abstains from marijuana for 30 days and then smokes as much as he can for the next 30 days, taking physical, psychological and SAT tests during both periods.

“We’ve got 401 screenings scheduled right now” for April 20, said Chris Hyams of B-Side, an entertainment technology company that is helping market and distribute the film. “By the time of the event we expect 800.”

Hyams had to talk film producer Alex Campbell into the ploy. “My first instinct was there’s no way I’m going to give this movie away for free,” Campbell said. “I’m an independent filmmaker and I haven’t made any money on it. But he said he then got to thinking that “people are going to watch it, they’re going to love it, they’re going to buy it.”

The interview was barely a week ago, but we’re way past the ‘hoping for 800′ mark, with over 1,000 screenings officially booked.

Read the full story here.

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Spent the morning with 101X’s Ray Seggern (aka Raydog) talking about our Roll Your Own Screening program. Ray is a big supporter of the local Austin indie film scene, and highlights filmmakers on a regular basis. The interview segment audio is all posted here.

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Anthony Kaufman of Indiewire wrote a great story today on indie digital rights. I was pretty pleased to be included in the story in the company of folks like Liesl Copland of Netflix, Robert Nathan of Cinetic, Jason Janego of Magnolia, and Lisa Schwartz of IFC.

Most people agree that digital distribution will become the most dominant form of media consumption in the not too distant future. Where people tend to diverge in their thinking is just how distant that future is. And where they diverge even further is what to do in the mean time.

The big technology players (Netflix, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon) are investing (read: losing) a ton of capital under the (correct) assumption that they can’t afford not to. Whenever we reach the promised land, if they’re not already there, it will be too late. To be fair, Google (YouTube) is definitely making money, but in a different space (short-form vs. long-form). And even Fox & Universal are now in the mix with Hulu (they are private, but unlikely to be making money yet).

With close to 60% of the total market, Apple today is still the 800 lb Gorilla. But to put that in perspective, last year they sold only 7 million feature films on iTunes. At $9.99 a pop, that’s less than $70 million. Which is less than than the opening weekend gross of I Am Legend – last year’s #6 grossing film. Which means the whole market is roughly $117 million, or less than the opening weekend of Shrek the Third – last year’s #2 grossing film.

So what does this mean for filmmakers? That for the foreseeable future, digital distribution is still experimental. To put it another way, don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Currently, the various models include download-to-own, such as iTunes, or subscription-based, such as Netflix. In the age of “freeconomics,” however, as outlined by Chris Anderson’s March 2008 WIRED cover story “Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business” (link), “the trend lines that determine the cost of doing business online all point the same way: to zero.” The most successful future model, then, could be simply to give the movies away.

That’s at least what Hyams’s B-Side has been doing in theaters: B-Side has been promoting over 300 free screenings around the country for their most successful title, the music documentary “Before the Music Dies,” in the hopes that it will drive online sales.

[...]

“I don’t believe there will ever be a time when you can just put your movie online and make money,” said Hyams, who believes that a cross-platform approach is integral to getting movies watched and purchased.

At B-Side, that means that we spend most of our time and energy on innovative (we think) approaches to marketing — eg, check out what we’re doing with Super High Me. And we spend the rest of our time and energy on partnering with distributors to pair online distribution with offline outlets — eg, our partnership with IFC.

I do believe the first pure-online million-seller will happen in the next year. But it will likely come from a movie version of Radiohead’s In Rainbows experiment — ie, a known-entity with established brand taking a great film and making it available online only.

The keys there are a) established brand, and b) great film. One thing people often forget is that while digital distribution absolutely does reduce friction in the system, it can’t make something bad turn good. In fact, I believe the online world is more Darwinian, drawing a sharper line between “good” and “bad.” This is true for two key reasons:

1. Audiences are no longer captive. When massive selection and on-demand availability becomes a reality, why would anyone bother spending 90 minutes on something that doesn’t resonate? If I’m bored, I’ll just fire up something else.
2. Viral can mean life or death. Word of moth travels fast for things that are great, and faster for things that suck. This is one that people tend to forget / ignore. The only things that benefit from buzz are the ones people love. You can’t manufacture true buzz.

So, not really big news that the future is uncertain. But Kaufman’s story is a great view into what some of the indie players are thinking and doing.

You can read the full story here.

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Our friend Mike Jones at Variety wrote a nice piece on today’s Super High Me announcement.

This is the kind of alternative distribution news that defines SXSW.

Announced at the film’s SXSW screening, B-Side, Red Envelope and Screen Media Films have partnered to distribute Michael Blieden’s stoner doc, “Super High Me,” where the director documents comedian Doug Benson’s journey to smoke pot for 30 days straight while monitoring his medical condition.

In a unique arrangement, the partnership will roll out grassroots screening events, giving free DVDs of the film to anyone that wants to hold their own public screening — with any sized group.

Those interested can go to superhighmemovie.com to “roll your own.” Once they’ve completed the signup, their event will show up on a list of other free screenings. They’ll be sent a DVD and promotion assistance.

The hope is the campaign will fuel DVD sales of the doc.

The idea follows the success of the 2006 doc “Before the Music Dies,” which screened at 300 fan-hosted events across North America.

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Anne Thompson, Variety columnist and author of the widely read Thompson on Hollywood blog wrote a great story yesterday (and not just great because B-Side is featured) on the challenges of online distribution. A companion piece to her must-read pre-Sundance story “Sundance Shoppers Beware,” today’s story is titled “Frustrated indies seek web distrib’n: But still face challenging online marketing gap.”

The story explores the question of what options remain for the 100+ features from Sundance that failed to secure distribution.

Once filmmakers make the mental leap that Hollywood isn’t going to offer them a $2 million minimum guarantee, they have plenty of other distribution options, from cable and self-distribution to the Internet. The problem lies in getting the word out to sufficient viewers to convince them to download, stream or pay-per-view the pic.

Thompson argues that alternative distribution models are starting to offer real possibilities for filmmakers. But she also lends ink to my assertion that making films available online is only part of the puzzle.

So far, a large market for selling movies online has not developed. Tiny movies with microbudgets are selling online, but while Amazon, Netflix and others are expending considerable effort in building these marketplaces, this is a nascent business. “The pure online approach is not generating returns,” says B-Side’s Hyams, who has recently partnered with IFC to air five new B-Side fest pickups on “Choice Indies” each month, promoted by 30-second spots both on IFC and online. SXSW discovery “Before the Music Dies” debuts in February.

“Combining different approaches both online and offline allows us to identify things that other people are missing and get them in front of audiences,” says Hyams, who also books and invites B-side members to local screenings — more than 300 in 2007 — and sells both $7.99 high-res downloads and $12.99 DVDs, such as “Four-Eyed Monsters,” on the site.

B-Side promotes eco-horror comedy “Blood Car” on the site, but the filmmaker still owns the DVD rights and a click to “buy now” goes to Bloodcar.com/store.

B-Side is featured throughout the article, alongside the perspective of with Netflix’s Ted Sarandos, Cinetic’s John Sloss, and others. The full article can be found here.

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So I’ll go public with my commitment here to post at least twice a week. I do have a bit of catching up to do first, which means the next several posts will probably be “old” news. Bear with me, it’s all good stuff. At least you’ll see what’s been keeping us so busy.

[ed: OK, that didn't work out too well. The next several months have been busier. Let's try that again.]

- Chris

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