One Too Many Mornings
My friend Leo pointed me towards One Too Many Mornings, a really truly indie that’s playing at Sundance this year. As it turns out, I know the director (Michael Mohan) through his work at the filmmakers’ lab.
The movie looks great in its lo-fi simplicity, but what interests me even more is how the filmmakers are approaching distribution.
In the wake of The Nines, I’ve written several times about how getting a movie made is substantially easier than getting a movie seen. The mythical Sundance experience — fierce bidding wars to land the next indie smash — are over. Most films don’t sell, and the few that do struggle to reach even a tiny audience.
Some filmmakers like Todd Sklar have opted to self-distribute, essentially taking the indie band approach and touring theaters around the country. That’s great if you enjoy being in a van.
The Mornings team is doing what I would try: skipping theatrical altogether. The day after the premiere, you can download their film or get the DVD. You can even buy a piece of the set, or buy the filmmakers lunch.
They’re not going to make a lot of money, but my hunch is they will be able to get a lot more people to see their movie this way. That should be the main goal of any indie.
Articles
January 12th, 2010 at 6:16 pm
“They’re not going to make a lot of money, but my hunch is they will be able to get a lot more people to see their movie this way. That should be the main goal of any indie.”
True. But what about making your investors’ money back?
January 12th, 2010 at 6:50 pm
Thanks so much John! It’s kind of funny how talking about our release strategy has been a key element to our release strategy. Even something as seemingly small as this blog mention – it’s a very big deal to us, and will really help raise that much more awareness for the film.
To clarify something for your readers: when John writes that he knows me through my “work at the filmmakers’ lab” – I was not one of the fellows in the actual labs. I was an assistant. I popped the popcorn for the screenings, fixed paper jams, and absorbed as much knowledge as I possibly could.
Also – we’re not counting out theatrical altogether. The film is screening in Los Angeles at the Cinefamily/Silent Movie Theatre on February 9th. And we’re organizing other screenings in cities where we know we already have a large enough network of people for it to make sense financially.
And of course, if a traditional distributor wants to buy our theatrical rights – they certainly still can. We just don’t want to have all our eggs in that basket. In the meantime we can capitalize directly from the publicity Sundance will give us, and cultivate a direct relationship with our potential fans.
If anyone out there has any questions about how we made the film, or how we’re releasing the film, post them here – me and my producers/friends be happy to answer them.
Thanks again John! Mike
January 12th, 2010 at 8:13 pm
Hey David B.–
In terms of making our investor’s money back; that’s actually one of the reasons we’re doing this. In 1994, this would have been a much different conversation, but in 2010 the simple reality is that the deals for low-budget films with no “name” actors are very low or non-existent.
We’re actually very lucky that our film cost so little (under 50K) because if we had spent even 100K, this would be a much more difficult decision.
That said, in addition to the plan we’re enacting on our own, we do indeed have a traditional sales agent looking into things like cable VOD, television, and international markets. We certainly didn’t make the film to become rich, but we absolutely feel responsible for the investor who made it happen. In a way, despite how progressive this approach may seem, it’s actually far more conservative.
-mm
January 12th, 2010 at 11:51 pm
Mike, I like how you’re distributing this one. Too often the only place indies get seen is New York, San Francisco, or Los Angeles. It’s not fair to us midwesterners, for one thing, and let’s face it, there are just as many film fans out there in great flyover land than anywhere else.
January 13th, 2010 at 2:04 am
David B said: “True. But what about making your investors’ money back?”
I remember when Silver Screen Partners sold shares, trying to raise $25 million for a raft of films in its production schedule. I think it ended up going all wahooni-shaped, but it would be interesting to put together a package of indie productions as a sort of film investment mutual fund, spreading the risk around different filmmakers and business models.
Just don’t allow any film credit default swaps.
January 13th, 2010 at 6:51 am
DIY – it’s the wave of the now.
Wonder if there is a filmmaker equivalent to this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Indie-Band-Survival-Guide-Yourself/dp/0312377681/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263390659&sr=8-1
January 13th, 2010 at 8:27 am
There are at least a couple:
http://www.amazon.com/30-Film-School-Michael-Dean/dp/1598631896/ref=dp_ob_title_bk
http://www.amazon.com/Reel-Deal-Everything-Successful-Independent/dp/0446674621/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263396266&sr=1-1
I can’t “recommend” either of them, but they’re out there if you want to read them.
January 13th, 2010 at 9:38 am
Jonathan – It’s funny you mention that, because after our Los Angeles theatrical screening, it looks like we’ll be headed, of all places, to Michigan and Virginia. It’s untraditional, but for us, it’s simply where two key members of our team grew up and we know we can get an enthusiastic audience out.
Chip – There is a filmmaker equivalent book that we’ve been referencing called “Think Outside The Box Office”: http://www.amazon.com/Think-Outside-Box-Office-Distribution/dp/098257620X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263400325&sr=1-1
It’s definitely geared toward filmmakers/productions who have more money than we do, but it’s still fantastic and current information.
January 13th, 2010 at 10:05 am
@Mike –
Tell us about the web service you’re using for your site and store. How did you pick it? How has it worked out so far?
January 13th, 2010 at 10:40 am
I applaud the OTMM guys for offering a digital download concurrently with their Sundance premiere. Online will prove to be a very viable option for getting your film seen in the future and I think a lot of filmmakers do themselves a disservice by not offering it.
January 13th, 2010 at 10:40 am
@Mike
As much as you’re able, please discuss how you structured the sharing of profits. What order are you paying out and who’s involved in that pie? Any crew or actors defer fees for back-end share? Whatever you think might be helpful for someone at the tiny budget range who can’t afford to pay everyone up front.
Thanks!
January 13th, 2010 at 11:05 am
We are working with a company called Topspin (topspin.net). While they’re a relatively new company, they’ve already made a huge mark on the music industry. In short: they enable artists to market their product directly to their fans, and manage those direct-to-fan relationships. They’ve worked with some incredible people already, stretching from the Beastie Boys to Eminem to David Byrne + Brian Eno.
Their service is a whole lot more robust than our site would suggest – within their app, we can monitor our twitter feed, see which blogs have embedded our widgets, manage all our video players, run our online store, and a whole lot more.
For instance, right now we are giving away three songs from our soundtrack in exchange for someone’s email address. If we see that 500 people in Tulsa, Oklahoma have downloaded the mixtape – we can determine that it might be worth our while to fly there, screen the film, and meet these people. Using Topspin’s software we can do this – and incredibly easily too.
The people that work there are staggeringly smart – they’ve also been able to give us strategic, practical, and ethical advice with running an effective online campaign.
In terms of how I chose them – I am pals with one of the software developers; and he was able to get me set up there. Eventually, I believe it’s going to be no different than using Final Cut Pro – yes, they are a marketing company, but above all – it’s software. Signing up to use them is free – they just take a small percentage of our sales, and there’s a nominal fee for data usage.
Definitely check them out.
January 13th, 2010 at 12:47 pm
This rules.
I suddenly have questions for Topspin.
Mostly because of their video on WIRED:
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/10/video-topspin-medias-ian-rogers-on-why-letting-itunes-own-customers-is-a-bad-idea/
Being a new company, I wonder if they would assign a Staggeringly-Smart-Implementation-Specialist to my project if I cut them a greater percentage to make them a partner in crime all the way through?
January 13th, 2010 at 1:48 pm
Mohan, it’s Gumby!
Any chance New York is in the future?
The movie looks lovely, man. Anything specific you could share about how you were able to secure financing from your investor(s) and what the discussion was back then about how you might distribute after completion? Seems like an interesting topic: what to talk about with a potential investor near the beginning of the process in regards to what your plans will be for the film near the end.
Wishing you well, Mike. (Won’t be at the fest, hope to see you at the labs?)
Jeremy
January 14th, 2010 at 10:42 am
Hey Mike.
Congrats on the film. Can’t tell you how excited I am to see how the experimental way you are going about marketing and distributing the thing pans out.
Like others, I keep waiting for the studio-driven world to split open and for a new way of doing things to emerge. I truly hope that One Too Many Mornings brings us closer to that point.
That said, and perhaps this is a better question for you to answer once you’re off the roller coaster, but, if you were about to embark on making an indie film tomorrow, what would be the first steps you would take now given the lessons you’ve learned from this experience?
Regardless, good luck and am eager to hear only good things happening to you and your collaborators from here on out.
January 14th, 2010 at 12:16 pm
if its not sold in Norway, there is this special theatre for art films in Oslo. “cinemateket” so everybody knows. -this trailer is so pretty. The Cool John.
January 14th, 2010 at 3:06 pm
I really like this idea for marketing and distributing movies. Does anyone have any idea how widespread this method has become? I’m also wondering if any thought was given to the Radiohead method of basically letting the customer decide the price. My hunch is that this method would work better for established acts (or maybe very well known movie makers) than newcomers. Finally, is it fair to assume (given the embedding option) that everyone involved is cool with bloggers putting the trailer up on their sites (giving hat tip to John of course)?
January 14th, 2010 at 4:17 pm
did anyone see the 90 days movie?
-several little tight groups made movies in my country this year. I love the phenomena. 3-4 people having a vision, and one group made a famous danish actor come to act in a film. some schools even have media courses at junior high now. and we had a level explotion. it s like we never knew before all the cool rules came.
you gotta be able to create a creative environment, and if you get “the gotta have successes”, a script and a few actors then you probably get fundings if the project checks out. then after that you may play around.
I just hope the model can adapt to saving the world. create one non – agressive environment.
Peace. hopefully.
January 14th, 2010 at 10:19 pm
@Matt Without going into too much detail, our deal with our investor was such in that we just wanted it to happen quickly. He got a great deal – we got to make a movie. We did give our main crew back end points should we recoup beyond what the investor put in. We did have to pay our SAG actors upfront – in fact, all low budget filmmakers should know that if you make a film for $5 or $499,999 – you are covered under the same deal. It’s absolutely worth it, but you MUST pay your actors $100 per day. Plus worker’s compensation. Plus payroll fees + taxes.
Something else we learned is that SAG also requires a fairly massive deposit (your estimate of days shot times the number of SAG actors times $100). This was a pretty big, unexpected hurdle for us.
@Gumby How’s it going man! The first thing we did was do a camera test, and cut together something that resembled a music video for Brad Breeck, who was our composer at the time. This music video ended up getting passed around music blogs, and we started getting some initial small donations to get us started.
We took this small amount of money and started shooting all the “cheap” scenes in the movie – anything involving the two non-union leads. From that, we were able to cut together a trailer that not only represented what the film looked like, but was literally scenes of the final film. I think this helped in more than one way, because we were on the same page creatively with everyone on our team.
Back when we first were courting investors, (and by investors, I mean, anyone we could talk to) we were pretty upfront with the fact that most independent films do not make their money back. You really have to do this, ethically. But we pointed at examples of films that were done on our scale, and did recoup their money.
At the time, Topspin didn’t exist, and the idea of a hybrid release was far more expensive than it is now. I suspect a lot of independent filmmakers will have their eyes on how successful OTMM is in order to gage whether or not it’s a relevant Plan A to put in their business plans.
@Thomas If I were to do this again, I wouldn’t change a thing. I think it was important for us to be naive – we didn’t realize just how much work it would be, and eventually we got so deeply involved into it, there was no turning back. The smartest thing we did was pick a start date, and shoot SOMETHING on that date no matter what.
The biggest lesson we’ve learned recently though – we underestimated how much money it costs to actually GO to Sundance. It’s really expensive – travel, lodging, and the accelerated pace by which we had to finish the movie had a price tag too.
@Bjoern You can totally buy the dvd – it’s region free! There are no Norwegian subtitles though.
@4Hour As far as I know, we’re only 1 of 2 films committed to a hybrid release so far going in to Sundance. The other is called Bass Ackwards, and it looks awesome (www.bassackwards.com).
In terms of our trailer – we want it embedded anywhere and everywhere – we’re really relying on word of mouse to make this digital grassroots effort a success. Again – we just want as many people as possible to see our movie!
January 14th, 2010 at 11:12 pm
Just wanted to weigh in here. There is a book that helps filmmakers distribute their film – I just published it. Its called Think Outside the Box Office – there are some sample chapters at http://www.thinkoutsidetheboxoffice.com I also blog on the subject at jonreiss.com/blog. But interested folks should also check out Ted Hope’s Truly Free Film Blog, Brian Newman’s Springboard Media and anything written by Peter Broderick.
January 15th, 2010 at 6:19 am
Thanks for the response Mike – look for your trailer “Coming Soon” to my blog :-)
January 15th, 2010 at 7:43 am
Mike – here ya go:
http://www.4hourscreenwriter.com/2010/01/applying-4hww-principles-to-independent.html
good luck!
January 15th, 2010 at 10:59 pm
thanks for talking about it, @Mike, I don`t always need sub-titles. (;
-Is it Any sorts of special effects or animations in it? And did you focus on advanced staging- (illusions for the audience(;) or only story and conversation in actors??
January 16th, 2010 at 1:10 pm
Mike and team,
This is a very inspiring story! Having self-financed my latest short film, I can relate to anxiety involved in throwing yourself and your work out there with no one to back you up but your film. I wish you guys best of luck at Sundance (really, go enjoy the sun and the snow and the films, I was there last year!) Hopefully, you’ll feel all the hard work of the last two years paying off. Best of luck!
January 17th, 2010 at 12:04 pm
Mike,
Good job! Here’s to the continued success of One Too Many Mornings …
Do you think that painters, sculptors, writers and other creative folks will eventually use direct-to-buyer channels using quantitative marketing tools, e.g., Topspin?
If so, do you think that would spell doom for traditional channels like art galleries, for example?
January 17th, 2010 at 8:40 pm
@bjoern – No special effects. It’s a very simply told story. The best special effects are the actors.
@Ben M- Great question. A very good friend of mine, David Malki ! (wondermark.com) has been cultivating an online audience for his work, and now makes a living full-time as an artist. Regarding Topspin specifically, I think one of the great things about it is the digital delivery aspect. People can download our movie, or songs from the soundtrack. With painting and physical goods – artists could still definitely use their app, but they can’t quite take full advantage of a digital market.
On a related note, I also don’t think that this is going to be the demise of movie theatres or traditional theatrical distributors. I would much rather people see my film in a theatre, than on a computer. It’s just that traditional art house distributors – they’re downsizing, and are forced to take less risks. I don’t blame them.
January 19th, 2010 at 12:00 pm
hey Mike. -What kind of background did you have when you got the assistant job?
cool if you could talk about about it.
-is it filmed all black and white?
I really enjoyed the mysterious and classic edge to it. Like “wristcutters a lovestory”
Good luck with your project. with a cool website, and a festival, i guess half the work is already done. Congrats.
January 19th, 2010 at 7:58 pm
Hello again @bjoern-
I started out as an intern at Fox Searchlight Pictures. I actually got that job through the strangest of ways. They were having a test screening of Super Troopers at the local theatre, and I snuck in (film students weren’t allowed).
I was really hoping to weasel my way into the focus group at the end of the screening to meet one of the Searchlight executives, but apparently they already had enough 20 year old white dudes. But after the screening they handed out a flyer that had the email address of someone that worked there. It read something like: “if you have any additional comments on Super Troopers, please emails soandso@fox.com“.
At that moment, that was my only connection. This one email address of a complete stranger.
So I stayed up all night long composing the best email of my entire life. The thing would have made Tolstoy blush it was so long. I discussed every minute detail of Super Troopers – I even looked on imdb at the upcoming comedy releases, and tried to give them advice on exactly when they needed to release it later that year – when there was no other competiting comedies in the marketplace.
At the bottom of the email I even wrote “it will be in your best interest to call me tomorrow so we can set up an appointment for you to hire me as an intern.” The thing was absolutely and completely naive, but full of passion.
It worked. The next day both a development exec, AND a creative advertising exec called me.
Three weeks later, I had an internship exactly where I wanted to be. Two years later, the exec I worked for was able to have an assistant – right at the moment I graduated from college. Two years after that, our department closed, exactly at the same time the job at Sundance opened up.
In short: I was really lucky.
Regarding the black-and-white, yes, the entire film was shot that way. The joke on set was “we couldn’t afford color.” That’s partially true. When you’re shooting black-and-white, light is light. So you can mix and match all sorts of light sources regardless of color temperature. Most of the equipment we used was borrowed – we really couldn’t be picky. So black-and-white allowed us to have a specific aesthetic that we could actually fully realize.
Additionally, I figure that if things go well for this film, this might be my last chance at making a black-and-white movie. Hopefully the next movie won’t be quite so low budget, and of course that will come with producers who understandably will want the film to be in color (Soderbergh apparently wanted to shoot “Sex, Lies” in b+w, but wasn’t able to when the budget got upwards of 350K). So I figured I might as well take advantage of all the creative freedoms that shooting a low budget movie would allow – b+w was one of them.
January 20th, 2010 at 12:52 am
Hello Mike!
Congrats on the film! I just popped in to read the site and was excited to see your name. You interviewed me at Sundance a couple summers back when I first moved to LA. Just want to say thanks for the opportunity; I had the greatest time as a script reader for the labs and gained so much from it. I look forward to seeing your film!
-esther
January 20th, 2010 at 1:29 pm
Hey thanks so much@Mike! The moment i read it, I clicked directly on a newspaper site telling about this film team shooting by our fjords.
Your method may be ballsy, and so much out there at the moment. -But I`m gunna try.
January 20th, 2010 at 2:13 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24yN28b74zo
heres something to make up for any creepy post may be out there cause of me. However, john august made it, and it has 9 all over it. Ok, it lasts 9 minutes, and there may be another john august behind it, because it`s music. (brain synch, worth it=)
I hope you guys enjoy. and thanks again Mike, for sharing your cool story. Awesome. Thank you
January 21st, 2010 at 1:27 pm
I’m truly inspired. Thanks guys! I have such a hollywood mind, but lately I’ve been wanting to take the bull by the horns and make something on my own terms. I’ll start with a short to get my sea legs, but I’m beginning to think about the kinds of stories that can be told on a super-low budget. Looking at the breathtaking locations in your trailer, I’m reminded that nature is a great set that can add a sense of scale to even the smallest film. Thanks for showing me that yet again.
And Congratulations and great success to you this week at Sundance!
January 23rd, 2010 at 2:31 am
Thank you everyone for your warm feedback – I’m back at my condo after the premiere of the film, and it was just incredible. The audiences here at Sundance are so amazing – our Q+A was really fantastic.
I wanted to quickly tell all of you about something extra exciting that I couldn’t talk about until today – our film is now also available for rent on YouTube.
So if people can’t even afford the $9.99 we’re selling our HD Download for, they can just go on YouTube, and rent it for $3.99. Right this second.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK91Gsx1ePE
Boom. That’s my film. Two years of work – right there. If you’re the slightest bit interested – that’s where you can see it.
Cheers from Park City! mm