Distribution Advocates Presents: The Truth About Distribution (Episode 6)

What is the current system of distribution, and what can happen to filmmakers when a distribution company fails?

In the finale episode of Distribution Advocates Presents, we take a hard look at the current system of distribution, and what can happen to filmmakers when a distribution company fails. In conversation with an independent distributor, this episode also considers the larger corporate forces currently dictating and limiting the range of distribution for both distributors and filmmakers—and thus, ultimately, audiences. This episode features conversations with Orly Ravid, Kim Laureen, Pat Murphy, Efuru Flowers, and

Matt Stoller

. Stay tuned for more podcast extras in the coming weeks.

Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeartRadio.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Orly Ravid:

I don’t think there’s ever been any more cinema and series content created ever in the history of the universe. It’s a boom in terms of creativity and productivity. There’ve never been more outlets for content and probably never been more people consuming it. It’s just there’s a degree of bust to the marketplace right now. Technological shifts that occur every so often that lead to boom buying and boom distribution opportunities, we’re not in that space right now. We’re in an opposite space of consolidation, contraction, streamlining—just less, less and less.

Avril Speaks:

Hello out there, and welcome to Distribution Advocates Presents. I’m your host, Avril Speaks, producer, filmmaker and co-founder of Distribution Advocates. Our team has commissioned this series of conversations where we delve into concerns about the current landscape of independent film distribution. We’ll chat with folks who are navigating these spaces, debunk some outdated myths, and look to innovative, sustainable and equitable solutions for distributing films to their waiting audiences. Here at Distribution Advocates, we’ve been trying to have conversations around the distribution end of things, really looking at the systems that are currently in place. This episode will take an overarching look at how distribution currently operates while hearing from two filmmakers who organized collectively to right a distribution relationship gone wrong. We’ll hear from economist Matt Stoller, independent distributor Efuru Flowers, entertainment attorney Orly Ravid and filmmakers Pat Murphy and Kim Laureen. We’ll begin with a bit of Kim and Pat’s story dealing with former distributor, Passion River.

Kim Laureen:

I’m Kim Laureen. I’m a documentary filmmaker, and I bring the world stories from the heart. Our film selfless was distributed through Passion River and it seemed like an amazing fit, but it didn’t take me long to figure out that there is very little passion in their river.

Pat Murphy:

My name is Pat Murphy. I’m a documentary editor and director and producer. My first film is called Psychedelia: The History and Science and Mystical Experience, and Passion River distributed that film.

Avril Speaks:

Tell me a little bit about selfless. Selfless was your first feature film?

Kim Laureen:

Yes. Filmmaking is something that has found me along the way in this journey called life. I heard a calling to tell stories. I’ve always loved writing, but the bulk of my life has been raising my family. Selfless, when we first began, we asked ourselves, “What if a girl lived in the forest? She had no mirrors, magazines or social media. What would life be like for her?” So it was interesting. When I say stories find you—we have this little music blog. We live just outside of Vancouver in a small town, and somehow this little brother and sister music duo who live off the grid in the hills of Devon, England, they found our music blog. They reached out and asked if we’d like to cover their music, and we did.

So when we had this feeling about where we headed with technology and how it’s affecting us body, mind and soul, we thought we’re going to reach out to the Warburtons and ask them, “Could we come and spend some time with you?” And that’s what we did. We packed our bags and we went off the grid in the hills of Devon, England and that’s where our story began. What we saw with the Warburtons, and what we loved about them is they really cherish their relationships with one another and we thought, “This is a great place to start.” So that’s where selfless began off the grid in a yurt in Devon, England. It probably took us about a year and a half to film. We went back and forth to England four different times and then we traveled around.

We went to schools throughout USA and Canada and we just really wanted to hear from kids what life was like for them, and that’s how selfless came to be. We applied to film festivals and we got on the film festival circuit. That’s where Passion River, our distributor, found us out there on the film festival circuit, and they reached out to us. We thought, “Wow, this could be a good fit, because they are very much about the education market. They have a genre for that.” With all the libraries and universities, we thought, “This will be perfect.” We did some research. We were leery because we didn’t really know much about the business side of it, but we signed on with them and had great hopes for working together.

Avril Speaks:

Pat’s connection with Passion River came through a sales agent. Can you tell us a little bit more about your film and how you got involved with Passion River?

Pat Murphy:

My film is a classic example of an independent documentary. I started filming it when I was going through film school, and I heard that there was a research study at the NYU School of Medicine using psilocybin, which is the active compound in magic mushrooms, with people with cancer as part of therapy to help them cope with the end of life. I got very interested in the whole psychedelic research scene. The film took eight or nine years to put together. It was completely independently funded. I was directing, producing, editing, writing, the whole shebang, so it took ages and ages to put together. It was just sitting on my hard drive, not really being seen by audiences. I got interested in DIY distribution, direct distribution. I started doing a DIY educational campaign. About a year or so into that, it was being screened at conferences and universities and private screenings, and I thought it would be good to get this out on the major platform so it’s available to the consumer. So that was my reasoning for working with Passion River.

I was actually connected to Passion River through my sales agent because Passion River had a really good reputation. They’d been in the business since the ’90s and they were known for being very flexible with filmmakers, allowing them to keep certain rights. They really had a good reputation for prioritizing filmmakers, and they were known as being one of the “good guys,” quote, unquote. I was already aware that film distribution is a very tricky territory, so I was really, really diligent about finding the right distributor. Passion River was interested in distributing my film. I spent thousands of dollars in attorney’s fees going back and forth on the contract, redlining every single line. I was doing as much due diligence as I thought I could. About two or three days before I signed this contract, a streaming platform contacted me called Gaia.

They focused on this health and wellness content and they said, “We’re interested in streaming Psychedelia,” and I was really torn. I was like, “Should I tell Passion River about this deal, or should I make the deal without Passion River?” ’Cause Passion River would take 25% of that deal. I thought the honest thing to do is to go to Passion River and say, “Hey, Gaia approached me about streaming, let them handle all logistics of delivering that and as a fee they could take 25% of that.” So that was really the beginning of the relationship. I did get paid for the first half of that deal. It was a $25,000 licensing fee, and it was non-exclusive, but I was waiting for the second half of that payment, which is about $10,000. I was supposed to get that earlier this year. There was about a year that I was signed with Passion River. 

Avril Speaks:

Pat and Kim’s experience with Passion River is atypical, but unfortunately, not entirely uncommon when it comes to dealing with distributors. Attorney Orly Ravid was able to provide further insight around dealmaking based on her experience representing filmmakers throughout her career.

Orly Ravid:

I am Orly Ravid. I’m the co-executive director of the Film Collaborative, and I’m also an entertainment attorney. I have a baby firm called Creative Arts Legal. I’m also a law professor at a law school that houses a pro bono law clinic, Southwestern Law School, and I head up our Entertainment Media Institute there and I’ve been working in this business since the late ’90s. First of all, many distributors are just aggregating, collecting rights. The things that they have to offer, not all filmmakers can access. For example, certain platforms will not take films directly from a filmmaker. In fact, most one has to go through an aggregator or distributor. Many distributors are collecting rights for their libraries.

They do the minimum, but they have the rights and, in fact, then we see that they’ll sell for millions of dollars. Passion River sold its library. Qmedia—its library went on sale in a fire sale in its bankruptcy proceeding. Gravitas, which I’m not criticizing here, but it also sold. So there’s a reason these companies want the rights. It’s because they monetize them both individually and then in the aggregate. There are other companies that take your rights for 20 years and there’s a 30-page contract, and they don’t give a lot when you push. The accounting is ridiculous. The sense of, “I need to explain to this filmmaker exactly what happened,” there’s none of that.

Avril Speaks:

Pat and Kim found themselves in a predicament with Passion River when the company went bankrupt. They each received minimal to no communication or transparency regarding the situation upfront; however, they were able to band together with other filmmakers to collectively seek answers.

Kim Laureen:

When we first signed with Passion River communication was good. I had so many questions for Passion River, and they were very full of communication with us. But not too long after, I began having to reach out every reporting period for reports and payments, “When is our report coming? When does our first check come?” By mid-2022, there were no reports or payments coming forward to us, and I kept reaching out. I did receive a message saying that some of their accounting was being changed and that I would have to wait until the next reporting period.

The end of the year came and still nothing. I reached out again, and I was getting no communication back from them. So then I thought, something’s not right. So I looked online, I Googled, I found an article that said that Passion River was closing and BayView Entertainment would be taking over, and I thought, “What the heck?” So I started reaching out to some people in the Passion River catalog, and they started saying, “Oh, wow, this is happening to you too. You’ve had no payments, reports for quite some time.” So I realized we were not the only ones. There was a lot of this story going through, and so we began coming together as a group, and that’s where we really realized that something wasn’t right here.

Pat Murphy:

I got this email from Josh Levin who was the person that I was in communication with at Passion River, and it said, “Dear filmmakers, I’m writing with an important update from Passion River Films. The parent company of Passion River lost the ability to meet its obligations and this week completed the sale of the majority of its Passion River assets to BayView Entertainment, LLC. BayView is a venerable, much larger film distributor with an outstanding 20-plus year reputation in film distribution. I am sure you have questions about what this transition means for your films as they may or may not have been included in the asset package. These questions can best be answered by speaking directly with BayView. Please email contact@bayviewent.com to set up a call. The team at BayView is looking forward to speaking with you. Yours, Josh.”

Pat Murphy:

I immediately reached out to Peter Castro from BayView Entertainment to try to set up a meeting with him. About a month later, I got a call saying Passion River was financially mismanaged, and they’re not going to be paying out any royalties pre-January 1st when this sale to BayView happened. I was really shocked at first. I had so many questions about what the heck happened at Passion River and who is this new company, BayView Entertainment? What does it mean when Passion River says they sold the majority of their assets to BayView Entertainment and how many other people are in this situation? Am I the only person that got screwed? The communication from Passion River was basically non-existent.

Kim Laureen:

No one had ever contacted me from Passion River to let me know of what was happening there, if there were any troubles there, why we were no longer receiving funds or reports, and I felt really left in the dark. It was when I connected with others, I put the dots together. There’s others that have no idea what’s going on.

Avril Speaks:

Though Pat and Kim found themselves in a confusing situation with what seemed to be little transparency about the state of their films, they managed to use their resources and look to what would become a solution and source of reprieve, unity with other filmmakers in similar situations. The power of collective action.

Pat Murphy:

There was an email chain of those people. I just started doing cold outreach to other filmmakers in this situation. We started sharing information, having a lot of Zoom calls with each other, and eventually we gathered on Slack and we built a private Slack channel with 100 filmmakers in this situation. As we banded together, we were able to accomplish a few different things that I’m not sure we would’ve been able to accomplish without strength in numbers.

Kim Laureen:

I thought, “Okay, where do we go next?” Josh Levin was now with BayView and he was giving an open invitation for us to come in and deal with him over there, but I thought “Passion River needs to answer to this.” So I put out a tweet. It was a very basic tweet to Passion River that just said, “There are many filmmakers waiting for reports and accounting.” It asked for accountability and payments for the filmmakers in the catalog. We were looking for an answer, and that’s where I finally got someone’s attention. It had been one simple tweet.

It was very clear and to the point, and it was simply asking the question, “Where is our accounting, and where is our payments?” Peter Castro, who runs BayView, he reached out to me via telephone and asked who I was. He knew nothing about me and why I was doing these things. He wanted to know what my beef was. I told him on the telephone what I was unhappy about. I pled to him in a humane way for him to be transparent and accountable to us filmmakers because these are projects that are filled with heart and soul, and they’ve been our life work. He just did not see what I was so upset about.

Pat Murphy:

One of the filmmakers, she’s amazing, Kim Laureen, she’s got such a good heart. She was on the phone with Peter Castro and told him, “All these people are looking for answers. You need to treat us with respect. We’re all being disrespected here.” So he told Kim, “Okay, okay. Well, I’ll host a Zoom conversation with you and your friends, and I’m happy to answer any questions about BayView Entertainment.” We then went to all our channels and said, “Tomorrow at 2:00 PM we’re having a group Zoom with Peter Castro. Everybody sign on.”

Kim Laureen:

I think he was quite surprised to see so many of us on the other side and with questions. I did a lot of listening. I did speak forward when I heard some things that didn’t sit right. What I saw was someone that was trying to put fires out. He had a whole bunch of people there, and he was putting fires out. All I wanted, and I think the others there, was accountability for what’s going on. I left that call, and I decided I’m not going to take up his offer to sign with BayView.

Pat Murphy:

Eventually, he was able to at least agree to us and say, “If money is coming in on your film currently post-January 1st post-sale from Passion River, we will pay you. Whether or not you sign a new contract with BayView, we will pay you.” So we got him to agree on that. We recorded it. We have it on video. That’s one thing that we were able to achieve with the strength in numbers. Then another great person was [Distribution Advocates co-founder] Amy Hobby. She put a group letter together and actually got the only piece of communication from Alan Chu who was the president of Passion River. She got him to write us all a letter saying, “I was in charge of Passion River. Passion River’s no longer in business. All the rights to your films revert back to you and you can do what you wish with your films,” which was really important because we didn’t have it in writing. There was nothing official, but with those strength in numbers, we were able to achieve a couple of different things.

Avril Speaks:

Do you know how much money you lost through Passion River?

Kim Laureen:

It’s hard to say because I don’t think that our accounting has ever been completely transparent.

Avril Speaks:

Any cent that a film makes, those filmmakers deserve to have that money, whether it’s in the thousands or whether it’s pennies. That’s whether you spent it out of pocket or whether you have investors’ money or what have you, that’s money that was spent. That was time that was spent. Do you think that your experience with Passion River is symptomatic of a larger problem within the film industry?

Pat Murphy:

For one, it was such a good insight into how these distribution companies work because they’re a middleman between your film and all these different buyers. You’re relying on them to report accurately and on time all the sales that are happening to your film, and it’s really difficult to know whether they’re being honest or not. It was just a really good insight into how this whole system works.

Avril Speaks:

I love the aspect of that story—of all of the filmmakers coming together on this Slack and sharing their stories. I’ve had films that I still have no idea or if I do get reports, they’re very generic that aren’t specific that you understand and know exactly where your film is selling, how it’s doing in certain markets, even when you’re, in many cases, having to do marketing yourself. When you’re marketing yourself and putting out your own dollars to help market the film, you don’t really know what’s doing well and what’s not and where to put your dollars. I’ve had that experience before as well, where I was in a vacuum, and like, “I can’t believe this happened to me.” Then you reach out to other filmmakers and realize that it’s happening to other people.

That starts to build a community and a momentum like, “Oh, that happened to you too? Okay,” and then you know what to stand for and what not to. 

Following our conversation with Pat and Kim, we reached out Passion River and Bayview Entertainment for comment. There was no comment from Passion River. The following is Bayview Entertainment LLC’s official statement: “Thank you for the very brief opportunity to respond. Unfortunately, some of the quotes attributed to BayView Entertainment personnel are taken out of context but it is beyond the scope of this response to go into specifics. We would welcome the opportunity to talk individually with any of the persons in this podcast to re-address any concerns they may have about BayView. Also, we would be remiss if we did not bring to your attention the multiple producers which have switched from Passion River to Bayview and are quite happy with us. We cannot comment on what Passion River did or didn’t do, as we are, and always have been, different companies. We can only address what we have done for those filmmakers that have contacted us since January 2023, and can tell you categorically that we have paid those filmmakers their full shares of the revenues they are due from the monies we have received.

Respectfully, Bayview Entertainment, LLC”

But these issues have roots in the larger concern of vertical integration in the film business and the direct impact on independent distributors. 

I spoke with independent distributor, Efuru Flowers, who was able to comment on some of the challenges of distributing films from the distributor perspective. 

You’re one of the few Black women distributors. You distribute, you also produce, you consult, you do a lot of things, so I wanted to make sure that you were part of this conversation to share your insight. Can you just share your film journey and what ultimately led you to be a distributor?

Efuru Flowers:

I come from an artistic family of painters and singers and musicians and Black Panthers, and so I didn’t know what that would be for me. But when I got to Los Angeles and went to school, I was working at this company called Newspapers First. They would get the Hollywood Reporter, and one day, I came across an article about John Singleton and his CAA agent at the time getting a deal at Sony and starting their production company, New Deal Productions. I just decided to write a letter saying how I would be happy to help and learn and etc.

I got a call from the company and went in for the interview and got the job. I really got a sense of what this industry was from a creative standpoint. From a production standpoint. I think when you start from a creative standpoint or from a production standpoint, you don’t really get to see the business side of it. You’re not really interested necessarily in the business side. You’re really focused on the creative side. My journey was learning a little bit about the creative side, but then being exposed to the business side through actually working in acquisitions and seeing the other side of the business.

Avril Speaks:

Then you started your own distribution company. How did that come about, and what need did you see for creating your own company?

Efuru Flowers:

When I was working at Paramount Pictures, a woman called Sydney Levine owned a company at the time called FilmFinders. All the studios subscribed to her services. She would keep track of all the films that were made around the world, sold to who and which territories. I would always ask her if she thought Black movies in particular would sell in the international marketplace because we’d always heard that they didn’t. She told me she thought that they would, but there just was really no representation for the material in the marketplace. I thought, ?Oh, okay, there is a need for somebody or somebodies to be representing our content in the international space because that’s in essence how this business works.” So that’s when I thought at some point I’d like to start a distribution company.

Avril Speaks:

In general, what’s been your approach to film distribution? As far as getting them in front of audiences, what’s been your overall approach or philosophy toward that?

Efuru Flowers:

It really depends. First of all, I look at each piece of material holistically. What kind of film is it from the genre to whether or not it was done by writer-director, which gives it a different feel. Is it a festival movie? Does it have prospects for a festival run? Is it more commercial? So I take each one of the film product and figure out what is best for that film, and it’s tough when people say you need to know who your audience is. It’s true, but also there is this sense that maybe you don’t really have a good handle on who exactly the audience is because part of what attracts me to content is its global feel that it actually is attractive to different audiences. This gentleman, Peter Broderick, he talked about content as a thing that it’s sometimes hard to grasp who the audiences might be, especially when you marry that with a particular kind of film.

So he used the example of this guy who made films about these planes that fly over desert sand, but he made so much money because there were people actually interested in this film and bought, at the time, I think they were DVDs. But he had an industry that he had created with this type of film. So I use that in my sense in that each piece of material is different because it’s made by a different person, and yes, the audience could be Black, but the audience could also be Asian depending on the film itself, the material itself. So that’s the way I see things. I take things individually and try and figure out where the best place for that is to go. Now on the buying side, it’s limited in where you can take things. There’s this other gatekeeper, the buyer on the other side who is making the decision about what kinds of things they’re going to take, the exhibitors, the streamers, the TV channels.

The buyers themselves, there are a limited amount of those, right? There are the BETs, there are the HBOs, there are the Netflixes and the Tubis. There are places for material to go, but even within those spaces, they make decisions about the types of content that they’re picking up, and that can change depending on the time and just what’s happening at that particular moment. Things change so fast all the time, that one moment you could be looking for thrillers and the next moment you’re looking for docuseries. The number of companies to place material is fairly limited, especially compared to the amount of content that’s being created. Then on top of that, you have to deal with what these companies are looking for that could shift in any moment. The other thing is you’re competing with studio content. Netflix is making their own shows. Everybody’s making their own shows, their own content, their own films.

When Netflix came and was licensing content from the different studios and the studios were like, “Well, we want to have our own streaming services,” so they have to put their content some place and then take it back from another place. There’s always this movement that keeps us all guessing, trying to figure out what should be done next, how do we stabilize? This is not a stabilizing business because there’s art in business and it’s just always moving. So when you’re competing with even the studios who have to make their own content, when you think about the professionalism of the studio content compared to some of the indie content, obviously, there’s a place for some of the indie content. Things in terms of indie have quality obviously, but yeah, you’re just competing all around. Everybody’s competing for space, and so that’s what makes it a bit limiting.

I think people think, “Well, you’re a distributor. You should be able to place my film. Why is my film not placed yet?” Sometimes the expectations of filmmakers are a challenge to navigate because this ain’t easy, and it’s not for lack of trying. I’ve had a couple titles where they didn’t place for a couple of years, but some people can’t wait that long and I understand it, but it’s also just very difficult to find a distributor who’s interested to champion your project. So that’s a challenge in terms of dealing with filmmakers’ expectations. On the other end, sometimes buyers take a long time to make a decision or sometimes there’s a buyer who doesn’t pay. Dealing with the business part of it is also a challenge and the gatekeeper at the end of it that makes a decision on whether or not to take your product, they’re making a decision based on their own criteria and what their mandates are at the time.

Avril Speaks:

An overall challenging and fraught landscape for distribution was echoed by economist Matt Stoller when we spoke.

Matt Stoller:

My name is Matt Stoller. I am the director of research for the American Economic Liberties Project, and I write about monopolies for a newsletter called BIG so I write about business largely. The film industry is imploding, and it’s not just independent films, it’s commercial films. I started looking at the movie industry in 2018, 2019. I started writing in the era of peak TV when everyone was high off of all of the money coming in from the streamers because they were buying everything at inflated prices. I was looking at this bubble, and I was looking at the reasons behind it. Even though people were making a lot of money at the time, it was a very unhealthy industry, because what was going on is what you’ve seen in a lot of areas in the American economy, which was an attempt to monopolize the industry. That’s been going on in different areas in different ways since the 1980s.

In Hollywood, it’s been consolidating for a pretty long time, but the fundamental change really started in the early 2000 and teens when you had a consolidation of programming and production with distribution in the form of the streamers, and then everyone got into that game and became streaming giants. They were all trying to become the dominant player by overpaying for content. What effectively happened is that the market structure, the markets that had connected audiences with filmmakers and with TV creatives, those markets broke. You used to have a bunch of television stations and TV networks. You had things like Nielsen’s, which measured whether people were watching or not. With movies, you had a series of markets and after markets like theater ticket sales and DVD sales, and there was always syndication. When the consolidation happened in the 2000s and teens, all of that went away. Disney would buy something and then it was just like a Disney+ movie or TV show, and that’s it.

That same thing with Netflix and so on and so forth down the line, they all copied each other. So this made it impossible to actually figure out what stuff was selling and what stuff wasn’t because people weren’t paying for things directly. They were buying subscriptions. I think the key problem that consolidation introduces—and you can see this really starting from the 1990s onward when the movie theater chains consolidated it’s gotten worse—is that it’s really hard to introduce new product. We should be in the midst of an amazing moment because the internet is this incredible production and distribution technology, and you have all of these theaters. You have the raw materials for a revival of independent filmmaking, but you have a very brittle, consolidated set of commercial institutions that are preventing that from happening. It’s fixable, but consolidation has really destroyed or really harmed the industry, and until there’s a move to deconcentrate the industry, it’s going to get worse.

Avril Speaks:

I produced a film that released in 2020, and we decided to distribute it independently. Everything that you’re saying became so clear to me in that moment of just how difficult it is to get your project seen. At the time, everybody’s mindset was, “Well, everybody’s at home, so everybody’s watching TV.” Yes, people are watching television; however, everyone is watching these consolidated networks. They’re watching Netflix, they’re watching HBO, and it’s really difficult to break through the noise, especially as an independent filmmaker with limited resources. But even for independent filmmakers who may have a bigger budget than we had, it’s still very difficult to break in the midst of all that consolidation. I hear that from a number of different perspectives. 

I asked our guests today about ways to reorient our mindsets to navigate the current realities of film distribution. Here’s what they had to say. Can you just share any advice that you might have for filmmakers who are trying to navigate this space of distribution and any advice on dealing with distributors?

Orly Ravid:

I think start off with getting clear about who the audience is and how those folks will come to know about the film and want to see it, because that will help decide what kind of people and services to work with and then do some homework around distribution companies and not waste energy on pursuing ones that make no sense. Different distribution companies have different types of films that they pick up and different reputations. In my opinion, things to watch out for are like blanket market fees. In other words, “We’re just going to charge this amount of money. We’re going to deduct it from the revenues no matter what. We’re not going to be accountable for spending it. We’re not going to make a promise to actually spend it. We’re just going to charge it.” I find that problematic. I’m okay with a menu, like some distributors have a cost menu.

Some of this stuff is in-house, but we still want to recover the cost. We’ve priced it at this, but at least it’s a menu that you can see. What I’m saying is, give it to me where either the filmmaker has approval over the cost, you have the expense recruitment cap on the expenses that can be recouped, a menu where the filmmaker has the information presented to them and they know exactly what they’re getting into as opposed to this blanket fee. If this distribution company is taking a distribution fee but is actually not doing most of the distribution by itself, it’s farming it out to others. I will never let a client do a deal where they cannot terminate and get their rights back in case of insolvency and bankruptcy because, in fact, that happened with Qmedia filmmakers who didn’t have that right were screwed.

Other red flags, no accounting unless you’re due money. Well, how would I know if I’m due money if you don’t send me the accounting? There are companies that are much more filmmaker friendly and more transparent than others. When you’re doing that research, you need not overwhelm yourself and read the entire internet, but be a little bit more surgical about it, and that starts with not looking to what happened in the 1990s, but see what’s going on presently or recently as well as reading in a way that’s more related to your movie, what genre it is, who’s in it, what it’s about, what it’s aiming to accomplish and who the audience might be.

If you think about these things ahead of time before you finish your film as opposed to finish the film and then do that, then you can also start to plan and create some effective distribution marketing. Distribution should be thought about alongside development and production. The only reason that the movie’s being made is to be seen, so there’s no reason to wait to only think about the being seen part at the end. Give yourself the time—including raising money while you’re raising money for the actual film. Because these days, investors and donors do understand the struggles of distribution and they’re also not putting money into the film for it to not be seen. So let them put a little bit more so it can be seen and then some of your problems will be solved before you’re even done.

Avril Speaks:

Pat, what did you learn from your experience? How do you see this getting better or being better for filmmakers?

Pat Murphy:

So many filmmakers still have this mentality of all you need to do is go out and make a great film and then premiere it at a fancy film festival or get it in front of the right person and then they’ll handle the rest. That may have been true for three to four to five independent documentaries per year, but that system never really worked, and now it seems that that system’s really not working for anybody. People really need to think about marketing and distribution with the same amount of energy and financial resources and time that goes into making the film. They need to put that into their marketing and distribution. If filmmakers really want to get their work seen, they really need to take charge of their distribution, get creative. There’s the whole DIY educational side of things. There’s opportunity to work with brands. You can invent your own way of reaching the audience for your film. If you’re signing a distribution deal, you need to really know what is this person doing for you?

If you don’t have a really clear answer on that, then I don’t even think it’s worth working with a distributor. My goal was to get my film on the TVOD platforms just so somebody could Google me and find my film. Then it turned out Passion River just used an aggregator called Filmhub to get my film up on these platforms. Then again, through working on the Slack channel and sharing information with each other, we found out that Filmhub is willing to just work with us directly. So instead of sending their money to Passion River, they just send it to us directly, and we get 80% of the revenue. There’s some glorification of the DIY distribution route, and people cite the most successful examples of those DIY distribution. The amount of work that goes into it is immense. If I were to make another film and self-distribute it, I think I would build a team because I did it all myself, and I was burned out. I don’t think my film had the impact that it could have had if I had a team working with me.

Avril Speaks:

Kim, you were talking about the systemic problems of distribution and what we see there. What do you see as a way forward?

Kim Laureen:

People are often driven by money, and so it really leads people in a different direction at times, and it’s really what dirties the waters in the filmmaking process, whether it be pride and money leading people forward. But I just strongly believe that the greater thing that could be solved here is if we followed the golden rule, do unto others as you’d have done unto you. That’s what I would love to see more of, more honesty in here in this world that we’re working in because I think so many of the problems would be solved if we treated others as the way we wish to be treated. I know so many of us that have been taken advantage of. Some may call us naive, but we are leading forward in that direction, and I think we could use so much more of that.

Avril Speaks:

What should filmmakers be thinking about, particularly filmmakers who are thinking about getting films out?

Kim Laureen:

I think it’s incumbent on all of us to figure it out because we are creative, and we have stories to tell, and we have audiences to serve. If we can’t depend on the system to do it for us, everybody is always trying to figure it out. They say that the streamers are losing lots of money right now trying to figure it out. I heard somebody else say that the film business needs to figure it out like the music business had to figure it out. How do artists make a living? I’ve heard filmmakers say, “You know what? I’m going to leave this business because I’m making movies for a limited budget already.” Let’s say you make a film for 500K, a distributor might pay 300K for it, you still got that 200K to make up. How am I going to make that up? Do I need to make the film for 250?

We do hear about films that are made for 20K that are being sold, and some people are making money with that model. The challenge and goal is to be grounded, obviously, to love what you do, be as honest as you can with yourself and with the people that you’re doing business with and your friends in the business. Try and make new friends who you can trust and respect and talk with you through budget and casting and ideation around the script that you want to make. The industry generally thinks that dramas are really tough unless you’re casting with bigger names. It would be good to talk through, does it make sense to make this drama or bring in another genre within that genre, and then knowing how to deliver your content as well and making sure that you have all of those elements to be able to deliver properly. We’re in the film business, and so if you are part of this business, you got to think about the business side to help you to make your decisions about the projects that you want to make.

Avril Speaks:

What is at stake if the film industry continues to operate in this way?

Matt Stoller:

Our ability to tell stories about who we are as a culture. We learn from movies. We fall in love to movies. We understand our politics through film. It is a wonderful art form. It is how our culture understands itself. It’s how foreigners understand our culture. It’s a massive mechanism for being a society. It’s art, and it is probably the dominant art that we have. It’s beautiful and it’s wonderful, and to let that die, which is what’s happening, is a real tragedy. There’s a lot of problems in our society, and I think a lot of them are actually downstreamed from consolidation, which is happening everywhere from airlines to mail sorting software. But this is another area, and you take this beautiful thing and you kill it. You kill enough beautiful things in a society and it stops being a society, and that’s where we’re moving to.

If you want to talk about who has oversight over content, I think it’s very clear that the streamers are aggressive about looking at the actual content to make sure it doesn’t offend anyone. In particular, the truth-to-power documentaries are very hard to sell. It’s impossible to sell those now. It didn’t used to be. Coercion and censorship, and the frustration of free expression is actually coming from the consolidated corporations, not the government. If you break those up, then I think you’d have much more free expression and openness. When you don’t have transparency into data and pricing, which is what the situation is now, you effectively break the market. The WGA wanted transparency, but advertisers want transparency too. That fundamentally breaks the bargain at the heart of the filmmaking industry, which is that if the film does well, the people who worked on it get a piece and you bargain over the piece you get, but there’s a common language to understand how to price that content. Netflix broke that bargain, and it’s not hard to understand that, and it’s not hard conceptually to get back to that.

Avril Speaks:

These conversations surrounding intentional practices, creative practices, while making films available to the public are ones we’ll constantly return to and ruminate on as we discuss the topics of this series. That’s all for this episode of Distribution Advocates Presents. Tune in for our other series installments discussing the landscapes of film festivals, film school, exhibition, sales agents and awards. This episode is produced by Moso Haus. Our producer is Nacey Watson Johnson. Our supervising producer is Ivana Tucker, and our production manager is Samiah Adams. Sound design is by Emily Crain. Special thanks to the team at Distribution Advocates, Abby Sun, Carlos Gutiérrez, Karen Chien, Amy Hobby and Kelly Thomas, as well as this episode’s guests, Pat Murphy, Kim Laureen, Matt Stoller, Efuru Flowers and Orly Ravid. Of course, thank you to our funders, Ford Foundation, Prospective Fund and Color Congress. I’m your host, Avril Speaks, signing off.