Nowadays, Jon Reiss is without a doubt one of the most important names in DIY distribution. He’s the perfect combination of filmmakers that manage the distribution and marketing of their own movies, and the theoretical thinkers that have been reflecting of the issue. And how did all this happen? Well, life, I guess…
In 2007, Jon Reiss managed to première his feature documentary “Bomb It”, about the explosion of the graffiti culture and street art, at the Tribeca Film Festival. Despite all the effort put in the promotion at the festival and the good reactions to it, all the traditional distribution deals offered to him were low. So Jon started thinking of his own strategy to release the documentary. After all, it was nothing new for him. In the 80’s, he started his career in TARGET VIDEO, a punk rock collective, where he was booking documentary screenings throughout USA and Europe. Using this experience and network Jon scheduled a 27 city theatrical release from April to July 2008. Soon, with the DVD sales, social networking advertisement and major big buzz, “Bomb It“ became a widespread success and a model case of DIY distribution.
In the mean time, Jon started teaching at California Institute of Arts about everything he wish he had been taught in Film School in his days, real world survival skills for first time filmmakers.
Amazed by his remarkable success his team members suggested Jon should share all this “crazy” marketing and self distribution tactics with other filmmakers. That led to a conversation with Scott Macaulay, the editor of Filmmaker Magazine and three major articles on these issues. (Part I “My adventure in Theatrical Self – Distribution”, Part II “My Adventure in Home Video” and Part III “How to Market Your DVD Online”).
It seemed only natural for Jon Reiss to expand this set of advises into a book directed at filmmakers called “Think Outside the Box Office: The Ultimate Guide to Film Distribution in the Digital Era”. The book works as a single resource on all these methods. (Here you can see him talk about his book. Keep also track of the discussion group he created on facebook).
We think the book is truly a must have for filmmakers with more imagination than financial resources. We will post a detailed review of it later this month.
One of the most curious things about Jon Reiss, as an independent filmmaker as well as a theorist, is that he managed to master the digital platforms without embracing the radical opinions of many other theorists. For instance, he doesn’t think theatrical screenings are dead, as it is so “fashionable” to think nowadays. Instead he believes in reworking the concept of “theatrical” into “live theatrical event”, since audiences will always want to gather and watch a good film.
You can follow Jon Reiss in almost every major digital platform, but I would advise bookmarking his blog for news on his projects and masterclasses (these can be quite engaging, here he is at DIY Days).
By the way, if all goes well this May he will be with us here in Amsterdam to talk about these issues. More details will follow very very soon.
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