Well, if you are Marina Zenovich, director of Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, and a panelist on The Digital Documentarian at the Digital Hollywood Fall conference (presented by the IDA), you hit film festival pay dirt and get the distribution deal of a lifetime at Sundance Film Festival. Marina has international distribution with The Weinstein Company, a limited domestic theatrical release by THINKfilms and cable distribution on HBO. Other documentary filmmakers also screening at Sundance that year, including fellow panelist Rebecca Yeldham, producer of Anvil! The Story of Anvil were green with envy at the time as they waited for their own lucrative distribution deals that never materialized. But what I learned sitting and listening to the panel, which also included Matt Tyrnauer (director, Valentino: The Last Emperor), Courtney Sexton (Participant Media) and Scott Hamilton Kennedy (director, The Garden) and moderated by IDA President Eddie Schmidt, is that what seems like pay dirt at the time can actually come with a huge down side: Marina no longer owns the rights to her film. She has no “say so” how the film is marketed or distributed nor can she profit from its future sales.
All of the panelists agreed, including Marina, a filmmaker should never, when at all possible, give up that much control of their film. Rebecca Yeldham, Anvil’s producer, finally did get calls about distributing her film but she felt that the offers were too low and decided go with her gut instinct not to sell the film. She instead decided to self distribute, using social media networks and some very famous fans of the film to promote Anvil which led to screenings with live performances from the band around the country and a band appearance on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien. Eventually, she sold the DVD and television rights to VH1. Scott Hamilton Kennedy got a distribution deal through Oscilloscope Pictures, which is partly owned by Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys. Scott was able to maintain some of the rights to his film to The Garden and can sell DVDs of his film from his website and at screenings and yes…pocketing those profits!
Besides talk of money, rights and ups and downs of the business, we attendees got to watch clips of their completed films and works in progress in addition to hearing some great stories about how these films got made. The best stories came from Matt Tyrnauer, director of Valentino, who was advised early on that his crew must all look like male models because the fashion designer, Valentino, must always be surrounded by beautiful things! Furthermore, the crew had a strict dress code, I believe he the mentioned both blazers and slacks. Can you imagine?
More importantly, Matt discussed the equipment and format he shot on and how digital media has revolutionized the art of documentary filmmaking something which all of the panelists agreed on. Can you imagine trying to shoot intimate discussions between a designer and his lover with a 35mm camera? How many cameras would you need for coverage? What could you miss while changing the mag? I could go on but the idea is that digital technology and the web is revolutionizing how we are conceptualizing, executing, promoting and distributing our films and making the once overwhelming task of documentary filmmaking and distribution accessible to all.