Travis County in Texas canceled SXSW, only a week out from the festival’s start. At the time, it was the first major event in the United States to be canceled due to Covid-19. At the time, it was looking like it might be the only major event canceled.
We unpacked our bags. Nobody knew what would happen to our film and all the other SXSW films.
Well-wishers sing Happy Birthday to Dulce in Peru (still from We Don’t Deserve Dogs)
The films of SXSW 2020 were the first films to confront the absolutely wild idea of releasing a film during a global pandemic. Some films were fortunate to already have their plans finalized. We were in the unsigned category – we needed major festivals as a springboard for our work.
Distributors were absolutely scrambling. Distributors are people too, and they were also buying up toilet paper, switching to Zoom and teaching kids from home. They didn’t have time to worry about a small little film like ours. Everybody had a common thought: “surely streamers are dying for new content!” Yes, but the queue had already formed. With major studios pivoting their works to streaming releases, a backlog quickly formed.
In the months that followed, it was hard generating buzz for our film. And as every other film festival in the country was called off, the pile-up of independent, unsigned films just kept growing. Distributors were showing interest in the film – but they wanted us to hold off, sometimes for more than a year, before they’d consider it. We couldn’t wait that long.
The moment Rosie learns – live on TV – that SXSW is canceled
What followed was a tough year. For the first six months we just did nothing – we scrambled together some pandemic assistance and went into low-power mode. Our sales agents told us not to do any virtual screenings – it would blow our chance at distribution, they said. Eventually we folded, and were selected in about a dozen virtual fests. The film did mange to participate in two “real” festival screenings – one in Warsaw, Poland, the other in Brisbane, Australia – during brief lulls in the pandemic around the world. We of course were not able to attend; in fact, to date, we’ve still not seen our own film on the big screen.
In the U.S., virtual cinemas were the game. Some festivals did well, rallying their audiences in support of our film and helping us share our work with audiences. Other festivals felt exploitative – they demanded that we serve up our film so they could simply sell it on their website, for which we wouldn’t receive a cut. I know festivals were struggling too, but we learned which ones really supported filmmakers, and which ones just saw our film as a revenue source.
After another six months we had played in about 12 festivals, raising the profile of our film and connecting with audiences. There was solid interest from distributors, but we just couldn’t get the right deal. Smaller boutique distributors came forward, but with cinemas closed, all they were really offering was to put the film online for rent and purchase. Some even wanted us to foot all the upfront costs. And they wanted to hold onto a decade’s worth of potential streaming and broadcast rights too. We knew those were our most valuable rights, and didn’t want to give them away for nothing.
So we did what we’d been doing all along – we did it ourselves, again. We released the entire film worldwide on our own. Rosie designed all the poster artwork, and I cobbled together a website. We got the film onto whatever platforms we could ourselves, and hired an aggregator to do the ones we couldn’t. Rosie sold the film to a broadcaster in the Middle East. We brought in a freelance publicist to help us raise awareness of the film. We endlessly emailed outlets giving away free copies of the film. We ran ads on social media. We translated the film into Spanish (and designed posters for Latin America). We recorded an audio commentary and mastered our own Blurays. With the pandemic keeping us out of work (globe-trotting filmmakers aren’t really in high demand at the moment), what we could dedicate was time. We’d talk about our film to anybody who would listen.
In the end, we did the very best we could on our own. Our film reached #1 on the iTunes Documentary charts in Canada and Australia, and #5 in the U.S. The film is doing well on Vudu, and apparently it’s doing great in Mexico. We’ve sold it to people in 49 countries now. And a cinema exhibitor in our hometown in Australia reached out to us — it’s now playing on the big screen for some of our earliest followers, with a 50/50 split of the revenue, and no P&A (prints and advertising) costs for us.
Filda with Lok Oroma in Northern Uganda (still from We Don’t Deserve Dogs)
Most importantly, we’ve retained all the rights to the film – every last one. If cinema owners want to do a screening, they talk to us. If streamers want to put it on their platform, we retain all the revenue. The deals are all ours to make.
This pandemic showed us many things. It made us realize how transient our creative lives are – after 15 years of living paycheck to paycheck, it only took a yearlong global shutdown to show us we need to be more sustainable in our craft. But it also taught us that we really can take on every last bit of the filmmaking process ourselves – even the distribution. And although it makes it a hundred times harder – and I’m not sure we could ever do it like this again – it also makes me a hundred times prouder of our film.
Share:
