The Way We Watch Now: Case Studies
Five experiments in theatrical-on-demand
By Richard Whittaker, Fri., June 22, 2012
(Page 3 of 5)
Case Study #3: The Indie Filmmaker
Every filmmaker has to make a decision: How much time and effort do they want to put into promoting their film? Joe Bailey Jr. and Steve Mims, co-directors of Incendiary: The Willingham Case, are no exceptions. As Bailey says, "Incendiary has been our first and foremost obsession for the last two and a half years." However, he added, "There's only so much time you can carve out to distribute your film and keep an eye on your kid after it's grown up and gone into the world."
After opening at the South by Southwest 2011 Film Festival, Incendiary had a limited release last fall through Truly Indie, a distributing arm of Magnolia Pictures. The home crowd gave the film a four-week run at the Violet Crown in Austin, plus the filmmakers secured two weeks at the E Street Cinema in Washington, D.C. and one-week runs in Dallas, New York, Iowa City, and West Hollywood. However, Bailey concedes, theatres like that represent "a very rarefied cinema that has a nurtured audience."
After that initial run, Bailey and Mims were faced with a tough choice: Keep pushing for more public screenings, or start working on video-on-demand and DVD. Bailey says, "We could have, if we thought it was a wise business decision, have opened really wide. We would have spent a lot more money, and we could have earned some more back, but it seemed to be a diminishing return." Ultimately, he says, "There's a point where you have to ask yourself whether it's worth having a higher gross over the life of a film just for an ego boost."
However, Bailey saw Tugg's theatrical-on-demand model as a low-risk way to keep some momentum going in cinemas, and in return Incendiary has given Tugg one of its first success stories. Bailey notes, "We were probably, if not the first Tugg screening, we were the first to do several subsequent screenings in a row." The first screening was booked for Dec. 14, at the Cinemark in Cedar Park, and there have been seven more since then. "Early on," Bailey says, "we were a little more curious about how it would take off, and I probably put a little more effort into making sure the screenings happened. But the last few screenings – it's been really humbling."
"I definitely have to applaud Tugg because it's so logistically efficient," he added. It also gives access to unusual markets because it "uses the larger behemoth theatre chains as well as the smaller operations." However, the real driver behind the screenings has been word-of-mouth among anti-death penalty advocates. So far, six of the eight screenings have been presented by an anti-death penalty group, like Death Penalty Focus in San Francisco and Advocates for Innocence for the Wrongly Convicted in Durham, N.C. However, Bailey and Mims have stayed closely involved in nurturing each screening. Says Bailey, "I definitely take care to announce screenings when the Tugg page is live. But I think the great thing is that it works when the audience is engaged, and no one's left holding the bag."
