2/20/2024 0 Comments Liz in september vimeo on demandIn April 2018, shortly after their SXSW Film Festival premiere, the Thunder Road team accepts the Creative Distribution Fellowship. Being their own domestic sales agents, they quickly begin to contemplate, “What if we did this ourselves?” They hadn’t waited for gatekeepers to give them permission to make the film, so why should distribution be any different? They want to prove that their team can distribute the film on a shoestring budget better than what the traditional distribution deals were offering. With the SXSW Film Festival Grand Jury Prize and festival buzz, they feel they have a chance at being offered a good distribution deal from a reputable distributor, but unfortunately, the offers they receive are mediocre at best. This guarantees them a $100,000 streaming-rights deal through the Amazon Festival Stars program. In 2018, they premiere the finished feature-length film at the SXSW Film Festival and win the Grand Jury Prize. However, they decide to keep their options open, hoping that a big festival opening will help their chances for a distribution deal. Prior to the finished feature-length film’s festival premiere, the Thunder Road team speaks with Sundance Institute’s Creative Distribution Initiative about self-distribution, sussing this out as a viable option after witnessing the unfavorable marketplace distribution trends throughout the past year. From there, the team sets out to make their micro-budget feature. Zack and Jim each throw in $50,000 of their own money, bringing the total budget to $200,000. This success convinces six additional investors, who found out about the project through Kickstarter, to come on board, contributing a total of $64,000. They end up exceeding their $10,000 goal quickly, raising a total of $36,000. In the fall of 2017, the team begins with a Kickstarter campaign using the short as a proof of concept. Zack worked in development at AMC for years and loved the concept of Thunder Road after seeing the short at the SXSW Film Festival. The team decides to bring in one more producing partner, Zack Parker, to take point on raising equity for the film. At that point, Jim knew he had to take matters into his own hands and make his first feature, Thunder Road, on his own. However, during his “water bottle” tour-going to every studio, agency, and production company pitching his ideas-he realized that a breadth of experience and critical acclaim in the shorts world wasn’t going to get his feature-length ideas greenlit. At the time he had three scripts-one about a werewolf, one that was a paparazzi thriller, and a feature version of Thunder Road, which he felt was some of his best writing yet. Jim felt this experience and portfolio would be a calling card for stepping into the feature space. The end product turned out to be an anthology of six comedy shorts titled Minutes and a three-short series titled Still Life. To help with the production of these shorts, the team, operating under Matt Miller’s LA-based production company, Vanishing Angle, brought on producer Natalie Metzger. The producing team-then composed of Cummings, Ben Wiessner, and Matt Miller-decided to enter into a deal with Fullscreen for a six-short series and with Topic for a three-short series. Soon after the festival, director Jim Cummings was approached by both Fullscreen and Topic for multi-short deals. Buzz swarmed around the short Thunder Road following its 2016 Sundance Film Festival premiere, where it won the Grand Jury Prize.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |