Why We Need You…

Over the last eight months, we’ve shared Bold Native with people across the world through community event screenings, independent theatrical bookings and via DVD and iTunes.  We’ve repeatedly been asked what we’re doing to get this film to a broader audience.  We always answer with some variation of the following – getting this film to a broader audience is going to be a group effort, one in which we need your help.  We don’t have a big fancy distributor… we have something much better.  We have you.

Bringing a film into the world is hard and takes the efforts of many people.  Researching and writing a script can take years.  Putting together the resources to shoot is daunting and challenging.  Editing hundreds of hours of footage into a compelling hour and a half can test the patience of even the most dedicated individuals.  But we do it because we love the art form and we’re excited to share our stories with others.

If you’re making the film independently of a distribution entity, this is where the real hard work begins — the work of getting the film to its audience.  In some ways, it’s now easier than ever.  And it’s also more difficult because of the sheer amount of entertainment options available.  When we finished Bold Native, we began the normal process indie filmmakers take.  And we discovered the unique challenges posed by this movie, some of which we’d like to share with you, our audience.

We began by submitting the film to festivals.  After a string of rejections (including rejections from fests in which we’d premiered previous films), we began to understand that no first-tier festival would program the film, despite the high quality of filmmaking and innovative subject matter.  It seemed to us that this was a problem of content.  Festivals claim to seek films that are challenging, but they’re not looking for films that challenge the everyday choices of the programmers.  It’s easy to embrace a film that challenges things you’re already questioning.  It’s much harder to embrace a film that questions what you had for lunch.  We also suspected that the programmers might believe no one would want to see this film.  We knew that was untrue.  We knew there was a huge audience for Bold Native, not just vegans who would be sympathetic to the message, but also film lovers and progressive individuals who would be hungry for a film that had something unique to say. Submitting a film to festivals is expensive.  Almost all fests have submission fees, many of them around $100.  So we had to make a choice.  Do we continue to throw money at submission fees, or do we stop asking for permission and start setting up screenings on our own?  We chose the latter.

We set out to make a film like the 70’s films we admired — films that challenged society, asked provocative questions, and took artistic risks.  Films that, sadly, would probably not find distribution today.  We were inspired by Easy Rider, a movie that was edgy and weird and rough around the edges, but full of heart and ideas.  A movie that the establishment didn’t understand but that found an audience who was totally underserved, an audience which had never seen itself portrayed on screen and was excited to embrace a film that looked like real life to them.  We didn’t know if we had succeeded in making a film like that, but we knew if we could get the movie in front of people, they would tell us how close we’d come.

We set up our first screening in Los Angeles.  We spent a lot of time discussing venues, trying to find somewhere we could afford that would also provide enough space for the audience we suspected the film had.  We gambled big and booked the Crest, a theater with over 500 seats.  We promoted the screening through social media and had our friends drive posters all over town, convincing local restaurants and stores to hang them in their windows.  We sold that theater out.  When the film ended and 500 people rose to a standing ovation, we knew we had succeeded at creating something people were waiting for.  We introduced the film that night by saying, “This film has been ours for the past nine years, and now it belongs to you.”  We decided to embrace that ideology and empower people around the country to work with us to set up and promote event screenings in their local communities.

Sold-out screenings followed in Portland, Seattle, DC, and New York.  By the time we got to New York, Russell Simmons had seen the film, thanks to his assistant Simone Reyes (who saw it in LA).  Russell agreed to host the New York screenings.  He spoke passionately with the press before the film and was helpful in expanding our audience.  After the screening, he approached us and volunteered to get the film to a good friend of his who runs a major cable network along with his recommendation that it was not only an important movie, but also an entertaining crowd-pleaser.  We thought, great!  There’s no better path for the film to follow than through someone who has shown an impeccable sense of what people want from entertainment.  We were excited about the prospect of the film being on television.  Even if it showed at 2 AM between B-movies, it would reach an enormous number of people who might stumble upon it and be exposed to a story that could enlighten, surprise, and move them.  Unfortunately, when we finally heard back from the network, the answer was “Not for us.”  This is how people in the entertainment business say, “Hell no.”

Around that time, one of the actors in the film introduced us to a friend of his who worked at another major cable network.  This friend had heard about the film and was excited to set up a screening for the acquisitions people at his company.  We sent him a copy.  A couple weeks later we followed up, and he told us that the network was not interested.  Being younger and newer to the business, he didn’t just tell us, “Not for us.”  He let us know the real reason.  While they thought it was well-made and engaging, they found it “too political.”  This is a network that advertises itself as envelope-pushing.  He said that the text at the end of the film too directly advocated a position.  Which was strange because the text at the end of the film is simply facts related to the subject matter of the movie – how many non-human animals are killed and in what ways every year, and what impact an individual can have on those numbers by making the choice to go vegan.  If a film on a foreign genocide listed similar numbers at the end to give a real-life context to the fiction, it would not have raised a red flag.

We had always expected that we might have to self-distribute the film and had proceeded to develop a plan for that from the beginning.  Nevertheless, it was surprising to us that no distribution entity had recognized the obvious commercial value of the film.  In a business dominated by profit, we thought someone would recognize that a well-made, entertaining film on this subject had a huge underserved audience.  With zero advertising budget, we had sold out multiple screenings across the country in crowded marketplaces where indie films with million dollar publicity budgets often struggled to get a dozen people to show up.  A smart distribution company could have made a lot of money with this film. We began taking steps to distribute the DVD independently.  We taught ourselves how to author a DVD and filled it with two hours of special features.  We booked another couple screenings in San Francisco and sold them both out.  We booked a theater in Los Angeles for the DVD release party/screening and sold it out.  We began selling DVD’s internationally through our website, and as the film went out all over the world, we began getting emails from people in other countries interested in setting up local screenings.  We gave them permission, usually as fundraisers for animal activist groups or imprisoned activists.  We did multiple skype Q&A’s, engaging in discussions with people internationally about the film.  We continued to get the same question, “What are you going to do to get this film to a broader audience?”

We worked with a company named Distribber to get the film onto iTunes in the US and Canada.  We continued to promote the film exclusively through social networking, lacking a publicity budget.  Through great word-of-mouth, we have been selling copies every day as more and more people hear about the movie.  Our imdb.com score has hovered around 9 out of 10, an unheard of number for an indie film.

We had accepted that the mainstream channels for independent film were not going to embrace this movie.  Our core audience of people passionate about animal rights had embraced it and were beginning to share it with friends and family.  But many people in this core audience are still not even aware of the film’s existence.  Months ago, we submitted the film for consideration to the Genesis Awards, an awards show whose stated mission is to celebrate film and television that “raise public awareness of animal issues.”  We thought this would be a great way to let more people know the film exists, and we thought it fit about as perfectly into that mission statement as any film possibly could.  The selection committee had asked us several questions when we submitted regarding our distribution as they require that films have distribution in order to be considered.  We explained that we were self-distributing the film, a model that has become more commonplace as technology has developed to make it possible.  We explained that Bold Native had played more theaters in more cities to more people than many films with traditional distribution models.

So we were quite shocked when the Genesis Awards announced their nominees and Bold Native was not included.  We were even more surprised that they had only nominated two films, How To Train Your Dragon and The Switch.  If the goal of the awards was to celebrate films that brought awareness to animal issues, we felt that Bold Native had been more effective at that than either of those films, both artistically and in terms of hard numbers.  We had not met anyone who told us they went vegan due to watching either of those films, but we had met many who said they went vegan because of Bold Native.  If the goal of these awards is to encourage the Hollywood establishment to place more animal rights messages in their films, it clearly isn’t working.  If it was, they would have been able to find more than two films to nominate.  It seems to us that if money is going to be spent on this awards show, it would be good to encourage those filmmakers who are making films that embrace an animal rights message by helping their projects reach a broader audience.  It does not make sense to ignore films like that in favor of films which may contain a tangential animal rights message, but are made on sets where animals are served for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  It especially doesn’t make sense if you’re only nominating two films.

We tell you all this not to complain about how tough the road has been.  We are extremely grateful for our path and the generous, committed individuals we’ve met along the way, people around the world who have taken time out of their busy lives to set up and promote community screenings.  We’re continually impressed by the increasingly large audiences who come to screenings choosing to take a chance on a movie they’ve only heard about through friends and the internet.

We tell you all this as a way of answering your question — How do we bring Bold Native to a broader audience?   We do it through you.  You are our distribution company.  You are our publicity department.  You are our film festival and our awards show.

Every time you hand a copy of the DVD to a friend or family member, every time you post the trailer on your Facebook page, every time you use iTunes to buy the film as a gift for someone and send it to them, every time you call Netflix and ask them to add Bold Native to their collection, every time you rate or review the film on imdb.com or iTunes, every time you wear a Bold Native t-shirt or put a Bold Native sticker on your car or skateboard, you become part of our team.  You become our distributor and our partner.

With your help, two years from now hundreds of thousands of people will have seen Bold Native.  Some will love it and some will hate it.  But it will make all of them think and some of them feel.  It will hopefully make a small difference for the billions of animals suffering right now.  It will hopefully make it easier for animal rights activists to have conversations with others without being judged as extremists or terrorists.  Without your help, this film will fade into obscurity.  With your help, it will surprise those who doubted that people would be interested in a story about animal rights.  Its life is in your hands.  That’s why we need you.

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