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Kelli McNeil-Yellen is a twenty year marketing and PR pro who finally made the leap to indie filmmaking with her award-winning Slamdance film DARUMA, now available on platforms. Learn more about DARUMA here. To work with Kelli, click here.
“Hollywood doesn’t make money by entertaining any one group with one kind of film; it has to entertain everyone. And whoever is not buying what we are selling on any particular weekend is an audience being ignored, money left on the table.
The answer is low-budget internet whiz kids, journeyman auteurs and great family crowdpleasers. And giant action-adventures, sci-fi, tearjerker dramas and romcoms, concert films, documentaries, Jackass, and everything else. It’s films for Zoomers, films for retirees and Paw Patrol for toddlers. And it’s films for women, and Black and Latino audiences and everyone else.” - Richard Rushfield
I’m thrilled to be working with POOLS director Sam Hayes once more, this time on his awesome partnership with Letterboxd, the beloved website film community that Ted Hope and Elizabeth Joyce are mounting a crowdfunding campaign to purchase for the greater good of the whole indie film community. This month’s curation was selected by film influencer Kit Lazer.
At the POOLS Letterboxd launch party (which the awesome tasbeeh herwees of No Bad Days attended) they were giving out codes for free rentals on the Letterboxd Video Store.
I’ve got five free rental codes that I’m giving out to the first five people who restack this newsletter. So if you’d like a code, restack today’s newsletter and tag me so I can see the timestamp!
Here’s a poll for those of you old enough and online enough to know the good old days when Twitter was a great networking tool for writers. Is Substack now screenwriter Twitter? I genuinely feel like the Notes section of Substack is doing the heavy lifting SWT did back in the day but I want to hear from you! What do you think? Weigh in on the poll below!
Every week I do a round-up of headlines that are pertinent to our business and list them here in my newsletter. I do my best to provide non-paywalled articles when possible! Here’s this week’s fresh catch:
CAA, TPG Form $250 Million Holding Company to Acquire Businesses Led by YouTubers and Other Creators
‘The Amazing Digital Circus’ continues win streak for digital-native stories at the box office
Lionsgate has taken an equity stake in the generative AI company Runway
How Barnes & Noble Became Private Equity’s Most Radical Retail Experiment
‘Teachers Are Going to Hate It’: How Social Media Apps Hooked Teens at School
From writer, director, producer Andrew Rajan. The film follows a day in the life of one ‘Jane Grey’, a struggling Black actress living in the hard but beautiful city of London, grappling with where her life is now; unemployed, disillusioned and her affair with a married man up in flames, she slips unnoticed down between the cracks in the pavement. Made in 2008, the film is available to watch on Tubi!
If you have a finished feature length film (narrative or documentary) that’s available for people to watch that you’d like me to promote, click here to submit your materials. I do not promote crowdfunding campaigns but I also never charge to plug your film! This support matters and I hope you’ll spread the love around.
This week’s edition of Film Soup Zine features an in-depth review of THE DRAMA by C. C. Simmons, a profile of FilmStack leader Courtney Romano and this week’s recommended film from producer Rachel Walens, DIE LIKE A MAN!
Check it out below!
Indie filmmakers: submit your films for a review and yourselves to be featured in Film Stack Tech Stacks, where you can share what your gear/tech stack is. It’s an easy, quick way to get some visibility for yourself and your films. Publicists, you’re also welcome to submit.
Indie writers: pitch an idea for a story here.
Indie outlets: if you run an indie media outlet and want to be added to my media lists for info about the indie films I work with for screeners, reviews, guests, etc, shoot me a DM.
And now let’s talk about…
Much has been made of radically changing things from the distribution side of things for indie film, but what about from the PR side of things? What I’ve learned is that just because you change your windowing strategy, doesn’t mean that outlets will be inclined to change along with you. Read on to see what I mean: indie filmmakers you don’t want to miss this week’s deep dive.
Content below is for subscribers, so please consider upgrading your subscription! As a reminder I do four in-depth posts per month and a subscription could save you time and money!
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