We Don’t Have to Ask Permission:
DIY Filmmaking with Ava DuVernay
Posted by · 03.08.2011
See it. Then buy it.I met Ava DuVernay a few years back in Philly at the Black Lily Film & Music Festival. I was there hawking copies of The Message. Ava was screening her first documentary feature This is the Life. She stopped by my small table. We chatted and she mentioned her film was also about hip-hop. Word? She was one of few people who purchased a copy of my book. So naturally, I remembered her.
Fast forward. To say DuVernay has been busy this past year is an understatement that warrants head jerks. In addition to running a successful film PR business, she’s directed three films including BET’s My Mic Sounds Nice and the 2010 Essence Music Festival.
This Friday, I Will Follow, her first narrative feature which she wrote, produced, directed, oh and self-financed, will be released in AMC theaters. She’s releasing the film through an initiative that she cofounded.
The African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement (AFFRM) is a theatrical distribution collective dedicated to black independent cinema. The collective will theatrically release quality independent African-American films through simultaneous limited engagements in select cities. The inaugural presenting black film organizations are Urbanworld Film Festival with Imagenation in New York, Pan-African Film Festival in Los Angeles, ReelBlack in Philadelphia, BronzeLens Film Festival in Atlanta and Langston Hughes African-American Film Festival in Seattle. If you’re in any of these cities, be sure to see I Will Follow during its run.
Proceeds from the releases go back to the festival organizations to help sustain them and their preservation of black films year round. AFFRM will release two films a year.
I Will Follow stars Salli Richardson-Whitfield as a woman who must close one chapter of her life in order to move onto the next. Reviews for the film have celebrated the movie’s quiet power—refreshing storytelling in an over-the-top blockbuster era. About the film, Roger Ebert said, “”I Will Follow” is one of the best films I’ve seen about coming to terms with the death of loved one.…it isn’t sentimental, it isn’t superficial. It is very deeply true.”
I had an opportunity to chat with the smart, funny, and down-to-earth DuVernay about film publicity, distribution, and why you can (and should) embrace DIY (do it yourself).
What was your first introduction into film?
I’ve been working as a film publicist since 1995. I went immediately into the studio system, then went to a big agency and really loved it. When I was in the studio system, I worked on six films a year if that. At the agency, it was more like six films a month. It was much more fast-paced and I loved the energy and vibe. I opened my own agency in 1999 and worked on Scary Movie. Here was this film with a black director that was satire and a spoof. People didn’t know what it was. I was 27 years old and trying to build campaigns around films that were niche and mainstream. That became my specialty. I went on to work with television and film projects like Girlfriends, Lincoln Heights, Cop Out, and Invictus.At what point did you want to start making films?
In 2006 or so, I started getting interested in filmmaking. It became my own kind of hobby. I was always around great directors and became interested in what they were doing.I made my first feature This is the Life about a group of people I grew up with. It’s a small, handmade documentary that didn’t cost a lot of money to make. I knew that no one was picking it up and putting it in theaters. Maybe we’d get of DVD deal or sell it off to cable.
Those were your options.
Instead of selling the DVD rights, I did it myself—packaged and distributed it. I made more money than the deals that I was offered. Companies take your DVD rights for 20 years. We made back our money in one year doing it on our own. We sold it to small hip-hop and record stores. Then we got it on Netflix and iTunes. We did get a Showtime deal that I orchestrated.I want to stay in the self-distribution realm. I see my non-black counterparts embracing the DIY movement. I don’t see too many black filmmakers doing it.
Why do you think that is?
They may not know it’s possible. It may be a matter of education. I see the studio stuff, the black indie world and I see the white indie DIY world. Black and Latino filmmakers haven’t embraced it at the same pace. Filmmakers who deal with specific communities are trying to create these communities. We have niche communities ready for the taking. We can literally tap into large audiences who love black romances or just love black film period.At what point did you feel there was a need for AFFRM?
Right after I finished the This is the Life run in August 2009, I had long list of notes in my Blackberry. I had just successfully self-distributed my documentary, put it in theaters, got it on Showtime, on DVD, and festivals and was thinking of the next film.I started shooting I Will Follow in November 2010. I just looked at my bank account and that was the budget. And I knew I was going to self-distribute it. But then I thought, why would I do this with just my film? Can we do something that will sustain itself and would support other filmmakers? It became bigger than my film. We should create something for other filmmakers to tap into. And after five years, we could have released ten films. It’s really kind of groundbreaking and outside of the studio system. We don’t have to ask permission.
We can embrace DIT—do it together. We can join with robust film festivals and organizations to put a film out together on the same day in our particular market. We can get our people out for a couple of weeks to support this film, just as small studios like Magnolia do. I can secure national publicity; a lot of indie films don’t get that. Then it goes to DVD.
How are films selected?
They’re curated by the festivals. There are no better people to select the films then those who get tons of submissions and watch hundreds of films. They see everything and can say, “This is special; this is a filmmaker we want to support.”
How can others support AFFRM?
We’re a small team of five people. Anyone out there who can lend their creative talents to the process, I invite them to contact us and let us know what they can help with.But we really need people to come and see the films. If people don’t come, companies won’t want to support us; filmmakers won’t want to be a part of AFFRM. Please come. This isn’t an ego stroke for me. Come and participate.
You’ve promoted big budget films and independent films like your first one, This is the Life. Are there promotional activities that work for both types of films?
The campaign I ran for Dreamgirls was different simply because of economics. We secured national publicity—high level reviews, magazine features. I married that with advertising, promotions, and street teams. It’s a wall of noise hitting you. All paid for.For I Will Follow, we don’t have that kind of money. We don’t have a lot of money to buy ads or put out street teams. We have been able to secure publicity which helped to get companies wanting to donate spots. A black owned company has agreed to give us a gang of ads and editorial because they loved the idea of AFFRM, and love black film. They appreciate our images and wanted to invest in this movement. That’s what we need—that kind of support to match our black creatives. We have to bring audiences and creatives together, but the business needs to come into play too—business people who have assets. It takes a village.
How do you run your publicity business and make films at the same time?
I got a team that works on the DVA Media + Marketing, and I have teams for the films. I have one central person, Tilane Jones, who acts as a liaison between both and helps to keep everything running. Last year, we did a lot less films on the agency side. We worked on Invictus and Cop Out and I started directing My Mic Sounds Nice while cutting I Will Follow. We did the Essence Music Festival film and publicized three titles for Warner Brothers.I work to make my films and to self-finance them. They’ll have small budgets—the price of small cars. It’s really low-budget filmmaking. A lot of people are doing it well. I don’t know if we’re doing it well, but we’re trying.
And you’re doing.
My goal is to make one movie a year. I made three movies last year. Because I am in the industry, I sat in those rooms. I know the system really well—what it requires, what it takes from you. I prefer independence and being my own boss. I haven’t worked for anyone since 1999—it’s just what I prefer. I’ve pitched studios. If a studio came to me with a great project, I’d probably consider it; I just don’t prefer it.I’m about getting a little bit of money, making a picture, and getting it out to people. To me, there’s no romance in saying that it took seven years to make a film. That’s not sexy to me. I’m trying to get to another way—scratch out a path that allows me to be able to do it without asking permission.
Felicia Pride (@feliciapride) is the founder and chief content officer of BackList. She wrote the production notes for I Will Follow.
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Mo’ Goodness
+Get involved, lend your talents to the AFFRM movement.
+Check to see if I Will Follow is playing in a theater near you.
+Watch the trailer for I Will Followvia thebacklist.net
Building an Alliance to Aid Films by Blacks
Ava DuVernay at a screening of her film “I Will Follow,” which will be the first to benefit from a campaign to widen the distribution of black-themed films.
By MICHAEL CIEPLY
Published: January 7, 2011
LOS ANGELES — Ava DuVernay, the filmmaker and publicist, imagines a time when black-theme pictures will flourish in places where African-American film festivals have already found eager viewers.
Fifty such cities would be an ideal black-film circuit, Ms. DuVernay said. In March she will start with five.
“I Will Follow,” which was written and directed by Ms. DuVernay and stars Salli Richardson-Whitfield (“I Am Legend,” “Black Dynamite”) as a woman sorting through memories of a dead aunt, is set to become the first film from the newly formed African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement.
The plan is to put black-theme movies in commercial theaters, initially from the independent film program recently begun by the AMC theater chain, for a two-week run supported by social networks, mailing lists and other buzz-building services at the disposal of allied ethnic film festivals.
The films will not be part of normal festival programs, but will screen in all cities simultaneously with promotional backing from the festival organizations, which will share in revenue. The inaugural group of backers is expected to include the Urbanworld Film Festival in New York, the Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles, the ReelBlack Film Series in Philadelphia, the BronzeLens Film Festival in Atlanta and the Langston Hughes African American Film Festival in Seattle.
A second film, and three more cities — Chicago, Boston and Nashville — are expected to follow in August.
And if Ms. DuVernay is correct in her belief that African-American viewers want more movies than they are getting from conventional distributors, the movement will eventually reach about four dozen cities where black-oriented festivals have been gaining strength, even as black film languishes in the studio world.
Speaking over espresso and hot chocolate at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills last week, Ms. DuVernay, 38, who helped market studio films like “Dreamgirls” and “Invictus,” described the new alliance, which she organized, as being less a business than a “call to action.”
Those who make specifically black-theme movies, she said, should realize that “no one is ever going to care about their film except the people it’s made for, which is, black folks.”
According to a 2009 survey of moviegoing compiled for the Motion Picture Association of America, African-Americans, about 12 percent of the North American population, accounted for only 11 percent of ticket sales and less than 9 percent of frequent moviegoers. (By contrast, Hispanics, who make up 15 percent of the population, bought 21 percent of tickets, according to the study.)
By some accounts, that is because the black film world is shrinking.
Stacy Spikes, a former Miramax Films executive who is the founder and chief executive of the Urbanworld festival, is one of several executives who said the distribution of black-theme films began to evaporate in the last five years. That happened, he said, as New Line Cinema, Warner Independent Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and other companies that had specialized in midbudget comedies and dramas shrank or disappeared.
“There’s a breakdown in distribution, especially at the indie level, for things like this,” Mr. Spikes said of films whose primary audience is black.
Films in a long-running Tyler Perry series have continued to do well — Mr. Perry’s “Why Did I Get Married Too?” brought in $60 million in domestic ticket sales for Lionsgate last year, and was the best-performing black-theme film of 2010. For the most part, though, movies by black filmmakers with a largely black cast barely registered at the box office.
As recently as 2002, the success of “Barbershop,” which cost a little more than $10 million to make and took in nearly $76 million at the domestic box office for MGM, seemed to point toward a resurgence in black-theme films. Chris McGurk, who was then vice chairman of MGM, even tried to position the studio as a gathering point for black filmmakers.
But the strategy faltered, Mr. McGurk said, as costs rose, and black-theme films, which generally underperform in foreign markets, outgrew their niche. “The economics of that business really only work if you’re able to produce them for $10 million or less,” he explained.
Told of Ms. DuVernay’s new alliance, Mr. McGurk, who is now the chief executive of Cinedigm Digital Cinema Corporation, said, “They’re doing the right thing.” Low budgets and precise marketing, he said, are critical to reviving the genre.
Others warn that great passion and a festival network cannot match the power of a well-heeled studio distribution mechanism. And Ms. DuVernay acknowledges that her alliance can do little more than get a picture on screens; turning a profit will depend on what happens to a film at additional theaters and in home entertainment markets after its brief introduction.
Still, Mr. Spikes said, filmmakers and studios could learn something from glad-handing politicians, who have long used networking and physical presence to build support. Films distributed by the new alliance, he said, will be backed by directors and stars who are willing “to go on the road and do that heavy-lifting” with festival-style appearances at screenings.
As opportunity diminished in feature films, Mr. Spikes noted, black actors and filmmakers — like more than a few white counterparts — have turned increasingly to television. He cited Regina King, who plays the detective Lydia Adams on “Southland,” as someone who was once better known for her work in feature films like “Boyz N the Hood,” “Poetic Justice” and “How Stella Got Her Groove Back.”
Yet this year’s Sundance Film Festival has a strong run of work by black filmmakers, including “Pariah,” about the struggles of a Bronx teenager, from the writer and director Dee Rees, and “Gun Hill Road,” another Bronx tale, written and directed by Rashaad Ernesto Green.
John Cooper, the Sundance festival’s director, said his programmers had not consciously reached for black-centered films but came up with a bumper crop anyway. “It’s almost natural selection,” Mr. Cooper said. He noted, however, that almost all of those films arrived without distributors.
When Sundance gets under way in Park City, Utah, on Jan. 20, Ms. DuVernay said she would be there to introduce her alliance with a couple of filmmaker dinners. And she applauds Mr. Cooper for having put the spotlight on at least a dozen black-theme pictures at this year’s event.
“I’m calling it Blackdance,” she said.