Given the extraordinary output of indie films in search of an audience, filmmakers Ben Hicks and Jerry Tran have created Fandependent Films an online indie distribution platform that’s part festival, part Indiegogo.
Filmmaker Hicks of Elephant Dream Pictures and Local 476 electrician Tran’s upcoming site “is geared towards the biggest challenge facing filmmakers today — getting your film seen,” says Hicks.
“It’s a new option to help indie filmmakers find an audience and a new way to empower fans by allowing them to vouch for their favorite films.”
They are launching with a submission call for 60 features to be collected by Aug. 1, so Fandependent will debut Jan. 1, 2016 on the website. They seek high-quality, entertaining, America-made narrative and documentary features. (Sorry, no shorts, no foreign films.)
Submission is free to filmmakers. When a viewer, or fan, likes a film and wants to support it, he donates $3, of which the filmmaker receives a third.
The goal is to showcase 60 films each quarter, or each season, with a new film posted everyday for 30 days, Hicks explains. The most popular films as voted by fans remain on Fandependent for the third month of the quarter.
The three top seasonal choices that have earned the most fan votes, or donations, go into the sites award-winning collection that the partners will shop to larger distribution platforms.
“We are reaching out to the community because the first 60 films are essential to constructing the concept. It takes time and money to build the site, so we need to know we have the materials for it,” Hicks says.
Considering the abundance of today’s indie film production, harvesting a bumper crop of indie films for Fandependent exposure should not be difficult.
In the past 15 years, nearly 7,000 film festivals are held annually in the US, with Sundance alone attracting 4,000 annual entries. Add to this film schools, crowdfunding, submission aggregators, VOD distributors and more and the source is ever-flowing.
For submission details, click here.
