I am happy to be keeping my promise to myself to regularly contribute to my blog. Hooray, me!

OK, enough self-congratulations. In my first post, I pointed out a few of the many, many problems facing independent and documentary films trying to enter the current US marketplace. I promised to follow up with some explanation as to why I would choose to stay in the film industry at this difficult time. Here goes:

1. I LOVE TELLING STORIES. Documentary filmmaking is a calling — a calling that promises neither wealth nor fame. People who create docs do it for the love of the craft, out of their need to tell a particular story in a way it has never been told before, and/or because they find their muse in the documentary idiom. For independent narrative films, the motivations vary more widely and include dreams of Hollywood (not a bad thing, in my book — creative people should aspire to share their art with the biggest possible audience), fame, money and immortality, not to mention the possibility of meeting people who are stunningly physically attractive.

2. I THINK THE NUT CAN BE CRACKED. As a marketing and distribution consultant, I am convinced that there are ways to successfully release films in the current environment, provided the filmmaker is a) willing to make the effort and b) willing to make the effort. If that seems redundant it is, for good reason, because marketing and distributing a film requires a lot of repetitive grunt work that creatives often disdain. I’m not in any way suggesting filmmakers are lazy — making a film requires a ton of hard work, crazy hours and mad passion — but they often seem unable to muster the same enthusiasm for promoting their work that they channeled into creating their work. However, filmmakers who are willing to evangelize for their projects can succeed where the existing, broken distribution model is failing.

3. NO CUBICLES. ‘Nuff said.

4. THE CHALLENGE. I have a personality quirk that drives me to tilt at windmills (literally, in the case of CAPE WIND: The Fight for the Future of Power In America). So, instead of a cushy desk job with casual Fridays and rush-hour traffic, I choose the path less travelled by, and hope I make a difference.

Next up: SilverDocs 2008

On a happy note, I want to congratulate my friend, documentary filmmaker Morgan Dews. This past week, Morgan’s film MUST READ AFTER MY DEATH had its U.S. premiere at the Los Angeles Film Festival, secured a distribution deal with Gigantic Releasing and got a rave review in The Hollywood Reporter. The film uses family photos, home movies and preserved audio recordings to document a nuclear family’s falling apart in 1960s Connecticut.

I saw MUST READ at the HotDocs festival in Toronto earlier this year, and can attest to its emotional power and striking composition. Keep your eye out for the film’s release — you’ll be glad you did, if for no other reason than the sense of relief you’ll have when you realize your family wasn’t nearly as screwed up as you thought it was when you were a teenager.

Welcome to the new Gallant Films website and blog! This is my inaugural post (granted, it’s not as fun as an Inaugural Ball, but we’ll have to wait until Obama’s sworn in next January for that!). My hope is that this blog, and this site, will be more than just an internet presence for my film marketing and distribution consulting business. My intent is to provide regular updates on my observations on the state of the film industry, media in general and what’s going on with me.

My perspective on the current state of film can be summed up as follows: Technology is the great democratizer in the creation and dissemination of content, but good luck paying your rent.

For creative people, advances in digital technology have all but erased the traditional barriers to entry — just about everyone can get their hands on professional-quality camera equipment and editing software. Website are cheap, and YouTube is free, so distribution is easy. If your goal in life is to be able to have people see videos you made, life is good. However, if you are planning on a career (or even a subsistence living) in film, these are not the best of times.

Why? Since I assumed a lifetime of student loan debt to get a fancy-pants Ivy League MBA, I’ll express it in economic terms: Because the two key metrics of the marketplace — supply and demand — are out of balance, and getting further out of balance every day. We are producing more film product than ever before, while the marketplace for films is diminishing. The competition for eyeballs is intense, with people spending less time in theaters and video stores and more time gaming, logging onto the internet and/or on cell phones. The public perception of the movie-going experience has never been more negative, yet Hollywood is producing and releasing more and more films into theaters every year.

Because the market is flooded, the studios have to pay more per film to market each film — again, in economic terms, this is an unsustainable model, since the marketing costs per unit for any product should go down as the output increases. Plus, Hollywood is cannibalizing its own product — the studios choke off the long-run prospects of each of their theatrical releases by opening so many new releases each subsequent Friday.

So, in this bleak climate, why do I work in the world of independent and documentary film? Good question! My next entry will answer that question, plus talk about my experience last week at SilverDocs. So stay tuned!

Josh