- Matt D'Avella is the award-winning
director of the documentary Minimalism.
It's on Netflix.
It features some guests we've had on the podcast in the past
like Colin Wright and we had Matt on the podcast,
so that's what this video is about.
So, in today's video I wanna run
through the best of that podcast episode.
Here is my conversation with Matt D'Avella.
First we talked about how Matt created Minimalism.
- [Matt] Yeah, it just started out with, you know
let's just start filming as much as we can,
let's explore this idea of minimalism and simple living,
and let's see how far we can take this thing.
And then, we went through many many iterations
and many versions of the film before we were
finally, you know had something we thought we were confident
that would be received well and that we were proud of.
- Then I wanted to talk about marketing,
so we talked about how to create
an initial sales bump in iTunes.
- [Matt] I would say the one big thing
and the one big takeaway I have from a distribution
was having an audience going
into distribution is incredibly helpful.
And so, two of the producers who are also in
the film are Josh and Ryan from a website
called The Minimalists.com
And they have built up that website
at the point of the release of the film
to probably a few million people a year
that would go to their website.
- We talked about how to create a watchable film.
- [Matt] I mean that is really like at its core
a big part of making a good film.
Is it watchable?
Is it engaging?
Does it pull you through?
And I, you know that now everybody
can make a documentary, and people
that don't have a ton of experience with it
are getting into it, which I think is great.
Like yeah sure, I encourage people
to try to pursue this if it's something
that they're really passionate about.
But, I also come into it with like 10 to 15 years
of experience as a filmmaker,
so I kinda knew news story telling,
not on a large scale like a feature like film,
but I kind of had a pretty good intuition about how
to carry somebody through a story, which is that's key.
- What to look for in the first cut.
- [Matt] Yeah, so I know for a lot of filmmakers,
a lot of editors, and I edited the the film myself.
The beginning, the first cut, the very first
rough cut is usually so rough that it's like
embarrassing and like you wouldn't want anybody
else to see it, and I've worked with some editors
before and I've talked with others who've done well.
It's usually how it is; is like
because when you're working on a feature film,
when you're working on something that
either has funding or producers or partners,
you need to get everybody's input and feedback,
and you need to make sure the vision is cohesive
and everybody's onboard with where the film is being taken.
- How not to lose your story in the process
- [Matt] The best advice I ever got was if your story
doesn't change along the way, you're not listening.
And I think that's mainly true for a documentary
but I'm sure that's true for narrative films as well,
where you may have to change things in the moment
you know you may have a whole idea of how this shoot
is gonna play out,
the entire script, and then when you get
to the location you realize oh,
the lighting's not working, this isn't working,
the actor isn't feeling it.
And you have to make changes on the fly.
It's very much true for a documentary.
- Then we talked funding.
How did he get the money to create the movie Minimalism?
- [Matt] We funded it ourselves.
So, we didn't...
Going into this film they had a decent audience,
but we weren't proven filmmakers.
And to get a budget for a film
it's little bit more challenging
that obviously takes a lot of groundwork.
But honestly I didn't think we needed it
because going into it I had the filmmaking skills
to actually produce and make it
and I was confident that I could do that.
And Josh and Ryan had connections within this community.
They were able to setup interviews,
and down the road they were the ones
that helped with the major push at the distribution.
So, we were like all right let's just kind
of pull our money together and go bit by bit.
- We talked from a marketing point of view
the release strategy for the movie Minimalism.
- [Matt] Yeah, so the first thing was actually
we did a month long release on Vimeo,
which for no real reason but to make it
very simple and have one place to go.
We'd never done this before.
We didn't know about how to even
put it on iTunes or go about any of that,
and Vimeo just seemed like the easiest way to do it.
And in hindsight, I think we would have attempted
to try to get connections first and then like
contact Vimeo and say, hey, we're planning on
doing a limited release.
This is our audience size.
We expect it to be pretty good.
Can you give us any kind of additional promotion?
Like could you like put us on the homepage banner?
Or give us a cut in terms of how much
you'll be taking away.
In turn giving them exclusive rights
for a month for streaming.
So, that's one thing I would've done differently.
It ended up working out fine.
- Then we talked about how he got an intro to Netflix.
- [Matt] So it was Gather was the third-party company
So we had like, they then found
another company that was working with Netflix.
So that's how it worked out,
And very far removed from me who made it.
So it was like three or four steps of connection.
- If you want that full episode, and you wanna hear
the whole conversation with Matt D'Avella
that is down in the description below.
If you want the proposal that we used at Lorelia
to sell documentaries, let's say you're in video production,
and you wanna sell video production too.
That is over at experiment27.com/proposal
and you can have that for free.
Subscribe for more videos like this.
And if you can think of anyone
that would get value from this,
I would love if you would share the video with them.
I'm Alex Berman, thanks for watching.