Episode 17: Disrupting Distribution for Indie Film with Kinema Founder Christie Marchese

Welcome to season 2 of the Entertainment Business Podcast. I'm your host, Tisha Morris. Join me as we go into the business of entertainment, publishing, music, and all things creative. We'll get inspirational interviews, informative trends, and practical tips. And with that, let's get on with the show. Hello and welcome to today's podcast. This is Tisha, your host. And today on the Entertainment Business Podcast, I am so excited to have as my guest someone who has their finger on the pulse of independent filmmaking. And this is such great timing because we saw Enora win a slew of Oscars at the Academy Awards, really celebrating the power and potentiality of independent filmmaking. I think we're really at an inflection point for all the possibilities and really seeing a rise of independent filmmaking, partially because of the distribution options. I just returned from South by Southwest and really saw independent filmmaking— really, it's always a haven for independent filmmakers, but this year there was a different vibe. And it was really cool to see my guests actually be in the headlines. There's an IndieWire headline that came through while we were at South by Southwest. And that the Duplass Brothers just signed a project with my guest's company, Kinema, and Seed and Spark to really start finding different distribution options for indie, or even not even for indie filmmakers like the Duplass Brothers, but finding different distribution strategies. And so the Duplass Brothers are going to be releasing a series on the Kinema platform, and we'll be discussing How Kinema works with the founder today. And, and this will be the first series on the Kinema platform. The podcast interview was recorded before this announcement, so we don't get to talk about Kinema's plans for episodics, but know that this will be their first episodic on the platform. So I know you're excited to learn more about what options are available. So with that, let me introduce our guest today, Chrissy Marchese, founder and CEO of Kinema. It's a global film distribution and exhibition platform that uses the power of community and social interaction to stream films. She was previously the founder of Picture Motion, where she continues to serve as executive vice president. And prior to that, she ran Impact for Righteous Pictures and led digital strategy at Participant Media. She's a co-author of The Distribution Playbook, which we'll hear more about. And she's won several industry awards, including Fortune's Rising Female Founders 2023 and Fast Company's Most Creative People. Welcome to the podcast, Kristi.

Hi, thanks for having me.

I am really excited. I mentioned in the introduction that I feel like the time is perfect to have you on, cuz I feel like independent filmmaking is really at a great place to really take off and partly, in, in big part actually to the distribution options. And before we go down the rabbit hole of cinema and all it has to offer, I wanna get a little bit of the origin story from you and how you got into the industry, if you've always been on the business side of the industry, or if you've done some filmmaking yourself. But yeah, how you got into this business.

Sure. How, how did I get into it originally? I think I'd have to credit my grandparents who let me steal their video camera when I was like, oh, 12 years old. And my cousins and I would make short films essentially. We would do basically put on a play and then film it. And I used to have to edit it like on the actual camera because I didn't have any editing equipment. I was a kid. We didn't have TikTok in the late '90s. I think that's where it started. And then once I got into high school and I, we had an amazing editing program, so I started learning filmmaking and editing pretty young and just really enjoyed the process. I've never been a massive like cinephile. I couldn't tell you all the best directors. I just genuinely love movies and storytelling of all kind. Started with that. I wanted to go into film editing when I went into college and then just completely shifted, changed course and left college with a degree in international security and conflict resolution and the focus on the Middle East and studied Arabic for 2 years. So went totally different direction. I, but then got pulled back into the entertainment space post-college. I got a job after Human Rights Watch working for for Norman Lear, who had a nonprofit. And I was not as familiar with Norman's work back then, which was embarrassing to say. And through his nonprofit, which was focused on getting young people to register to vote, we used entertainment and pop culture. We ended up making a big 70 short videos for YouTube and MySpace and Funny or Die back in 2007, 2008. And then from that, fully fell back in love with the storytelling aspect. So through that nonprofit and then working at Participant Media afterwards, I got to pair the kind of impact NGO work I was looking at doing with a, my degree from college and getting back into storytelling and entertainment and how you could use that as a mechanism to inspire people, connect audiences, connect people, and drive audiences to take action. So that's, I'd say like the origin story goes back to Grandma and Grandpa. Yeah. And their video camera and then transitions out and back into film.

That's awesome. I have a similar origin story. Mine started with a video camera too. Me and my sister and friends, we would make these very great story arcs. Like we had this great James Bond, you know, that would be total copyright infringement. I'm sure these— yeah.

Oh, MGM will be after you now.

Yeah, that's right. I know they're gonna take our home movie video down. Unfortunately we can't find it. It's in the archives. But I remember, yeah, editing on the camera and like trying to do the whole thing. Yeah.

Stop, start. You're like, I was reshoot that, rewind, taped over it.

Yes. Yeah. And then, so you went to the conflict resolution route and I went to law school, so very similar paths.

Oh, that's so funny. I actually took the LSAT exploring law school.

That's how I actually— oh, there you go.

And couldn't get my score, I think, high enough. And then my heart wasn't in it. I'm like, what am I doing? This isn't for me. I don't have the stamina to go to law school. And so it's impressive that you did it.

You having your a taste of the conflict resolution. That's pretty much what all storytelling is, good, good conflict, right?

Oh, that's— I've actually never thought about it that way. Yes. So it's, I guess we're always in pursuit of solving the conflict versus creating the arc of the conflict.

Yes. And then also sounds like your work put you in touch with, with— we're gonna go into cinema, but they do serve a lot of documentary filmmakers. And so it sounds like you've had a nice experience with your own experience in that work.

Yeah, it's true. I'd say when they, when we were shooting the short films later in high school, it was all scripted. We had a great news station at my high school. I grew up in Southern California, super suburbia. I would say if you've seen Edward Scissorhands, you've seen my town. And, but because we were close to LA, we had incredible teaching talent that had moved out to the suburbs. And so I didn't actually do too much documentary work. We had a TV station to do news. Um, so I was a like sport, I was a sports correspondent and And then we had, uh, the TV and film classes and that was all scripted or a lot of, in our case, a lot of music videos. I think I didn't even get to really understand or love documentaries until I worked at Participant Media. Mm-hmm. And so that developed a bit later. And of course we love documentaries. It's, it's like tapping into the matrix. You get 90 minutes and 2 hours and learn so much in a short period of time.

Yeah.

I think whoever was presenting at the Oscars had joked that it makes you sound smart at parties. Which is— yes, but also, yeah, but a more better round, well-rounded humans and I think a better citizen.

I came to know Kinema through some of my clients who have films on the platform and just really was so impressed what it has to offer. So I would like for you to tell our listeners what Kinema is and, and how it benefits indie filmmakers.

Sure. So Kinema is a global film distribution and exhibition platform that is centered on film creators. So what that means is we have in the business terms, essentially a three-sided marketplace where we have created one, an operating system for filmmakers to make their films available, to be booked for screenings, to manage those screening tours from the licensing and financing and film delivery side. Then we have our second part, which are B2B2C. Second B is the screening host. These are organizations, influencers. Businesses, physical spaces, uh, uh, what's— we're looking for nonprofit leaders who host movie screenings. Um, half of them do it in a physical space. We built a film delivery system for that, and half do it online. And so we have a virtual, uh, cinema, we have partner and an event-based VOD, and then we have direct to audience. And audience is like our third, our B2B2C, the customer to see. And we don't focus on audiences as much, but we make the experience very audience friendly. So to find a screening, to find a film and to easily watch on your computer or on your TV. And so our, our main driver is working with filmmakers, that they're our primary partner on this. How do we make it easier for them to connect with screening hosts, to connect with audiences, to collect and utilize that audience data? And also for two, our main pillars, which were securely making sure the film files are secure, um, and to get paid quickly. 'Cause that was another thing we noticed in the industry at how long it would often take filmmakers to get paid out of their distribution deals, so you get paid weekly through our platform.

Oh, that's great. Yeah.

Quick summary today.

Yeah. So is it as easy as uploading the film and then I guess y'all obviously split the royalties on some level? Yeah. Pretty smooth, easy process. Personal.

We think so. We try, we always take feedback from our filmmakers, cuz it's, we're not just doing it like for us. We want it to work for us and for our mission and our interest areas. But we always take feedback and everything we built is because we've gotten great feedback from the filmmakers we work with. But yes, in the beginning we were curating a bit more. We had a form you'd fill out on the site and we filtered the films that would come on. And part of that was, uh, just to handle the flow and the requests we were getting and also to learn to see what types of films would be coming on or interested in working with us and what their kind of frankly price points were or splits that were they able to do and how could we build the business. But we also didn't want to be another gatekeeper in the space. We didn't wanna be another person saying that we decide what audiences like. And so we've said last summer we removed that filter and now anyone can go to kinema.com/filmmakers and begin the process of uploading your film. We do have a code of conduct that we do have some rules around. It has to be festival quality, and while that can be subjective, it's still, it's a bar that we can measure against. It also can't be targeting any communities, can't be overtly violent. There's some rules in place and we do watch those films before they fully go on the platform. But anyone could go on right now and get started and in 48 hours you can have your film page up and live and booking screenings.

That's amazing. YouTube is, I think, the top streamer of content currently, including films. It's actually more than even Netflix. It's the elephant in the room and it's hard not to compare But I, what I love about KineMa is it offers, it offers an aspect of YouTubeness, but also it adds that, like the host screening options and the, where you can book with the live screenings. And I feel like that's such a, such an important component that's different than YouTube. And in today's world where any film, even if it's on a major streamer, the onus is on, is becoming more and more on the filmmaker. For promotional efforts. And so I feel like cinema really sets the filmmaker up to win in that regard as much as possible. Tell us what your thoughts are these days with promoting, with filmmakers promoting their films.

Yes, I am. You nailed it actually. I think no matter where, where your film is, I, you are, have to do some of the promotion. That even goes to look at Wicked. Wicked was obviously a great pop film. That had a lot of marketing and promotion behind it. Every film, whether you're Wicked to you're fully independent, requires the talents and the filmmakers to participate in the marketing of the film to be successful. There is just so much competition for audience attention right now. Yeah. It's not really an option to not do it. Yeah. But if you are independently distributing your film, it really falls entirely on you from the budget side and from the resources and time management side. Knowing that and seeing that actually shift through the last few years, it's what are the features that we wanna offer to make sure that you're getting the most out of that. So it's why we only do, we do a small percentage of a split. If it's a, if it's a co-hosted event and they're selling tickets, we only do 10%. If it's a licensed event, we only do 20%. We try and get the economics to be as fair as possible while still being able to maintain the platform and pay out those AWS streaming fees and all those other third-party costs that all platforms have to pay until you're Netflix and can afford your own. Servers. So yes. And I, again, it's all under their control. It's, you can come on for one day, you can come on for one year, you can be in private mode. So only the screening host you want can host the film, or you can be in public mode and we can help promote your film. And I think in, when we were building this, we started entirely focused on in-person events and that's changed over the years. Part of that is 'cause the industry has changed so much and we've been impacted by the pandemic and the streaming wars and the the economy. So we wanna make it as flexible as possible, share as much of the revenue as possible with the filmmakers who are doing that marketing work, as well as the data so they can collect email addresses, they can collect audience data, they can see their revenue in real time. And all that matters because again, to your point, they're doing the majority of the work. So when we looked at other platforms, we, and where we could improve what we were seeing, we wanted to not just be that operating system and tool, but we wanted to have access, provide access to the audiences we were building. In this kind of space, if you're in the entertainment space, if you're a platform, you're a distributor, you're competing for that audience attention, it is really expensive. So if I'm running ads for films on my platform, I'm up against a Netflix budget or an Amazon budget. And so we can't quite play in that audience space, but what we can do is once we know that what audiences are watching within our platform, we can remarket other films to them. So I know that if someone— we have different cohorts of users. That watch documentaries or social justice films or only comedies. So as those new films come on, we then promote those films to our audiences. We also looked at the host mechanism in that the second B, the B2B2C, as a flywheel. So when a filmmaker comes on and let's say if they're marketing that film, they're going out to their own screening host and they bring in 100 new screening hosts, we now know what those hosts are interested in and we can remarket the next film that comes in.

Mm-hmm.

And so for one film with 100 hosts who then goes out to their audiences and they bring them in. We then can remarket those audience and host the new films. So we, that's why we wanted to be both a set of tools, but also an audience engagement platform.

So that's great.

That's gonna help with that marketing.

Yeah, that's great. So that ecosystem within that helps the filmmaker.

Yes.

That's great. Are, what would, are most of your films, what would you say the split as far as scripted and non-scripted?

I am, we just got a, actually a rather large influx of scripted recently in the last couple weeks, so I gotta go recalibrate. But I would say from a percentage-wise, it'd probably be about 60/40 to 70/30 more documentaries. Mm-hmm. In terms of just a general library. But when we look at what gets booked or the views or the most popular films, I, it's 95% documentary. It really does. Every once in a while we'll get a, a film, a scripted film that'll do really well for a couple weeks or a couple months. But percentage-wise, it's primarily documentary film that drives the most bookings and the most audience views.

What would you— you don't have to necessarily name one, but if you can, if you want to feel free, but like an example of a success story, and it could be just an example of a type of film or grassroots movement that does really well, or it could be a particular case study you wanna mention and kind of the secret of the success, so to speak.

Yeah, there's a bunch that we could go into. It's so funny, all of the top most successful films. Have had the same, I guess, like pillars in their approach, but different strategies, uh, of how they've done it. And so I won't be able to give the exact numbers for all of them 'cause those are the filmmaker numbers. And one day when they're fully done with their release, they will share them. But I can give some rough numbers. And so for Show Her the Money, which I'll give as an example, 'cause we both are familiar with that film.

Yes.

And I did just interview Catherine to hear more about her strategy. So that's one of our top performers. I think she's fine that she's definitely in the top 5. She's also done a limited number of screenings. Now her, here's what she did. She had a very thoughtful plan. She had a strategy that was almost like 2 years out of what she was going to do. She knew her audience immediately. In this case, it was not just women, but women entrepreneurs, women investors, women who work in finance. She was very specific about the audience. She also knew it was an audience that could pay, and then she windowed her release. So the film was only available at theaters for a couple weeks. Then through us only for in-person screenings. And that in those in-person screenings build that energy. You get the photos, you get the conversation, you get the focused attention. And sometimes they take longer to get the bookings initially, 'cause of course someone has to plan the events and the invitations, book venue, but it's worth it. And she knew she was gonna be in it for a while doing that. After doing, I don't even know, at least 6 months of in-person events, then she opened it up to live virtual events so they could be online. But it has to be a live event. You have to attend on time. And then only recently started opening it up to what we call event VOD. Someone can have an online screening. It's not live. The audience can watch it within a couple days or over the course of a month. It's been at least a year and a half. I think almost will be 2 years in the summer. You might know more than me. It's still not available on streaming. You cannot— she's doing a limited window right now, March 1st through 6th, to where you can watch the film and join a live Q&A after. But it's just, she's creating limitations and artificial scarcity. You have to do it right now or you're going to miss it.

Yep.

So like that's all those different like pieces. I am, I worked for her and we've had other films that have done similar things. The other films in that category in terms of financial success, same thing. They had a plan. They, they knew how they wanted to release the film. They knew specifically who their audience was. They knew how they wanted to have those screenings.. And then some things were different. So the, another film, I think they might've passed her in revenue. I gotta double check. Catherine's film, Show Her the Money, has done, I gotta check my numbers, somewhere between 100 and 200 like in-person screenings. That's a small amount, but those were more lucrative.

Mm-hmm.

This other film that's made about the same amount of money, it's done almost 800 screenings. And so, but they've done it at a lower price point because their audience was different. They were global, they were not women venture capitalists, and their film was also timely. They wanted, there was something happening in the news and they wanted to get it out pretty quickly, so they immediately made it available. The other thing is online marketing. We've seen if the film has, if you have no online community and you're starting from scratch, then you have to start to build that community of releasing content with partnerships, accessing other communities through influencers, organizations, and email lists, which I think is what Catherine did. Well, she had a platform for Show Her the Money through her podcast. The brand itself still had to start from scratch.

Yeah.

With this other film, it's called Where Olive Trees Weep. They had a big email list and a massive email list from the release of their film before, and they had a brand. Their audience knew what to expect from them in terms of the types of films they created. So when they released their film just for in-person virtual, live virtual bookings, they had an audience ready for it, but they knew that. So they knew they could just say, boom, right now the film's available and they would get an influx of bookings versus having to build it over time. So those are kind of two, two rough, quick case studies.

Yep.

And I can send you some links too where they, we've talked to both these filmmakers in a video interview to help go deep into those case studies.

Oh, nice. Okay. Yeah. It's the, the through line is having, building an audience. And I see this, I, I actually, my previous podcast episode is of an indie author, thrill, of thrillers, and she's sold over a million and a half copies of her book. Doing all these same things. It's a very— it's the same with indie music artists. It's the same for all content creators. It's building that audience. How do you reach them? How do you organize them and keeping them engaged? And that really is where all content creation is going. And I think there's a bigger and bigger divide between the big studios and each— in all of those sectors. And then the indies. And there's more and more because of technology and technology such as Cinema 4D for getting the work out into the world. To where there is a, the less gatekeeping and to get your film or music or books out into the world. So it's a very exciting time and yet it does also put a lot of work on the artists.

It does. Yeah. And part of that is, and that's why we're, we keep, we're like, our pillars are looking at how do we give them all the tools that we can at this time, but also support through the easier to use. You know, we're an ecosystem that we're creating and I look at Substack as a great model of this. Substack. Yeah. Anyone can write, but journalists are moving off that. Professional journalists are using that platform because they're giving them the tools to make it easy, but also they're participating in an ecosystem to help with discovery. Oh, that was what I was looking for. Audience discovery.

Yep.

I, when someone comes in and we know what you like, we wanna help you continue to find new things. We'll introduce maybe some things that might be different to see if you like them, but we do wanna help support our filmmakers in that way. And so we say all boats rise together. If you're a film working with us and you're bringing an audience, we will be promoting other films to them. And we have had filmmakers say no to that. They have— we've had them say, I don't want to participate in that. It's my audience, or I don't want access to my screening host. And we understand that they're doing the work, they wanna own that. But for us, we're interested in working with the filmmakers that believe in the capacity building and supporting the industry for the next wave of independent filmmakers. And the last thing I'll say on that is in doing this for many years, I, I ran a company called Picture Motion where we ran impact campaigns. We would see this over and over again where we'd see a filmmaker work on a film for a few years, then work on a campaign, and then maybe their film is on a different topic. And now there's a great email list of people and screening hosts that are not really gonna get used because the next film's on a different topic.

Mm-hmm.

And so the idea was like, okay, what if we had a system, that email list lives somewhere and we kept it active. By introducing new films. And so it doesn't go to waste. Mm-hmm. So it is, if someone does wanna own their list entirely and keep it to themselves, we're not the right platform.

Gotcha. Just to be a geeky attorney for a second. I mean, it, I assume it's a non-exclusive license and so the filmmaker gets to own all their stuff and they can put it on other platforms if they just, if they want. Am I correct? Right?

Yeah, you're totally correct. That's completely non-exclusive. We don't own any rights. Like you can work with us in every other platform. You can, again, come on for a day or come on for a year. And the legal part is if someone books a screening, we're this service provider, but they're technically licensing it directly from the filmmaker. That agreement, I will pay this filmmaker to access this film, and then Kinema gets a revenue share to oversee the process, to deliver the content, to, uh, to do all the payouts and tracking and everything.

The reason I bring that up is because I hear so many, I'm sure you do too, horror stories from people who signed distribution agreements that they're stuck in for 20 years and lost the rights to all their stuff. And so this is a really great option for people who've been burnt in the distribution space. So I also want to, on that note, talk about your distribution playbook that you, that you're co-writing. I went on to it and it's such a great resource for folks. Could tell us a little bit about what this is?

Oh, thank you.

I am—

this was produced, written, known to call it, with Emily Best from Seed and Spark. She and I have just developed a great relationship over the years, just being supporters of each other and confidantes who do fundraising and build a company and work in tech and film. I'm— and over a couple phone calls, we were talking about resource sharing and access to information and why is this— why is distribution so confusing? Where do we find this information? We knew like of a couple good books. John Rhys has a great book. Film Collaborative has some great case studies, but how do you, what would a resource look like to just explain all the different distribution options, especially in this day and age when most people are, not most, but many filmmakers are engaging in independent distribution, some by choice and some not by choice when they were, didn't get the deals that they should have gotten at film after film festivals. And Emily had a great presentation that she would do, but the presentation would be an hour and a half just to go through all the different topic areas. And then writing a book takes forever, requires a publisher, or to your point, you're distributing your own book. And we're like, we don't really need to do that. By the time we finish writing it, it'll all change again anyway. So that was the idea of, can we take her presentation, all the information we know of and have access to about distribution, and then additionally help be a, a resource of who else is working in this space that you can work with. So we've been calling it independent distribution, uh, just like independent filmmaking. You're doing it on, you're building a team together on your own. You're leading the team as the filmmaker, but you're not necessarily doing it alone. You're just doing it outside traditional institutions. And so we wrote it like a choose your own adventure. So if you were looking for a publicist, great, here's our list of publicists that work in this space that have good reputations. If you're looking for an impact producer, great, here's that list. But also, what is impact producing? How, like, what, how do you know if you should have an impact producer? Help giving some like guiding questions and resources. And actually we should probably have a stronger legal section. So if you would like to contribute anything, like we do, we have a form on the site and people send us stuff to put in. And so every quarter we do an update and we get requests of some missing information. So if anyone out there listening that thinks we're missing something in the playbook or would like to contribute, please send us that information.

That's awesome. Yeah, it's so, and so informative and there's videos. It's like a, it's like a how-to. Distribution. It's amazing. I'll put the link in the show notes for folks who are interested in checking that out. Kristi, this has been so informative and I think so helpful, and I think indie filmmakers are gonna really love getting to know KineMa and they can reach you at KineMa, or they can go on the platform at kinema.com. That's great. Anything else you wanna add to, we can reach you on Instagram and YouTube at KineMa HQ.

Yep. That's right.

And like I said, I'll have link for the Distribution Playbook as well.

Oh, great.

Yeah.

Distribution Playbook, we can find at thedistributionplaybook.com. It should hopefully reroute to a Notion site that a bunch of us collaboratively maintain. Find us at kinema.com. You can email, um, films@kinema.com. There's the fastest way to get ahold of someone on our team from a filmmaker perspective. And then we have a YouTube channel too that we just started updating or even to putting a lot of demos and how-tos. I think the thing that we found in running, this is, it's a business, so we wanna make sure the business is successful. What helps us be successful is when filmmakers are successful. Mm-hmm. So how do we help support that? Mm-hmm. And so the distribution playbook also inspired some of those resources, like how do you do media buying? What is windowing? And then the demos, like how do you set up your page? How do you allow gifting of your film? How do you allow pay what you wish? So we're trying to make it as easy as possible for filmmakers to be successful. It's essentially, that's our mission.

That's great. Thank you so much.

No, thank you for having me.

Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If you like the podcast, please like, subscribe, maybe even share to your friends. And for more information about my services, visit my website at tishamorris.com. That's T-I-S-H-A M-O-R-R-I-S. Well, that concludes today's episode, and I wish you all the best. Until next time, keep creating, and please take care.