DIY Film Festival's New Sponsor: Kinonation

DIY Film Festival is proud to announce a new sponsor for our film festival!

Kinonation is a wonderful place for do it yourself filmmakers who’ve made award winning films to get distribution for their films. The grand prize winners from the festival will have an automatic window to sign up with Kinonation for distribution. The Winners in each category will also be eligible for distribution from Kinonation.

It’s not an exclusive contract, so there’s no fear of being tied up with one particular company.  You’re free to continue submitting your film elsewhere, but while you’re doing so, your film could be generating a revenue stream to pay for the festivals themselves.

We at the DIY Film Festival encourage filmmakers to find innovative new ways to get their work into the marketplace, or into the public eye. If you search our web page you'll find articles about DIY distribution, DIY filmmaking and DIY creativity.  We're only limited by our imagination, and while we're working on our next project, it makes sense to find a home for our last one!

Kinonation has taken all the stress of figuring out how to put your film in the marketplace, was created by a group of filmmakers with extensive distribution and filmmaking experience.

Kinonation also has distribution agreements with Hulu and Amazon Prime, and a host of other online resources, and can help guide your film into the world of online distribution.  You’ll be surprised at the number of outlets available for filmmakers to make money for their hard work and labor, and having checked into a number of various distribution entities and believe that their distribution offer of 80% for the filmmaker, is the best we’ve found.

The DIY Film festival is proud to announce this new relationship with Kinonation. For more information on how their distribution model works, check out Kinonation.com:

Filmmakers & production companies

Sell & stream your title on Hulu, iTunes, Amazon and many others

Whether multinational studio or indie filmmaker, Kinonation – distribute directly to Digital Service Providers (for example Video-On-Demand outlets) and other business partners, manage your catalogs, promote your titles and create digital revenue around the world.

How it works

1 You upload

Upload your titles and trailers using our unique Upload Manager. Add artwork and enter metadata. Easily resume uploads with unlimited file sizes, and parallel uploads from several locations – making the upload fly!

2 We transcode

Your video assets are transcoded into many formats as required by our digital outlets, for example iTunes, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and many more.

3 We author

Our system also prepares the artwork and "metadata" files which describe your title. Then we package everything into outlet-specific delivery bundles.

4 We distribute

Your title - including metadata, trailer & images - is automatically delivered to the chosen VOD outlets. They review the package and make their selection.

5 They watch

Consumers rent, buy or stream your film to their HDTVs, home theater systems, game consoles, Blu-Ray players, streaming players, computers, phones and tablets.

6 You get paid

We consolidate accounting from all outlets, and create convenient online reporting for you. The outlets pay us, we keep our 20% share, and you can withdraw your revenue anytime.

All hail the DIY Filmmakers!

We at the DIY film festival just wanted to take a minute to thank all of you... for choosing to make films. And for choosing our festival to show them.

Santa Monica Beach

We are beginning to plan our summer DIY film event - looking for a suitable venue - and we'll announce that when we're going to make that happen.

We usually take a sampling of films that have been submitted, sometimes shorts from previous year's fests, and invite everyone down to participate. In the past we had an outdoor screening at Umami in Hollywood, and one at the Flying Saucers in Santa Monica.


But in the meanwhile, as we look for a good spot, we just wanted to give a shout out to you DIY Filmmakers who've chosen to work in film to express yourselves.. There's an old saying "You don't always pick up a paintbrush to pay the rent." Meaning - sometimes it's just fun to create art.

Here's a sampling of the notes we've gotten from filmmakers along with their entries for the current season:

"Film is my passion. Upon entering College, I have realized that the art of visual media is what I want to dedicate my entire life to. My dream is to create films that have some sort of significant impact on somebody's life."  submitted by CM, student.

"This was the first film I ever directed and it is one of the most memorable experiences I've had on set. I wrote the story as well, which was inspired by my personal life... I hope this film has the opportunity to screen at your festival and reach a wide audience!"
submitted by TZ, student

"I was delighted to find your festival, and I hope to make it my next excuse to visit LA. I can't imagine it gets more DIY than this" RI Documentary filmmaker

"This is the most recent short from the Director who won Best Short Comedy two years ago at the DIY. Hope you like this mockumentary about filmmakers!" 
submitted by CW. 

Site of previous DIY galas, the Roosevelt

Having always dreamed of both making a film and hitting the highway for a year, we finally killed two birds with one road trip:   In 2011 the four of us traveled the US in an RV, home schooling the kids, while learning the ropes and shooting an original feature along the way...  John turned his talent with paint to the Canon 5D, using the lush mountains, craggy coastlines and dry landscapes of the American desert as his canvas.  He wrote a score to accompany the images; he learned Final Cut.  We act in it; we all worked the sound.  And we wrote a story that would work in tandem with our adventures on the road...
Feature film submitted by TP


"I'm submitting my first film for consideration in the DIY Festival. This self-financed, self-produced film, tells the story of the 2009 Winterover crew at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. I had the privilege of being a chef on station from October 2008 to November 2009 and I was able to take my camera and film for the entire year..." 
Documentary submitted by KR 

Pacific sunset

We look forward to seeing your films and good luck with all of them! Keep up the good work, and keep doing it yourself.  And thanks for letting us take a look at them!!!

DIY FILM FUTURE

Everything seems back on track with WithoutABox - other than a couple of snafus, everything seems to be working fine. If you submitted a film a couple of weeks ago and haven't heard a confirmation, please let us know.

And now a word from our sponsors:

Corel has released some new editing software. Pinnacle 16 is a PC based editing system that seems designed for DIY filmmakers and filmmaking. Although why they name things "ultimate" is a bit loopy, as it's usually "the ultimate" until it's not.  That being said, if you're not a MAC based editor, Pinnacle is worth looking into.  Not expensive, but has the bells and whistles of Avid software backing it up.

Our sponsor Avid dealt Corel their Pinnacle division, so it remains to be seen how that will affect Avid's foray into the low end (DIY) editing world.  Currently they're focusing on Media Composer, a professional editing system that handles the higher end material, in a Final Cut Pro fashion.

Where there's a will, there's a way - there are free editing solutions and opportunities in every platform, whether windows "movie maker" or "ifilm" from Mac.

There are many camera platforms to consider, from Canon single lens reflex series that also shoot HD, to the standards of Sony, Panasonic and other versions.  With feature films using the RED digital film systems for their big budget pictures, it's a matter of time before these systems become prosumer.

Lighthouse to the DIY future

In terms of DIY film distribution, what appears to be the easiest to navigate, is the createspace.com model - where you submit your DVD to their service, they digitize it, copy it, and make it available on Amazon.com in return for a percentage of your profit.  Once you've created the DVD or the streaming video, it's up to you to promote and sell and make it worth the effort to make it.  Itunes requires an aggregator to be the go-between between filmmaker and their sales outfit - and that can cost the filmmaker thousands of dollars in order to format it in their system.

 In that vein, KinoNation is a new company that will act as an aggregator, but takes their cut from the profit of the film.  Worth looking into.  It's a matter of time before DIY production, distribution becomes a larger share of the creative workplace. 

It seems to be the DIY way of the future.

And now back to the show!  Click on some of the films along the side panel to get an idea of the kinds of DIY winning films we've had the pleasure of honoring over the past 11 years!!!! Keep up the good work and thanks.