CASE STUDIES IN DISGUISE

Quietly in the background, decades of independent production has given me something of incredible value; project case studies and laser-focused insight. This cumulative past experience now reveals just how much consideration my films have had locked into them from the get-go.

(Left to right) Sean O'Grady, Kim Michelle, and Kathleen Murtagh in a production still from Al Carretta's 2024 feature 'It Starts In This Room'.

In Autumn 2024, I released my 23rd (Thirst) and 24th (It Starts In This Room) independent feature films. They had premiere screenings in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe that August and are now distributed on various streaming channels, including Tubi and Amazon. The true value of this situation as a topic for discussion lies in the irony; so far these films are incredibly unsuccessful products, however, success is a strange definition.

If strategised and market-positioned Hollywood films make most of their money in the first two years of commercial availability, then truly independent films that make anything back financially are a total anomaly. Why? Some of the products in this ecosystem can make their money back with a glint from the spotlight because profile and exposure on a carefully considered concept blows it up overnight. Consistently delivered content helps snowball films as interest isn't allowed to collapse in the previous production. The internet-driven world makes or breaks things in hours but when it randomises what might be popular, you need a foothold in the game.

(Left to right) Sean O'Grady and Robin Kirwan in a production still from Al Carretta's 2024 feature 'It Starts In This Room'.

KNOW WHAT SELLS, PREDICT WHAT MIGHT, RISK ON PROFILE

Thirst was made for a total spend of £400, and It Starts for £1550. Royalty returns so far are nominal, but I will detail why this is the case as the point of this blog is to give insight into the marketing foibles of indie film.

I work on zero-spend marketing budgets. I think creatively and decisively to link projects to wider current trends that help the project gain momentum and online visibility. It Starts is a simple story about an aspiring music producer in a near windowless 1990s America. Essentially, the film is inspired by Tupac Shakur's 1994 shooting in a New York recording studio and makes a broader comment on corruption within the music industry. There are some smart, sassy characters, and it's got a tight plot but to see the full potential of the script it needs to be remade in New York with a bigger budget. The key is, limitations aside, the film isn't a pipe dream - it still got made.

Thirst is adapted from American playwright Eugene O'Neill's debut one-act play from 1914. The work is long out of copyright, however, there are over 50+ 'thirst' related films on IMDb, and that poses potential difficulties with exposure. The zeitgeist dictates that 'Thirst' is a work of little relevance in comparison to O'Neill's classics such as 'Long Day's Journey Into Night', except, Journey itself is a soon-to-be-released 2025 feature with Jessica Lange and Ed Harris. This gives us a valid connection, and unlike another cabin-in-the-woods horror from a debutant company, as a director (and actor) I'm showing some range.

Al Carretta as 'The Gentleman' in his 2024 feature film adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's 'Thirst'.

REALITIES OF NO BUDGET PRODUCTION

Thirst could do with some broader physical scope in terms of location. An additional few set-ups around water and a few additional locations could have added so much but the budget reality couldn't factor this. My restriction was what can I produce when my credit cards are maxed out and I've got no income? A reality of independent filmmaking; you simply run out of all resources.

If you've ever helped underserving people with their respective projects or life problems, write it on the wall - these are the first people who will not pay back what they owe and the last people you want in future productions. Petulant ingratitude within the arts isn't talked about much, and in the years after I saw brief financial success with The Devil Made Me Do It I saw my hospitality abused. Little things add up when you're in dire financial straits but to quote Sonny in 'A Bronx Tale', "Look at it this way: it's cost you $20 to get rid of (them), right?..."

Ultimately, I should have re-titled Thirst for potentially wider appeal but a completed feature that only cost £400 should have a unique stance. In 2025, it simply doesn't. After 24 features I can safely say that in the UK, 'no budget' work gets sneered upon. It shouldn't be that way. Closed shop UK film institutions such as BAFTA have a lot to answer for as they fail to deliver any kind of industry pathway for artists who work outside of the film bubble.

Charlotte Reidie (in the mirror) and Al Carretta in a production still from feature 'Thirst'.

PROVING SCRIPT POTENTIAL

I rarely deliver a film that doesn't have current relevance or a linked title consideration in place. My feature films The Devil Made Me Do It (2012), Cocaine.Gangster.Talk. (2019) and The Judge Of Harbor County (2021) have all made their total spend budgets back. Combinations of exposure over a number of years helped achieve this but there are many factors at play that made them successful. Genre and overall actor standard are arguably the two most relevant considerations but I also proved two of the scripts in EdFringe first and knew in 2009 that Devil (in it's stage form as 'The Tears Of A Clown') and Judge were simply the best stories I'd ever come up with.

Proving scripts by making them is an all risk environment so collaborative efforts are essential to realising visions. Finding actors who look past short-term gain for long-term credibility is the goal. Today's marketplace has never been so saturated with content. Cutting through the noise is becoming an art in itself and this means next month's hit is impossible to predict.

Kathleen Murtagh and Kim Michelle in a production still from 'It Starts In This Room'.

QUALITY DERIVES FROM A PLACE OF BALANCE

If you are funded, have money or even have a significant other to believe in your vision with you, consider yourself exceptionally lucky. Quality derives from a place of balance, and this applies across the creative process. If you can assess rationally you can make the best decisions for the production. If you can't, it doesn't mean you won't make appropriate decisions, but the extra creative edge that comes from being in flow and control won't be present. You can make brilliant art under extreme pressure but repeating that process will be near impossible.

One of the core reasons why a media text will fail is immediately obvious to the lay viewer but rarely apparent to defensive creators. I assess my output constructively for what it is. Know your product's strengths, accept its weaknesses but don't try and sell what isn't present.

You can only work within the resources you have, and this is where profile begins to come into play. The more presence you have the greater your chances are that the film - even amidst its respective limitations - will be recognised. I don't attempt festival runs with my films because I can't afford to. These products have to go directly to a marketplace, and in 2025, choices to monetise are nearly as bad as they were in 2010. Distributors don't care for your film - they just assess the ingredients to see if it has the slightest hope of selling.

Nora Woolsey as 'Presence' in Al Carretta's 2023 indie feature 'Twenty Two Presence'.

EYES LIKE CAMERAS

Many years ago a promising young director, then passionate about theatre and film, enthused about the process of viewing everyday life as if it were set-ups for shots on a film. His quote was 'have eyes like cameras'. Said director never pursued a career in the arts but his insistence on pre-visualisation stuck with me. Designed observation has become ever more present in filmmaking but it doesn't always add value in low-budget work.

I've made a number of films that have failed to find an audience, but perhaps shockingly, I've been aware of this potential failing from the start and still pursued the project. As stated previously, the place of balance you need to deliver great product doesn't always exist. So many people and things do not align or cooperate, but sometimes you just have to work with what you've got, or you'll deliver nothing because nothing still costs money.

Carole Boletti and Sean O'Grady in a production still from 'It Starts In This Room.'

THE FUTURE OF CINEMA HAS AN AUDIENCE PROBLEM

Post-COVID, the indie film landscape has changed enormously. New streaming services come and go on a monthly basis, everything is a subscription, and the Amazon Prime interface is a wall of sensory overload. Vast libraries of content slip into the ether of obscurity, and AI is creeping into all aspects of modern life and filmmaking with no genuine benefit.

Through Nightpiece Film Festival, I screen films in EdFringe for a week every August to try and get them an audience they wouldn't otherwise have, yet Snow White has already run 21 times to an empty screen in my local multiplex this week. To me, that indicates there's a big problem with the gatekeepers' programming cinema but as Technicolor goes bust and gets acquired by a Language translation and AI tech business (Transperfect), the march of the future is already pounding.

I didn't attempt to make feature films until the late 2000s. I deliberately held back because I knew that equipment needed to reach a point of quality and value. I also recognised I needed platforms on which to get my content seen; I can after all stage a play in a theatre and open to an audience with no issues. For me the point of technical equality in film production came in around 2010, and that means for the past 15 years the production aspect of the technical playing field has been level. Should I choose to I can still use what I worked with then to deliver content. On a beautifully shot 2k production, you would barely notice any difference.

Now, the part of the playing field that is barely accessible is going to create a problem for future cinema. I'm not a social media content creator chasing subscribers; I'm a traditional filmmaker with limited points of sale and randomised interest in my work. How specifically I stay on pulse, en vogue, and in competitive standard defines my position in the market. The distribution and exhibition models of the past century are collapsing industries. This will strangle the long-term future of original, independent film that needs a focused audience. Commercial cinema venues do not embrace outsider content but they need to. I love cinema, filmmaking, and the arts passionately but stifling variety in exhibition spaces makes them uncompetitive arenas.

Up against new forms of visual media that can now pop up anywhere, this is where the traditional moviegoing experience dies.

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