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.