http://www.thinkoutsidetheboxoffice.com/ is a good starting place. Gives a detailed overview of the problem and an excellent blueprint for solutions.

Follow with http://www.scottkirsner.com/fff/ for case studies in successful captures of an audience via digital means.

http://sellingyourfilm.com/ case studies in truly independent distribution.

Of course, all of this is more helpful if read with a detailed understanding of business as usual. For that, go here — http://tiny.cc/2kz4aw

This lady is a social media guru with a blog and newsletter with tips, tools, and insights on the right m.o. to finding an audience (or customer base). http://katrinapadron.com/﻿

This guy is a cultural critic I follow who was asked to give a talk at SXSW about DIY promotion (something he calls shmoozitsu) — http://hilobrow.com/2012/02/22/schmoozitsu

http://www.vodo.net/

(Combines crowdfunding with crowd-currated torrent distribution; very cool community, but obviously biases toward genre films.)

(Combines crowdfunding with crowd-currated torrent distribution; very cool community, but obviously biases toward genre films.) http://beta.indiegogo.com/ (Like Kickstarter)

I'm also curious to see what will happen with MUBI, if it will become a viable streaming platform for films that don't interest Neflix.

A friend of mine recently did a lot of work on a very beautiful short film that has had zero interest at festivals, which has convinced him that he simply doesn’t know what they want anymore. I wrote him this e-mail to correct this idea, and it occurred to me that many independent filmmakers have had this same problem and should know this stuff if they don’t already—Luis!*I wanted to go into this a bit more in depth, because I have some resources that have been really helpful for me that I want to spread the word about.Basically what I was saying earlier is what you yourself have discovered—. In the past filmmakers have trusted festivals to be true curators of merit, so that the vetting process conferred some legitimacy on their work and gave them exposure to (eager, willing) distributors and audiences that they would have no means of accessing otherwise. Sundance was a name that meant something to the little guy. Budgets and faces were not the concern that they were to Hollywood, and festivals were THEplaces to see something daring, groundbreaking, or unique. At the height of this system we had films like, The American Astronaut, Derek Jarmon's films, Greg Araki's films, etc, etc.Now Sundance has become so upper-tier that Slamdance emerged to service truly independent budgets, and even Slamdance has become a supersaturated mess. Everywhere you look in the festival world, we're seeing independent films with names behind them, because that was the only way to get them into festivals (or to secure the budget from investors that would produce a film slick enough for festivals increasingly friendly to indirectly Hollywood fare**). As the market saturates, nepotism takes over the merit system, and the hope for a micro-budget film (even a short one) with no known faces becomes slim to none. The films that are actually screened, in all the major fests, are seeded with films made by filmmakers who were personally invited to submit sans entry fee, which you can see means. Obviously you still see a few genuine indie entries that make it in on the strength of the film alone, but this feels more and more to me like window dressing.This relates also, I think, to ballooning Hollywood budgets. I'm sure you're aware that the budgets of blockbusters are skyrocketing to get bigger and slicker spectacle in front of audiences so that the studios can turn a bigger profit on mediocre storytelling, but this effect has pulled modest budgets higher as well***. Comedies are not typically expensive films, even at their worst, butcost more thanandcombined (two older films in expensive genres that call for high production value). This has really changed audience expectations for how expensive things should look, the amount of lighting design and post production and reshooting that goes into even minor scenes in minor films with no need for intense visual presence, and distributors who buy things from festivals are certainly influenced by this trend. The films they looked at buying when the playing field was more level they probably wouldn't touch today.Even if we leave aside the enormous preference for films by straight white men, it's not just that festival screening is no guarantee your film is any good, it's also that. If you're going to be a pioneering, creative filmmaker, you need to be able to get your work out there without the help of compromised gatekeepers.I'm about to throw some resources at you that will lay out what to do, but I'll give you a rundown of what they are all going to say in one form or another—Streaming and social media make it totally possible to reach your audience without festivals, but this means a lot more work than you've had to do before, work that begins in pre-production, is fully integrated with the production side, and continues long after the finished film is in the can. You may be able to hand this off to a friend, but the bottom line is generating buzz for your film and getting it in front of your intended audience is just as important and every bit as much your responsibility as actually making the film.I hope I haven't overwhelmed you, but I've done a lot of work and I feel like I should share some of the fruits of my labor. Unfortunately what this has done mostly is show me what I did wrong withI haven't had an opportunity to put these ideas into practice yet, but they are a big part of the planning I'm doing for the next project (which isn't even written yet).Good luck!--CiroP.S. Despite my festival bashing, I of course have not abandoned them completely. They are still incredible magnets for the community. I am just mindful of the fact that all filmmakers need to be putting a lot more effort into alternative methods.