Q&A with tothehills 2 Director Fritz Donnelly

Fritz Donnelly

Fritz Donnelly wrote, shot, and stars in many films from his ongoing series of shorts, To the Hills. The latest collection of his work, tothehills 2, was picked up by From Here To Awesome and is now being distributed by more than a dozen outlets including Indieflix, Netflix, Heretic, Caatchi, and Amazon. See some of Donnelly's work on his Reel-Exchange profile.

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What does the From Here to Awesome partnership mean to you? And in this new age of distribution, what does an online presence/building viewership mean to you as an artist?

Donnelly: No one wants to own anything; all agreements are nonexclusive. Profit is minimal, and expenses are almost zero. It's a scale game. More clicks, more views, more comments, more buzz leads to more clicks and more comments. This is like targeted mass-mailing, and a .09-percent return rate is excellent. If you know a million people or you are advertised — by fluke or by design — on a well-trafficked website, then you can make money online. Otherwise, the online world is as good for filmmakers as it is for other people: finding apartments, searching people to date, spying on people you know, and checking messages. To generate interest in your work, you still need to do it yourself.

From Here to Awesome is like a school in self-promotion on the Internet. The people interested in your online audience are other online services, and they'll pay you for your people — like politicians signing up new voters before a close election — a dollar or more per signature. From Here to Awesome has partnered with these services, some of them give you free accounts or special privileges; others engage you in new contests to use their services and suck your audience into their service.

All distribution schemes are basically scams. In the old days, it was a monopoly; the studios owned the artists and the cinemas and everything in between. It was a feudal system with a few people benefiting from the collective effort and enough leftovers for everyone to eat. Now, no one wants to own anything, because the product is not inherently valuable — it's the marketing and promotion that is valuable. Most of the work to generate interest and awareness in a film is done by the artist. So the only difference between the feudal days and these informed days is that we all know what's going on.

Read the rest of Donnelly's Q&A at reel-exchange.com/insider/fritz_donnelly_to_the_hills.

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