Just in time for the holidays – join filmmaking pioneers Gary Hustwit, Jeanie Finlay and Amy Hobby who will share how creative merchandising can build community, fund releases, and keep your audience
Why Merch?:
In my book Think Outside the Box Office I reclassified film rights into three main categories: event/theatrical, digital and merchandise (I’ve since added educational as a hybrid fourth category). I created these categories to help filmmakers organize how to release their films without the support of a studio machine. Each category is defined by the unique audience/consumer experience of that film “product”. Event/theatrical is driven by connection and community and digital is driven by convenience. Merchandise is driven by object and identity: “I want that object because it speaks to me, has some intrinsic value, expresses something about me.”
Thus merch isn’t just T-shirts—it’s strategy. Join filmmakers and merchandise pioneers Gary Hustwit (Eno) Jeanie Finlay (My Fat Friend) and Amy Hobby (1-800-On-Her-Own) for a deep dive into how independent films can design, price, and sell merchandise that actually sustains their releases and their creativity.
We’ll cover:
- What kinds of merch should filmmakers make?
- Is merch for every film and audience?
- How to build audience engagement through physical products.
- Drops vs. evergreen products and when to use each.
- Creating FOMO through scarcity.
- Best practices for setting up a merch store and fulfillment.
- Timing merch – from festivals to the holidays.
. . . and more.
Guests:
Amy Hobby is the co-founder of Distribution Advocates, which runs (or and runs) the Marketing Innovations Fund. In mid-December, she is launching CUTAWAY, a new merch design and sales company focused on documentary films. She is also an Academy-Award nominated producer in her spare time.
Gary Hustwit is a filmmaker and visual artist based in New York, and the CEO of Anamorph, a generative media studio and software company. He has produced over 20 documentaries and film projects, including the award-winning I Am Trying To Break Your Heart about the band Wilco; Oddsac, an experimental feature film by the band Animal Collective; and Mavis!, the HBO documentary about gospel/soul music legend Mavis Staples.
Gary worked with punk label SST Records in the late-1980s, releasing the music of bands like Black Flag, Sonic Youth, and Dinosaur Jr. He ran the independent book publishing house Incommunicado Press during the 1990s, and started the DVD label Plexifilm in 2001. With Plexifilm, Gary released over 40 films including work by the Maysles brothers, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Andy Warhol and David Byrne.
In 2007 he made his directorial debut with Helvetica, the world’s first feature-length documentary about graphic design and typography. He has continued to explore how design affects our daily lives with his subsequent films Objectified (2009), Urbanized (2011), Workplace (2016), and Rams (2018). The films have been broadcast on HBO, Netflix, PBS, BBC, and outlets in 20 countries, and have been screened in over 300 cities worldwide. His most recent project is Eno, a documentary about musician and artist Brian Eno, which uses generative technology in its creation and exhibition. Eno premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and was shortlisted for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
His film and photographic work has been featured in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art New York, Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, SFMoMA, Design Museum London, the Venice Biennale, the Victoria & Albert Museum London, Paul Kasmin Gallery New York, Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, and Storefront for Art and Architecture New York, among others.
Jeanie Finlay is a British documentary filmmaker and artist known for intimate, award-winning work that resonates globally. Her latest film Your Fat Friend had its world premiere at Tribeca Film Festival, followed by its international premiere at Sheffield Doc Fest, where it won the audience award, followed by a pioneering, creative distribution path to audiences around the world.
She has made films for HBO, BBC, and IFC, including five for the acclaimed BBC Storyville strand, including Bifa & Grierson nominated The Great Hip Hop Hoax and Bifa winning Orion: The Man Who Would Be King.
Whether inviting audiences to share the (extra)ordinary journey of a British transgender man, pregnant with his child (BIFA nominated Seahorse), behind the scenes of Teesside’s last record shop in her home town (SOUND IT OUT), or onto the set of Game Of Thrones: in her Emmy nominated The Last Watch, her work is known for its emotional intimacy, pathos and humour and has garnered Emmy, BIFA, Grierson wins and nominations.
A champion of creative distribution, she’s a Chicken & Egg Awardee with retrospectives at Criterion, BFI, and MOMI NYC, True Story and Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. The recipient of an honorary Doctorate of arts in recognition of her contribution to documentary, Jeanie is a member of AMPAS, BAFTA, and FWD-Doc and is currently making her tenth feature film.https://jonreiss.substack.com/p/the-ultimate-merch-master-class-create