Filmmaker Using BitTorrent & TopSpin To Distribute Free Copies Of Older Movie To Promote New Skateboarding Documentary

from the bittorrent-as-promotion dept

Skateboarder and filmmaker (often focusing his films on skateboarding) Stacy Peralta is releasing his latest skateboarding documentary, Bones Brigade: An Autobiography, about the Bones Brigade skateboarding crew -- Tony Hawk, Lance Mountain, Steve Caballero, Mike McGill and Tommy Guerrero -- which Peralta helped put together in the first place. Rather than go the traditional route with releasing the movie (as he's done many times, including with the acclaimed skateboarding documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys), Peralta has decided to go direct to fans. The movie was shown at Sundance earlier this year, where it got some attention and had a bunch of opportunities to go with traditional distribution partners, but instead Peralta figured it was time to take control, noting that the DIY ethic of direct-to-fan is similar to the way skateboarding evolved in the early days:
As skateboarders, as people that have always lived on the outside, have always had to sneak over fences or through the back door, have always had to create our own terrain, we’ve decided to put that ethic towards how we release “Bones Brigade: An Autobiography.” We turned down all of the conventional offers for distribution when we came out of the festival in favor of doing it ourselves.
One part of this DIY approach is that to promote this new movie, Peralta teamed up with BitTorrent and TopSpin to help with direct-to-fan digital distribution and promotion. Via BitTorrent, people can download a "Bones Brigade Bundle," including a bunch of extras, and then using a TopSpin feature (either on the web, or directly in the uTorrent client), if you submit your email address, you can download an entirely free copy of the classic skate film, The Search for Animal Chin, which was released 25 years ago, and featured the members of the Bones Brigade. So the combined effort, from Animal Chin to the Bones Brigade documentary is sort of a "full circle" situation.

It's great to see more filmmakers really embracing both direct-to-fan, but also realizing that things like BitTorrent aren't automatically bad, but have a place in a marketing campaign as well. In this case, it's interesting to see Peralta using a combination of a few different tools to create an integrated and comprehensive campaign not only to market the new film, but also to distribute the old film (the first time it's officially available in digital format). Oh, and if you'd like to download The Search for Animal Chin, there's an embedded widget right below this sentence...
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Filed Under: animal chin, bittorrent, bones brigade, direct to fan, diy, documentaries, downloads, movies, skateboarding, stacy peralty, tony hawk
Companies: bittorrent, topspin


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  1. icon
    droozilla (profile), 30 Aug 2012 @ 12:27am

    I've seen Animal Chin. Nice if you're into skateboarding. Also a good reminder of how shitty people's tastes in fashion were back then.

    This is excellent promotion by Peralta.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 30 Aug 2012 @ 1:58am

    Curious if BitTorrent kicked back anything to arrange this.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. icon
    Alana (profile), 30 Aug 2012 @ 2:40am

    This is how you adapt to the digital age.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. icon
    Ninja (profile), 30 Aug 2012 @ 5:20am

    He (Peralta) obviously must burn in the directors' hell. Why? Because he's obviously a piracy apologist for using this demonic technology devoted to ripping off artists and murdering baby Jesus and fluffy kittens.

    /MAFIAA

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 30 Aug 2012 @ 7:00am

    Re:

    A ninja MAFIAA?

    Well, that explains the whole "pirates versus ninjas" thing

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 30 Aug 2012 @ 8:26am

    Good idea, poorly implemented

    The Bones Brigade Bundle (156 MB) is a torrent. After email verification, it links to a direct download of Animal Chin (724 MB). Should have made them both a torrent for speed and server load reasons.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 30 Aug 2012 @ 2:30pm

    Skateboarding is great!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 30 Aug 2012 @ 2:32pm

    Re:

    If you want to check out some skate videos online you go to (check url)

    link to this | view in thread ]

  9. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 30 Aug 2012 @ 8:15pm

    Mike seems gender confused in this article. He keeps using a male pronoun ("he") and a feminine name ("Stacy") to apparently refer to the same individual. Obviously, though, that person cannot be both male and female. Anyone know what's up with that?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  10. identicon
    Sam, 31 Aug 2012 @ 3:35am

    This sort of thing works for bands (putting free music out on P2P or MySpace etc) and it worked for some of them. Nice to see someone in the film industry being a little different.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  11. identicon
    cJ love, 20 Sep 2012 @ 6:39am

    stacy peralta

    I think its a great idea ! I really don't care much how its released , just so I own a copy ASAP ! I'M super STOKED!! Stacy never stops pioneering....

    link to this | view in thread ]

  12. identicon
    George, 16 Nov 2012 @ 3:32pm

    Re:

    Stacy is a man.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  13. identicon
    Dey, 17 Dec 2012 @ 12:53pm

    Grrrrly man

    Yes but he's a Grrrrly man.

    Showburn?

    link to this | view in thread ]


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