Ask any indie filmmaker in the last twenty years about an optimal distribution strategy, and it would probably start with getting into Sundance. That was certainly the plan for director Lance Hammer's first film, Ballast, which traces the troubled interactions of three characters in the long winter shadows of the Mississippi Delta.

“It’s so ridiculously impossible to be accepted into Sundance,” says Hammer. “You have to make a good film and you have to have luck. But Sundance was the only chance, honestly. If you don’t get in, you really don’t have a prayer of being successful in the marketplace.”

Hammer’s prayer appeared to be answered when Ballast was not only accepted at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival but honored for best direction and best cinematography. A promising offer from a well-regarded indie distribution company quickly followed. But when the deal offered too little money and creative control, Hammer learned that getting viably out of Sundance had become at least as difficult as getting in.

“The truth is, even if you get into Sundance now and do very well there, the marketplace is brutal,” he says. “Most films don’t sell, even the ones that do really well there. And the ones that are more artistically rigorous really don’t have a chance in hell. That’s the American independent film marketplace. It’s all completely exploded this year.”

Mac to Market

Hammer is attempting to steer Ballast through the fallout of that exploded market by bringing some of the same digital advantages realized in the process of film post-production to the process of film distribution. And while Ballast isn't the first indie film to be made on a Mac using Final Cut Pro, it's one of the first and most noteworthy to be distributed that way.

“Everything goes through the portal of my MacBook Pro,” says Hammer. “Every aspect of this project, from the most creative, right-brained, intuitive pursuits to the most rational, accounting, business kinds of things. And I think this is very important.”