The Texas Round-Up

Three cast tiers, the budget each can carry, and the five ways an independent film earns its money back after the festival run.

There are two kinds of DCP. One is the standard, one is the leftover. And the long name on the folder is a label any projectionist can read. Here's both.

A DCP is a few huge files and a few tiny ones. The tiny ones are how a cinema server knows the huge ones are right. Here's what each file does.

DCP-o-matic is free, runs on any computer, and builds DCPs that play in real cinemas. Here's the whole process, from new project to a verified package on a drive.

Most DCP problems are master problems. Frame rate, aspect ratio, color range and audio layout, and what to hand over so the DCP comes out right the first time.

A feature DCP runs from free to roughly $700 before the drive, depending on who builds it and how fast. Here are the published rates, the math, and the costs that don't show up on the rate card.

Some festivals require a DCP, some won't play one, and the Academy won't accept anything else. Here's how to know which situation you're in before you spend money.

A DCP is the file package every commercial movie theater plays. Here's what it is, why theaters use it, and when your first film needs one.

Four rate sheets, three of them from city-owned historic houses, a Mineola single screen that has shown movies since 1920 and runs a free shorts festival, five festivals that are the region's real on-ramp, and a warning about weekends.

Fourteen rooms from Abilene to the Oklahoma line, many of them community-owned single screens, four with rental rates posted, plus the festival in Lubbock that wants films about the Southwest. And why Midland, Odessa, and San Angelo are not on the list.

Two El Paso festivals that pay local filmmakers, a city-owned digital cinema inside the Plaza, a cultural center with a twelve-week lead time and a museum with an eight-week one, and the nonprofit theater that is Marfa's only screen.

One true art house, the civic halls that do the real four-walling, a film society running Laredo's only non-chain screen, an artist-run film center in Harlingen, and the festivals that stand in for theaters across the Valley and the coast.

A subsidized DCP room in Midtown, a monthly showcase that takes Houston shorts for free, two venues that price a film screening as its own line item, and one ownership question you should know about before you call River Oaks.

One theater with a filmmaker service menu, a Fort Worth that lost four rooms in four years, and the suburban historic houses that publish their rates. The North Texas edition.

Twelve rooms between Waco and Kerrville that will program or rent to a filmmaker, four more to call first, with the path in, the format they take, and what changed this year.

A ranked list of the 100 best U.S. theaters for independent film, and which 72 will actually book yours. Free brief, plus the working file.

The seven-part directory, folded into twelve pages you can print: the two booking worlds, the five things a venue checks, the first calls in every region, and what has changed. Free, with no email address required.

Close to eighty independent rooms across seven regions that will program, rent to, or festival a Texas filmmaker, checked against each venue's own site. The three doors in, the five things that decide whether a venue says yes, and the regional editions.