To hear the podcast of this post, click here.

Hi, this is Anna Callahan from Super Indie Films, and you’re reading the transcript of our second podcast for independent filmmakers. This podcast is the meat and potatoes of this five-part series: I’ll give you an overview of one indie film’s successful marketing campaign and how you can apply those ideas to market and distribute your own film. Let’s get started with:

Four Eyed Monsters – How to Distribute your film

Four Eyed Monsters is a film that is totally independent and self distributed, and that sold a lot of dvds and downloads without a major distributor. First I’ll tell you their story, and then I’ll break it down into some pointers on how you can promote your films.

Before I get into the story of Four Eyed Monsters, let’s remember my definition of distribution from the first podcast. Distribution means that lots of people have bought your film and you have made money. What most indie filmmakers don’t realize is that distribution costs money. (graph). So even if you aren’t distributing it yourself, if you’re not paying for it, someone is. Any film that is successful has had someone spend money to make that happen. Fortunately, it costs less money now than it used to. But even the major studios don’t get away from this. The average film spends 34.4 million dollars on Prints & Advertising — prints are the physical copies of the film that get sent to theaters and advertising is what you think it is.

“For studio films, Prints & Advertisng often equal the cost of the film production, and for inexpensive films they may greatly exceed that cost.”

So for your film, distribution costs should be about as much as the cost to produce your film. And that’s a good way to think about it when you’re making a new film. However much you plan to spend on your film, that’s a reasonable amount to spend on distribution, getting it to be talked about and well-known, and getting people to take that extra step and spend their hard earned cash on your work. But don’t worry — since most filmmakers have not planned things this way, the tips in these podcasts will be inexpensive and will get you far without a large budget.

I’m just going to reiterate the hard facts about distribution: It costs money and time; it’s not free; no one is going to distribute your film for you.

Now that last part is not necessarily true — of the tens of thousands of films that apply to film festivals, many get in, some get into the top film festivals, some of those get awards at the top film festivals, and a few of those get a contract with a reputable distributor. But what you have to remember is that traditional distributors work like this. Let’s say a distributor has 100 films that they have in their catalog and are currently advertising. Of those100 films, 90 of them will not make enough money and the other 10 will. This model works for the distributor because those 10 films make enough money to pay for the advertising costs of the other 90 films, and then they can spend more advertising on the successful film (and sometimes neglect the others). Now that works for the distributor, but think about it from the filmmakers’ perspective. Ninety of those 100 filmmakers are not getting paid because the contract says that if their film does not make over a certain amount, the distributor doesn’t have to pay them. But the film is still under exclusive contract, so while the distributor is busy advertising the more successful films, these other 90 films are being forced into oblivion.

Most of the people I just talked about, those tens of thousands of filmmakers, believe that someone else will distribute their film, and the vast majority of them, unfortunately, are wrong.

Sounds dire, I know. I just want you to be aware of the reality of going the traditional distribution route. So many filmmakers spent all of their money and years of their life gambling on this system, and never made another film. But it doesn’t have to be that way — you can self-distribute.

So how can you be your own distributor? And when I say “be your own distributor”, I don’t just mean doing the work, I mean getting paid for it.

The biggest bang for your buck is targeted advertising. You want to spend as little as possible, and sell as many films as possible. Advertising, especially on a small budget, is all about creating buzz. You want people talking about your film. I’m going to describe what the Four Eyed Monsters filmmakers did as an example of a great way of marketing your film.

Four Eyed Monsters started off at all the film festivals and they got into Sundance and other major film festivals, they won awards, and they thought a distributor would pick them up, but no one did. So they started making some little videos about the making of their film. They released their first podcast on the day that Apple opened the podcast portion of their iTunes site. They were one of the only podcasts about independent film available on that first day of iPod podcast downloads. This let them piggyback on iTunes advertising instead of having to pay for their own.

There was a lot of interest in these podcasts, so they made more and posted them everywhere they could. They had podcasts on iTunes, on their own site, on google video, on myspace, they put them everywhere they could think of and they got a lot of interest. Every time someone responded to them about their podcasts they asked for their name, email, and zip code. Then they made a google map of all these zip codes, and when they had 150 people in the same city who were interested in their film they would organize a screening. And on their site they had posters that their fans could download and do all the advertising for them. Fans love to help you with your film — in fact, fans desperately want to help you with your film — they’re a great team for you. So when Four Eyed Monsters was going to have a screening, fans would do the marketing, and the filmmakers would create a special dvd, just for that city that contained short indie films and trailers for other feature length indie films.

What’s great about their method was that it was very inexpensive; it was absolutely timely; and it was something worth talking about. The way that they got this to happen was by creating something new that other people hadn’t done, at the right time, being on top of what’s happening currently, and taking advantage of things like the day that iTunes opened the podcast portion of their site.

So here are some specific ideas you can gain from the story of Four Eyed Monsters and use for your own distribution:

1. You don’t have to do this yourself. When I say that no one will distribute your film for you that doesn’t mean that if you are the writer, director, producer, and editor of your film that you have to do the marketing. Find someone that can be on your team, who can be part of your film crew who can help you with the marketing side. Marketing independent films is incredibly creative and fun, and there are lots of people who would love to do it.
2. You need to have a plan, and you should use the “seven times rule”, which says that it takes someone seven times of seeing something about your film or product before they’ll buy it. So instead of doing something once a month for seven months, try to coordinate your efforts so that everything you do happens at the same time. Then someone will say, “hey, I just saw a video on youtube that was about this independent film” and their friend will say, “really? because I just read a blog about that film!” That’s when people start talking. So try to plan your advertising so that it happens in a coordinated effort.
3. Your audience is your best source for marketing — keep them interested. Your fans want to hear about your experience as a filmmaker. Set up a blog so you can keep in touch with everyone interested in your film. They will be thrilled to help you with advertising and promotion too, because it lets them be involved with the romantic world of filmmaking. Let them help you.
4. Be unique. No one can give you a laundry list of what’s going to work, because what’s going to work is whatever the last guy didn’t do. You need to be remarkable, something that people want to talk about because it’s new and different.
5. Target your audience. Use whatever your film is about to aim your advertising. So if you have a film about basketball, then see if you can give away a few free copies to high school basketball teams. Whatever your film is about find that niche market and target your advertising to them first.
6. Be timely. If you’re not marketing your film but you have someone else on your team marketing it, that person should be someone who loves spending time on facebook and MySpace and twitter, reading slashdot or wired magazine, and knowing what all of the new social networking tools are. Next year MySpace might be out and facebook might be in, or facebook might be out and some new site might be the next big thing. You want to be on top of those new trends to stay in the public eye.

Thanks for reading Super Indie Films second podcast. Our next podcast will cover three topics: A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats – Help sell everyone’s film, Protect My Film! Why DRM is not good for indies , and Tug of War – The push model (TV) versus the pull model (web)

1. Trackbacks Says:
   February 4th, 2012 at 11:47 pm
   • advertising costs
   • Funny Videos

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