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This is good news for us! The film is now available on iTunes across the planet (except in Ireland! will anyone in our home country ever see our film?).
For those following our efforts of self distribution, the film is now available via the following means:
- iTunes
- Amazon On Demand
- DVD (via CreateSpace)
- IndieFlix (stream or download)
- NewFilmakers (stream or download)
- Multiple illegal file sharing sites which offer a copied version of the film in Polish (that’s not a joke)
From all of these sources, plus the TV sales, we’re going to return a good chunk of money. It hasn’t been easy. No above the line people were paid (apart from the actors) but that is how it is for independent film today. Its ALL ABOUT self distribution. You can’t afford sales agents or theatrical release or even DVD. For our future projects we’re not going to try and find a sales agent, its going straight to VOD. It’s the future – plain and simple.
So we finally finished filming last Friday. Yipee. Now the edit starts, slowly but surely. Aiming for festivals in the fall. Race is on.
Trailer here:
one, you don’t have to wait around for other people to like your stuff. if you made a good film, and you didn’t have Brad Pitt, you’re either going to need to get into Sundance or something similar or discover that your Spielberg’s illegitimate child.
PUSH IT OUT THERE. believe in your work. keep doing it, you’ll get better, you’ll get faster and eventually that enthusiasm will give way to blind luck which will help you on your way.
Make a production company. Get a business card. DO IT!
Right, so you have a film, and you want people to see it. a few crucial steps:
1. get a facebook page and pester all your friends to join it and post it so that others may see it
2. get your trailer and some clips on youtube and vimeo
3. get a blog (like this one!) and blog your heart you
4. post comments on other blogs, forums etc about your film
5. remember, keep posting links to your website, the more links, the better you score on Google, the more people can find you, that’s important
After you have all that done, you can start to think about online distribution. You need to have a solid background in terms of internet presence before you can give your film a decent push.
So, you’ve a few options:
ITUNES
chances are, its going to be impossible to get on iTunes. now, there is a lot of stuff on the internet about this being some kind of Apple conspiracy because they only want to deal with studios, but really its down to content quality. fact is, it costs a MOUNTAIN of money to make a really high end, well put together feature film, and if you’re seeking to self-distribute, chances are you didn’t have a mountain of money to begin with, and though your film might be really good, REALLY GOOD, it won’t be as good, technically, as what Hollywood pumps out. Now, story is a different story (pardon the pun) and you might have an amazing story, but contrary to popular belief, that, on its own, is not enough. Remember that iTunes works and makes money through selling. As much as you might hate films like PS I Love You and Bring It On 7: Rockin’ Geriatrics, they sell, and sell big. Apple make money from that, justifying their own costs. Your film might be good, but without a large volume of purchasers, it doesn’t pay Apple to even watch it. Don’t be offended by that, its just hard facts.
Now, all is not lost, if your film is in the $50k and above budget range, you have a very good shot at iTunes. Go on to indieflix.com and check those guys out, they distribute to all manner of digital media, including iTunes, and offer an industry standard deal in terms of acting as a sales agent. They’ll want to review your film, but the process is good, its free, and they are an extremely well organised company.
VoD
Various services here, most of which work through ripping your DVD for you. NewFilmmakers, which run various festivals, do a good service which has a $45 set-up fee though to be honest, while we put our film up there, the quality isn’t amazing and the company (the other films up there) are, in large part, fairly amateur, ultra-low budget efforts. Not to impune those filmmakers, they did their best I’m sure, but a lot of them aren’t amazing. An important consideration. The great thing about Newfilmmakers is that they charge no commission on any sales after the set-up fee, so if your film does well, you will get paid, directly into your paypal account also, which is nice.
FREE
You can apply for a producer account with YouTube and bang your film up there for free. Advantages are that probably quite a few people will see it, as its free, and people love free shit, also, YouTube is like a culture of germs, it spreads and multiplies because of the community, that is very good if your film is good. It’ll leak everywhere.
The disadvantage to YouTube is that you’re giving your film away for free, obviously, this means you’ll make no money. Money is useful for paying bills and making movies. Something to think about. Personally, I believe YouTube is for shorts and shorts alone. But that’s just me!
so, you make your film, you bring it to festivals (we submitted to about 30 top rated festivals, got into roughly 10, won 4 awards), you get a sales agent, they sell it to tv, you make some of the money back. chances are, you still haven’t exactly set the world on fire (i know i didn’t). more than anything, you want people to see your film, so you set about trying to get a bigger audience.
there are two ways to do this, dvd and the internet. i know prince says the internet is over, but i really do disagree. the internet, as you may know, is huge and is used by billions of people every day. a lot of them use it to illegally download films and tv shows and read facebook. see the connection? movies and facebook. it just so happens they go good together. more on the internet later. for now i want to concentrate on self-distributing a dvd.
CREATE SPACE
Createspace.com is a company, owned by Amazon.com, that allows independent artists to distribute their work via the internet. they take your movie (or your music for that matter) and have it ready so when someone orders it, a little machine makes a copy and mails it to them. that way there is no bulk ordering of dvd’s, no storage costs, no logistics management and all that. they allow you to sell from a customizable page (with low commission) and/or from Amazon.com with absolutely outlandish commission. i mean outlandish in the strongest possible terms, however, amazon is probably the biggest dvd retailer in the world, so you know, you can’t really complain too much.
we’ve done the create space road recently and it works quite well, they are fast and have a good system. the end product is good quality and is turned out quickly. its also pretty easy to spread the word, and the best bit is, ITS FREE. yup, it doesn’t cost you anything to get your title set up on create space, as long as you can make your own artwork (we did and it worked out fine). i think this is a huge advantage to this system. at the end of making your film, you probably have $0 left in the kitty, so free opportunities are a really good thing.
more info on create space on their website, and if you want to see how the end product looks, just order our film by clicking here.
We linked directly to the create space page from our film’s website at www.satellitesandmeteorites.com
A good trailer is VITAL. Thought it would best to start off showing you an example of what we did, so you can better understand future rants…
This is the trailer our film ‘Satellites & Meteorites’ which stars Amy Huberman and Adam Fergus.
The film is available on VoD and on DVD by going to the website www.satellitesandmetoerites.com
There’s also a facebook fan page at www.facebook.com/satellitesandmeteorites
blogs. weird to write to no one isn’t it?
starting down the road of trying to self distribute ones film is a difficult process. firstly, you really do need to get it into your head that nobody in the world cares as much about your film as you. no matter how good it is, no matter who’s in it, you can’t expect people to just celebrate you or the film just because you made it or it exists. there are roughly 5,000 feature films made every year, and roughly 100 of them receive a large scale theatrical release. your indie film you made for $10k is as likely to get a release as you are to win the lottery.
instead, the focus needs to be on social selling. that is, getting yourself a much wider net of people whom you know. this has many benefits:
1. you can pester your friends to buy and watch your film (that’s what friends are for, don’t be shy)
2. you’ll meet lots of interesting people in the process of, well, you know, meeting people
3. you’ll have a wide range of contacts to call on when you’re trying to do something, and you never know who knows who, or what, or where…maybe that girl Paula that you met who you don’t really like is a niece of Ari Emanuel (trust me, if that happens, LIKE HER)
4. social cohesion and world peace: if everyone was friends with everyone else, there would be less war. so in addition to helping yourself, you’re actually helping humanity.
the fact is that if you have a friend who watches your film and likes it, they are a lot more likely to tell people about, because in addition to liking the film, they’ll like you and want to see you do well. strangers don’t care much for strangers most of the time.
i, and a large amount of other people, made a feature film in 2008 that attained moderate success at festivals and the like, and got some television distribution and ultimately is paying back a great deal of its cost. this was not easy, and doesn’t feel like success, certainly not financial success because i paid for the whole exercise. i learned a lot, and one of the most startling things i learned is that there is very little information out there on the trials and tribulations of indie film distribution, aside from the obvious stories of Once and In Search of a Midnight Kiss etc.
this blog is designed to give a no holes barred look into the ugly world of indie film distribution, of the costs, the pit falls, the benefits, everything. use the info whatever way you want, and email me if you have a specific question. also, since i won’t miss an opportunity, BUY MY FILM. really, its actually good, especially given the budget constraints and the fact that the director didn’t know what he was doing.
