Lesson 20 - Marketing and Distribution

You now have picture lock. You have written, produced, directed, and edited a film. It has taken 18 months of your life and aged you 36 months. You are as tired and as emotionally and financially spent as you have ever been. You have a huge obligation to your investors hanging over your head. Now what? Now you market and distribute your film.

When it comes down to it all you have done is go out into the world spend a whole lot of Other People’s Money and created a product that has inherent value. That’s it. You can rhapsodize about the “art” until you are old, gray, and poor but ultimately it is a product to be sold. Now, your end user is the audience. Every time we go to the theater we are the end users. You, as a filmmaker, will be selling your film to distributors.

You will be doing this simply because you don’t have the capital or network to distribute your film. It is incredibly expensive to market and distribute a film. You will be spending four hours with Dov Simens soon but first what follows is a brief overview of the marketing and distribution techniques used today.

• Festivals

• Marketing and Publicity

• Distribution

• Homework