Amazon Film Distribution

Amazon Film Distribution is easy to access. Over the last ten years, there have been a gazillion changes in the ways movies are made. But the one area I’m most excited about is Video On Demand. I frankly don’t remember how I lived without the technology.

As a filmmaker, this technology offers us enormous opportunity to not only make our movie – but with a couple clicks of a mouse, we can now reach a global audience — well, sort of.

Unfortunately there are still a few limitations to our global reach. I’ve mentioned CreateSpace quite a bit in the past. In fact, their advertisements seem to pop up frequently on this site. I love it that you can upload a VOD movie into the Amazon marketplace. But I think a few things still need improvement. Let me explain.

1. Lag time – For one of our projects, it took CS around six months to get our movie into the Amazon marketplace.
2. Marketing – Once in, there was tremendous lag time in getting our information correctly placed on the Amazon detail page. (I’m still getting this worked out.)
3. Trailer- And instead of presenting your movie trailer, the Amazon preview plays the first 2 minutes of your movie. So you better hope you hook em’ fast.
4. Audience – With CS/Amazon VOD, you are limited to a US only audience.
5. Reporting Sales – The sales reporting is not even close to real time – There is at least a 30 day wait to find out if your movie is selling.

Still, all of this aside, the tremendous upside to CreateSpace is having your movie featured in the Amazon Marketplace while carrying NO inventory. When people buy or rent your movie, all you gotta do is collect the cash.

In a more-perfect world of Independent Film Distribution, iTunes would open the flood gates and allow all feature filmmakers to upload their work. However, at the time of writing, getting your finished feature film into iTunes is still a pain in the butt. With few exceptions, the company seems to favor traditional distributors over the indie producer. So if you one day dream of having your movie viewed on someone’s iPhone, you’ll still have to find a middle-man and ask permission…

If you want more information on Independent Film Distribution, check out The Indie Guide to Digital Self Distribution written by me.