In years past, filmmakers only self distributed their movies when they had to. It wasn’t a choice! But these days, filmmakers can choose to self-distribute, because 9 times out of 10, making your title available on Amazon and iTunes and other popular VOD marketplaces can potentially pay more than a traditional deal. Because a deal that pays zero is not a deal. (Of course I’m expressing my opinion.)
For those of you who are adding your own thoughts to the Modern Moviemaking Manifesto, what I’m proposing is easier said than done. It is easy for me to talk about the success of our first feature. It is much more difficult to admit that our second feature bombed miserably.
Without a defined market or an established sales channel, it is difficult to justify financing, which makes it very difficult to pay cast and crew – which, by the way, makes it difficult to produce a movie. And assuming you can answer these questions, the problem is still economy of scale. If you can’t reach the masses (or reach enough people willing to pay for what you’re selling), how will you ever recoup your initial movie investment?
Since my last filmmaking podcast, I have been contacted by many of you. Some of you like my filmmaking ideas. Some of you think I’m crazy. But regardless of what you think, the world of independent filmmaking is changing. This is mostly because distribution is changing, which affects financing, which affects your ability to pay [...]
Over the weekend, I met with some key members of my film production crew, including my writer friend. He, myself and a core group of filmmaking friends are working a rough idea into a fine-tuned movie, complete with a marketable hook and an established, niche target audience. (If you’re just tuning into filmmaking stuff, you’ll quickly learn that starting with a defined target market in one strategy I use to hedge my eventual need for return on investment – more on this in the distribution and finance articles found at Filmmaking Stuff.)
