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Filmmaking resources for indie filmmakers, including, screenwriting, financing, producing and film distribution

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The Shocking Truth About Modern Moviemaking

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The other day I got into a debate with a friend about modern moviemaking. We were arguing over the difference between a “professional” movie and  an “amateur” movie. He contended that a professional movie needed a certain budget, cast and crew. And of course, I argued the opposite.

While the whole conversation was stupid, it reminded me that some people still think you need to ask permission to make money making movies.

When it comes to modern moviemaking, the only thing that matters is your end product. In this case, your product is a feature film. And if you are only able to shoot your film with a limited budget and limited locations, with scenes that are under-lit and contain no-name actors, that is okay – as long as you finish your film and find an audience that buys it.

modern moviemaking

The Shocking Truth About Modern Moviemaking

This mindset very much defines the entire modern moviemaking movement.

  1. You are efficient at using the resources you have right now to create your film.
  2. You don’t spend a ton of money, so you can recoup your initial investment faster.
  3. When you take a finished a product to market (a film over 70 minutes), you are a professional.

Modern Moviemaking Is All About Taking Your Finished Product To Market 

While many executives in Hollywood want you to believe that you need A-list celebrities, an expensive camera, and a budget in the hundreds of millions to make a real movie, this is a bunch of BS. The shocking truth about modern moviemaking is that if your movie makes money, no matter what the circumstance, then it is a real movie and you rock.

The Industry Is Changing

The options for traditional distribution are becoming increasingly sparse. DVD is dead and theatrical distribution is not a viable outlet for independent filmmakers. However digital distribution and cheap production technology now provides solid opportunities to get you film made, seen and selling.

There is no excuse to not start creating a film structured around your current cash, equipment, and location limitations.

There is no longer any difference between the dollars spent on “real” Hollywood movies and the dollars spent on your movie. And this is the essence of modern moviemaking.

5 Simple Steps To Help You Sell Your Movie On The Internet

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For years, filmmakers have faced uphill battles when it comes to making films and getting them out there for the world to see. Just finding funding for production on its own was (and still is) an amazing achievement. But once that a film is finished there’s still the matter of distribution. In this post, you’re going to learn how to sell your movie on the internet.

Distribution is simply the process of releasing your film for public consumption. In the past, the entire distribution process was safeguarded by a bunch of powerful conglomerates. And after a tiring tour on festival circuit, many filmmakers went into deals with these companies, lucky to sign even a crappy distribution deal. Thankfully, those days are done.

The internet has quite literally changed the game. As an indie filmmaker, you now have the ability to sell your film in popular marketplaces like iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, VUDU (and more) without a distribution deal.

sell your movie on the internet

5 Simple Steps To Help You Sell Your Movie On The Internet

While access to the marketplaces is exciting, you are now responsible for managing your own promotion. So taking time to focus on the following fundamentals is a good start. With that in mind, here are 5 key steps that you’ll want to remember.

  • Know Your Market – You’re never going to appeal to everyone. Just because streaming video puts your film in front of potentially millions of people, that doesn’t mean they’ll all watch it. Instead, know your niche market and then promote your film to your focused fan base.
  • Trolls Talk – Like it or not, some people are just going to troll you and your work. Even the most popular filmmakers have haters. The key is knowing that even those who troll your stuff may end up seeing it just to see how much more they can hate it. The bottom line? Don’t be afraid of people hating you and your work.
  • Stand Out – What’s the hook of your movie? What really helps it stand out from all the other films people can watch? The ease with which you can sell your movie on the internet has given rise to a flood of movies. It’s vital that your film has a marketing hook that stands out and gets you and your work noticed.
  • Build A Following – It’s hard for me not to bring up music bands when it comes to modern moviemaking… Because a lot of things are similar. Just as bands often build up a following in their early days, modern filmmakers do the same. Use a mailing list, online streaming releases, and even production blogs to help get your film in front of potential fans.
  • Use Your Website – Your website is your hub for building that fan base, for finding an audience, for marketing, for networking, and even for selling your film. Simply put, you need a solid, well-made website.

All in all, it still takes a lot of work to sell your movie on the internet. But if you put forth the effort, you’ll find that today’s distribution options make it easier than ever to get your work noticed so you can further build your career. And if you want to learn more, check out this film distribution training system.

How To Sharpen Your Movie Hook (So You Get Noticed)

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In business they have this thing called USP. A USP is your “unique selling proposition.” It is the one distinction that makes people buy one product over the next. In Hollywood we call this your movie hook. And without a strong movie hook, most filmmakers find themselves lost in a sea of other filmmakers clamoring to rise above the noise of mediocre movie making.

movie-hook

What Is Your Movie Hook?

When defining your movie hook, one of the first questions people ask is, what is your movie about? While this seems like a pretty easy question, if you find yourself rambling on about a complicated, character driven story, full of people reflecting on love and loss.

Don’t do this. A long description is confusing.

A confused mind doesn’t buy (or invest) in your movie.

To sell your title, your movie must be distinct and memorable. You need to make your movie REMARKABLE.

What do I mean by remarkable?

Here’s a brief story to explain how your movie hook influences word of mouth.

Picture this:

Let’s say you’re at a party. You chat with someone and they ask you about your movie.

Your Response: It’s about this guy who falls in love with a woman. Then they have issues. They break up. Then they get back together. It’s really a romantic comedy marketed to every man, woman and child in the world.

Do you see the flaw here? There is no real movie hook.

Do you understand how there is absolutely nothing in this description that makes me want to share your movie idea with other people?

And let’s use another example. Let’s say we start talking and you find out I love martial arts and that I’m really into Bruce Lee. In response, you tell me about the original Ip Man movie. (Ip Man was Bruce Lee’s mentor.)

Then you pull out your phone and share the following fight scene with me:

httpv://youtu.be/MCoH4FVgi7M

You can bet I’m going to remark about this. (I might even figure out a way to add it to a Filmmaking Stuff article about finding a movie hook so thousands of people can see my remarks.)

The point here is this. You can have the best movie in the world, but nobody will care about your movie until they care about your movie.

And you have to make them care.

The only way to make people care is to show them something remarkable. And the only way to do that is to make sure there is market for your movie and that you have a sharp movie hook.

In the Ip Man example above, the market is: Martial Arts Movie Enthusiasts.

The movie hook is: The story of Bruce Lee’s Mentor

How To Find Your Movie Hook

Finding your movie hook revolves around taking your broad movie concept and distilling it down to the bare, yet memorable essentials.

For example, let’s say your movie hook is described as “A boxer fights for the title.”

Obviously this is a succinct log-line, but it lacks memorable detail.

So your next job is to incorporate some flavorful elements into your movie hook.

Here is the same example with added detail: “An impoverished boxer is given a once in a lifetime chance to fight for the world heavyweight title.”

Can you guess what movie I’m describing?

With this movie hook example, you can see how the extra detail adds sizzle to the description.

Taking time to sharpen your movie hook will help you in two arenas.

Firstly, with this description, your prospective audience will immediately understand how your movie differs from all the other boxer movies. And from a marketing perspective, the words “boxer,” “fights,” and “heavyweight title” will help you to target your core audience and later, these keywords will help you jump-start your internet search engine optimization campaign.

Finding your movie hook is the start of your movie marketing. Once you have a movie hook, you can then answer the next, very important marketing questions. Take a moment to answer:

  1. Who Is Your Target Audience?
  2. How Large Is Your Target Audience?
  3. How Will You Reach Your Audience?
  4. What Is Your Marketing Strategy?
  5. How Many VOD Sales To Break Even?

For many filmmakers, the benefit of creating a movie hook, as well as marketing, sales and distribution plan saves TONS of headaches when you actually take your movie to market. And putting together a distribution plan is a lot easier than you think. For more information on how to market and sell your movie, check out my newly updated distribution system at www.HowToSellYourMovie.com

How To Overcome Your BIG Filmmaking Challenges

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Over the past year, we have seen a lot of developments in the indie filmmaking space. New technology coupled with non-discriminatory distribution has enabled many would-be filmmakers to finally get a feature made and distributed.

While most of us in the indie filmmaking community welcome these changes – The downside to these innovations is the market is now saturated with backyard indies.

The other day I asked members of the Filmmaking Stuff Facebook community to describe their biggest indie filmmaking challenges. Minutes later, it became clear that the most glaring obstacles revolved around:

  1. Film Finance
  2. Movie distribution.

This seems right. Like you, there was once a time when I had no idea on how to finance, make, market, sell and distribute a movie. I remember spending countless hours reading everything I could get my hands on. Most of those filmmaking resources let me down. None of them helped me overcome my particular indie filmmaking challenges.

So I decided to address both points below and offer solid solutions you can utilize to get your movie made, seen and selling.

filmmaking challenges

Indie Filmmaking Challenge – Film Finance

You know you need money to make a movie. Your indie filmmaking challenge here is obviously finding the money. Read any filmmaking book and the solution almost always involves some ridiculous scenarios where you either hire a seasoned producer to raise the money (wouldn’t that be nice) or find someone with disposable income, like a doctor or dentist.

I’m sure you heard this useless crap too. I am tired of it.

So here is your non-magical solution to film finance. Notice I DID NOT say easy. What I’m about to share is not easy. I am sorry. If you don’t like a challenge, choose another profession or simply buy another indie filmmaking book that promises fame and fortune. But for those of you wiling to do the work, here are the steps for raising money:

  1. Write or acquire a great script.
  2. Break your script into a schedule and budget.
  3. Create a business plan that outlines how you will make, market and sell the movie.
  4. Have a lawyer draft a Private Placement Memorandum.
  5. Approach prospective investors and ask for the money.

While the entire indie film finance process can be broken down into five basic steps, it may take you months or even a year or more to get your movie fully financed. At this stage, your indie filmmaking challenge is to decide if you want to keep going, or perhaps save your blockbuster for another time and focus on making a smaller movie now. I personally think it’s better to make a feature than wait. But only you can decide what’s right for you.

Regardless of the scope and scale of your project, most prospective investors will want to know how they will benefit from your movie. Tom Malloy talks about this quite a bit in our film finance guide – But the basic thing to remember is that each prospective investor is looking for a different payoff. Some want a financial return. But some simply want to get involved in the movies.

It is important that you do more listening than talking. Figure out what the investor wants and then provide that. In all scenarios, investors will likely ask what your plans are for marketing, sales and distribution. And that leads me to address the next point in your biggest indie filmmaking challenge – Distribution.

Indie Filmmaking Challenge – Distribution

There was a time when film distribution required someone picking up your move in exchange for a tremendous outlay of cash. Those days are over. Thousands of filmmakers flood the market with cheaply produced backyard indies. DVD distribution has been replaced by VOD distribution. And traditional distributors (with minor exception) no longer offer minimum guarantees.

filmmaking_challenge_solved
The cast of Special Dead.

Sounds pretty wacky, right? Wrong.

Many traditional distributors still pretend it’s 1995 and avenues to the marketplace are limited. But this is not true. Getting onto iTunes or Amazon or any number of VOD outlets is simply a matter of choosing one of the popular encoding houses and shelling out a few thousand bucks.

I cover a lot of this in my indie guide to digital distribution. But the bottom line is, you no longer need a traditional distributor to grant you access to these marketplaces. (Especially if the deal is not good!)

Here are your steps to distribute your movie:

  1. Create a marketing plan and launch strategy. (This should be part of your business plan.)
  2. Get your movie onto popular VOD platforms like Amazon, iTunes and Pivotshare (and others).
  3. Come up with an advertising strategy that pays for itself and provides a profit.

Once again, I oversimplified this. Your indie filmmaking challenge with distribution is creating a strategy that makes sense for your movie. You need to move enough units of your movie to show a profit. Otherwise, you will be operating at a loss. And nobody wants to lose money… Because that’s not a real business.

If you’re like most indie filmmakers, you want me to prove that this works. You want Video On Demand Sales Projections to show your prospective investors. The truth is, most investors will see your projections as fluff. The reason is simple – Just because The Polish Brothers were able to have one of the highest grossing movies on iTunes does not mean that your movie will have similar success.

There. I said it.

More important than any VOD sales projections is figuring out how you will leverage VOD sales, to sell more movies. In short, there are some old fashioned direct mail formulas that will serve as an awesome starting point for actual scenarios. You can utilize these in your business plans. And savvy investors will understand.

You need to plan both your financing and distribution strategy as if you are your own mini studio. Because you are. If you plan to make, market and sell movies – you now have the technological firepower to take your filmmaking dreams to the big screen. And the best part? You don’t need to ask me or any other film professional for permission.

But you have to take action and make things happen.

What is your biggest indie filmmaking challenge? Feel free to tweet this and comment below.

 

 

Digital Self Distribution: How To Sell Your Movie Online

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Having spent the last few years working in film distribution, I can tell you the landscape is changing. Instead of crossing fingers for an awesome distribution deal, entrepreneurial filmmakers now have options for taking ownership over their products and reaching audiences directly.

In response, smart distributors are keen to work with filmmakers who, aside from having a great movie, can also demonstrate an ironclad digital self distribution plan. In other-words, film distributors seek projects that don’t actually need a distributor. Many distributors pay for this privilege.

Distributors have always worked to acquire projects that offered the lowest risk with the highest potential for reward. In the past, a low risk project was one that had a name actor with a ton of international value. And these days, because film distribution is increasingly online, a low risk project is one with a famed YouTuber.

A distributor naturally assumes the YouTuber will promote the movie to his or her audience. And by having a famed YouTuber, a distributor does not have to pay marketing money to build word of mouth. Less money spent for marketing, equals a lower risk for the distributor. And this means a lot more reward for you.

Digital Self Distribution

Digital Self Distribution: How To Sell Your Movie Online

But what if your movie doesn’t have a famed YouTuber or a movie star? After months and months of hustle, the reality of how you’ll garner ROI (return on investment) might be slightly different than the idealized imaginings of the three-picture studio deal you once had.

The reason for this is simple. Your project is too risky.

So your first order of business is to lower the risk and increase the potential for reward. And that starts by creating your digital self distribution plan. Here are five tips to help:

1. Find your USP: In the world of marketing, USP is short for Unique Selling Proposition. And if you can’t market your move based on celebrity, the next step is to leverage whatever makes your movie unique, interesting and memorable. Do you have a cutting edge horror movie? Ninja movie? Girl with a horse movie? Or a food documentary on why you should quit meat for a plant based diet? Great!

2. Focus on Controversy: What aspect of your story provokes an emotional response? Think of how politicians market during a political campaign. Most folks either hate the message or they love it. Does your movie make a polarizing statement? Is there anything about your movie that makes some people totally dislike it, while other people LOVE it? Great. Use controversy to spark word of mouth.

3. Create a Marketing Plan: Creating a marketing plan is less complex than you think. Just answer these questions: Who is your target audience? How will you reach your target audience? Based on your budget, how many unit sales will it take you to break even? How will you make this happen without losing money?

4. Update Your Marketing: When I evaluate movies for distribution, the ones that grab my attention look professional. I instantly know what the movie is about and where it fits in terms of genre. Branding is the marketing equivalent of matching your belt with your shoes. Look at other movies in a similar genre. Make sure you present your movie like a “real” movie. Hire a graphic designer.

5. Digital Self Distribution Platforms: Even if you are seeking a traditional deal, you should simultaneously plan your release strategy as if you do not have a deal. This means getting to know some DIY platforms. You might do film festivals or use Tugg for your theatrical release. You might then consider some transactional video on demand platforms. This way, if you don’t actually land a favorable distribution deal, you’ll still enter the market.

No longer can you make a movie on spec, cross your fingers and hope a deal finds you. You have to find your own deal. But unlike years past, you are no longer limited. You can leverage technology to market your movie directly to a global audience. And that’s what digital self distribution is all about.

Want to plan your distribution strategy? Check out my digital self distribution system.