Film Making / Distribution >

Selling Your Film
Independent documentary producers are a stalwart bunch. Often laboring for years chronicling the far-from-certain fates of their respective subjects, they enter a parallel and equally uncertain universe of film festivals and markets in search of that elusive prize: an audience. They should be encouraged; the U.S. theatrical market for documentaries is better than it's ever been, thanks in part to the recent success of films like Brothers' Keeper, Hoop Dreams, Unzipped and Crumb. Nevertheless, as in the best documentaries, reality has a way of derailing one's hopes and dreams; the vast majority of documentary films will never, in fact, be picked up for theatrical distribution.

Delivering a Film
Delivery requirements vary from distributor to distributor. But anyone selling a film to one of the larger theatrical distributors or bigger foreign sales agents can count on having to deliver the basic items below.

Self-Distribution

1. Don't buy into your own hype
2. Develop a strategy and stick to it.
3. Know the terrain
4. Know the calendar
5. Know the players
6. Keep the heat down until you are ready to screen
7. Enhance your film's value
8. Seek outside validation
9. Hand the ball off
10. Reevaluate and follow-up
11. Close deals quickly
12. Declare victory and move on
    

Alternative Distribution
Theatrical distribution, in its current form, is no longer a realistic possibility for the vast majority of independent, specialized, cult, underground or art films produced today.

Specialized theatrical distribution as we know it only reaches the standard art-film audience, which is graying by the day, and the "urban sophisticates" who follow like lemmings the popular wisdom of today's newspaper critics and television tastemakers. It takes serious ad dollars to reach these folk and put their butts into gear. And because spending this kind of money requires hopes of large returns, standard distribution is predicated upon crossover dreams.

Unless the means are created to reach new, untapped film-going niches and supply them with cinematic satisfaction on a regular basis, audiences had better resign themselves to a pretty bland diet. And if we, the independent film community, remain loyal to antiquated distribution systems, we are digging our own graves.

Agents and Reps
There is no question that agents are essential to independent filmmakers who want to work as directors (and, increasingly often, as writers) within the traditional studio system where the studio or one of its producers first develops a project and then hires the various individuals necessary to produce a picture. While many "purer" filmmakers scoff at the prospect of such a mercenary use of their talent, everyone needs to eat, and, since the period necessary to obtain financing for the next opus is indeterminant at best, such assignments can often be music to even a purist's ears. (Let's face it, very few of us are like John Sayles, who can generate not only the rent but also a significant portion of the budget for his own films through his demand as a studio scriptwriter.)

Top >