One must analyze one’s investment of time and costs in doing delivery before committing to any distribution option. Can you do yourself what the platform is offering to do for you? How much time and cost will you take on to accomplish the task? Is it worth it to pay someone for their expertise and connections? Just because it is theoretically possible to handle the work yourself doesn’t mean that is the best option for you to choose.

Much of this information can be found within our Digital Distribution Guide, available to our members. For this week, you can gain access to the full Guide by contributing $35 to our IndieGoGo campaign.

Request to Keep Assets that Others Create for Your Film

Make sure you get all of the elements for each stage of the delivery process, whether it is the files for your authored DVD or if it is a subtitled version of you film that a foreign film festival created or if it the files for the closed captioning of your film.   I had a cc version of Bomb It created for Canadian television.   I received the master HD of this version, however not the closed captioning file.  Because of this I will need to pay for the cc process again. I was however smart enough to request copies of any subtitled version made for foreign film fest screenings or broadcast.

I just screened Bomb It in Tel Aviv.  The venue wants to screen it again, but with Hebrew subtitles.  I just completed a deal for Israeli television which requires them to provide me with the subtitles and a Hebrew subtitled DVD.  So now I have a DVD to use for the next screening of Bomb It – this time with Hebrew subtitles.

My workshops are coming to NYC on June 5 & 6^th organized through IFP – and Vancouver on June 12 & 13^th.   One of the perks of attending is a digital pack of articles and documents including a delivery schedule and blank boilerplate budget in Excel.  I hope to see you there! Check out the book and workshops here.

Full Frame Video Delivery Still Exists

Even though the world is moving to HD and its 16:9 aspect ratio as a standard, some television and VOD contracts require a full frame 4×3 version. In smaller deals, you can often push your way out of this requirement, but on some bigger sales with bigger companies –just may not take your title if you don’t have a full frame 4×3 version.  This is not a letterboxed version that has black bars top and bottom.   It is the dreaded “pan and scan”.  However it is a pan and scan that you can control – and you can pay to have a pan and scan done. A less expensive approach is a 4×3 extraction. This is a down convert from HD 16:9  in which a machine pulls the center of the picture into the full 4×3 frame.   Remind yourself that you won’t have to be there when people see it. You can also wait to do this until you are forced to deliver one.  When you are doing your DI – make sure that your titles/subtitles/graphics are very title safe – so that they stay in the frame when the extraction occurs – otherwise you’ll have to replace each of those titles individually – NOT FUN (I know from experience)

My workshops are coming to NYC on June 5 & 6^th organized through IFP – and Vancouver on June 12 & 13^th.   One of the perks of attending is a digital pack of articles and documents including a delivery schedule and blank boilerplate budget in Excel.  I hope to see you there! Check out the book and workshops here.

Don’t Do Your Deliveries Alone

Yesterday I mentioned how onerous delivering your film can be.    As a result – Having someone on your team either help with or do your deliveries is manna from heaven. This alone is a reason to have a Producer of Marketing and Distribution.   If you are self distributing or using an involved trans media project, you will have many more deliverables than what is conventional. It is also a reason to start doing them during production when you have the most crew available to help.

My workshops are coming to NYC on June 5 & 6^th organized through IFP – and Vancouver on June 12 & 13^th.   One of the perks of attending is a digital pack of articles and documents including a delivery schedule and blank boilerplate budget in Excel.  I hope to see you there! Check out the book and workshops here.

Start Your Deliveries During Production

As I continue to create delivery elements for Bomb It (for new sales three years after its premiere), I am reminded as to how onerous they are.  Deliverables are the assets you need to deliver to distributors so that they can exhibit/sell your film.    You need to start developing them during production.  You should be organizing your contracts, keeping track of your chain of title (which actually starts at prep) and creating digital assets such as stills and video.  Stills are hugely important and you need three types of stills:  Of the Film, Of the Crew (mainly the director), and Specials of The Actors. Check out a list of conventional deliveries – and then expand that to include any trans media assets you will need.  You’ll thank me for starting earlier than you think.

My workshops are coming to NYC on June 5 & 6^th organized through IFP – and Vancouver on June 12 & 13^th.   One of the perks of attending is a digital pack of articles and documents including a delivery schedule and blank boilerplate budget in Excel.  I hope to see you there! Check out the book and workshops here.

This is a repost with some adaptation of a post on digiday:DAILY by B.L. Ochman. I thought it was important to emphasize the points she made here because I talk a lot about the wonders of social media marketing for the independent filmmaker and how it gives the power to reach niche audiences like never before. But it isn’t the end all, be all of your marketing strategy. The use of social media is just one tool in the marketing mix and should not be the only tool relied upon for spreading the word about your project.

Social media can’t:   

Substitute for marketing strategy
A Twitter campaign, or a Facebook page that announces your latest activities is not a marketing strategy. Marketing strategy encompasses the type of film you have, the audience you are targeting, where you find that audience and how you connect with them. Campaigns only use the tactics (like Twitter and Facebook), but they don’t define what you are trying to accomplish. A complete strategy must be defined. 

Succeed without top management buy-in
Social media requires a way of thinking that includes willingness to listen to customers (that would be your audience), make changes based on feedback (changes to your script, your trailer, your rough cut etc.), and trust employees to talk to customers (this would be your cast and crew or other members of your production team). Using social media is meant to be collaborative and engaging, so if you aren’t going to put in that kind of time or trust someone else to do it, do not use social media.

Be viewed as a short-term project
Social media is not a one-shot deal. It’s a long-term commitment to openness, experimentation, and change that requires time to bear fruit. This is why I advise to set up your platforms as soon as possible, even during script stage but for sure during production. It will take a long time to gather attention and a core following. It also must be fostered on a regular basis or it will not gather an audience.

Produce meaningful, measurable results quickly
One of the complaints about social media is that it can’t be measured. But in fact there are many things that can be measured: including engagement, sentiment, and whether increased traffic leads to sales. Those results can’t be produced or measured in the short term. Like PR, social media marketing often produces its best results over a long period of time, like a year or two.

Be done in-house by the vast majority of companies
A successful social media campaign integrates social media into the many elements of marketing, including advertising, digital, and PR. Opinion and theory are no match for experience, and the best social media marketers have experience incorporating interactivity, blogs, forums, user-generated content, and contests into online marketing. You need strategy, contacts, tools, and experience–a combination not generally found in-house, so you are forced to reinvent the wheel or choose the wrong tools.

Provide a quick fix to the bottom line or a tarnished reputation
Social media can sometimes provide quick results for a company (or filmmaker) that is already a star. That’s why you see well known celebrities and directors gather large followings for their projects, seemingly overnight. However, there’s a lot of desperation these days and many seem been convinced that a social media campaign can provide a quick fix to sagging sales or reputation issues. Sorry, it doesn’t work that way.

Be done without a realistic budget
Building a site that incorporates interactivity, allows user-generated content, and perhaps also includes e-commerce doesn’t come cheap from anyone who knows what they are doing. Even taking free software like WordPress and making it function as an effective interactive site, incorporating e-commerce, creating style sheets that integrate with the company’s branding, takes more than time. That takes skill, experience, and money.

Guarantee sales or influence
Unless your effort can pass the “who cares” test  – and most simply can’t – your social media efforts will fall flat.  Unless you know how to drive traffic to your contest, video, blog, event, etc. you’ll have little more than an expensive field of dreams.

Be done by “kids” who “understand social innately”
You can climb Mt Kilaminjaro without a sherpa guide, but why would you? Experience and perspective can make the trip easier, or even save your life. Companies (or filmmakers) trying to run social media without experienced consultants waste time, money, and reputation on their efforts. And then, sadly, many decide that this new-fangled approach doesn’t work.

Replace PR
No matter how great your website, video contest, blog, Twitter strategy, etc. you still need publicity. Just because you build it doesn’t mean they will come.

The term Deliverables will come up when it is time to sign a contract with your sales agent in order for him to find traditional distribution for your film (theatrical, DVD, VOD,  broadcast, basically public viewing of your film handled by someone else) or with a distributor directly. Deliverables refer to a list of  requirements such as print materials, publicity materials and legal documentation needed to release a film. Deliverables are the last things created by the production team and delivered to the film’s distributor, but are often overlooked by the novice filmmaker.

A deliverables list is usually extensive and can vary wildly depending on the company handling the sale. It is also an expense that is underestimated, wildly underestimated. The latest figure I heard from a professional in the industry was close to $50K and that is if you have done your post production correctly! It is an expense incurred by the filmmaker, usually up front but in rare cases the distributor will front it and take it out of the filmmaker’s cut. So what is on this list that can be so expensive?

Below, you will find a general example of the things asked for by a sales agent or distributor to release your film to the public. This is not an exhaustive list, just commonly asked items. I have heard of some lists running into 7 pages long! Some items can be negotiated. The most expensive items are the prints which can run up to the tens of thousands alone for a feature film. If your audio and sound track were not professionally cut and separated, this is a very expensive redo as well. Careful now, your head is going to spin!

This information was sourced from the Access Film Markets web site.

This post is not meant to scare you away from following your artistic dreams of making a film and having it traditionally distributed. However, the film business is a business like any other and you must be prepared for the realities of it. Every deal is different and there is no set in stone contract. Make sure your deal is assessed by a knowledgeable entertainment attorney and let them advise you on what can and should be negotiated.