The Radical change  during internet 2.0 was this: Artists took back control of their own works their IP (intellectual property 101) and major studios bit the dust.  Remnants of brick & mortar or keys to the Cadillac   more about that in an upcoming blog...the standard distribution models were written in stone. Today it's Hurray (not) for Hollywood -the ground has been broken. Tectonic plates have shifted in the Land of T-Rex.

Nosferatu my favourite open source Dracula

The music Industry was the first instance where the music artists and majors music giants i.e Sony , Warner bobbed or drowned altogether; technology opened doors and devoured an entire industry or two... In Internet Era 2.0 circa early to mid 2000's. Bandwith and internet connections were going through puberty and music tracks were easiest to upload download.  whereas film files would could take days to upload/download. But that too would last just a few seconds and within a couple of years the film industry would meet a similar fate.

For a producer getting the funding  calling it a wrap (heavenly sounds!)  is where (more) obstacles begin to pop or  stop.

Distribution is like beating a dead horse to get up and run. Even with an award, festival buzz can be a big help the crucial in th eoverall upstart of an publically anticipated film, a film lifeblood is at the beginning. Festivals can be vital tto this process. which can grow in time , these films a rean exceptiion trather than the rule.

 Sadly this often means that the heart and brain  flatlines together with years of hard work and money - simply stop beating. And as the producer or let's face it the director producer often  the creative force behind production gets discouraged or hasn't put marketing into the budget. Without a plan for distribution via traditional or new online distribution networks. Singles vs deals i.e. Netflix vs eOne. one place everyone goes are festivals and conferences allow for networking  expanding your professional network. 

In th eold days of studio marketing inhouse i.e. th emajors of yesteryear it's truly a jungle out there.

THe independent niche drven marketplace is where it's at and is the beauty of the new ways in which you can market your film.

The one issue producers and directors avoid, until the last possible moment of their filmmaking journey, is distribution. The “dreaded” D word. They put it off because it's complicated. Believing a distributor will do it all and make some fantastic multi-million-dollar deal you  think about it again. Well those days died in the mid nineties.

Film distribution is sexy. Filmmakers who build sustainable careers with their work. 

So how can you achieve successful distribution when you don’t get offered that multi-million-dollar deal? Up until the mid-late 1990s, independent films were frequently acquired by one company for all rights. You made one deal, or maybe two, and you were done. Distributors dealt with the it all.

Along came the internet and social-media revolutions and the early digital platforms for film. Democracy in distribution was the buzz but the money was missing with early digital platforms. 

Today, we have arrived at the next evolutionary step of indie film distribution, which contains three key principles: (1) Optimally leverage your film into each major market; (2) Split your rights up amongst multiple companies or situations (assuming you didn’t get that fat check from Fox Searchlight or The Weinstein Company), and (3) Recognize what’s occurred with the online film platforms over the past two years, and leverage this maturing market correctly.

Here’s what each of the three principles mean:

 1. Optimally leveraging your film into each major market (theatrical, Blu-ray/DVD, VOD, internet, television, foreign), is simply going after and exploiting every single major market. Starting at theatrical (if appropriate) and working down in a a hierarchical way.

Skipping markets — something many independent filmmakers are doing these days — and heading right to the internet is may not a winning strategy. It can work for filmmakers but typcially still have secret cache of money from a silent major or  larger independent.

In the music world bands like Radiohead could launch a track or two for no money or pay as you please. But without a marquee name yourself, or a star-powered cast, straight to online market means little / no  revenues and ultimate failure.Even if your film is a masterpiece. Even sadder.

 2. Splitting your rights up amongst multiple companies or situations has actually been a strategy many producers have been using since the mid-late ’90s (including myself). It means making a deal with one company for Blu-ray/DVD rights, another company for VOD rights, another company for foreign rights, and so on.

When filmmakers make one deal for all rights (an “all-rights” deal) with one company, this is usually the mistake that kills them — unless they’re getting a nice big check in advance. Why does it “kill” them? Frankly, there are many crooked distributors out there, who will not pay a producer their fair share of the profits, and/or will use accounting tricks such as cross-collateralization to always show a loss.

 3. Recognizing what’s occurred with the online platforms over thepast several years requires understanding a brief history of digital distribution. The early platforms for movies got a tremendous amount of buzz in the beginning. Filmmakers  uploaded their films available for online VOD, but the public didn’t pay for it. IN fact a whoe generation of young people have never paid for a music track nevermind a film.

For one, broadband capability (and speed) was not yet ubiquitous, and secondly, the public was resistant to watching full-length movies on their computers. So the revenues were just not there.

But here we are, just a few years later, and the market has been growing every year for revenues. The majority of the country has broadband now, more peoples’ televisions are connected to the internet (or they have connected devices) and of course tablets hit the market in 2010 — which made movie watching on-the-go more palatable than trying to use a cellphone.

Additionally, the “big boys” (Amazon, Vudu, Xbox, Hulu, etc.) have all matured and hold unquestionable market share now. The smaller indie players of the late ’00s no longer have significant traffic and cannot generate serious revenues for most producers. They couldn’t before for the reasons stated above, and don’t now.

Some may take issue with my characterization of the small indie platforms. But let’s be real here: Do you want to sell your film, or do you want to be on a bunch of platforms that don’t have sustainable traffic and sales? If you’d like to try some independent platforms, great, go for it! But today you absolutely need to be on the big boys’ platforms as well. Unfortunately, nine out of 10 filmmakers simply do not understand this.

If you view distribution holding these three principles in mind, and you take the correct actions, there is virtually no reason that you cannot see real returns on your films. (The only reason you wouldn’t is avoidance, or perhaps laziness over learning and understanding the marketplace.)

Those producers and directors that are utilizing the “Film Distribution 3.0” approach? They are seeing real success.

In my next blog, I’ll cover the realities of getting into the theatrical, home video (Blu-ray/DVD) and VOD markets for your film.

Laurie Gordon

resources: Jerome Coushon -The Wrap