How to Distribute Your Documentary Film

Video Transcript

"So you're done with your documentary, you know what do you do with it? And I'll say this is your first documentary, you know, you don't have a good track record or anything. You want to send it out, and basically you're kind of sending the thing out blind because, you know, if you want to send it to like HBO, if you think it's something that could be on HBO, you know, send it out there. Find the address and stuff, you know, on the internet. Find the contact person. So you're going have to do a little bit of research on who to send these things to. If you're going to send it to PBS, your local PBS, you know, find the person whose the programmer. You know, call them up, talk to them, tell them it's coming. You have to be persistent because people never return your phone calls or anything, but definitely when you mail something to them, you know, have it, you know, return receipt so you know that they received it. So, you know, after they get it, you know, call a month later because it takes them usually a couple months to watch these things because they get so much stuff in. You know, call them up and do a follow up thing, but you've gotta be persistent. I mean you're going to be calling, doing a lot of calls, and because it's your first documentary you want to make sure that it's as good it can be because, you know, this definitely shows what you can do. In terms of distribution to like libraries and just a home video, you know, it's to people who might want it. Well you can sell it on your own website, send review copies out to all the library publications like Library Video Journal, the Video Librarian, all those type of things because if you get a review in there you'll get a lot of orders, and then you can find lists of libraries and solicit them directly just saying that you have this program. So there's all different ways to do it, but it, you know, involves a lot of time, involves a lot of research. You know, after you do your first one you'll get all these connections, you'll know where to send stuff to so when you do your next documentary you kind of just put it in that slot and just you know, you know you've got to send it here, you've got to send it there, you've got to send it there. So the first one is where you find out, you know, kind of the difficulty it is to, to sell the documentary, you know, and so you'll be probably spending as much work doing that as you were making the thing to begin with. So just be pared, be prepared if you spend six months, you know, shooting and editing the project, well you're going to be spending the next six months, if not longer, trying to find a home for it, and if you spent this much time and put that much heart into your project, I mean that's the thing. You don't want to just send, you know, send it out to two places and get rejected and go oh nobody wants it. I mean, you know, you're going to be sending out to maybe hundreds of places so just be prepared to do that and send out lots of copies."