How to Promote an Indie Film

Video Transcript

"Okay. So you've shot your production, you've edited it, you have the music, it's finished, and now what are you going to do with it? Well, I'm sure you had a good idea from before you even started the project what your intention was so, you know, if it was for a film festival well now is the time to send it off to the film festival. If it's something intended for PBS, well you need to send it off to them. So, you know, what to do with it? That's the thing. You know features are probably the hardest thing because there's so many companies out there and there's such a glut in the market now that, you know, distributors basically kind of want stuff for free. So, you know, you have to balance that. Let's say you send your feature that you worked a year on, you know, invested all this time and money and everything, and the distributor is going to take it and they'll stick it in the video stores, but you're not going to get a cent from it. Well, you're going to get released and it'll be visible and that's kind, you know, that's what you want of course, you want people to see your production, but is it worth not making anything off it, and a lot of people think that, well the first movie they make, well it'll be a loss and I'll get exposure and it'll be worth it, but it doesn't always work that way. So you may make more money if you just sell it yourself, and with the way the internet is now and having your own website and such you may do a feature, you know, distribute the thing yourself because, you know, technology with DVDs and being able to do everything you can do that. So, you know, just really depends what your intention was before you even picked up the camera, but now, you know, you have to spend as much time, you know, selling it and getting it out there than all the time you spent making it. I mean, when you look at it making the project was easy. Finding a home for it, that's the hardest thing. So its persistence and it may even take longer to get the thing out there than it took you to make it. That's why when you go to the video store and you look in the back of the box and it says 2005 and it's like, you know, 2008. Well it took them three years to get distribution and it takes that long. So you kind of have to be prepared in your mind that, well it may take a couple years to get this thing out there, just depending. So, you know, when you start this you're basically in it for the long run and you should be prepared for that."