You've put your heart and soul into your film, you've sacraficed nights, weekends, sleep, food. You've begged, lied, cheated to get your film made. You've taken your film to a couple of festivals, gained some recognition, maybe even won a few awards. But you still find yourself without distribution. Before seeking desperate measures and signing with an unkown company to either represent or distribute your film, look into self-distribution as an option. It may not be as hard as you think.
"Like most industries, the film industry contains its share of those seeking to take advantage of vulnerability. Bottom line: Be Careful with your choices".
A: THEATRICAL RELASE
If you can book your film in the top 20 markets (NY, LA, Chicago) with at least 1 print in 1 art house theater for 2 weeks with corresponding publicity and ads, you will have created a product that the audience believes has a perceived value of a $10 ticket. Even if you find nobody attends the screenings, this 'perception' will trigger sales to the ancillary markets. To book, you will probably get a percentage deal (25 - 35% of box office) or a 'house-nut' deal, where the theater owner takes out his expenses first, then splits. Another method is called '4-Walling', where you literally rent the 4 walls of the theater, place your ads, sit in the box office boot, pray, and keep all the money for yourself.
B: PPV
Depending on your theatrical exposure, you can now sell the Pay-Per-View rights to companies who will split 50-50 with you on distribution revenues from hotel/motel travelers ($6-$7 fee) and home viewers.
C: DVD
This could be wonderful revenue. Assuming your film has been booked in theaters and video renters have seen the newspaper ads but did not attend the movie when it was in theaters, they are now curious about seeing it at home. Let’s assume there are 25,000 video stores who each purchase only 2 cassettes each from a video distributor at a fee of $99. You will gross almost $5.0 million. If, at the low end, 1 out of 5 stores orders only 1 DVD priced at $24.95, the video distributor will gross $125,000. Thus, DVD sales could range from $125,000 to $5 million depending upon the theatrical exposure and word-of-mouth of your product when it was in theaters.
D: PAY CABLE
Your best sales now will be to the cable industry, but specifically to those channels that program mostly movies. For our purposes, movies are defined as “those things that you see in newspaper ads in the entertainment section.” The pay-
cable buyers are HBO, Cinemax (owned by HBO), Showtime, The Movie Channel (owned by Showtime), StarZ, Encore (owned by StarZ), Disney and Playboy. Disney and Playboy don’t pay big dollars. Thus, there are only 3 cable networks who will give
you $100,000-$1,000,000 for a limited theatrical release. They are HBO, Showtime, or StarZ. Good luck.
E: BASIC CABLE
Although pay cable pays the most, the likelihood of getting a sale to one of the big 3 is not good if you haven’t had your film in at least the top 20 markets. However, you can get basic cable sales of $25,000-$150,000 from basic cable networks that cablecast films that have no theatrical release but have been award winners at festivals. These networks are the Independent Film Channel, Bravo, Sundance, TNT, TBS, USA, A&E, etc.
F: PBS/TV
The most prestigious sale will probably be to PBS. Although the money is not great ($425-$550/minute) it could still garner you an additional $25,000-$60,000 and massive credibility. Thus, get the Public Broadcasting Directory ($15
from Corporation of Public Broadcasting) and contract stations. You will either get a “lead” or “presenting” station (see directory above) or a regional network, such as CEN (Central Education Network, Des Plaines, Illinois) or PMN (Pacific Mountain Network, Denver) or SECA (Southern Educational Communications Association, Columbia, South Carolina), etc.
ADDITIONAL: FOREIGN MARKETS
Besides America, think globally. hus, you would like to sell, (the correct word is “license”) your film to other nations or territories. There are approximately 35 nations (Germany, Italy, France, Japan, Ecuador, Israel, etc.) or territories (Middle East, east Africa, Benelux, Scandinavia, etc.) around the world that can afford to pay you some money for the rights to market your film in their nation for a period of 4-10 years. To reach these international buyers you will
attend 1 or 2 of the 3-5 film markets (AFM, Cannes, MIFED, RAINDANCE & IFFM) that take place each year and make an arrangement with a foreign sales company which will represent your product for a fee of approximately 35 percent.
