Independent Film Distribution in 2019 and Beyond

When you set out to make an independent film, you set your goals, and surely one of your main goals is to get as many eyes as possible to see your work. Making money off the project would also be nice, but how the heck do you achieve these goals? I’ll share my story and lessons I’ve learned along the way. If anything, this will hopefully present some options for you as they exist now.

The landscape for distribution is ever-changing. In 2009 when we made Go West Happy Cow, we knew going into it that we were a very small player and exhibition in movie theaters was not an option. Not only is it incredibly expensive to exhibit your film in theaters, it’s practically impossible without a studio behind it. Even if you could buy your way into screening your movie at the local cineplex, you need a substantial budget to promote your movie or no one is going to see it. So, movie theater exhibition is out of the question, at least for the vast majority of independent films.

That’s not to say you can’t still show your film on the “big screen.” An achievable goal for an independent film is to get some love in the festival circuit. Before your movie is finished, but when you have a handle on when it will be finished, you should start a list of festivals that you want to screen in. There are thousands upon thousands of film festivals all around the world, including many niche festivals that your project might be perfectly suited for. We used Withoutabox (ending their services late-2019) to find a handful we liked. If you go after the big-name festivals, keep in mind that it’s uber-competitive and many of these festivals (take Sundance, for example) will not even consider your film unless it will world premiere at that particular festival. This fact alone may be a deal-breaker for your project. Another factor to consider is film festivals will also charge an entry fee. The fee might be a few bucks to well over $100 (just to submit) and if you get rejected by the festival, you do not get your money back, so be smart about your submissions. Choose quality over quantity. Timing is another consideration. There are film festivals at all times of the year and the submission deadline for these festivals varies accordingly. If you are finishing your movie in January or February, you’ll be too late to submit for Sundance for that calendar year because Sundance is generally at the start of the year. Do you want to sit on your finished film and wait to have your Sundance world premiere a year later? Probably not. Along the same lines, while festivals may say they accept a rough cut of your film for consideration (assuming the final cut will be ready when the actual festival occurs), avoid submitting a rough cut. A rough cut is not a good indication (for you or the festival) about how good a film will be and you’re likely to get rejected. Keep your rough cuts private and internal, between you and your post-production team, and don’t share your project until it’s truly ready to be seen. Festivals are only going to give you one shot to get in so put your best, most complete work forward.

Screening in film festivals may or may not generate some money for your project. It is possible, especially at more premier festivals, to get a distribution deal at a film festival. This was especially true in the 1990s (I highly recommend reading Peter Biskund’s Down and Dirty Pictures). Studios/distributors send people to various festivals to scout for projects to put their resources and support behind. Sometimes festivals have an entirely separate marketplace for buying and selling projects. One movie I worked on, 7 in the Torture Chamber, travelled all the way to Cannes Film Festival to find a buyer in their International marketplace. Still, all of this is another very long shot, but not entirely impossible. You most likely will not generate a penny from ticket sales for your film at a film festival. Ticket sales money all goes back to the festival to pay their bills and workers. You might be paid something for the rights to publicly screen your movie, but don’t expect it. If anything you are paying money to be in the festival so you will end your film’s festival run well in the red ink. When Go West Happy Cow had its festival run, circa 2012, we were always able to set up a merchandise table to sell our DVDs and t-shirts and that actually got us some money. Selling your movie at a public screening was always the most effective way we would actually sell copies. You may have to share a percentage of your sales with the festival, but that can still generate some money for your film.

If you still dream of screening your movie publicly, but you don’t have a studio’s support and its festival run is underwhelming, you can always set up your own screening. Playhouses, performance halls, community centers, and most theaters allow you to rent out their space. There will be costs involved for nearly every part of this, usually starting with a deposit to secure your date, then paying staff and paying for the space itself. It can be a gamble to pay $1,000+ just to screen your movie publicly, but if you are certain you can sell enough tickets and merchandise, you can walk away with a profit. With Go West Happy Cow, we utilized Eventbrite to sell advance tickets to several of our public screenings across Los Angeles. We also got some free publicity through local newspapers and publications, made colorful flyers to hand out at events, and used email blasts to our already-established mailing list of fans, and then we added activities other than our movie – concessions, a raffle with prizes, a DJ, a comedian, a food truck, an afterparty, etc.. With proper planning and time, this can be a money-maker! Remember, you’re competing for people’s time and money and you need to have an activity that will be appealing and entertaining or your prospective audience will find something else to do. How many times have you thought of going out and doing something, but instead settled for staying in with your snacks and watching something on Netflix or TV?

You made an independent film and every penny counts, so maybe you don’t even have the goal of showing your work on the big screen, in festivals, or at your own screenings. That’s fine too! Distribution in 2019 has many options. Your audience will be watching your work on little phone screens, on their computer, on a TV, maybe even on a plane. Ultimately, s screen is a screen and another set of eyes seeing your project is a good thing, regardless of how they see it!

My first feature film, a truly horrible horror film called Experiment in Torture, was entirely a straight-to-video play. We made the film in 2006 and road the coattails of movies like Saw (2004)and Hostel (2005), investing very little in the actual production (I was paid $1,000 to do ALL of the post production, from editing, to sound design, to color correction, to delivery). Don’t be that cheap! Despite its crapiness on every level, Lionsgate picked up our little movie and gave it a slick trailer and packaging. In 2006, it was still possible to get a bunch of people to pay for your movie because the cover art looked cool, especially in the horror genre. The formula was much more predictable when your main audience was shopping for a title at a Blockbuster, FYE, or Best Buy. Note that artwork and a great trailer remain vital in marketing your film, but the options for marketing and selling are totally different some dozen years later.

It’s rather obvious: physical media is dead. Napster and the likes killed the physical music market, mainly CDs, in the early-2000s and Netflix and the likes have killed DVDs and the physical movie market over the last decade. This is not a bad thing and I’ll tell you why. With Go West Happy Cow we started by selling DVDs of the movie. We spent time and money on nice DVD jacket artwork and found a company to mass produce 100 DVDs at a time for a little under $5 per DVD. We could sell these DVDs for $15 and make some profit, but if we didn’t sell them at a screening, we also had to package and ship them to the buyer. In the home entertainment world, there was still a market for DVDs when our movie was released in 2010. DVDs, however, are standard definition so they’ll make your beautiful 4K movie not look or sound nearly a good as it should. They’re also a hassle to deal with when you have to store a bunch of them or pack up and move. There’s a reason you can find $2 DVDs at your local WalMart! DVDs are simply not desirable anymore. Same goes for BluRay discs, which are basically DVDs except they generally cost more and have better picture and sound.

The future of home entertainment is entirely in digital distribution, streaming directly to the viewer, or living on their storage device or media player (AppleTV, Roku, smartphone, computer, etc.). My dad, born in 1951, likes to tell the story of the time he and my mom moved to Bellingham, Washington in the early-1970s. They pulled their all of their personal belongings in a trailer behind their Jeep. Half the trailer was dedicated to music – they had boxes of vinyl records, a bulky receiver, heavy speakers, cables. Today, all those vinyl records x 10,000 could fit in his pocket on a smartphone, and a better sound system could be no bigger than a shoebox. It would all cost a lot less as well. Digital media does not take up physical space!

No surprise, although we still offer a DVD version of Go West Happy Cow, we never sell any. Our Producer, Derek, saw the writing on the wall years ago and in 2011 we started to offer the movie to rent or purchase digitally, through a company called Distrify. At the time, Distrify accepted a 720p H.264 version of your movie and handled the encoding and all that jazz. You could embed the movie on your website or social media with rent/buy options and then the end-user could securely pay and watch the movie on their device. Distrify was not the only option for doing this in 2011, but they didn’t charge an arm and a leg to serve up your movie; they got their cut, about 30%, from the sales. Considering we don’t have to pay $5 per DVD, plus shipping, we don’t have to mark up our product very much and 30% is a great deal, all things considered! With digital distribution, our audience can decide on a whim that they want to see our film and a minute later, they can begin watching it while the rest buffers. If they only want to see it once, they can rent it for just a couple dollars and if they want to watch it over and over, they can own a copy forever. Fantastic!

Distrify was a step in the right direction for our movie, but it did not offer the discoverability options we wanted and it was not built in to a major app or streaming system. Most people haven’t heard of Distrify so most people are simply not going to trust it, especially back in 2011, when this concept was much newer. There was also a few more steps to actually obtain the movie and take it with you on your mobile device or watch it on your home entertainment system. If we are giving up the physical copy of our movie, we still want some assurance that we will always have access to a movie we’ve paid for. In 2011, that was a leap of faith to make, whereas today it’s more accepted that if you buy a digital version of something, you’ll be able to access it forever (as long as you can remember your username/password combination).

Again, we come back to budgeting when talking about your distribution options. While you are no longer needing to set aside money to order a batch of 100 DVDs at a time, you are going to need some budget to get your movie out there on most all digital platforms. As of this writing, you can put your movie out there for free on a number of platforms and make money off of views or total minutes streamed. This is the case for YouTube and Amazon Prime Video. Vimeo Pro members can sell or list their feature films as well through Vimeo On Demand, without the need for a middle man or aggregator. If you have an aggregator, streaming on Netflix, Hulu, cable, dish, pay-per-view, etc. is possible, but don’t expect to make much money off of these paid/membership services unless you get LOTS AND LOTS of views… and you probably won’t get any views without some sort of marketing plan and marketing budget to push your movie’s availability to an audience. One independent film I worked on, Movin’ In, is available on YouTube, free to watch for anyone. It’s a rather sad “ending” for a movie that actually had a decent budget and some recognizable names (Kim Possible‘s Christy Carlson Romano and Seinfeld‘s Estelle Harris). The title has been on YouTube for four years now and it has just over 250 views, so it’s safe to say it’s not ever making its money back.

Last year, we joined the big leagues by getting Go West Happy Cow on the major digital distribution platforms – iTunes Store, Amazon Instant Video, Google Play (which includes YouTube), and the Microsoft Store. At least one of these platforms is available on every streaming box, mobile device, or computer, so our potential market is huge. With the exception of Amazon Instant Video, which lets you do it all yourself, these aforementioned digital storefronts require you to work with an aggregator, a company that already has the relationship with the respective storefront and knows the specific requirements for each. We could not be happier with our aggregator, Juice Distribution! You pay a fee to get started, currently $945+ for a 60+ minute film, and you provide everything you can to the aggregator – an uncompressed master file, all audio channels, a trailer, artwork and graphics, plot summary and metadata, credits, and so on, and the aggregator puts it together for delivery. Your project will need closed captioning in the language of the market you want to sell it in, so English subtitles for the United States, England, Australia, and so on. Your aggregator can help with that (for a fee). You’ll also go through strict quality control and any patches/fixes will cost extra. Our movie had two such instances –  a moment where the sound jumped from stereo to mono and another where an onscreen title needed to be corrected. Minor stuff, but still something that has to be just right. When you’ve gone through the QC phase and the aggregator has everything they need from you, you’ll get a premiere date, the date when your project can go live on all the platforms. It’s an exciting day to be able to search on something like iTunes and see your project! But, it’s certainly not the end of your work.

While you’ve just spent some $1,000 to get your independent film on the digital storefronts, you now need to promote the heck out of it. Promoting your project is really the subject of an entirely different post, so I won’t go into it here, but your independent movie is not likely to just show up as an available movie when a user is browsing the iTunes Store or searching around Amazon and it’s not the aggregator’s job to help you promote your title. Discoverability will be very low, so you’ve got to let people know your project is available for sale (or rental) and you’ve got to be smart with your search engine optimization (SEO) for the title. Hopefully, you’ve already built an audience on social media or elsewhere so that you can get some quick sales. With each digital storefront keeping anywhere from 30-50% of your sales, you’ll need to both set a smart price-point for your movie (I would not advise selling your title for more than $10 or renting for more than $4) and then convert your leads to sales. Selling your movie for $10 on iTunes will require nearly 150 sales just to break even on what you paid to the aggregator. You’ll need even more if you’re mainly getting rentals. Each aggregator will provide you with a report of your sales breakdown, by storefront, by market, and so on.

To conclude, in some ways it’s harder than ever to make money off of your independent film in today’s oversaturated market. Audiences gravitate towards the “free” available content they have access to through their Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Hulu memberships. Success is within reach, but you’ll have to be smart with your money and even smarter with your marketing. Expect an uphill battle. I’ve had variable levels of success with each of the projects I’ve worked on and I’ve learned a lot. Let me know if you have any questions or are interested in a consultation.