CREATING OUR OWN PATH: DISTRIBUTING FIREBIRD
The entire journey of making a single film is in the shape of a bow-tie. Let me explain.
Pre-production is the left side of the bow tie. It’s a long process - full of emails, hours-long discussions, making look-books, raising money, etc. But there’s no action, it’s all just figuring out how we are going to make this film. That way, we are completely prepared for…
Production! The most exciting chapter of any filmmaking journey. It’s what you picture when you think of “making a film”. You have to think on your feet constantly, but hopefully pre-production was thorough enough to provide a great foundation for quick decisions.
And then there’s post-production. Editing, sound mixing, coloring. It’s taking a mountain of footage and cutting it down into a tiny ant-hill. But there is another reason why post-production is so long…
Distribution.
So what is distribution? Simply put, it’s the process of the film’s release to a general audience. It’s where we get the finished film seen by as many people and on as many screens as possible. An all-rights distributor is a company that buys your film and does all of that for you.
Most films that you watch on Netflix or Hulu are made by filmmakers that have a reputable relationship with distributors, sales agents and movie studios. It’s an elite club, and getting the password is easier said than done. So, how do we distribute our film to as wide an audience as possible with the condition that we do NOT have established relationships with distributors, sales agents or studios? It involves thinking outside the box, and adopting a resilient DIY strategy.
The first step in our DIY strategy is cultivating our audience. Our niche audience to be exact. What’s helpful is that we already had our world premiere, so anybody who decided to attend (and thank you so much if you did) is part of our niche audience. But what about people who never heard of the Firebird Festival?
Luckily there are people out there that are very familiar with community events and burning events in general. So the plan is to market directly and specifically to them.
We had a great film festival run, but now it’s time to switch gears. With film festivals, we put our trust and faith in jurors, but with DIY distribution, we must have faith in ourselves. We are the masters of our own destiny. Sounds epic, but we’ll just be sending emails.
Marketing our world premiere at the Colonial Theatre last year was a huge undertaking. It involved us throwing everything against the wall and seeing what stuck. Marketing to this very specific audience is probably going to feel the same way. However, we narrowed down our scope. The more specific a group of people, the easier it is to begin conversations. And the hope is that these conversations can turn into screenings for more audiences!
