OUR DISTRIBUTION YEAR

It’s hard to believe that it’s been five years working on this project. But once you break it down into individual years, it actually makes sense. Year one (2020), we filmed. Year two (2021), we filmed. Year three (2022) was post-production. Year four (2023), we finished post-production, submitted to film festivals, organized the world premiere, and had the world premiere. And finally, year five (2024) was our distribution year. And our distribution year was a doozy.

At first, we really didn’t know what we were doing. We assumed our best path would be to screen at a film festival, meet the right people, shake the right hands, and partner with a distributor before we leave the film festival. But we learned fairly quickly that it doesn’t work like that. Take Sundance, arguably the most influential American film festival. In 2023, there were over 4000 film submissions. 80 were accepted. Of those 80, three - THREE - were sold at the festival. Yikes. Despite getting into some great film festivals, we decided we needed a different approach to distribution.

We posted a blog a few months ago titled “Creating Our Own Path: Distributing Firebird” where we broke down how our distribution path would be different. In short, we adopted a resilient DIY strategy. Now that our distribution journey is pretty much over, we can reflect on it and share exactly how it went down.

In fact, we actually had conversations with a few distributors last year. There were deals on the table. And we passed on all of them. If you would’ve told us two years ago that we were going to pass on multiple distribution deals, we would’ve thought you were crazy.

So what did we do instead?

First, we cultivated our audience. We discovered that our most dedicated audience was people who are committed to community events and their community in general. So we marketed directly to them through something called “impact producing”. We reached out to hundreds of community-based organizations with the goal of creating screenings events that promotes both of our missions. For example, we partnered with Allegany Arts Council in Cumberland, MD to screen as part of their opening night of their inaugural film festival. We wrote a blog about that! We did a similar event with Union County Performing Arts Center in Rahway, NJ. In addition, we partnered with the amazing Lancaster-based artist Brady Pappas and created a local art event that began with a special presentation from Pappas.

By connecting with what our film is truly about, we were able to create screening events and show our film to communities all over. A traditional distributor would not have offered us that.

A distributor buys your rights and gets your film on streaming platforms, while also marketing the release themselves. We chose to go with a company that tries to get you on your preferred platforms, but you keep all of your rights! The catch is the marketing is up to you. But guess what? What did we do all year? Screening after screening, we were building our audience. The marketing had already organically started. It’s still a mystery to us how a distributor would market a film about a small community event that builds and burns a giant wooden bird every year. We were learning how to do that all year. We were equipped. We didn’t need a distributor.

In conclusion, going about a DIY strategy for distribution forces us to redefine distribution. Very simply, distribution means people seeing the film. And since November of 2023, audiences all over the country have seen our film in a movie theater. We connected with audiences, not just all across Pennsylvania, but from coast to coast as well. We went dipped down into Appalachia, and even further down to Atlanta. We crossed over into New Jersey, and flew across the country to Utah and California. Now the film is available to all on Prime Video and Apple TV.

And we did it without signing away all of our rights. And we are proud of that.