Hollywood, Unapologetic!

- Season 9

(2020)

Want to succeed in filmmaking? It's an honest question. I ask this because so many filmmakers I've known and met over the years don't develop a distribution strategy during the Development Stage of film production. Something I cannot stress enough throughout this series, how you see your film distributed is a major key to be a successful filmmaker. And making strides to get there can make or break your success. What's very important for you to know at this stage, for your film to ever be considered by any distributor, they look at how to best maximize any and all ...

When looking at your distribution options for your film, it's important to understand film rights and content licensing before signing off on any distribution deal. Not knowing or fully understanding these crucial details is probably the biggest mistake I've seen over-and-over again that aspiring filmmakers make with their first and even their second and third finished films. Digital Rights refer to relationships between copyrighted creative works, such as motion pictures, music, and art, in a digital format. Digital Rights involves the permission and usage rights of ...

As part of your distribution strategy, you should plan for possible distribution opportunities being split up. Film today is largely thought about as the "moving image" or "moving picture", over the format of film itself. Some see the power and authority of documentaries losing some of it's stature to the "documenting of reality", such as what can be found on television programming of "reality" shows and on digital platforms like YouTube today. This has caused some film distribution companies to rethink how they approach their distribution strategies. More progressive...

Like most independent filmmakers, we produce our film and find a distributor. The distributor tries to find exhibitors, which in turn attempt to find an audience. This has been the "traditional" way most independent films get released. For many independent productions, it becomes an uphill battle to find the right audience, if the battle itself hasn't already been lost. For me, and my more successful filmmaking colleagues, we define our target audience first. This determines everything else.

It is so important to consider a marketing strategy, geared to a very narrow and targeted audience at the very beginning of the development stage of your film. The process should be a collaborative effort between your audience and you from day one. What that really means, you can gauge how the public reacts to what you post online. You can interact and get feedback to see what your audience responds to, both positively and negatively. That feedback can help you work out the details towards a positive marketing strategy. And if you are able to build a solid base of ...

"Do you approach filmmaking as a business opportunity?" I ask this because the most common obstacle I've seen is aspiring filmmaker's unwillingness to look at their film projects as a business opportunity. Many don't look at what they are passionate about as being a product. There's resistance to this line of thinking by us creative types. But here's the reality of it all, to make a good film, short or feature, requires money. The bigger the film, the more it's going to cost. For most of us, the money to produce our films comes from the distribution end.

Your cast's name recognition is a huge part of the marketing process. A distributor can capitalize on the cast's notoriety, building up the "value" of your film. And this helps with the distributor's Return on Investment. This return, or ROI is the distributor's ONLY goal, the bigger the return, and the better. This goes directly hand-in-hand with your casting. Your cast members will have a fan base already built in. The more well-known the cast member, the larger the fan base, the more likely some of those fans will want to see your film. Think of it as having a core...

From my experience writing screenplays, and working on hundreds of productions for film and television, often brought in during development, I've seen a screenplay's title change several times of many of the films during the production process. The reasons can be from the story itself has changed so much from the original text, the moods progressions have changed, to considering the marketability of the film. Having a non-complicated and short film title helps it to be remembered. There are exceptions to this, usually from a more established director, or a film with a...

The first stage in the filmmaking production process you need to do and be mindful of, during the Coronavirus Pandemic is the development stage. This is the stage when ideas for a film are put together. Sometimes that means acquiring the rights to a book, stage play, magazine article, video game, comic book, graphic novel, or directly from the source of a true story. Other times the screenplay has already been written or a pitch for an idea is available.