Ever want to be a indie filmmaker? Great! make films... But who's going to watch them? It's hard to get butts in the theaters seats if you don't have big actors to catch people's attention, and it's hard to even get your film into a theater if you don't have a distributor putting their money and efforts to expose and market your film. And if you don't have much money yourself how are people ever going to hear about the movie if you can't afford marketing?
There are films all over the US with the big bucks to produce posters of their film and put them all over the major cities of the U.S. or pay for pop up ads on websites or T.V. spots to be played over and over again during prime time television. So it's not like people are in need to hunt down entertainment, they're used to having it incessantly flashing before their eyes.
So, where does t
he indie filmmaker fit in? I really don't know yet... and to be honest - it's all a bit scary. Festival exposure... sure, but once the festival circuit is done - then what?
Well, for the film
Unflinching Triumph, written by Rob Lambrechts and
Mark Decena, and directed by Mark Decena, we at
Kontent are trying to figure that out. Here's how it's going so far:
There is a place called
Rocketindie.com which would offer some pretty cool stuff for the completely "no budget"(or actually "very low budget" more like) film market.
They would store the DVD's at their ware house (1,000 or less = 29 bucks a month - or if you're able to sell 50 of them they'll wave the fee entirely). They'd set up a pay pal account and provide 24hr access to current sales and stock levels. Also they would provide a thing they call a "Rocketindie Gold account" which would get our DVD on Amazon and - well, it didn't say exactly, but - it would be a better deal than just setting up an account with Amazon.com where they literally take 45% of any sale. (but to set up the "Rocketindie gold" account... that would cost 50$).
So aside from all those initial charges and possibilities it's FREE! Well, one would still have to make and replicate the initial DVD and cases (1000 or so) for them to sell, and they'd also charge the buyer an extra 5$ for "shipping and handling." (which is how they make their dinero). Also they don't really supply any marketing besides saying that they're selling our DVD on their website... OK
For one, Kontent has it's own website :
kontentfilms.com, and two so does
Unflinching Triumph (<- just click on the title). And from there I'm sure it wouldn't be too difficult to set up our own pay pal account and we could just charge the buyer what we're selling it for with out the additional 5$ charge from a distributer. And if we're starting off with 1000 DVD's, I'm sure we can find room in the office building to store them - we'll just save our 29$ a month thanks. Next I found this place called
Createspace.com 
(check it out) they actually do this thing where they don't make the DVD until it's ordered... interesting, yet one would still have to buy the 1000 DVD + DVD case package ahead of time. So, it's kind of a deal if we're trying to save materials, but that's really just them saving materials. Well, nothing against the idea, just kind of a funny thing to highlight. Anyway, they had some pretty good deals with fully packaged DVD options but the way they make money (or
more money that is) is to charge us $4.95 per unit sold.
So, it looks like it comes down to either charging
us or the
buyer some extra dollars just for sending the darn DVD's out to the entertainment hungry folk eagerly waiting with dripping lips for the tasty Unflinching Triumph.
There was another sweet looking place for distribution:
discmakers.com and through them they have something called "
Film Baby." Their Film Baby would be charging 4$ per DVD while also helping us out making a website, but as I've mentioned before - we've got website on lock. They offer to help us with making a two minute trailer to encode on the website, but we've got that thank you (and i hope anyone who's making a feature has one as well). They take phone call orders and online
purchases and would send us a check every week for items sold. Didn't mention a storage fee, but I'm sure if we started cutting a deal it might come up.
Ummm... still looking like our own pay pal account on our own website with our own trailer would be more cost efficient because discmakers.com isn't offering us anything that we don't already have. So it looks like if we were to go to any of the above places it's either charge the buyer more per sale or be charged.
Then their is places like
Filmthreat.com (yeah the magazine), but of coarse with a name like that they'd want to license the right to sell the DVD, we'd only get paid twice a year and the filmmaker pays for production and authoring of the DVD. Not only that, but it's a huge maybe to get in there because they'd have the Film go through the acquisitions dep.
Microcinema.com, another one like Filmthreat, acquisitions dep. then us paying for the DVD authoring and replication. The only good thing about distributing companies like that is the exposure that would come with being in the magazines or on their website.
Ok, good for them. After I presented these options
and more to one of the producers here at Kontent
Teri Heyman (<- produced UT), the director Mark Decena, editor Matt Notaro and more of the lot here at Kontent, we decided to do distribution "in house." No unnecessary extra fees for buyers or for us, and we can just store them and ship them from here in the office. We also have other items for sale like t-shirts
for Unflinching Triumph as well. And we'll just see how that all turns out. I think we're going to have discmakers.com make us some sexy sleek sleeves and also replicate our DVD, they had some eco-freindly supplies and we like the environme
nt as well, so why not combine the forces of entertainment with the cause of helping the planet stick around a little longer? good idea? yup - you know it.
Um... if curious - you could check out the behind the scenes and trailer on our youtube page:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhpLLLwy1zs - and this'll perk your interest I promise. these filmmakers are crazy with tactics and tenacity to try something new.
or just watch it right here! Yeah! ( oh, by the way, I edited this - yeah, thank you thank you... I know... no all the clapping isn't necessary, OK calm down. Woah, a little awkward with all the winking and blowing of kisses. OK, well, I'm dating someone so stop. I appreciate all the love, but I'll just keep my phone number to my self. Yup, you're sexy too. All the best to you and your unborn child. )
Funny enough, just the fact that I graduated with a film degree makes people think I'm great at all aspects of production, and recently a friend of mine, Matt - with whom I used to work with at San Francisco's favorite video rental store, Le Video (Check out the commercial I made for them: Click Here)- thought of me when his friend Rory, was shooting a short and desperately needed someone to do some lighting. He asked, "you know how to do lighting?"
