You made a film. Now what? Chances are you would like other people to enjoy the fruits of your efforts, and if you are fortunate enough to have other people with a financial interest in your project, chances are that they would not only like the film to be distributed, but rather they would demand it. If the latter is your situation, I would hope you have already planned ahead and have a distribution plan ready (see our recent article on how to make a business plan for your film). If you don’t, read on for some of your options.

Tugg

Tugg is a community-driven platform for bringing independent titles to screens anywhere in the US. As a filmmaker you can use the platform to arrange and promote screenings, or you can use it to engage your social media following to the point where enough of them – your fans – request your film shown in a theater near you. It’s not a money-making machine, but it’s a fairly low-risk way of making sure your film gets a theatrical release.

Gathr

Like it’s slightly more streamlined competitor, Tugg, Gathr is a theatrical-on-demand service where either filmmakers or fans can request and promote a screening. Gathr is focused on documentary films.

VOD

Video-On-Demand seems to be the best way for a self-distributed film to generate revenue on a continuous basis and it should be part of any distribution plan you create for your project. Once your film has completed it’s festival run, you need to push for sales on VOD services like Netflix and iTunes. But don’t limit yourself to those brandname services – there are dozens of smaller, independent services that don’t require curator approval before making your film available for download/streaming. As a DIY filmmaker you can make your film more or less instantly available on services like Amazon Video Direct, IndieReign, Vimeo On-Demand and TopSpin, so you can start creating a stream of revenue. Check out this list of services compiled by PBS.

Aggregator Services

There are a lot of film out there. Not only do you need to know who you are marketing your film to, you also need to make sure your film is available for purchase wherever your potential viewers might be looking for it. That means either a lot of submissions for VOD services – or using an aggregator. A service like Quiver Digital takes a one-time fee to distribute your film across all major digital services (like iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Google Play, etc.), after which you get to keep all revenue, less any percentages taken by the service your film was purchased or rented on. Similar services are offered by Kinonation and Juice.

Check out this No Film School article on aggregators – and the same writer’s experience using Tugg for her theatrical run.

h/t No Film School and Oakley Anderson-Moore

Laurels. Adding words like ‘Official Selection’ or ‘Winner’ – neatly displayed between the familiar laurels – to your film’s poster, can help boost your credibility as a filmmaker or help your film stand out in you marketing. But be careful to not let the laurels be a goal in and of itself. There are many festivals that capitalize on inexperienced filmmakers’ eagerness to get recognized, without actually offering anything of value, like a public screening or networking opportunities.

A handful of online festival submission tools have made it infinitely easier for filmmakers to submit their work to festivals around the world, but this ease of submitting also means that many filmmakers don’t necessarily do their due diligence before paying up. So as we present the following tools, we do so with a warning – nay, a request: Please don’t submit to anything and everything that will accept your film. Do your due diligence and make sure the festivals have actual artistic merit and clout in the community. Otherwise you’re really just paying to give yourself a comforting pat on the back.

Withoutabox

In the days of burning DVD screeners and mailing festival applications, Withoutabox was a much needed technological leap forward into the future of festival submissions. With Withoutabox filmmakers could suddenly upload their project to a website and submit to as many festivals as their little hearts desired, paying a small fee for the convenience. Withoutabox is still one of the mastodons of the festival submission tools and they do have partnerships with some of the more recognizable festivals, but the platform is lacking behind some of it’s more recent competitors in ease of use. And submission fees quickly add up.

FilmFreeway

Preferred by many over Withoutabox, FilmFreeway has quickly become the go-to for convenient submissions to a large number of festivals. Not all festivals are represented on the platform, so you may have to shop around a bit, but this is a great place to start. FilmFreeway never charge for submissions, so you only pay the applicable festival fees. An easy-to-use and well organized ‘project folder’ lets you present your film in HD, with a poster, director bio, trailer and much more.

FestHome

A UK-based alternative to FilmFreeway and Withoutabox, FestHome sets itself apart by also offering a way for filmmakers to monetize their projects through their VOD channel, IndieHome TV. I have not used this platform myself, but it is by all accounts user- and artist-friendly. Apart from the per-submission fees that are charged in addition to the festival fees.

Reelport

Reelport, based in Germany, is not so much an alternative, as it is a supplement to the larger portals. Similar to FestHome, it has partnerships with a smaller number of festivals, but many European ones, so if that’s your target market, you may want to look into Reelport’s services. The interface is less user-friendly than that of FestHome or FilmFreeway, and only your first upload (short film) and submission is free – after that additional festival submissions are 2 EUR and additional project uploads are 3 EUR. On top of that comes the festival fees, of course.

Shortfilmdepot

Another European option, Shortfilmdepot is – as the name implies – specifically focused on short film submissions, so if you’re about to submit your first short film and the thousands of festivals available through FilmFreeway or Withoutabox seem impossible to manage, this may be a good place to start. Unfortunately, submissions will cost you 3 EUR each (on top of any festival fees) and the user interface is not quite as inviting as some of the other alternatives listed above.

Lessons to be learned here?

Don’t submit blindly. Do your research. Target festivals based on your project’s format and audience. And make sure you budget for festival submissions before you even start shooting.

Jesse Harris, the found of the NFFTY film festival in Seattle, shares some insight on what filmmakers should – and shouldn’t – expect from taking home awards at a film festival.

Whether transporting us to Mars, sending us to school at Hogwarts or putting us in a dystopian future where we must fight for our lives, a story is only limited by how far the writer’s imagination can take them. However, in the filmmaking world, there is a limitation that exists for all films, studio blockbusters and indies alike: The Budget.

Now, a budget isn’t just saying, “I have this amount of money… let’s go make a film!” On its most basic level, a budget outlines every element that goes into the film and determines how the money is going to be divided amongst those different elements.

When creating a budget the Producer, Line Producer and/or Filmmaker will sit down with the script and literally go through every line (hence the name Line Producer) and calculate how much money each element of the script will cost. How many locations, what kind of costumes and art direction is needed? Are you going to spend more on a location that needs little dressing but is going to need more shooting days OR are you going to rent a studio and build the location in-house? These are creative questions that are dependent on your budget.

It’s important to remember that the size of the budget directly corresponds to the expectations for the film. Simply put – a higher budgeted movie needs to make more money.

Story before budget or budget before story? It’s the chicken or the egg, but for filmmakers who plan on producing the story they write, being aware of your budget, as you are writing the script is important. You have an idea of what your budget will be and what you are capable of producing with that budget. Also, when you begin looking for financing, your budget and script will act as a package that will help convince investors to invest. They can read your script and know exactly how much you need and why.

When drafting your film’s budget you need to go through every stage: pre-production, production and post-production, as well as marketing and distribution. Think of it this way: The budget allows you to see the lifecycle of your film before it’s even been made.

Do not let the thought of having a small budget make you think that you can’t come up with an interesting story. In fact, budget constraints can fuel the imagination.

Take a look at the trailer for this movie that was made for only $60,000 and was one of the biggest hits of 1999 (the same year The Matrix came out)

So now that we know what a budget is and why it’s important, let’s go into some of the ways that you, the Filmmaker, can finance your film.

#1. Self Finance, aka put it on plastic (the Kevin Smith approach) – Every filmmaker knows this story. You take the money you were going to spend going to film school and instead put it into making a film, or perhaps you put it on credit cards and hope the movie makes enough money to pay them back.

As an example, take Clerks. Kevin Smith’s first film was made this way with a total budget just over $27,000 dollars. When the film went to Sundance, Miramax bought it.

There are benefits to this option – if it’s your money that’s financing the project then the film is completely in your hands. The negative is that there’s a higher risk of not making your money back.

If personal investment is the option you choose to pursue, I would highly recommend creating a Limited Liability Company (LLC) for the production. An LLC protects its investor(s) from any loss incurred during the making of the film – you’re only responsible for the money put into the LLC. LLCs also have tax benefits and are free from governed rules in regards to shareholder and company decisions. Basically, you’ll be able to have more control over the decisions taken in the creation of the film and be more protected should there be problems during production.

#2. Equity – Similar to self-investment, this is when you have a number of investors (be it friends, rich cousins or private investors) that also invest hard cash into the film. When they invest the hard cash, they are buying equity in the film.

It’s important to note that this option requires an LLC structure and that investors must be paid back their original investment plus 20% before profit can be calculated.

Want to know more about LLCs? Check out this article on why LLCs are good for filmmakers.

#3. Crowdfunding – This option differs from the Equity option because people aren’t buying into or investing in your film, they are donating to it. Yes, filmmakers can offer a tier structure a la donate $5 you get a thank you, $10 you get this and so on, but they are not required to pay that money back, like it is the case with equity financing.

The trick with crowdfunding becomes creating a campaign that garners attention and raises enough money. Remember, crowdfunding sites likes Kickstarter take a cut of the raised funds. It’s their payment for giving you a platform to collect donations. In addition, campaigns that don’t raise their goal amount do not keep the money they raised. These are important facts to realize when you are not only creating your budget, but also when you’re deciding your target crowdfunding goal.  Can you risk time and money creating a crowdfunding campaign when there’s no guarantee your film will end up getting financed? What will you do if the crowdfunding campaign doesn’t meet its goal?

#4. Pre-Sales – Pre-sales are related to distribution and they can be your best asset in both financing your film and finding private investors. Basically you are making an agreement for where and how the film with be distributed before it has even been made. The amount your film is sold for is based on the package you, the filmmaker, has created: your script, the talent attached and the marketability of your story. After the agreement for the pre-sale of the film has been made, the filmmaker can either use that as collateral for taking out a loan from a bank to complete the budget or lower the cost to private investors. It’s important to note that, like with equity, the filmmaker would have to payback the bank for the loan before a profit can be calculated.

Depending on the budget, if a distributor buys the film in the pre-sale state, the film may have actually already made money before it was produced.

These are the four basic ways for filmmakers to begin financing their projects. Join us next time when we’ll dive deeper into film financing, using The Storyteller as a case study.

Until then, here’s a trailer to a film that the writer/director funded by submitting himself to clinical drug testing.

But what exactly is a film market and what can you expect when you attend? Networking, sales pitches – and lots of films featuring Danny Trejo?! Producer Buz Wallick shares his experience.

We’d like to introduce you – as part of our ‘Do You know?’ series – to The Bureau of Creative Works.

Created by Erica Hampton and Mike Ambs, The Bureau is a film collective with the valiant goal of bridging a gap between audience and filmmaker by getting the audience involved in the process at the earliest possible stage – assuming responsibility, but also taking credit. According to their mission statement, the idea materialized after realizing how ‘more and more digital media outlets are pushing to acquire short-films in exchange for only credit and recognition’ – a promise of legitimization through association, leaving filmmakers in an increasingly difficult and unsustainable situation.

The Bureau is set up to function is a year-long film grant supporting 12 filmmakers each year with funds for producing original short films, backed by the very audience the short films are made for. A kickstarter campaign is currently raising the funds for the first year of films – 10 of which has already been selected, leaving two spots open for you to apply for.

Please visit The Bureau of Creative Works for more info on this great project – and, if you can, please support the campaign on kickstarter.

Welcome to the future.

More videos with Jimmie will be shared over the coming months, so be sure to subscribe to our newsletter and our YouTube channel. You might learn something.

Nevertheless. If no one sees your film, was everything else really worth it? Devin Buttner – CTO of Los Angeles-based digital marketing strategists Screenpush – urges you to consider marketing an important aspect of your planning, and reminds you to plan carefully so you know your money is well spent. Enter analytics. Here Devin breaks down the importance of using analytics and how you use them most effectively.

Well, Rachel Noll is here to tell you that learning by doing is an art form, and one of the most important lessons you can force yourself to learn if you want to produce your own film. Sure, you want everything to be done right, but if you’re working on a low-to-no budget, chances are that you’re often better off simply getting things done, than worrying about getting things done right. Because if you won’t settle for anything less than perfection, you’ll be stopping production before you even get started.

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