Filmfinder - Getting Your Film Distributed

For most indie film makers thinking about distribution is something that only happens after your film is made.

However, planning your distribution strategy prior to production radically increases your chance of actually selling your film.

When we decide to make a movie, all to often getting the film made seems to be the biggest obstacle to success; this is especially true for micro-budget film makers. Not only that, but there is a real “Field of Dreams”… “If I make it, they will come” attitude to distribution.

What most film makers believe is this: the quality of my film and the originality of my concept will be enough to persuade distributors to buy my film.

However, the truth is, a bad but well marketed film will make more money in distribution than a good, poorly marketed one. A fact, I learned for myself in 2005 when on completion of my visually stunning, well written, HD drama “No Place” we failed to get distribution, whilst my boom operator’s badly written, poorly acted, DV exploitation camcorder movie “A Home For The Bullets” did. (I’m not bitter…really… OK, maybe a little bit! LOL)

Where most indies fail in this process, is in not understanding the importance of industry awareness in the buying process. Let me explain this.

When distributors and sales agents go to festivals, they are looking for films to buy. However, they also know there will be more films in the market, than they have time to view… so, prior to arriving they draw up a list of films that they want to prioritize. They have films they have earmarked as potential purchases… films that they want to get for their business, before a competitor gets to them.

These lists are given priority orders… so, there will be a handful of films the sales agent will see themselves, because they believe them to be “hot” projects… and, then there is a list of “possibles” which get delegated to their PA’s.

Not even on the list, will be films that get flung at them during the festival. In reality, the simple fact that the distributor hasn’t heard of the film is already a good enough reason to NOT buy it, because if they haven’t heard of it, then there obviously isn’t an audience for it. (There are some genres where this isn’t true, but even there the odds are stacked against an unknown film).

What this means for micro-budget film makers is that in order to sell your film, you have get your film on either the “hot” list or the “potential” list. Sales agents and distributors have to know about your project.

Now, there are two primary sources of information which sales agents and distributors use to compile their shopping lists: the first is the trade press, Variety, Screen International, Cashier du Cinema etc; the second is the sister company of Withoutabox, Filmfinder.

Filmfinder is a market listings service that sales agents and distributors subscript to, in order to get intelligence about the available territories on any film in development or in production.

However, the great news is, this service is FREE for producers and production companies. In other words, you register your film as it goes into production, they verify its existence and then you are on the listings… and providing your concept is hot and you actually deliver a viable product, then when your film goes to festival or to market it already has industry awareness.

In order to capitalize on that basic awareness, you also have to create ways to get your film some press during production… but that’s another post.

In basic terms, if you’re serious about distribution, then I strongly advise you to research Filmfinder and build it into your film’s sales strategy.