How hard can it be to distribute a film? Surely it can’t be any harder than actually making it? With the independent mindset that got me to go out there, raise the money and produce A Four Letter Word in the first place, I decided to embark on releasing it as well. Why? Because I’m a control freak, of course! And because it’s important for me to be able to pay back my investors so that I can keep making films. To be able to do that self-distribution seemed like the best way to go.
With my comedy, A Four Letter Word, I was in the lucky situation to receive a handful of different distribution offers for the film. The film has played at over 60 festivals around the world, picked up several prizes and gotten great feedback. So I didn’t think its ultra-low budget of only $125,000 shouldn’t be too difficult to recoup. But the distribution offers I received usually consisted of a low upfront payment and a small back-end participation deal. Once I declined them, the offers got a little bit more creative: A bigger upfront payment (still nowhere near the actual budget for the film) and a slightly higher back-end participation. Or no upfront payment but big backend participation (after the distributor had recouped all of their costs, of course).
The distribution offers were not totally unfair—they were certainly nothing out of the ordinary. Had this been my first film I probably would have gone for it. I know many moviemakers who knowingly accepted much worse deals for distribution, but with the attitude that they just wanted to get their film out there. “I don’t care about the money,” they say. “Getting the film out will help me get my next film made.” And, of course, “I can’t worry about the distribution stuff. All I want to do is make movies!”
All I want to do is make movies, too. In fact all I want to do is write and direct. But since no one would hire me to do that I also had to produce to get my films made. As a producer, I raise money. I promise my investors that they will make their money back. I owe it to myself to make it happen. That’s the only way I will be able to stay in business.
Hence self-distribution.
Theatrical distribution isn’t completely new territory for me. I sold the DVD and TV rights to my first film, the romantic comedy Slutty Summer, to a distributor but I released it myself in theaters. With openings in a total of only four theaters we didn’t make a huge impact on the box office, though the publicity the theatrical release generated did help in raising the film’s profile and in selling DVDs later.
Now, if I made mainstream movies, how would I go about releasing the film? I honestly don’t know. The upside is that you have a huge potential audience, but how do you reach them with a low-budget film without any movie stars? You need to find a niche and then hopefully expand beyond that niche. In my case finding that niche is easy: I make gay-themed films.
Marketing a film to the gay audience isn’t all that difficult, as I can focus my marketing and advertising on the gay media. Now to actually get the gay audience to show up? That is difficult. Many not so good gay films have been released over the years. It used to be that gay audiences were starved for seeing their own images on screen and would go and see anything. Not so anymore. So we are working on positioning ourselves as the gay film to see in theaters this season.
Except for the media part, what else does a theatrical release entail? Well, booking the theaters of course. Which is difficult. Lots of theaters are weary of self-distributors; they fear the moviemakers won’t do a good job—they won’t put enough money into the release—so they might ask you to four-wall the theater (i.e. putting all the risk on you by having you rent the theater for maybe $10,000 for the week). A better deal is to share in the box office revenue. A big studio might be able to negotiate a 50-50 split for opening week, but you will have tough time getting anything more than 30 to 35 percent (though those numbers can go up if you take in a certain amount).
If your release is a digital one, most theaters will tell you that doing a digital projection means renting that equipment (even if they have it in theater they will insist on a rental fee). This can be anything from $400 a week to $1,000 or more. Of course they expect you to spend several thousand dollars on advertising. You then have to make your posters, postcards, banners, etc. You will need 35mm trailers that can be shown prior to other films. You will probably need to hire someone to deal with press and make sure you get reviewed everywhere, too.
Okay, listing all of these things I’m staring to doubt my decision to do it myself. But hey, even if it all fails, it is still exciting. And for sure one can learn something from it all!
Self-distributing the DVD is a whole other ball game. A game I’m not that informed about at the moment, but that I’m planning to learn more about in the months to come. I do know that I have to design the covers and have the actual DVDs produced. I need to publicize and advertise. I know I can sell the DVD on my own Website, but I also need to get it into stores and on other video selling sites including Amazon.com. For this I’m hoping to get a distributor interested in making a service deal so that the distributor can sell the DVD for me in exchange for a 20 to 25 percent commission.
All this is daunting I know. And it’s not for everyone. But I figured that I have to give it a try. Once my invertors are paid back I will start making a profit, and though distributing will take up a lot of my time, for sure it is time better spent than to take a dead-end job for money between my film shoots. I’m not saying that any of this is easy, but as an independent filmmaker I’m starting to feel that this is part of the job description, and I do intend to have fun every step of the way. Hey, if it were easy everybody would do it! And besides, compared to actually making a film—how hard can it be?
Casper Andreas runs his own production company, Embrem Entertainment, in New York City. He has written, directed and produced three feature films. His second feature, the gay romantic comedy A Four Letter Word, opened at the Chelsea Clearview in NYC on March 28 and will open at Sunset 5 in LA on April 11th (with more cities to follow). Casper will be present with his cast during the opening weekends. For more info about Casper’s films and to pick up a DVD of his first feature, Slutty Summer, visit www.embrem.com.