Why & How We Chose to Self-Distribute Our Film - Part 1

Where We Are Now 

MindFlesh went on sale to the public last week. We're selling a 2-disc special edition DVD via Amazon & CreateSpace and the movie can also be downloaded via Caachi to personal computers and portable devices.

The film in all formats is DRM-free (except via Caachi's streaming service). Later this year the movie will be available on other download and streaming sites and a couple of video-on-demand (VoD) pay-per-view TV channels in Europe.

 

Anyone discovering the film on Amazon, a download site or VoD will have no idea or reason to care that we're self-distributing the movie. Potential customers can watch our trailer or various clips from the movie and they can read our excellent reviews. On the MindFlesh site I've tried to provide as much information as possible for the viewer to make an informed decision about whether they'll like the film before they buy.

 

This blog post is about how we got to this position. In subsequent posts I'll discuss the various marketing activities we have underway and their relative merits.

 

Should I Self-Publish My Work?

In any other industry except book publishing and movies, cutting out the middleman would be viewed as a good thing! Why give away x% of your revenue if you don't have to? And yet there seems to be some kind of stigma about self-published works - as though those who choose this route do so only to satisfy their vanity or because they weren't good enough to get a "real" distribution/publishing deal.

It was great to see that Lance Hammer took his Sundance film Ballast and decided to self-distribute it because maybe this will encourage a change in perception.

 

My usual response is, talk to people who have distribution deals and ask if they're happy with the money they're making or if they're happy with the marketing the distributor/publisher is doing. Very few will tell you they are. Many authors I know that are with big publishers still find themselves working hard to promote their own work. Why not take that little extra step and cut out the middleman? Cut out the distributor and speak directly to your audience? The problem of course is knowledge & resources to do the promotion and distribution efficiently (e.g. to sell the book or film with the minimum time and money).

 

Market Background - Independent Films

After the success of London Voodoo on DVD (now available in five languages and 21 countries; and we also had a small theatrical release in USA and Singapore) I'd been planning to sell MindFlesh to various distributors around the world for a minimum guarantee and then walk away. Approaching and selling to distributors is very easy - they're looking for product they can sell and they're open to any film that might make them money. It's a simple as that and it should be. So what changed?

 

Well, several things happened or increased in prevalence over the two years if to took to shoot and post-produce MindFlesh:

•  Internet piracy is stealing DVD sales - why buy the DVD if you can download it for free?
•  NetFlix, LoveFilm and other rental companies that offer "all you can eat" subscription-type services have reduced DVD sales - particular for independent titles that have always been seen by the public as a bit of risk
•  user-generated video sharing sites like YouTube are satisfying viewers' needs for original content. Further, because there is so much to trawl through, it's created what some have called a new "Attention Economy" where everyone publishing any kind of content is struggling to get some of the viewer's time.

 

The result of this has been a huge reduction in the number of DVDs purchased.

This in turn has meant that those most likely to sell are the Hollywood titles and those other titles with big marketing budgets that buy attention through print, cinema and TV advertising. 

Hence:

• the big retail outlets now only carry a narrow range of titles. (For more information about what's happening in retail, watch this video or visit the "Save the Indies" MySpace page)
• independent DVD distributors have gone bust because of lost sales through piracy, subscription-based rental and they're squeezed out of retail outlets.

Some people may be able to point to exceptions of course - smaller titles in a Virgin Megastore for example -  but these titles come from the bigger distributors that have long-standing relationships, a bigger library of titles and hence more leverage – "take our turkeys" they might demand "or you won't get the better titles". This bundling of dross with gloss happens everywhere – in TV and in film festivals: take these weaker titles or you don't get the titles you want. It further squeezes out the indie.

The bottom line for us then is that the market for indie films is smaller and more risk-adverse. We knew going in that MindFlesh was never going to be an easy sell because we set out to make something completely original: it doesn't fall into a neat pigeon hole because it's part sci-fi, part horror with a storyline that allows parallel interpretations because it's a film about parallel realities. It's based on an excellent Buddhist horror novel, White Light. 

 

We screened in Cannes and although many distributors loved the film they confided "I don't know how I'm going to sell it".

Of course we'd anticipated some distributors reacting in this way but had hoped to sign with some niche distributors who sell kinda fetish/art-house/genre cross-over titles. But in a smaller market (by which I mean less money being spent) these guys are going bust. For for the bigger distributors still in business it's not about "good films" vs "bad films", it's about "sell same product to known (but dwindling) audience" vs "sell something unusual to a hybrid audience" - they can't be bothered to take the trouble. 

Sure we have a niche audience but the audience for MindFlesh is very easy to identify - it's those people who like films by David Cronenberg, some of those who like David Lynch and some Buddhists. Look at Cronenberg's fans - they're not all horror fans or all sci-fi fans; some would just say that they're fans of great cinema.

 

Thankfully we'd anticipated this outcome from the moment we signed up the book rights which means we'd already started our audience building long before we'd started shooting, never mind selling.

 

Coming Next

In the second part of this blog posting I'll discuss all our social media audience building work including our YouTube blogs, widget building, newsletters, MySpace page, Facebook application and so on.

Comments

[James MacGregor]

Thanks Robert for the update. I'll post some of your blog at the foot of your London Voodoo interview, but could you please do me a short account of the making of MindFlesh so we can say something about the film itself - that would be great and we can direct people to your website too.
Good luck with it by the way. What have you lined up for no. 3?

Yours Aye

James

[James]

A MUST READ: Filmmakers become DIY distributors in self-defense (LA Times)

Not that long ago, any movie being distributed by its director or producer was considered damaged goods: If not a single legitimate distributor wanted to release a film, it simply had to be agony to watch. But as the specialized film business has been experiencing its own tumult -- some studios shut down or downsized their art-house divisions, while others looked only for indie films that could play to the broadest audience possible -- the DIY distribution stigma quickly became immaterial.

These days, a number of new movies with recognizable stars and prestigious film festival pedigrees are being released by their makers, and while the early financial returns are easily forgotten, the trend is not as hard to dismiss.

The way the filmmakers see it, self-distribution has become a creative solution to many of the industry's woes, where countless indie films come and go in the blink of an eye. What's more, the strategy gives a film's creators not only final say over how their movie is brought to audiences but also lasting ownership of its copyright.

"It's not at all what I thought I'd be doing," says Randy Miller, who with his wife and filmmaking partner, Jody Savin, self-distributed this summer's wine competition drama “Bottle Shock” and will do the same with their Dec. 5 thriller “Nobel Son.” "But the system is broken. So what else are you going to do?"

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-word30-2008oct30,0,6691578.story

[veiko herne]

Is there any way I could get some financial information from your projects, like what was the production budget and how much it got back from DVD sales and how much from pay per view. I have some interesting project in development myself and so far haven´t been able to attract financing for those.
You can contact me directly at veiko.herne [at] southwave.co.uk

[Stuart Brennan]

Great blog, very interesting reading and great to see you persevering with your movie in the face of adversity!
Looking forward to the future blogs!