Distribution

Lisa Steadman I would like to point out that Obsession and Backrooms were both picked up and marketed by very wealthy companies, who leveraged the early audience (especially for Backrooms) to kickstart their marketing campaigns. They therefore are not as relevant to independent filmmakers as one might think. In contrast, Iron Lung, by independent filmmaker Mark Fischbach ("Markiplier" on youtube) is an important case study, as he built his audience and then arranged his own theatrical wide release (3015 screens domestically, ~4200 screens world-wide). He did this by building and addressing his own audience base primarily through YouTube, and adapting some of the strategies of certain influencer campaigns. Other creators, including the Backrooms people, essentially have just sold their idea to to a studio/distributor. Mark Fischbach owns his IP and his product, in the mold of independent filmmakers who have largely disappeared in the 2000s.

Excellent points, Shadow! And you're right. Markiplier is a far better example. I need to see his film. Did you see it? Curious to hear your thoughts.

Lisa Steadman I made a point of seeing it. Unusual, well done, not for everyone. Not what you would see out of a major studio, but with artistic merit. And that's the point for independent expression, which the current and near future theatrical environment denies to the general audience.

Yes! That IS the point of independent expression. Thanks for sharing, Shadow!

hello Luis, I’m a cartoon animator and a VFX artist.

Nice to meet you Luis Grimaldo! And congrats on being in the finishing stages of your short film. You're in for an exciting journey ahead! Have you considered working with a film festival consultant? They can be helpful in guiding you through the festival submission process and help eliminate wasted time, energy and money by advising on the best festivals for your particular film. Happy to share some referrals.

For context, I flew solo in the beginning of my festival run and without a clear strategy, I now see where I could have saved my resources. Hope this is helpful.

Hola Lisa, thanks for the advise, I think I might be like in the same stage you were at the beginning of your festival run, kind of having an idea of where to submit my short film but I don't have a clear strategy yet, so I'd really appreciate if you could share not only the referrals you have but also your insights on the whole process. Thank you!

Good evening, Lisa!

I heard the wonderful news, and I’m truly grateful to have Namaste' PK added to the Stage 32 Marketplace! Hard work, dedication, and manifestation really does pay off. ✨

Thank you, RB, and the entire team for this incredible opportunity and for helping bring my vision one step closer to reality. I’m excited for what’s ahead!

CONGRATS James Robertson and welcome to Stage 32!! How exciting. What's the project logline? And what part of Australia do you live in? I spent 2 years in Sydney as a child. LOVED it.

That's fantastic @Rashika! Feel free to share the logline here. I'm intrigued. And yes, I always say Dream Plus Do = dreams come true.

Thanks Lisa. I'm in Melbourne. Not quite as picture perfect as Sydney. But we have a certain charm (at least we think we do). Logline is - Boy meets girl in Nazi Germany and their desperate attempt to flee leads to a terrible, tragic decision.

WOW! Sounds deep and intriguing, James. Congrats!! Keep us posted on this project and all of your creative adventures!

You know, a filmmaker gave me a pen at the Idyllwild Film Festival. It was a great pen! And I remember his movie. And it snowed a foot while we were there.

But anything to get into someone's craw and stay there in a good way, yes?

Have you seen the doc about film festivals, OFFICIAL REJECTION? Love that film.

Congratulations @Mark Anderson! How exciting. You're on the journey and doing all the right things. Keep us posted. I know very little about the animation space but I love your idea and the heart behind it. Hopefully more folks with more experience in animation will pop in and offer support.

Will have to check out Official Rejection, Philip. I can relate! Even with a festival win, the number of rejections that followed that festival were endless. It's par for the course and that's why it's important to celebrate the wins along the way.

Celebrate indeed. Thank God for adult libations.

Ha! Thank God indeed Philip Sedgwick

Lisa Steadman, , I understand that impatience! We make these films for people to see them, and then spend months keeping them behind a password lol!

So far, I’m exploring curated platforms alongside an independent online release, but I haven’t chosen a home yet. I’m looking at who each option actually reaches, any exclusivity requirements, and how much support they offer in helping audiences discover the film. I’m also preparing the captions, stills, and other materials so The Misstep is ready for its next chapter.

I hope we both find a home where our films can reach people who connect with them. After all that work, watching them begin a life beyond festivals will be such a lovely moment.

Once the festival run is done, put the full short online so people can find it. Vimeo and YouTube both work. Then post a short clip with a link to the full film anywhere your kind of audience hangs out. Send it to a few online short film channels and blogs that cover your genre, because many of them take submissions for free. Also keep using it as your calling card. When you pitch your next project, a finished short people can watch right away does more than any list of laurels.

@Sandra Isabel Correia keep me posted. It sounds like you're on the right track. I feel like there are so many new platforms popping up, so we definitely have options. But like you said, it's about choosing the best one for our film and our goals.

Absolutely, Lisa Steadman! I’ll share what I find as I narrow down the options. But I have one that I go to DM you. Having choices is encouraging, although apparently finishing the film was just the beginning of our homework lol!

Thank you, Matthew Morales! The point about sharing clips where the film’s audience already spends time is especially useful. And I love the reminder to keep using it as a calling card. The Misstep is my first film as a writer-director, so giving people an easy way to watch it feels like a valuable next step as I develop new projects. Those laurels have had their moment. Now the film needs its audience! Thank you.

Hi!

New York is a big state. Where will you be? Buffalo? Rochester? Albion? Binghamton? NYC?

Miguel, have you submitted to NY film festivals? That's a good approach. Look on FilmFreeway to see about deadlines and screenings. Good luck!

Richard Knight I will be in NYC

You know, I’ll name a fairly obvious film that had very poor box-office results, but honestly, I really liked it: Equilibrium.

They even cancelled plans for a sequel because of the film’s poor box-office performance. And honestly, I would have made the sequel. I really enjoyed the film.

As for why a particular film doesn’t perform well at the box office, I think it’s impossible to determine one exact reason why it happened.

You know, it’s like paintings. Take Van Gogh’s paintings. Van Gogh lived in poverty for most of his life. And it’s not like you could say he was a bad painter. You can’t say he didn’t know how to paint. Today, his paintings are worth millions, but during his lifetime, they were worth almost nothing.

What was the reason? Nobody really knows. You can’t say that nobody knew he was painting. People knew.

So I think trying to understand exactly why a particular film fails at the box office is almost impossible. Cinema is art, and art is a risky thing. Something may connect with an audience, and something else may not.

Mine is THE FALL by Tarsem. One of the most visually stunning films I've ever seen, shot on real locations all over the world, and it barely got a release. My guess on what went wrong: no stars to sell it, a story that's hard to pitch in one line, and a trailer that can't capture what those images feel like on a big screen. Years later people keep discovering it, which says a lot about how strong images can outlive a weak release.

Diablo Cody's movie "Jennifer's Body" is the perfect example of marketing killing a movie. It is a Diablo Cody movie, so it is smart and funny...which is hard to do in a horror movie. A horror comedy with more feminist subtext than you can shake a stick at. And the cast? Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried, Chris Pratt has a small role.

And the studio marketed it as "Megan Fox is HOT!". That's it. The fact she turned in a great performance in a ... well it's darker than a dark comedy what with all the cannibalism and murders and such.. but it is still very funny in parts. They decided to pitch it to teenage males... who shouldn't have been able to get into the theater anyway given it's an R rated movie... and 51% of the people who did buy tickets were still women.

Two that come to mind for me are Thoroughbreds (2018) and A Most Violent Year (2014).

I loved Thoroughbreds. Cory Finley made something that was smart, stylish, darkly funny and genuinely unsettling, and Anya Taylor-Joy, Olivia Cooke and Anton Yelchin were all terrific. I always thought it deserved a much bigger audience. My guess is the biggest issue was positioning — it lives somewhere between a dark comedy, thriller, satire and coming-of-age movie, and that’s not an easy thing to sell in one clean campaign. It also came out before Anya and Olivia had the level of recognition they have now, so the cast couldn’t quite do the heavy lifting for the marketing yet.

A Most Violent Year is another one. J.C. Chandor had Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain giving great performances, and the movie was very well reviewed, but I think the title and campaign set up the wrong expectation. It sounds like you’re about to see a hard-edged gangster or crime thriller, when it’s actually a much quieter, more restrained movie about ambition, morality and compromise.

To me, both are examples of how a really good movie can get caught in that gap between what the film actually is and the easiest version of it to market. Sometimes the audience is there; they just weren’t given the clearest reason to show up.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was sooo good!

Best of luck at AFM, Valerio! A comedy feature is a smart slate to bring to the market. One small tip from the post side: buyers increasingly ask early what the finishing plan looks like (grade, HDR/SDR masters, DCP), so having that mapped in the budget can make the pre-sales conversation smoother. Hope you come back with great partners for Cantina Digitale.

Some notes from experience at AFM, so you can go in with the proper expectations.

1) Comedies don’t tend to sell well internationally, so buyers at AFM (who are looking to sell overseas) may be less interested.

2) It sounds like you haven’t made the movie yet. When I went to AFM, I was in a similar boat. many buyers I approached didn’t want to meet because they’re only interested in finished films.

These are not reasons not to go, just be aware of what you’re up against.

Hi Valerio, I’ll be at AFM as well, working primarily around international sales, acquisitions and licensing. Your comedy project sounds interesting. I’d be happy to hear more about it and what stage you’re currently at with financing and distribution. Perhaps we can connect in Century City during the market.

Update: since is so difficult to have a list of Producers and Sales Agent I just have record mine, if someone want to share with me, message me in private, thank you

Curious to hear more about your experiences at AFM Valerio! And thanks for the awesome tips and feedback, All!

...too bad none of the dealmakers has any money for advances, negative pickups or MGs...

The decision I wish people made earlier is not a distribution decision at all. It is deciding who the film is for, specifically enough that you could name where those people gather.

Almost everything you listed downstream gets easier once that has a real answer. Runtime, genre, festival strategy, which materials you cut and when. And the expensive version of this lesson is watching a finished film that is genuinely good go out to nobody in particular, because the honest answer to who is this for was always "people who like good films."

On the rest of your question, I would separate two things that often get merged. Thinking about distribution early is useful. Designing for a buyer early is usually not. Films built to match what a platform is currently acquiring tend to arrive eighteen months later into a market that has moved, and they are the hardest films to market because they were never pointed at anybody in particular.

Designing for an audience is different, and it holds up. If you know a real community exists around your subject or your genre, you can make decisions in development that make the film easier to reach them with, and you can start talking to those people while you are still shooting. By the time you get to a distribution conversation you are not asking someone to find you an audience. You are showing them one.

The single most expensive lesson I have watched repeatedly: waiting until picture lock to think about any of it. By then the only lever left is spend.

For me, before even the finalization of the script. Listening to script readers informs me of what kind of distribution the project warrants. Not everything has to have a theatrical release. Getting foreign distribution locked down very early goes a HUGE way in securing total domestic funding and can expedite a green light quickly. Aggregators are priceless for streaming platforms, even with just the proposal ready. Myself, a really do want to see in numbers what the market demand is ahead of time. That shapes everything I do afterward. I've had foreign completely fund a full-length feature in six weeks before even the principle photography, based on cast commitments, and I've gone the other route with the "labor of love" project that was completed in post-production but never secured distribution at all and was canned...ouch...

Lourdes, that “labor of love” example really hits. There is a huge difference between creating something you believe in and creating something that also has a clearly understood path to an audience and market.

I agree that distribution should be considered much earlier than many creators realize. What I find especially valuable in what you shared is using script readers and market demand to help determine what kind of distribution strategy a project actually warrants, rather than automatically assuming every film needs the same path.

The foreign financing example is fascinating too. Being able to demonstrate demand, attach the right cast, and establish international interest before principal photography can completely change the financing conversation.

I think that connects with Chase’s point as well. Identify the audience early, understand the market around them, but don't let the current buyer landscape dictate the creative identity of the project. The goal is to know who you're making it for and build a realistic bridge between the creative vision, financing, and eventual audience.

That balance is something I'm paying much closer attention to as I develop my own projects. Appreciate you sharing the hard-earned lesson. “Ouch” is definitely the right word for that second experience.

Coming from an extensive background directing hundreds of commercial ad films in India, I believe distribution strategy must be integrated right from post-production. On our upcoming feature 'DAAS (Part 1)' (graded on DaVinci Resolve Studio), aligning the technical workflow and marketing positioning early has been critical for targeting international acquisition and OTT buyers. Great insights shared here!

Thank you, Mohammed. That’s a valuable perspective, especially coming from someone with your experience directing commercial work at that scale.

I agree that distribution shouldn’t be an afterthought. The way a project is shaped in post-production can have a major impact on how it ultimately travels, especially when you’re thinking about international audiences and OTT buyers from the beginning.

I’d be interested to hear more about DAAS (Part 1) and how you approached the workflow and positioning for the international market. Always good to connect with people who are thinking beyond the screen and into the full life of a project.