5 Mistakes that cost filmmakers TENS or HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of dollars
Film Distribution is a weird and wonky system full of highly specific jargon and terms of art that are meant to be difficult to understand by its very nature. I’ve already written several blogs on the basics of how these agreements are structured in a way that a person who is not a lawyer should be able to understand. However, even if you gain an understanding of this wonky system, there are a lot of things that can really hurt your film’s bottom line. Some of these things could even erase any profits you might have otherwise seen. Here are 5 mistakes I’ve personally seen filmmakers make that have cost them a minimum of 5 figures per filmmaker.
Not Fully Appreciating Exclusivity
Managing the rights of an independent film isn’t easy. There’s a lot more to it than uploading to Amazon and expecting a few million hits. In fact, making your film available on any wide-scale platform is going to make it nearly impossible for a sales agent to sell whatever territory the film has already been exploited in. Even if you take the film down, you’ve blown exclusive deals, and those are the only deals that pay anything notable upfront. One of the first things a territorial distributor does is to google the film from their home country to see where it’s currently available. If they see it’s available in their territory, they decline.
I’ve lost multiple territorial sales for multiple filmmakers due to someone prematurely exploiting a film in a certain territory without letting the sales agent know about it. Don’t be one of those filmmakers.
To be clear, films are not evergreen and there will come a time when the smart play is legal wide aggregation in order to cut losses from piracy and build your notoriety in those territories in order to better sell future work. That time starts at the earliest 2 years from the market premiere of the completed film. If you do it too much faster, you could be leaving significant amounts of money on the table.
Sending Screeners too early
Most of the time a distributor, sales agent, or even producer’s rep will only watch a film once. Additionally, they’ll only watch the first 5 minutes of it and if they’re not hooked, they won’t keep watching. I’ve seen many distributors walk out of buyer screenings around that mark. There’s very little you can do to prevent this from happening entirely. Even though a strong hook in the first 5 minutes will help lessen this happening, buyers are busy people with too many films to watch so you won’t be able to fully prevent it due to shifting market demands and mandates.
What you can control is how early you send out your film.
In general, it’s unwise to submit anything aside from the final, finished cut of your feature film. Distributors and sales agents get a lot of submissions, and often won’t watch with the eye of what the film could be, only what it is now. While they may give you some leniency because they know it’s not finished there’s more than likely going to be some degree of subconscious response reminding them that they weren’t big on the film when they watched it. That will manifest in several ways, nearly all are bad for the filmmaker.
Dropping promotional assets too early.
It’s totally natural to be excited when you get your new promotional assets like your trailer, your poster, box art, or anything of the sort. When excited, I’ve seen many filmmakers run straight to social media to show off to their friends. This is unwise.
Distributors use poster drops and trailer drops to get press coverage in the trades to grow awareness of the film on a global level. If you just put it up on Facebook, we can’t get the same drop in the press. Your friends will be more impressed if you drop an exclusive from BloodyDisgusting, Collider, or /film to show off your poster, trailer, or exclusive sneak peek. In general, it’s always wise to ask your distributor if you can show off their work to your social media contacts, if they say they’re looking to get an exclusive, hold off and check back in a week or so for a status update.
Making the wrong Genre
I know, I know this one has been beaten into the heads of most independent filmmakers. There’s a reason for that though. The sad fact of the matter is that not very many people watch dramas without names or high-level accolades. A bad horror movie is an easier sell than a great drama. If you make a drama, without recognizable names you’re only likely to make money in your home country, and at least in the US, you’re likely to make significantly less than you would have made if you made something like a thriller.
One suggestion I often give on this front to filmmakers who are still in the script stage is to consider telling the same story in a different way while emphasizing suspense over emotion in order to make the film into a thriller instead of a drama. You’re going to make a lot bigger splash with a thriller than a drama, and if all other things are equal in terms of cast and production quality, you’ve got a much better chance at recouping your investment.
Pulling their film without a plan.
Sometimes you have to take your film back from a distributor. There are a lot of sharks out there and there’s a good chance you’ll need to exit a distribution agreement at some point in your filmmaking career. Generally, when it’s time do to this you will have a very good reason to do so. That being said Just because you’ve taken your independent film down make it as though it was never there. If the film is taken down, platforms often won’t put it back up through a different distributor, meaning you’ll be in a rough spot to get it back up.
This is not universal, but it is common that once a film is taken down its exceedingly difficult to get back up. To be clear, if your distributor or sales agent is in breach of contract you may not have a better option than to take your film down. You just need to be aware that you might have some trouble putting it back up, and you won’t make any money from the film in the interim.
As I said at the top, this all gets wonky really quickly. It’s more than most filmmakers can really take in over just a few times sitting down at their computer. That’s why Guerrilla Rep Media offers FREE monthly content digests delivered straight to you as part of our Indiefilm Business Resource pack. It’s easy to sign up and once you do you’ll receive a monthly email full of useful educational content completely for free. Additionally, you’ll get lots of other goodies like a free e-book, free white paper, investment deck template, festival brochure template, and more. Sign up below.
