9 Essential Elements of an Independent Film Community Screening Package
Theatrical releasing isn’t about money, it’s about awareness. That said, not all films are suited for a theatrical release. Here’s a guide for those an alternative for certain films.
If you’re making a film with an extremely niche audience, it can make A LOT of sense to consider hosting some community screenings in place of a more traditional theatrical run. While this tactic is most commonly used for documentaries that have a strong social message, it’s also a tool that can be quite effective when utilized by narrative films targeting a very well-defined niche. Here’s what goes into the package you’ll be selling to anyone who might want to screen your film.
Essentially, what you’re selling is an event kit that includes pretty much everything that an event organizer will need to create an event around your film so both of you can make money.
1. The rights to publicly screen the film
You can’t legally screen a film to a gathering of people without a special kind of license. Many times, this license is more of a handshake agreement, but if you’re doing anything at scale you need a special agreement. Since if you’re doing this effectively, it’s probably going to be something that’s replicated across many screens across the country, it’s best to plan in advance and include the full license as part of the community screening agreement.
2. Questions to facilitate conversations after the film
Most of the time, the goal of a community screening is not just to show the film, but to build community around it. Starting a conversation around the film when it’s over can be a great way for people to begin to understand not only the film, but the other people in the community watching it. As such, providing a list of sample questions to anyone who would be hosting the event is a great way to make sure that the community building around your film is likely to go well.
3. Art Assets for social media
Not everyone is good at social media marketing. I would recommend that you create a set of art assets that can be easily modified to include the host and location for each of the following.
Facebook (general)
Facebook (event)
Meetup
Instagram
If you think I missed one, leave it in the comments.
4. A Pricing Plan
If you want to attract good event hosts, they’ll need to know what they need to pay. Generally, it’s best to structure this as a hard cost plus revenue share, with the potential to add consumables like DVDs to the list. If you do a Revenue Share, you need to insist that you host it through your Eventbrite.
Another couple of add-ons you could consider is Skyping or zooming in after the screening to take questions. You could also include the ability to fly out, but that would be a MUCH higher price point that includes travel.
5. Easily printable standard page size flyers in both black and white and color
You should include easily printed and customizable flyers in black and white and in color for your event hosts to put up around town and use for promotion. You do need black and white and color separately, as color is more eye-catching but black and white is more cost effective. These should be print-ready pdfs based on a template you created. Here’s an example i made for a masterclass I recently did in Las Cruces, New Mexico. (it’s a .jpb it displays in this blog.)
6. Easily printable quarter page size flyers
This is the same sort of concept as the full-page flyers but sized so they can be given out or left somewhere.
7. A Sample Press Release/EPK
This might be the most important item on this list. One of the biggest reasons that you want to do these screenings is to increase the profile of the film. If you get a significant amount of local press coverage, you’ll end up getting a significant boost to your SEO. You should also make sure you include a few quotes from you about the film, and a few images to make the job of the local reporter as easy as possible.
8. Testimonials
You should get some quotes about your film from any notable person you can that’s seen it. If you’re past your festival run, you should consider looking at any of the reviews you got about the project.
9. General best practices for marketing events
Not all community organizations are great at marketing events. So, an electronic file delivery of best practices for marketing a screening like this would be very useful to them. Having recently worked with a few arts organizations, I wish I had made a template with more detail to better get the word out and get a few more people to show up.
Thanks so much for reading! Next week I’ll release a blog about how to actually market this package.
This is a service I provide for my clients, so if you’d like me to consider taking yours on, use our services button below. if you want more content just like this, sign up for my email list to get monthly blog digests segmented by topic as well as some great film business resources.
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The Practical Guide to DVD/Blu-Ray Distribution for Independent Filmmakers
Physical media is dead, right? Well, mostly. Although maybe not as much as you’d think.
Last week I examined the rise and fall of physical media for the film industry. As promised, this week I’ll outline WHY that matters, and the practical aspects of the current independent film industry. Well, the answer to that (and so many things in both this industry and in life) is that it’s all in how you do it. What follows is an examination, looking to lend guidance to that question. Here are the ways you can still make money with independent film.
A disclaimer: a lot of this article is something that filmmakers can’t do themselves, and will require a distributor to help get the film into place.
Redbox pays up front, most others pay on consignment
There aren’t that many large-scale DVD retailers left. It used to be that everyone sold some DVDs by the checkout because people would pick them up on impulse. Now the only places that still retail DVDs in the US are RedBox, Walmart, Target, Best Buy, and Family Video in the Midwest. I’m sure I’m missing a few smaller players, but not much beyond that.
The trouble with this is that while I won’t name names for legal reasons, a lot of the retailers listed above buy DVDs on consignment, not outright. In practice, this means that your distributor will need to replicate anywhere between 10 thousand and 50 thousand DVDs and then pay shelf rental fees with no hard guarantee that they will get their money back. Replication at that scale is not horrendously expensive, but even while the per-unit cost of replication is cheap, the sheer number of units means that the distributor will have A LOT at risk.
Redbox on the other hand buys DVDs outright. Plus, since they don’t use standard cases the DVD replication tends to be cheaper. Even with that, they pay pretty well on a per-unit basis.
Redbox might well be your highest-value single deal
Since Redbox tends to buy anywhere between 10 thousand and 50 thousand units outright, the profit on the sale can reach well into 6 figures. This is not a small amount of money, especially considering that they do still buy low-budget movies. By contrast, most PayTV providers only pay low-mid 5 figures.
If the franchise has strong sequel potential and is brought to Redbox by a distributor they’ve worked with in the past, they’ve even been known to issue a sales agreement while still in development, which can greatly help in financing. It should be noted that this is rare.
A HUGE Caveat to note here is that both Redbox and most Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD) providers only acquire films that have had at least 250,000 USD at the box office.
MOD is almost certainly worth doing
MOD stands for Manufacture on Demand. A LOT of the films you see online but not in-store are put there through MOD services. Not all, but a lot. There are some services that are available only to distributors. These services tend to be the widest-reaching MOD providers. However, Amazon’s CreateSpace has recently become a place primarily for Video on Demand and MOD sold through Amazon. Their analytics are great, and anyone can do it.
I have done MOD Distribution for most films I distribute in the US, and most outlets I work with will do MOD for their releases as well. If it’s a theatrical film, and it’s something that has a real chance at getting to one of the major retailers, most distributors work with a partner to get it there. If you enjoyed reading this, you should check out my mailing list and resource package using the other button. The resource package has lots of great templates and additional information, plus you get a monthly blog digest segmented by topic.