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Independent Film Distribution: How to Make a Successful End Run Around the Big Guys
No matter how good your film is, if it doesn't get distribution, it will never been seen by anyone. Learn how to break out of the pack and champion your movie by getting it seen and heard by the biggest audience possible!
- GenresFilm
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 27, 2010
If you're looking for an upbeat, optimistic book about making a ton of money from your low budget film, this is not the book for you. But if you want to read a collection of war stories about people who have had their small art house or documentary films distributed, you'll find this book enlightening.
Phil Hall is a contributing editor to Film Threat, so it is interview-based with "Listen to what the man says..." summaries at the end of each chapter. Many of the filmmakers interviewed see distribution as a necessary evil to get their work seen by the public and are not interested in making money, or in making just enough to finance their next film. Look for occasional rants against mainstream tastes and traditional Hollywood fare, and about how the big studios or moneyed directors have taken over festivals with 15-20 million dollar faux indies like My Big Fat Greek Wedding or Sideways.
There are a few interviews with people who do low budget horror or exploitation films, but most of the filmmakers are working on labors of love about Croatian bluegrass musicians or the heart warming stories of one-armed Guatemalan beet farmers. The author is decidedly pessimistic about the prospects of commercial success with an indie, though I think he would say "realistic."
I appreciated the nuts and bolts approach, historical sections (especially the story of Oscar Micheaux) and how thick the book was - you get a lot of content for the money. There is a list of distributors, along with their specializations, in the back of the book. There is a discussion of the challenges and benefits of self-distribution and the different kinds of self-distribution, along with a chapter on Direct to Video and selling through Netflix, Ebay, or from a website. I was hoping for a book which was more focused genre films, but gleaned a lot of useful information from this work.
Phil Hall is a contributing editor to Film Threat, so it is interview-based with "Listen to what the man says..." summaries at the end of each chapter. Many of the filmmakers interviewed see distribution as a necessary evil to get their work seen by the public and are not interested in making money, or in making just enough to finance their next film. Look for occasional rants against mainstream tastes and traditional Hollywood fare, and about how the big studios or moneyed directors have taken over festivals with 15-20 million dollar faux indies like My Big Fat Greek Wedding or Sideways.
There are a few interviews with people who do low budget horror or exploitation films, but most of the filmmakers are working on labors of love about Croatian bluegrass musicians or the heart warming stories of one-armed Guatemalan beet farmers. The author is decidedly pessimistic about the prospects of commercial success with an indie, though I think he would say "realistic."
I appreciated the nuts and bolts approach, historical sections (especially the story of Oscar Micheaux) and how thick the book was - you get a lot of content for the money. There is a list of distributors, along with their specializations, in the back of the book. There is a discussion of the challenges and benefits of self-distribution and the different kinds of self-distribution, along with a chapter on Direct to Video and selling through Netflix, Ebay, or from a website. I was hoping for a book which was more focused genre films, but gleaned a lot of useful information from this work.
April 3, 2009
What sets this book apart from others is the series of interviews with industry people who have already been there.
October 21, 2016
Informative, but out-dated. It actually served as an interesting history of what distribution used to be like back in the time of DVDS and celluloid.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews