With BURDEN I toured for 6 months then entered Distribution talks, with a new film SWERVE that I produced we signed with a Buyer and Distributor before it’s World Premiere.

Similar to a band, we should be touring with our film, selling it to multiple territories at the same time. We shouldn’t do the waiting game anymore. Hollywood isn’t, if a film flops they quickly put it on DVD to save Marketing money. Way pay twice the marketing for a failure.

We as indi-filmmakers don’t have giant Marketing budgets so we need to do it all at once.

BURDEN and SWERVE will be playing on Italian TV starting Sept 1st 2010, and we are looking forward to continuing to lockdown other territories.

We are living in a crazy new era where the rules just don’t apply like they used to.

If we think of it as a company biz mindset than there are ways to cut cost long term. First, don’t rent but buy. Make it part of your biz plan that if you, as a filmmaker, can make back the money from the film after a certain period of time (after completion) than you (original company) gets a “bonus” in the form of the equipment. This gives you an incentive to sell, sell, sell and also when you’re done you have something tangible. Now the next film should cost you less because you have equipment that won’t be part of the equation. Now you might be able to have the original company make a cut of the backend as part of the trade for making the equpment available on film #2. And so on and on so on. My point is longevity. The first film made make considerably less but the second, third, fourth should start to cost less. Plus you need to study some of Rodriguez’s shooting technique like zooming between characters lines so that you are getting more than one shot per take, cutting down on production time. There are many cost cutting ways to trim the budget. Each film you should be learning your own tricks of the trade to make each one easier.

On marketing one of the things I’ve learned is to find a way to get my audience to fall in love with some of my characters prior to seeing the film. One of the things that made people watch episode after episode of LOST was that people fell in love with certain characters. Since we’re not shooting TV we have to find a way to make our audience fall in love with them prior to watching.

Raising awareness about a project has never been easier, the online tools are far less expensive (if not free), if you’ve got quality content and some imagination (which we’d expect, being a film maker and all) then there’s no excuse, engaging your target audience via the likes of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter is not rocket science.

However, as @Diana says, the internet is a tough platform to generate a clear revenue model, advertising doesn’t always cut it but is a good start, this is where we need our greatest minds working together, trying to develop a clear business model that considers web 2.0, peer to peer sharing, social media etc.

The web has changed things forever, and for everyone. Now we need to figure out how to best harness its power and apply it so that those who work hard and produce great visual projects can make some money to fund future ideas.

I also agree with Derrick and Diana… It is a new form of freedom for the producer. For the savvy producer, it’s a big fantastic new ballgame that he or she has better control of. This isn’t a negative thing, this a GREAT thing! Yes, it’s going to be more work on the business side but if you do a good job on the creative and get your distribution ducks in a row ON YOUR OWN prior to production, you can expect to do well.

As I stated before, theatrical is where to consider a larger chunk of revenue. It IS possible to get a limited distribution deal with a theatre chain. There are 36 theatre chains in the U.S. 2,620 theatres and over 27,000 screens. ONLY 4 of those chains are “biggies” and that leaves 994 theatres that are owned by smaller chains if you can’t get your foot in the door at the large ones. And yes,

Bottom-line is if you don’t want to do the research and the work it takes to get a product to the market, don’t make a movie, make a You Tube video.

One last thought…perhaps a group of filmmakers should get together and sue the government in order to loosen the SEC rules and regulations. Technically, SEC rules step on our constitutional rights and the rights of the “little guy” to make his own monetary decisions in order to grow and prosper. Think about it. Does the average person really have an opportunity to invest in a film? 35 is the maximum number of non-accredited investors you can have on a project. Originally, the rules were set in place to protect people from being taken advantage of. Times have changed and the rules are outdated.

Building an audience would only make sense if they had the opportunity to invest in the project themselves. 5,000 people investing 10K gets you to a 5 million dollar budget. Smaller investment, smaller risk for an investor and you have 5000 sales people ready to go out and recruit an audience. The model has changed, people have changed, technology has changed…it’s time for the SEC rules to change.