How secondary objectives inform the way you release your film
It’s Been Two Years
We are approaching the two year anniversary of when I moved from my Mailchimp newsletter to Substack. I started with my relatively robust email list of 6500 intrepid followers. I’m thrilled that we are now approaching nearly 10,000 – thank you! The very first post I wrote specifically for Substack was Self Distribution Does Not Exist and I still abide by what I said in that post – but perhaps I am not so didactic about it.
My second post on this Substack was the birth of my Distribution 101 series (if you are on the Substack website – its the menu above). If you have been following me for any time, you know that the very first question I ask a filmmaker in relation to their distribution strategy is: What is the goal of your release? I’ve found that lasting success starts with choosing one goal, and it always falls into one of four categories: Money, Career, Change the World, or Audience. You can pivot – but pivot to one other specific goal. You can have other goals be secondary – but one goal needs to take precedence over all others.
If you want to dig deeper into why I believe it’s essential to pick just one goal, and why I’ve identified these specific categories, check out that earlier post: Distribution 101: Set a Goal for Your Release
What is a Win For You?
I would add to that post to be as specific as possible as to what is a win for you and your team, when will you know you have achieved that goal. We recently started the Cohort 5 of our Distribution Lab (more on that next week) and the first assignment is about Your Goal, Your Film’s Brand, Your Brand, Your Audiences – and I’ve been very impressed with the results so far. One of the fiction lab participants, Mark Rosman (Cinderella Story, Lizzie Maguire) has a new independent project and was very precise in quantifying his main goal: Audience 10,000 of his primary niche audience to see the film within two years. 5+ Treatment centers or organizations to license the film to screen to families.
Goal Adjustments
While choosing an overarching goal is as important as ever, I’ve identified another layer to this framework — I call these Goal Adjustments.
Goal adjustments don’t change your goal and couldn’t really function as a goal, but they can affect how you achieve that goal. One adjustment I have been using for some time is creating a long term relationship with your audience. You can be aiming for an impact goal – but do it in such a way that you are collecting audience data and connection for future projects. Impact is still primary – but with an adjustment for long-term audience connections.
Other goal adjustments could be wanting to support union labor, wanting to have a green release with as little of an environmental footprint as possible (this might reduce the amount of cross country/international flights you take, minimizing usage of plastics). I have found a growing number of filmmakers are reconsidering which companies they’re willing to work with/partner with in creating a hybrid distribution path for their films. Note: I previously posted some of the following on Hope for Film – but I wanted to share it with my audience – you!
An Ethical Release
A perfect example of a Goal Adjustment comes from the team behind Revelations of Divine Love who wrote about their distribution for this Substack here. Their primary goal was to build their audience, but they were clear from the start that they wanted to do it ethically. Producer Kate Stahl put it this way:
It has been our goal through every part of the process to operate in an ethical and collaborative way, building a cooperative community of artisans, performers, programmers, filmmakers (many of whom checked multiples of these boxes). As we look forward to digital distribution and TVOD in particular, we want to approach it in the same way. Not partnering with major corporations with dubious values, but rather with members of our wider community.
For their release, ethics wasn’t just a consideration; it was baked into how they defined success. Their primary goal was to build their audience, and they used their goal adjustment — to release ethically — as a lens through which they made every decision about their strategy, including who to partner with and which platforms to consider.
“Should I Support Techno Fascists?”
Ethics could play a part in all aspects of a film’s distribution – but for today, I’m going to focus on VOD distribution. To paraphrase a client: “Should I, as the filmmaker, support techno fascist global corporations with my releases. What have they ever done for me?” In other words, with democracy on the line, do we want to give part of our revenue essentially to financially support the corporations and the billionaires who profit from them, while utilizing predatory business practices and catering to our would-be autocrat-in-chief. This question has been raised by a number of clients.
So Many Alternatives
Especially considering there are so many alternative platforms for direct-to-fan digital distribution such as Kinema, Eventive, Gathr, Cindee merch/digital hybrids such as Film Trade and Videostore Age (see info below for the upcoming webinar with these last three platforms), not to mention many other emerging platforms.
The initial “sells” for these platforms were twofold. First is money: direct-to-fan platforms you keep a significantly higher percentage of your revenue than iTunes or Amazon. Amazon is taking up to 50% of TVOD these days and iTunes 70% vs 90% for most of these platforms. That’s not a minor difference; it’s the difference between distribution that sustains your practice and distribution that furthers theirs.
The second is the relationship to your audience. When someone rents your film through a direct platform, you get their email, and (hopefully) the beginning of a long-term connection with a fan who may follow your next film or your next decade of work. Amazon gives you none of that.
Here are some other advantages:
- Creating scarcity through limited time “film drops”
- Eventizing VOD through virtual events.
- Giving you a variety of other marketing techniques such as pay it forward, pay what you want, discount codes and in some cases affiliate marketing.
- Linking merchandise to TVOD sales in some cases.
What You Might Give Up
The complication is convenience and potential reach. Digital audiences are conditioned to go where it’s easy. If your film isn’t where they already are, some of them simply won’t show up. If the consumer experience for digital is convenience, then you should make the film as convenient as possible. But perhaps there are bigger issues at stake now than convenience. McDonalds is a convenient place to get food, Starbucks is a convenient place to get coffee, Netflix is a convenient place to get movies: but part of the reason they are convenient is that most of these corporations have used predatory practices to gain market dominance that make them convenient Amazon has done this in nearly every consumer sector. (Not to mention questionable labor, environmental practices).
And yes – for those planning on doing a hybrid direct-to-fan and major platform TVOD approach, you do run the risk, if you have a large TVOD inclined audience – which still exist – that you might lose out on pushing your film up onto the higher performing carousels/making wider sales. But what really are the chances of that when you are competing against a range of studio and streamer product. It does happen. I’m pretty sure it happened to Hundreds of Beavers. It probably happens to some other indies – and you should consider these negatives in your calculations. The key is to weigh these options against the ethical benefits of the alternative.
Lead Your Audience
Perhaps it is time to encourage audiences to find innovative, diverse and challenging work in different spaces because the chance of the audience finding your content on those platforms considering the power of and ever changing nature of their algorithms may not be likely. Consider how Bookshop.org is working with independent bookstores to create an alternative to Amazon. Audiobooks.com is an alternative to Audible. Partner with your audience. Bring them on your journey as much as you meet them where they are.
And while the major platforms might offer convenience – they certainly do not offer discoverability. What I hear from digital aggregators is that it is increasingly difficult and expensive to even pay for placement on Amazon (which is, by various estimates, 75% of the TVOD market).
Build the Ecosystem You Want to Live In
Here’s where the ethics come back in. Platforms like Kinema, Eventive, Gathr, Cindee etc. exist precisely to support independent filmmakers with direct-to-audience distribution. As our media ecosystem is being consolidated into fewer and more authoritarian leaning hands, the need for a viable alternative system for diverse, innovative and challenging content is more essential than ever. When you choose these platforms over the giants, you are making a choice about the kind of film economy you want to exist in ten (or twenty) years.
Not for Everyone
This is a strong stance and won’t be for everyone. Many filmmakers will still feel that being on the major platforms is essential for their goals whether it is money, career, impact, audience. It will prove challenging to thread the needle with digital distributors and aggregators to be on some platforms and not others. But there are a plethora of different strategies and tactics. Some filmmakers are doing a direct to fan window before going on the larger platforms to monetize and collect audience data. Some aggregators will enable you to choose some platforms and not others, at a price. Weighing your options, considering what is essential to you, is at the core of creating your distribution strategy.https://jonreiss.substack.com/p/distribution-101-revisiting-goals