Intentional Filmmaking – Marketing, Distribution and Fund Raising Plan
(List your film’s name) has a special opportunity to achieve both financial and altruistic goals. It is a remarkable story of xxsxxx
(Give me the name of the character or event and some dramatic story line.)
We have developed and begun implementing our customized distribution plan. It combines social media, networking, an interactive website, attaching strategic partners, domestic and international film festivals, digital and DVD distribution platforms and strategic public relations.
This is a detailed outline of the various steps we are taking in the distribution of.___________ (name of film) to maximize the donations to complete the film.
Identifying our Market:
Currently we are using these key words to locate and engage our audience. List them here………. In Googling these words we have found the following organizations that we are contacting to support our film: (make a list of at least 8)
Attaching our audience to the film:
We are blogging on the subject; we are following (Name major blogs on this subject) and commenting. We are periodically advertising on FACEBOOK to increase our likes. We drive people to our web site where we give incentives to collect their names, email addresses and zip codes. This is one way we are building our core audience.
Entertaining our Audience
We tweet and post information on the subject matter, we put updates on the film on our site and Facebook. We have contests, we….(explain how you are entertaining you audience during the process of filmmaking.) (Perhaps say things like, upload film, posting articles on the subject matter, updates on the filmmaking process, news on our major character, etc.)
We have a unique marketing concept for this film (hook) of….explain what’s so special about your film and how you will market it.
Our Audience Consumes Media Through:
We have identified that our audience is made up of the following:
(Post here where your audience gets its information)
Teens that spend lots of time on twitter
Older people who use Facebook and our web site.
We are marketing to these people by (explain how) tweeting 3 times a week and creating a dialogue about the film/character on Facebook. We have created a blog. (You can use hootsuite.com to post all of these at once.)
Our web site has a place to leave comments or will be fully interactive in (put the number of months) months with incoming funds.
Distribution Avenues
- Film Festivals
- Theatrical
- Semi-Theatrical
- Cable VOD
- Direct DVD
- Domestic TV
- Retail DVD
- Direct Digital
- Retail Digital
- Foreign TV Sales
- Education
- TVOD (transactional video on demand) I tunes, cable video on demand do this first window 3-6-9 months till declining sales then Netflix, Hulu and Amazon, subscription on demand HULU has AVOD advertisement supported video on demand
- TUBITV upcoming platform
We will create a presence for (name of film) through film festivals, both national and international. To create awareness for distribution we will showcase the film on the festival circuit. These are the festivals we will target: (put in your choices)
- Premier: Toronto, Sundance, SXSW, Tribeca, L.A.
- Documentary: Hot Docs, Silver Docs, Full Frame
- International: IFDA, Berlin, Amsterdam, Sheffield, Copenhagen
- Other (this is for your genera, health, environmental, etc.)
- Environmental: Bioneers, Wild Screen, etc.
After the festivals we will release the film theatrically. (This you need to expand on. Standard distribution where you give all rights to a domestic distributor. (You may not want to put this in. Or you could say that you do not intend to use theatrical release for this film as you have found other windows that offer more income.)
After festivals we will release the film online through portals like www.distribber.com. We will use our database to drive people to purchase downloads or we may upload our film on our own website with www.VHX.tv.
We may distribute where we retain all our rights and hire a company to release the film. (Another option you have)
This is an example one person used and you can find your related organizations online like they did:
Our audience that’s interested in spirituality and higher consciousness consumes information from myriad sources. People interested in meditation, yoga, and “new age” spirituality visit the following sites and their associated Facebook pages:
Spirituality & Health Magazine 303,000 likes Science of the Mind 358,000 likes Agape International Spirtual Center 27,000 likes Yoganonymous 309,000 likes Yoga International.com 674,000 likes New Age 164,000 likes
Please put in your numbers as this is most impressive when you know your market and are identifying it with hundreds of thousands of potential viewers.
Our Strategy:
Talk about how you engage people on facebook. What will you post – how you connect via the fb pages of prominent blogs, advertising with targeted key words.
We are posting on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ – and driving people to our website to give us their name, email address, and zip code. . .thus developing our email database.
State you are commenting on social media with your eye toward connecting with influencers and strategic partners in the community. We (will?) are marketing to these people by posting on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ 3 times a week and creating a dialogue about the film on Facebook. We are driving people to our interactive website to view blog posts, post comments, and sign up to our email list. Our website includes a call for donations.
Growing our database by blogging and cross promoting:
We are periodically advertising on Facebook to increase our likes. (again you can make it “will” versus “we are”) And, we will drive people to our website where we offer an incentive to collect their names and email addresses by offering free articles. We will tweet and post information on subject matter related to our film, sound bites from interviews we’ve done, and videos; we post news about the film on our site Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ – with the goal to add Pinterest and Instagram in the future.
Website and Blog
Put how you engage people here – and how you blog and co-post your blog on other blogs to attract an audience. For instance, Huffington Post’s Religion Blog.
Areas of Distribution
Semi-Theatrical: We will release _ (name of film) semi-theatrically. We will have special event screenings on campuses and museums and theatres across the country. It will also be shown at _______ name places just for your genera.
These special event screenings will generate revenues from rental fees and ticket sales and DVD sales and sometimes speaker fees.
(Name of film) could make $50,000.00 for a cable vod run. (You need some comps here of similar films and what they made from vod runs. Like: The release of “xxx” via cable made more than $250,000.00 in revenue.
The video streams for revenue are:
Transactional video-on-demand (T-VOD), that includes rentals and pay-per-view
Subscription VOD (S-VOD) that includes online video
Subscription services and premium TV channels; and electronic
Sell-through (EST), which includes the purchase of TV programs and movies.
Domestic TV
The sale of the US television rights to (name of film) can be major revenue for us. Fees for the rights to show this on a first or second tier cable network like Showtime, PBS, A & E or Discovery (add any other stations you think will buy it) could be from 40,000 to 400,000.00.
Direct Download Sales
Direct sales of downloads from (enter your web site) will be more profitable than sales through retail outlets. We believe we can do sales of xxx numbers. We have extra content that can be sold with our film. We can get $6.95 for a single download for $19.95 for download and bonus content and even $49.95 for the extra bonus content our film has. This film has a long shelf life (if it does) and we can expect to continue marketing downloads.
This film will appeal to (name some of your markets here)
Our web site can become a good source of income from related products. We can sell:
– Our music as an original score on a CD.
– Our poster of the film
– Tee shirts, bags and hats
– Lateral products that will appeal to our audience like name items that your audience would purchase.
The film Forks over Knives and Pure Plant Nation (for Docs) has been very successful in marketing to their data base the same type products as well as seminars they put on for educational purposes. We will do something similar with the content of our film…. (Explain).
We are in the process of increasing our data base. We know this is our direct line to the people who want to see this film made. They are supporting us while we are making the film and will buy the download and help us market the film to their friends.
Retail DVD
We also believe this will fit with the shoppers of Costco and Wal-Mart because? It’s a family film? And we intend to approach them to distribute. We are considering a sales agent to handle the TV and retail DVD sales for us. (If you are they can make one call and sell your products if they agree to take you.) Listen to David Vasile interview on blogtalkradio.com and read his chapter in my book. (Something to consider.)
We could net as much as $5.00 per DVD from Costco and Wal-Mart after expenses. We believe we have the potential to net $ 50,000 to $100,000.00.
Retail Digital
Revenues from digital distribution are increasing. We will be contacting Netflix, Amazon Prime and we can also sell to iTunes or Hulu. We are investigating distribber.com to work through them. ( or any other master distributor you may want to use)
Foreign TV Sales
Most foreign sales will be for an hour version ( FOR DOCS ONLY) and we will make one for this market.
We believe that (name countries) will be interested in our film. We will definitely approach ZDF in Germany and Artes in France, Channel 4 in the UK, NHK Japan, Australia and the Scandinavian countries. (This can also be done by a sales agent.)
Educational Release
This film will be sold to colleges and universities. We will target the following departments (name which ones would be interested like history, art, science, etc.).
In addition, we will make a separate version to be sold to public schools, non-profits, government agencies (?) High schools and libraries. All sales will be much greater than the normal DVD sale. They can range from $99.00 to $299.00 each.
Core Audience (put audience here, like, health, women, etc)
(Name of film) will appeal to a number of key target audiences based on the subject matter. These audiences will be targeted through ________organizations, explain your core audience groups and businesses that are aligned with the subject matter of your film.
We have: (tell us your core audience, name who will buy this)
Special Events (1) Groups (2) Year around Outlets (3)
- List special events that you will attend with your core audience.
- Put a list of groups you belong to or are joining.
- List the outlets where your DVD can be sold.
We are already building audiences prior to the release of __________. We now have ____ names in our database and ______names on our Facebook page and are growing these daily.
Customized Distribution Strategy
Our distribution strategy is customized to our core audience. We know them well and we will market direct to them for maximum income and exposure of the information in our film. We will implement this distribution strategy one item at a time as we will continue to learn more about our audience and how to best relate to them. We are working with experienced partners, nonprofits and distribution experts to get the maximum exposure and income from this film.
From the domestic and foreign TV sales, direct sales from the website, downloads, income from events and educational sales, we believe that our film will earn approximately $__________. Or if you are looking for finishing funds, where you want a partner, say that you believe the distribution income will make more than the $XX,000.00 you are asking for completion funds.
________ (title of the film) is being released using all of the online distribution and marketing opportunities available to us. This gives us an immense amount of marketing available for a small percentage paid by films in the past. We are taking full advantage of all online marketing and distribution channels. We know the core audience for this film and are marketing direct to them.
We are proud of the work we are doing to create and market our film. Your support and confidence in our team and this film can help us achieve our goal of: (Releasing a great drama or? put your goal here, improving the health of our nation or exposing an important issue, etc.)
