Broderick believes that the Internet gives a micro-budget filmmaker unprecedented control of distribution. The old concept in filmmaking was creative control. Now, filmmakers need to add a new concept to their thinking: distribution control. The Internet makes it as important for filmmakers to retain distribution control, as it is to retain creative control.
The first step in retaining distribution control is to develop a distribution strategy. A distribution strategy outlines all the ways you plan to reach your audience. It includes things like theatrical release, semi-theatrical release, film festivals, Internet rights, DVD sales and so on. (We will talk about each of these later in this article.) When you have a distribution strategy on paper, you can focus your energies and concentrate your valuable resources on specific audiences.
This focus is especially important for micro-budget filmmakers, because they have very limited resources with which to reach their audiences.
When you begin to develop a distribution strategy for a micro-budget film the first question to ask is, "Is this film suitable for hybrid distribution?" because not all films are.
Films that are good candidates for hybrid distribution are those films with clear core audiences. (A core audience is simply a group of people that cares deeply about the subject of your film.) One of the very first things that Broderick does when he develops a distribution strategy is to help the filmmaker identify these core audiences.
It is hard to identify core audiences. One reason is that filmmakers tend to become so obsessed with their films, that they often overlook obvious core audiences and markets. This is why it is usually a good idea to work with someone else when you are trying to identify your core audiences. An outsider can often see possibilities that have never occurred to you. An outsider might point out large, important audiences that would be excited about your film and possibility of buying a DVD or a ticket.
Broderick says "filmmakers tend to get immersed in one area. They may know better than anybody the possibilities for distribution, but sometimes there is a core audience, maybe even the most important core audience, that they are just not seeing."
People, especially in the film industry, sometimes get trapped into thinking about audiences in the traditional terms of demographic definitions. This is the "Hollywood Quadrant" idea: Older males/younger males. Older females/younger females.
When the studios talk about audiences, they sometimes say "And how many quadrants is this film?" Meaning, is it one of those four categories or all four.
Broderick says this is a useless way to think about an audience, particularly for micro-budget filmmakers.
He says micro-budget filmmakers need to think, instead, about micro audiences and to think of the Internet as a collection of audiences. Some of those audiences are at certain websites, some of them are on mailing lists, some of them are on Facebook, and some of them are on Twitter, and so on.
Generally, it is much harder to develop a distribution strategy for feature films than it is for documentaries, because many features do not have a natural core audience. A film without a clearly identified audience often needs advertising directed toward a general, mass audience. Mass audience advertising is the most expensive and least efficient type of advertising you can do (think Super Bowl ads). The exception to this rule is a feature film that is unique enough to generate lots of attention and a lot of word of mouth advertising (think Memento).
When you can identify most of your core audiences, you can design a good distribution strategy. You probably will not be able to list all the core audiences before you start work on the film. Often you will discover additional core audiences as you work on your film.
Before you begin to design your strategy, it is a good idea to know the common first-time mistakes that people make when distributing their films.
