The distribution model is simple with a with a focus on (PPV VOC/Video On Command & on-demand DVD duplication) independent film site for independent productions/films and webshows that Fans Of Film finds to be of quality production…..

(note: Our marketing focus is Twitter with a growing following 9000+ (should I say more(:) my back yard/alt venues doing local theatrical paid and non paid screenings to create a buzz and draw people to the web to see the films there. We have a sponsored add in the online film section of our local fav and award winning news paper the ALIBI/ with a active reach of over 180,000 readers: http://alibi.com, find the Alibi on Twitter @WeeklyAlibi

Two Distribution Models:

Model #1. we manage and market content for (50/50) no $ out of pocket. (Fans Of Film will price content to reflect a payout of $0.50 to the filmmaker per view, meaning if the stream cost $1.00 then we charge between $2.00 and $2.99 to pay filmmaker $0.50 …processing charges for paypal not included.

Model #2. out of pocket money $9.95 a month for the streaming service (does not include extra minutes and channels) and a yearly membership of $100, and the filmmaker manages and markets their own content for 100% profit …( many perks including partnerships and affiliate possibility’s and free consulting on how to do it yourself)

VOD is exclusive with Maxcast

DVD is a print on demand, all DVD sales go directly to the filmmaker

Note on webshows: to have your show listed you must be a member on the community site @ http://fansoffilm.com with 1st episode loaded. FOF is hand picking independently produced webshows for some of our free content on the site, we’re excepting Youtube channels with add clicks so webshows could see revenue from their listing(;

So join me in this democratization of film distribution as we brave new models and technology in this new world of highbred distribution.

DOWNLOAD CONTRACT HERE: distributioncontract.rtf (For Your Own VOD please go to Maxcast)

Email signed contracts in a PDF, to fansoffilm@fansoffilmchannel.com…

Mail contract and DVD’s to Fans Of Film in care of Michael Palombo PO BOX 1381 Moriarty, NM 87035…..

If your interested in the Do It Yourself model for 100% of the revenue email me @ fansoffilm@fansoffilmchannel.com or call me phone# 505-934-7592

Note on VOD service:

You do not have to pay the FOFC yearly membership and have your film on FOFC to use Maxcast and it’s streaming services for your website.

Special Note!!!

Introducing The Adopt A Film Program!! where members on the site can apply to have all the films info such as bio, trailer code, PPV and DVD links so that other webmaster, blogers can add spice to their site and share our film with their fans. All that with a simple click on the adopt a film button on each film profile next to the social media share button, pretty cool yes?

Cable VOD has, at this moment, a powerful lock on VOD because it is currently the only delivery system, as perceived by Joe Six Pack sitting on his couch in his living room with his complex clicker in his hand. When he manages to stumble over to the VOD section of his complicated cable system menu, he begins scrolling through an endless list (alphabetized!! So start with an “A” in your title–like “A Father and Son”) to see what grabs his attention.

The ease of point-and-click will always be the primary control point for distribution…until Joe Six Pack gets comfortable with some other technology. TV was four channels and an on-off switch; color was rebuffed because dad didn’t want to fiddle with the green color adjustment knobs; cable boxes became tolerated; “500 channels” eventually became…well, now it’s the national sport to click as fast as you can through 500 channels daring any one of them to catch your attention within the second you allow them your eyeballs. Right now, Joe Six Pack is getting comfortable with the VOD section of his cable company menu.

But that’s soon to pass.

The “TV ANYWHERE” concept is touted by cable companies, but I believe they are short-sighted, thinking of it as only an extension of their base.

In my opinion, when “TV ANYWHERE” grabs hold of the consumer, it will be because of the melding of the consumer’s TV and their Internet.

For instance, that’s the really big news from Wal*Mart this week; they bought VuDu…which is not a content company, it’s a hardware company: VuDu is a black box inside TV sets that allows direct connection to the Internet. And damn if Wal*Mart doesn’t sell a TON of TVs to Joe Six Pack!

Once the consumer is as comfortable online while sprawled on his couch slurping his beer, then the indie film biz will be on its way to recovery!

That’s because, from that point on, we will be at the mercy of ONLY OUR OWN MARKETING STRENGTH, and the VOD biz will become TITLE-DRIVEN rather than a search through an alphabetized list. We will use every sound (and maybe some stupid ones, in the beginning) effort to reach our audience with the title of our movie AND the link to click on to see it right now on your TV set–an agnostic link, not one tied to a cable company that charges a $15,000 “digitization” fee.
Once we can grab Joe Six Pack’s interest in our specific title, we can host it anywhere we want, because he will click on an Internet link on his TV set just as easily as he now clicks on a title at random from his cable company’s VOD menu.

Our passion to MAKE our films will need to be coupled with a passion to MARKET our films. Sure, we can farm it out–Mike Johnston above makes a sound pitch for his services–but no matter what, if we as indie filmmakers want to have an audience see our film and also generate an ROI for our investors, we need “TV ANYWHERE” and passionate title-specific marketing.

My guess is, this is one year down the road. Welcome to the vibrant indie film biz of 2011.

Who is offering it? Me

I have been experimenting with various methods of promotion for about a year now with various bands and films. I have tried out everything that people are currently promoting such as building a fan base through social networking and concentrating on a thousand fans who are willing to spend $100 each per year on your products, etc.

While all of these things are useful you have to be careful of your return on investment in terms of time spent on those activities. I wrote a few blogs for Filmmaker Magazine several months ago which detailed what I was thinking then.

I decided that, to build an audience you have to create something called Implied Value in your product. That can be done through grassroots efforts which create word of mouth advertising but that does have it’s limits as I think people are discovering now.

Social networking is great and it can be useful but one mistake people have made is to relentlessly build their follower base by friending strangers. That just doesn’t do much. How many friend requests do you get from people you don’t know and even though you accept them you never really read the messages they send out or even check out their music or video?

I have seen artists with huge social network followings (like a million people)who maybe get an actual response from 100 or less followers when they send out a bulletin on some new event or feature. Why? Because they went through the relentless fan building exercise and ended up with a bunch of passive followers who don’t really have any particular interest in them.

From that perspective it seems much better to seek out other people who already have a more active follower base and co-opt those followers in a sense. Talk shows are a great example of this. Each show has their own base of followers usually from several hundred to thousands of people. The shows need fresh content on a regular basis and you give them that. In exchange you get the opportunity to pitch your product to their listener/viewer base for free.

When I was thinking about that I started thinking about how major labels and studios market their products. Web based DVD and VOD gives indie artists the same opportunity as the big boys have to be seen (availability) and does it at a competitive price (affordability) to major DVD’s or in the case of VOD to a theater ticket.

The only thing lacking is the theater experience. But with the advent of web to TV systems even that obstacle has been overcome to some extent. Independent artists now can be totally competitive in almost every respect with the majors. What is evolving now is how to best capitalize on the opportunity.

So with all that in mind I set out to create a service which would go the final step. I checked out how the studios are advertising their products and identified ways to mirror their methods at an affordable price. I tried building my own database of blogs and media contacts to send press releases to but, as I soon realized, there are just too many out there. I found a press release service that I use now that has a reach of 350,000 subscribers from blogs and web media outlets along with 35,000 opt-in subscribers from traditional media sources. It is affordably priced. I write the press release and compile the necessary info to be included in it. I also shoot a 10 minute web show episode with the filmmaker/director/star that distributes to every major video site on the web and is included in the press release as well as being posted to the film’s page on Amazon as a video comment.

I also create an advertising campaign for the product on the web. You decide on how much you want to spend on advertising. You can do quite a bit with $100 if you know what you are doing.

I tend to look at ads as being something like billboards. It is great when people who see the ad click right on through and buy/watch the film but it is equally valuable when they just see the ad. After all, how many people drive right to a theater or video store after seeing a billboard? And yet the billboard makes them aware of the film and probably influences their buying decision later.

From that perspective page impressions, where people just visit the page your ad is on but don’t click on your ad, are every bit as valuable as those that do click on the ad. Yet the only ones you pay for are the actual click throughs.

I am running an ad campaign for a film now and in the last week the graphic ad I created has had over 700 click throughs to the movie on Amazon which cost $7. But the pages on which the ad was running saw half a million views. Many of the people who visited those pages saw the ad and became aware of the film even though they didn’t click on the ad. Where else can you put yourself in front of half a million pairs of eyes for $7?

So that is what I put together and why. I think it is the best way to get the most impact from a reasonable budget.

Shameless self promotion: I’m looking for more clients

Sounds good. Which company is offering this?

check out her blog

Mike

That is totally not true. There ARE affordable avenues for advertising your indie film. For 1k or less you can have a professional press release distributed to web and traditional media up to and including the AP. A video podcast/interview featuring your film trailer along with a video interview with the producer/director/star of the film. And an advertising campaign that is targeted to areas of interest who would be expected to want to see your film. The ads can be text, graphic, animated graphic, video or even pre-roll on other people’s web videos.

All for under 1k. If that isn’t affordable then I don’t know what is…

Amazon items can go to TV via TiVo, Roku, Boxee and other systems such as XBox, PS3, etc and can be watched on handheld devices as well. It pretty much covers the whole spectrum of the viewing audience.

The thing to remember is that, once you have your project “on the shelf” no matter where it is, the remaining job is to make your potential audience aware of your product. For that you need promotions and marketing that is tailored to indie projects. I have been researching the best way to tackle this for a while now and have developed a low cost, high impact system.

For some films I still think there is a place for festivals in the greater scheme of things, but a filmmaker shouldn’t have to spend 2 years on ‘the circuit’ spending thousands of dollars on entry fees and p&h simply in order to look ‘credible’. Further, not every indie film is right for a ‘festival-going’ audience, some are aimed at a more mainstream audience.

In many ways we’re blessed that the internet is open to us, these thoughts couldn’t have happened 20 years ago.

More of what needs to happen is the need for more “high quality” online film festivals. The simplest way to do these would be to get established film fests to do more with online films. That way, you work off the already established trust of the film fest name. Sundance, Austin, Telluride Online for instance. Otherwise, it becomes a huge marketing game for who can give the impression of being higher quality first or best.

Film Schools can also do this. The point is there needs to be some known factor (and yes, that means even stars–such as Project Greenlight, etc.). Otherwise, the best film will simply be the one by the guy with the most FB friends or the best spam.

But there is a lot to be said for just getting a film online and allowing people to watch it. You may not get a distribution deal that way, but you might. You can get an agent by doing that for sure. You can even get that by posting it on Youtube. I did a vlog (the one and only one I ever did) on this very topic a few months ago in fact. Check it out under videos on my site.

Again, this is mos def the way to be thinking about filmmaking.
T.R. Locke