Once the final cut of your film is ready, you need to start marketing, promotion and distribution activities.
I believe that marketing and promotion of any film should begin during the production, but I also realise that trying to cover marketing and promotion while making an independent film is not as easy as it sounds. But keep that in mind for the future.
1. Make a list of film festivals you want to submit your film to. Remember that submission fees are pretty expensive so make sure to budget for that.
2. Once a month check out your submission deadlines and submit your film to the festivals, which deadlines are approaching.
3. If you are not planning to go down the festival road (I would advise anyone to do it at least once, as attending film festivals with your film is a lot of fun), find the most suitable platform for your film. Not every platform is suitable for every film. Is it going to be a free platform or a paid platform? If paid, how you are going to add your film to that platform?
4. If you are not taking the film festival path, building your online audience is even more vital than working towards film festival submissions. If you want to have an impact with your film, you need to have an audience for that.
5. Engage on social media platforms but also be available for interviews and guest blog posts. See what other films have done to gain following on social media and see if you could implement that in your campaign. What otherwise can you think of to promote your film?
6. When the big premiere day comes to release your film, get your mail list and your followers know about the release. For weeks, if not months, you were building up to it, with updates, clips and photos (or at least I hope so).
Your work doesn’t end there. If your film is online, you will need to keep promoting your work, kind of forever.
7. If you submit to film festivals, you will spend a lot of time waiting to hear back from them, whether you got in or not. If you do and think you can afford the trip to the festival, you should surely go. Some festivals are little heavens for filmmakers.
8. Whatever you do with your film, don’t just stick it on YouTube and hope for the best. The odds of anyone discovering your film without you doing a lot of work are very slim.
If you would like to find out more about self-distribution check out my other blogs:
List of 10 Ideas to Make Your Film’s Self-Distribution Successful
Can you Successfully Self-Distribute a Feature Film On Your Own?