Maximizing DVD Distribution
by dredmon on September 3, 2010 in DVD Distribution
Carnivalesque Films distribution burgeoned out of a sincere effort to help low budget filmmakers find and reach audiences that we had discovered by releasing our first film, Mardi Gras: Made in China. Our concentration and strength is DVD and documentary film (however, we’ve also released two fiction films and one hybrid). Every film we’ve released – with one exception – has earned a profit. The following introduction serves as an oversimplified explanation on how we started our boutique company.
Our first film, Mardi Gras: Made in China, played in U.S. documentary competition at Sundance in 2005. Before we premiered our film we knew which audiences we wanted to reach, why we wanted to reach them, and where most of them were located. Broadly speaking, Ashley took one year to identify every college professor in the social science and business departments in the United States, and then she collected their email, specialization, and phone number. At that point we composed an email to each professor in different departments explaining how our film could be integrated into their syllabus. Next, we asked each professor to ask their librarian acquisitions agent to order a DVD of Mardi Gras: Made in China from our webpage for $300.00 each. Each DVD contained two versions of our film: a 76 minute rated R version and a 48 minute PG version.
We immediately started getting orders and requests to speak for stipends at colleges, law schools, and conferences. Shortly thereafter we branched out to include theaters, TV stations, high schools, nonprofits, labor organizations, environmental groups, public libraries, and people who attend Carnival in New Orleans, among others. So far we have sold more than 500 DVDs to colleges, universities, and high schools (some with discounts) and we’ve just pressed our 4,000th consumer DVD. Part of our film has been integrated into one of the highest selling sociology textbooks in the U.S. With this money we started our boutique company and became part of the process of making a social impact. We’ve also been able to complete three other films, with our fifth and sixth coming soon. Of course we haven’t done this alone; numerous people and organizations provided labor and help along the way.
This weekend we participated in the Sundance Institute’s Creative Producing Summit where we met with Reed Hastings, CEO and founder of Netflix. In his keynote presentation, Reed predicted that Netflix will continue to purchase DVDs for the next ten years. Yet he also said they prefer digital streaming to DVD because it cuts their shipping costs in half and provides instant access to movies.
It’s no surprise that the overall collective demand for DVD is in decline. Yet it’s also true that hundreds of public libraries in the U.S. and Canada rely on DVD for their members. Likewise, colleges throughout the U.S. and Canada, as well as academic departments, continuously order DVDs for their libraries and students. We could provide many more examples of DVD interest by special niche groups, face-to-face sales, or other demographic groups. Clearly a demand for DVD exists for several reasons beyond immediate viewing.
We see ourselves in a unique and unusual situation compared to most filmmakers and distributors. We make films and also release films (mostly on DVD). With this dual role comes a whole host of responsibilities that divide our time given there’s two of us. Distribution is tiring, unending work that takes a toll on both of us since we do the work of an entire organization while simultaneously making our own films.
We attempt to prevent much of the dissatisfaction that normally develops between filmmakers and distributor by asking every filmmaker, before releasing their film, to write down their expectations. We do this draft to make sure we can work with each other. It also helps filmmakers clarify their intent, expectations, and goals. If an unexpected problem ever arises, both of us can go back to the written document to work out possible solutions.
Another tribulation on our end is money. We compensate for this problem by working 12- 18 hours a day within strict budget restrictions. We also work this much because we share a common passion for sharing visual stories. We understand that some films are a meaningful direct expression of one’s life work. We are thankful and careful to understand that we play a small part of sharing one’s life work with others. Our small company doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what we’ve described above. Anything else would be misleading and ultimately a disservice to filmmakers and their films.
In our next entry we hope to address which films we distribute and why, our thoughts on online streaming, our agreements with filmmakers, how filmmakers are paid, which retailers are most and least receptive to working directly with us, and how they pay us.