And Cannes Rolls On...

Thanks to all of you who have written in from the Cannes Film
Festival and Market. It's nice to have our Film Specific
members out there in the big bad Distribution world and
reporting live back to us at home...

Speaking of Cannes, over the weekend I posted my Top Ten
Cannes Buyers List up on Film Specific. Check it out on the
home page: http://www.FilmSpecific.com. It's free for
members.

And I also spoke with Scott Bedno, our foreign sales agent
in residence (also head of sales at Showcase Entertainment),
direct from his booth at the Cannes market - and he's looking
forward to giving us all a download when he returns. We'll
be having a teleconference call with him on May 30th and
we'll get to ask him all sorts of questions -- my favorite
being, when are sales companies going to stop charging filmmakers
such high marketing expenses?

In this day and age, I don't think sales companies should be
charging the $30K-$50K in expenses they are accustomed to doing.
In my opinion, if they continue this practice, they will all
soon go out of business. It's a dying business model if you
ask me....

Figure this - you can get your own professional looking DVD's
made for less than a buck a unit, you can print up your own
artwork and even provide your own FEDEX account number -- and
come out way ahead of the what the sales companies usually
charge back to filmmakers for all this under the heading of
'marketing expenses'.

Oh, and the biggest marketing expense of all is when sales
companies take your film to all the markets like Cannes....they
spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to be there, and
conveniently charge a portion of that back to all the films
they represent.

I never agreed with this particular practice because in my
mind, it's just a cost of doing business and sales companies
should build that into their own marketing budgets - just like
every other normal company does in the world.

Anyway, I'm off my soap box now but it's a topic of GREAT
discussion among filmmakers these days and is one big reason
why so many people decide to go it on their own without working
with a sales agency.

To that end, I even created a consulting package called
Distribution Plans whereby I evaluate your film and then
recommend specific distributors for you to contact directly,
referred by me of course. It's been an extremely popular
service because filmmakers are no longer beholden to the
sales agencies at this point - they can submit their films
directly to distributors and not worry about paying even a
single commission, let alone any big marketing expenses.

You can read more about our Distribution Plans here:

http://www.filmspecific.com/products/item10.cfm

Last but not least, my Film Distribution Labs are back and
are scheduled for August in Los Angeles, September in NYC,
and October in London. Distribution Labs are all day
intensive workshops, where I do very little 'teaching' -
rather we workshop your film as a group, pull apart each and
every distribution strategy in the room, and put them all
back together again, the right way.

Registration is open and you can read more about it here:

http://www.filmspecific.com/products/item13.cfm

Please write in and let us know if you've any good, bad,or
ugly experiences with sales agencies and what you would do
differently --- and if you'll be joining us on the call with
Scott Bedno on May 30, do send in your questions for him.
Let's grill him while he's still jet lagged! LOL!

Alright, off to work.....more later....

Regards,
Stacey*

On Being Published....

Well gang, it's official. I'm a published author now!

My "Inside Guide To Independent Film Distribution" (Focal Press)
is out on the shelves and I've even sold a few units I'm told.
Ha!

So get it while it's hot, (and cheap) on Amazon. I'll put the
link at the bottom b/c it's too long to insert here.

And if you've already purchased my Insiders Guide To Film
Distribution eBook, and you're wondering if this is the same
thing...the answer is NO. Actually, some of the material is the
same, but the publishers actually made me TRIPLE the content
(the cause of many sleepless nights!) so you'll find LOADS
more information, interviews, and case studies - plus charts,
sample contracts, lists of distributors, etc.

You really can't go wrong for $16.47!!

In other news, we had a phenomenal teleconference call on
Monday with Tom Eplin and Kurt Anderson, filmmakers who set
up their own booth at MIPTV in Cannes in a few weeks ago.
Their biggest piece of advice for filmmakers wanting to go
to a film market (Cannes and AFM included)? Start with
a participants badge rather than making the plunge to buying
an entire booth.

Anyway, you can hear it all on Film Specific, where both
teleconferences (the one with Eric Stein too) are posted as
MP3 in our Members Resources section.

And we have a THIRD teleconference coming today with
Tim Sparke of Mercury Media, a UK based Documentary sales
outfit, at 10:30 PST. What he has to say about selling indies
applies to both documentaries and features, so I wouldn't
miss this call. He's also going to tell everyone about a new
service he has that he's accepting submissions for.

To register for that call, and listen to the others, plus
get in on all the rest, go to http://www.FilmSpecific.com and
click "Join Now" in the upper left corner.

Alright - hope everyone has a great day! Here's the Amazon link
to get the bargain of the century!

http://www.amazon.com/Insiders-Guide-Independent-Film-Distribution/dp/024080922X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-1505343-2577663?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1178117431&sr=8-1