Should a filmmaker go to a Film Market?
With the near completion of my first feature film, I wanted to get my head around the workings of the world of film sales. How does money get made in the film industry? How is it possible to re-coop your expenditures for a short or feature film?
The current direction for that is Film Markets.
What is a film market?
It’s a market of “middlemen” (not gender-specific). The “middlemen” being the sales agents.
Who goes to the market?
People looking to “buy” films. People with a platform; whether it’s video on demand (VOD), television platforms, cinema chains, DVD sales, or people with subscription streaming services, or even other distributors.
Sometimes, a filmmaker might also be around the event, looking to share their films with the sales agents/distributors, looking for someone in a company that deals with acquisitions.
What should a filmmaker do before going to a film market?
The first step is to plan ahead. Work out, roughly (at least), what kind of markets you’d like to speak with. Are you an American filmmaker who has made a film for a target audience in the UK? If so, look for UK distributors ahead of time.
Where will you find all those distributors?
On your chosen film market’s website. If this is your first time going to a film market and not born into a family already in the industry, you likely won’t have a clue what distributors are out there and what each of their specialties are. Film markets will usually provide you with a large catalogue of companies and people looking to attend the festival.
From this list, you are provided with the company website and contact details of the individuals within each company. Some film market websites such as EFM allow you to filter specific qualities about companies, such as whether they are buyers, sellers or even where each company is based. Use these filters to shorten your list down to a reasonable number of targeted companies and begin looking through each of their websites. Who might be appropriate? Who is clearly not the distributor for you?
I spent two full days doing this, filtering out appropriate distributors into a spreadsheet and rating each one in relevance out of 10. My co-director had to step in towards the end of the second day to help filter some down.
How to contact distributors.
Now this stage is an important one, and the most important aspect of it, is whether you should, and what you should contact them about if you do.
First thing’s first, make sure you’re using the right Email address. Be sure to send any of your Emails to the person in charge of acquisitions, as they are the communication between filmmakers and the company’s film catalogue.
How you contact them will be depending on the stage you are at as a filmmaker. Do you have a 100% finished film ready to sell, that has already done its film festival tours? Do you have a pitch? Do you have a film in post-production? Are you halfway through a TV show series? All of these situations will change the direction you take with your email/phone call.
When should you contact a distributor?
In my case, we were at a tricky stage. As we have been doing the film on such a low budget, I’d taken on the vast majority of the work for the film, including editing, colour grading, sound design, publicity, social media, visual effects, pickups, animation, ADR, distribution plans, marketing plans and contacting potential future film partners as well as learning how this whole selling film industry works… it’s been a lot.
Due to the situation, I was unsure what stage the film would be in by the time of EFM, so I was hesitant to contact distributors. However, I feel like this was still a mistake, not one that can’t be rectified in the future by any means, but you should contact distributors at the film market early. Their appointments will fill up fast, do be respectful and understanding that buyers will take priority over you at a film market.
From the sales agent/distributor’s perspective film markets are for sales! They are not there to buy your film at their market stall. That is not the priority, if you can find time to chat with them, that is a bonus.
My experiences as a filmmaker at a film market.
Here I run through my experiences leading up and during a film market from a filmmakers perspective.
Summary
That’s where we’re up to now. We are currently in post-production with our feature film ‘Are We Monsters’ and will be looking further into distribution upon its completion. In the meantime, we hope you keep up-to-date with our thoughtful film making content on our socials: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
