So anyway… a couple of weeks back the main topic of conversation on Shooting People was about online distribution. Whilst the discussion around the role the internet can play in a film’s distribution strategy has been rather overtaken by the hubbub surrounding the impending demise of the Film Council, the one thing that last week’s shock announcement makes clear is that more than ever the future of your film is in your hands. Whether they want to or not Independent filmmakers of all shapes and sizes are going to increasingly rely on the internet as a vital market place. Even if you’d still rather your film was seen in cinemas first, online sales are surely going to outstrip DVDs before any of the scripts you’ve just finished get released as finished films.

Rejoice then because at long last the technology is catching up with the hype and buying and watching films online is finally becoming as good as they said it would be years ago back when it wasn’t…

For instance if you’re fed up of hearing me bang on about my film “Hallo Panda” because you’ve not managed to see it yet and don’t really know why everyone loves it so much, then all you need to do is click on this link:

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewMovie?id=374965584&s=143444

or alternatively just open up your iTunes and type “Hallo Panda” into the search window.

If you’ve already got an account with the iTunes store you can watch the film with one click. You’ll barely know that you’ve paid £1.49 and within moments you’ll have thirty minutes of bear shaped hilarity pouring out of your internet into the very room you’re sat in now. It’s well worth it, this is a film that, when it was screened late night on Channel 4, inspired the unprovoked adoration of an unoffical Facebook fan site created by lovely insomniacs. To convince you further there’s a delightful trailer on iTunes cut together by our friend and father-to-be, Mr.Ben Adam.

So how does iTunes compare to other delivery methods? Well, Apple are soon to overtake Microsoft as “the IT Giant everyone irrationally hates” and getting our film on the site is kinda how I imagine it would be for a small farmer getting his bacon taken on by Wal Mart. On the one hand it exposes us to a potentially staggering global market, on the other the cut is slender and the process of getting there has been numbingly painful.

Our distributor, Shorts International, have an exclusive deal with iTunes and seemed pretty confident from the outset that our film would be the sort of the thing that iTunes would want. First we were scheduled to be part of an anti-Valentine’s day theme. That was 18 months ago. Now, with the 4th anniversary of the film’s production just passed, the film is finally for sale though it’s not listed in their directory, not filed as a new release and they’ve not credited either my brother or one of the two producers…

So yeah, the massive global market that iTunes potential offers is appealing but if I’m honest what I’d love you to do is take a moment to go to iTunes, rate the film as high as you can, watch the trailer because it’s cool and then come to my website and watch the film using Dynamo player because that way more of your money will come back to us…