If making a film is akin to having a baby, then making the DVD is like packing the growing teenager off to college and making him face the world on his own two feet.  My (business) partner Maya Hammarsal and I are wondering how our off-spring will fare.  We’re as proud as parents generally are.  We think he’s a well turned out and carefully nurtured individual.  However, the anxiety is still there.  Will he make an impression, be ignored, be ridiculed even or exploited or will he find his own path and make some friends along the way?

He’s not a sexy or hip individual, he’s not brash or edgy.  On the surface he isn’t the obvious candidate for success.  Our off-spring is a 40 minute arts documentary (BOSDET: The man behind the glass window), our first film of significant length, about a little known (undiscovered even) Jersey artist who, made his name on the international stage as a particularly gifted stained glass artist at the end of the 19^th century.   The film seeks to shed light on the man and also on that distinct Jersey culture that’s not quite English and not quite French.

This is our first DVD – I’ve overseen the whole process and as a result I’m feel particularly anxious – fearful that I’ve made some major mistake along the way.  Help hasn’t been difficult to find though, if you’re prepared to do the searching on-line and in the real world.  I attended the very good talk back in July (Making and Raising Money On-line) given by Peter Broderick and Sandi Du Bowski.  Peter finished with a stirring thought that ‘now is a golden age for being an independent  filmmaker’.  Even 5 years ago there weren’t the opportunities to self-distribute, build on-line communities, crowd-source and crowd fund he said.  As I wasn’t making films (certainly not with the intention of making money) 5 years ago I can’t tell if he was right, but it was inspirational stuff.  Then there was the podcast [26/08/2010] by Chris Jones (of Guerilla Filmmaker fame) where he interviewed James Collie about his film ‘Beyond Biba’. On the surface this film about a 60s fashion icon seemed as niche as ours and yet they had had extraordinary success with cinema releases, festivals that paid them to exhibit (how cool is that?), DVD sales and international TV deals.

We decided early on that our film wasn’t going to get a TV commission or wide festival coverage partly as we weren’t know to TV execs and partly because of our subject matter and length (not quite a short and not a feature).  We’re happy with the 2 festival screenings we got: the first in the US at the Jersey Shore Film Festival – (note the Jersey connection; we made sure we flagged that up with personal letters to the organizers) and the latest this weekend at the Branchage International Film Festival in Jersey, UK).  However, as we all know festival screenings don’t make you money.

Our approach to making back the cash we invested has been through specialist screenings, targeted mail-outs and carefully developed partnerships.  The film has already made us money at 2 screenings last October at the local Jersey history society, who generously gave a venue for free and allowed us to keep the box office takings.  We had over 200 at the events.  With hindsight we should have had the DVD ready to sell then, but a combination of lack of time and a fear this would prohibit any festival exposure at all stopped us.  We resorted to taking names and addresses, trying to build our first level of ‘fans’ and hoping that 12 months down the line these people would still be willing to buy a copy of the film, especially if it now offers extra shorts and interviews that provide greater textual context to the times, the unique language on Jersey and the more ‘technical’ aspects of Victorian stained glass window making.

A breakthrough was getting access to other people’s mailing lists.  The local history society has 2,500 names.  A direct approach through a flyer and ‘members only’ discount for a limited period is good for the society presenting the offer and good for us (we hope).  These people fit our ‘ideal viewer’ profile: people who are interested in Jersey, interested in history and interested in art.

We’ve also got another partnership with the local museum to show the film daily for the next year and where the film will be on sale in the Museum shop.  The world of retail is not kind to the small independent filmmaker.  Their mark up will give them a profit far greater than the one either of us will get.  It’s certainly not as lucrative as selling direct through our website (www.bosdetfilm.com) but it’s a shop front where the public would expect to find it and having a few sales up front (even if they are at a whole sale price) does bring in much needed money without the wait.

Finally, the education/specialist talk circuit beckons.  Church groups, schools and the W.I. might not be as sexy as the festival Q & A circuit, but you need to go where your audience is and if they pay you to screen and you can shift a few dozen DVDs then that’s success in my book.  At the end of the day I want this film to get seen and make money: not be a worthy artistic success but a financial failure.

So at the moment the future for this slightly un-trendy teenager doesn’t seem too bad.  We’ve accepted that we won’t be too prominent at festivals, on TV or in high street retail outlets.  But this doesn’t mean to say that we won’t be a success.  Accessing, developing and targeting ‘meaningful’ mailing lists, setting up ‘deals’ where both parties feel they are getting something beneficial (though not always monetary) and doing much of the DVD authoring ourselves has kept costs down, allowing us to feel confidant that this first foray into the big wide world of distribution and commerce won’t be the last.

‘BOSDET: The man behind the glass window’ by Maya Hammarsal & Mark X Jones screens at St. Helier Town Church, Jersey at 7pm on Saturday 25^th September as part of the Branchage International Film Festival 2010.  It’s also available later this month from www.bosdetfilm.com

Whether you want to make money on your film or just find an audience for your unique vision, marketing should play a central role in your work.

This blog is dedicated to my thoughts on marketing independent film, especially using quantitative analysis. Don’t worry if you failed high school math or know nothing about marketing… my goal is to make the insights approachable by almost anyone.

I have to confess I haven’t yet summed up the courage to study his conclusions in detail but I’m interested to see what this sort of analysis brings up – and I absolutely agree that filmmakers have got to think about the marketing of their work. It’s about strategically working out how to tell the right people about your film and get them interested in seeing it. Call it something else if the word itself makes you uncomfortable but do it.

I should do the same with math.