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AD: Fans, Friends & Followers

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

You, Me & Peter Broderick: Distribution U., Nov. 7th @ USC

Here is the scary thing about talking about the new landscape of marketing and distribution at a film festival:

The panels and presentations are often too short (and sometimes too superficial) to really make much of a dent. Ask the audience at the end whether they're feeling more confident and in control of their destiny, or more anxious and confused, and they're likely to say the latter.

I've been talking for the last couple months with Peter Broderick about taking a different approach. We wanted to create a full-day workshop that'd dive into some of the marketing and audience-building strategies I explore in Fans, Friends & Followers, and would get into the nitty gritty of distribution and savvy deal-making, which Peter works on every day with his clients. We also wanted to bring in some guest filmmakers to talk in detail about how they've gotten attention for their work -- and made money from it.

Finally, we wanted to make this a great opportunity to meet other filmmakers and writers and producers who're working on this "bleeding edge" of new marketing and distribution strategy -- to create lunch discussion groups around topics you're interested in -- and, if you'd like, to get some ideas from Peter, me, and the rest of the group about actual, tactical things you might do with your film, online and off.

We're calling it "Distribution U.: A One-Day Crash Course on the New Rules of Marketing and Distribution." We're doing it on Saturday, November 7th in LA, on the campus of USC. If you register before noon on October 18th, you can take advantage of the early bird discount.

Our goal is to cram in as many examples, case studies, data points, and proven strategies into eight hours as is humanly possible. The complete schedule is here.

Right now, we're planning on doing this just once.

Hope you can make it, and if not, perhaps you'll spread the word to friends who are in LA.

(And if you'd be interested in a DVD of the proceedings, which we're considering, send me an e-mail.)

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2 Comments:

  • Hi Scott,

    Wish I was on the west coast so I could attend this!

    Quick question that might be of value to your other readers: Do you have any advice on the best shopping cart providers for websites so that I can sell ringtones and full downloads of my short form content from my own site? Also, what have you heard about the DIY publishing platform Lulu as opposed to Createspace? Is one supposed to be better than the other for filmmakers in terms of revenue sharing and visibility?

    Thanks for your help.

    Julia

    By Blogger FilmFlam, at 2:33 PM  

  • Check out E-Junkie for a digital shopping cart. It's what I use to sell the PDF version of "Fans, Friends & Followers," and I've got no complaints. In terms of Lulu via CreateSpace, Lulu has more flexibility and features than Createspace, but I like the way Createspace has a direct connection to Amazon -- which gives products much more visibility.

    By Blogger Scott Kirsner, at 7:56 AM  

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