Premiering at Sundance and Slamdance provides a film with one of the biggest world stages to launch a film. Savvy filmmakers might consider using the festival to launch a national release of their film.
At this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Linas Phillips, Thomas Woodrow and company are using the fest to launch the release of their film "Bass Ackwards" in conjunction with New Video. Last week three more films announced that they will at least be releasing their VODs day and date at Sundance. While these three films are being released by the Sundance Select series on Rainbow, it is actually run by IFC, which has been pioneering festival/vod day and date.
Even though I am a fan of a festival launch, I want to provide a bit of caution to filmmakers who might consider this path without being prepared. I do not recommend attempting to initiate the actual release of your film if you are just scrambling to get it finished and have not prepared for distribution or marketing.
I am writing this piece for two reasons:
1. To aid any filmmaker who is considering launching the release of their film at their premiere festival aka Sundance/Slamdance and --
2. To assuage the guilt of many filmmakers who have been kicking themselves for not utilizing this strategy in previous years.
In writing my book "Think Outside the Box Office," I spoke to a number of filmmakers who were mad at themselves because they saw the amount of exposure their festival premiere generated, and they never reclaimed that exposure with the theatrical release of their film. Hence they reasoned, “If only I had released my film day and date with my festival premiere!"
They realized, smartly, that it is best to have all guns blazing in your release to penetrate the media landscape and that top festivals are very good at creating audience awareness. Hence why not monetize that audience awareness with the release.
However it does take a fair amount of advance work and planning in order to enact this strategy. If you are premiering at Park City and aren’t ready for this strategy now, I have a suggestion at the end of this piece about how to engage this strategy at a later date.
So here are some points to consider for a festival launch of your film’s release.
1. You should create a thought-out distribution and marketing strategy that will guide you and your team through this release. Have you analyzed your goals for your film, your potential audience, your resources?
2. Very important in this strategy is what rights are you releasing and when. What is your sequence of rights release? Is everything day and date with the fest or only VOD or DVD? If all rights are not day and date, when are the other rights being released and how will those rights be promoted?
3. Of particular concern is theatrical. Are you launching what I term a live event/theatrical release at the festival (section 3 of my book)? Conventional theatrical usually requires at least three months. But
