First film finished,what now?

F

Foggy

Having recently finished the edit on my first film,I am now not quite sure what to do with it.

Now I know what most of you are thinking,its my first film and it is therefore just a learning exercise and only really worthy of now moving on from, however I really do think it has some merit. The film is a documentary about myself and a friend exploring religion in europe, and challenging ourselves to rediscover long lost religious beliefs.

We drove 2,000 miles through europe from the north of England to Geneva in Switzerland visiting places of religious interest en route.

The film in its current state is 22 minutes long, a strange length granted but the piece was created as my final University work and 22 minutes was the maximum time allowed. It does have the potential to be extended out to an hour as I have another 10 or so hours of footage and several plot points/scenes that would fill out the film nicely whilst retaining the feel it has now.

I don't have any expectations of making any money out of the film. As a newbie director producer, with a film of a strange length and using the most basic of equipment I understand I have a long way to go before I can turn this into a profession, however I do feel it's a piece with artistic merit that could be used to either aid with funding my next project, or perhaps gain a little exposure and begin to build a name for myself.


As I see it now my options are to either spend no money at all marketing it and just post it to youtube with links from social media as a way of getting a small audience. Or perhaps spending some money on marketing and hopefully getting a buzz going whereby I could get maybe a few thousand views or so to help build an audience for my next film. I know very little about distribution and feel at this stage of my career my time is better spent reading about techniques and researching documentary form as opposed to looking to distribute films that have next to no chance of being picked up.

Any advice is hugely welcome.
 
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It does share some of the style of Bill Maher's religolous as both myself and my friend are stand up comedians (we are studying comedy writing at university). However we show religion a little more respect than Maher does despite being devout atheists.
 
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I don't have any expectations of making any money out of the film. As a newbie director producer, with a film of a strange length and using the most basic of equipment I understand I have a long way to go before I can turn this into a profession, however I do feel it's a piece with artistic merit that could be used to either aid with funding my next project, or perhaps gain a little exposure and begin to build a name for myself.


As I see it now my options are to either spend no money at all marketing it and just post it to youtube with links from social media as a way of getting a small audience. Or perhaps spending some money on marketing and hopefully getting a buzz going whereby I could get maybe a few thousand views or so to help build an audience for my next film. I know very little about distribution and feel at this stage of my career my time is better spent reading about techniques and researching documentary form as opposed to looking to distribute films that have next to no chance of being picked up.

Any advice is hugely welcome.
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What specifically are/were your goals for this project?

The answer to that question will guide what you should do. We cannot tell you what your goals are.
 
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Film festivals are a way to start. There are many free ones and if you spend a couple of days searching you can find and submit your film to a few of them.

If you get accepted it's great. It values your film and if you can attend, you create opportunities for luck to find you.
 
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Foggy said:
I know very little about distribution and feel at this stage of my career my time is better spent reading about techniques and researching documentary form as opposed to looking to distribute films that have next to no chance of being picked up.
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The techniques of documentary making are intimately interwoven with their distribution, so Don't make the mistake of separating the two!! There's a very large and lucrative worldwide market for documentaries but to tap into that market you've not only got to provide interesting/engrossing content but additionally you have to conform to certain industry delivery requirements/expectations. Meeting those requirements needs to be planned from the outset! Shooting your doco and then trying to comply with the requirements afterwards, say during post-production, will most likely end in failure (an un-saleable doco).

My advice is to study and work towards meeting the BBC's Technical Requirements because meeting the BBC's specs will not only mean your docos will be potentially saleable to the BBC but with no (or minimal) alterations your docos will also meet the tech specs of pretty much all broadcasters worldwide.

G
 
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Thanks folks.

The aims for the project were University based, hence the separation between technique and distribution. The film ended up being better than I had hoped and it is only now that I began to think I wish I had paid more attention to the possibility of distribution from day one.

I feel perhaps the festival circuit may well be the way to go as a way of gaining exposure.
 
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Foggy said:
The aims for the project were University based, hence the separation between technique and distribution.
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To be honest, it's entirely common, for one reason or another, for no/lo budget amateur filmmakers to focus on and get carried away with the shooting/production and only after or near the end of post-production start to seriously think about distribution, by which time the budget has gone and/or it's too late to meet distribution requirements/specs.

My advice above was aimed more at your future development rather than for your current film. For your current film, probably the lower tier film festivals would be your best bet. You might need to check with your uni first as it's common practise in the UK for uni's to own the copyright of their students' coursework. It's usually not a problem as far as film festivals and other non-profit distribution is concerned but you should check with them to be sure and preferably get permission in writing.

G
 
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Cheers Ardeus.

As a slight tangent, the film is currently in a h.264 codec and is a 7GB file which is proving troublesome to send to people due to its size. Uploading to youtube says it will take 1500 minutes, what sort of format and file size would the average local festival expect the film to be?
 
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AudioPostExpert said:
To be honest, it's entirely common, for one reason or another, for no/lo budget amateur filmmakers to focus on and get carried away with the shooting/production and only after or near the end of post-production start to seriously think about distribution, by which time the budget has gone and/or it's too late to meet distribution requirements/specs.

My advice above was aimed more at your future development rather than for your current film. For your current film, probably the lower tier film festivals would be your best bet. You might need to check with your uni first as it's common practise in the UK for uni's to own the copyright of their students' coursework. It's usually not a problem as far as film festivals and other non-profit distribution is concerned but you should check with them to be sure and preferably get permission in writing.

G
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Thanks APE,Don't worry I didn't see your post as an attack and I can completely see and agree with the point you are making. I will read through the BBC requirements and make sure I adhere closely to them in my next project, as best possible within my very low budget.

We were careful to only use our own equipment and be completely self sufficient so the film is entirely ours, we made that explicitly clear at the outset to the University.

I actually go to Salford University and have a good connection with the people at BBC writers room as I live just across the road from Media City,hopefully in the future that will be a big help!
 
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Foggy said:
I will read through the BBC requirements and make sure I adhere closely to them in my next project, as best possible within my very low budget.
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Yes, that's the difficulty of course, meeting the specs within a very low budget and understanding where you might be able to cut corners if you simply can't meet them with your budget. For example, the BBC don't generally accept programs/docos shot on a DSLR, although this might not be such a problem for many other broadcasters. On the other hand, not providing an M&E mix for example, will rule you out from pretty much every broadcaster in any of the "developed" countries. Even if you don't have the budget for the professional audio post required, you can at least shoot in such a way as to make it relatively easy/possible to create the required deliverables at a later date, should you manage to generate interest from some broadcasters on the basis of your content.

Foggy said:
We were careful to only use our own equipment and be completely self sufficient so the film is entirely ours, we made that explicitly clear at the outset to the University.
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Whatever you made clear, you probably signed away the copyright to your coursework when you enrolled on the course. As I said, I can't see that there would be a problem, after all if you got accepted or won a prize at a film festival, that would be good publicity for your uni. It's still probably worth a quick chat with your tutor though.

Foggy said:
I actually go to Salford University and have a good connection with the people at BBC writers room as I live just across the road from Media City,hopefully in the future that will be a big help!
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That could indeed be useful!

G
 
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I would make 2GB and 4GB versions.

Some festivals accept the files directly, others let you submit youtube links or vimeo links with password (for vimeo you will have to compress your file to 500GB, unless you want to pay vimeo) and if you use platforms that let you upload a screener (like filmfreeway), the 2 and 4 gb will fit most of them.
 
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The fact I don't know what an M and E mix is worries me!much more reading to do I feel.Im struggling to compress the film into a 2gb file at the moment.Any advice on the best settings to use?

Thanks folks.
 
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I guess you are exporting an MP4 file. You just have to tweak the average mbps. Depending on the software you're using, it will show you the expected file size. And concerning resolution, use 720 instead of 1080.
 
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