First short film and distribution offer! please advise

M

Misnomer

Hi,

Just joined this forum and was hoping that someone might be able to advise me. I recently had my first film (12mins) screened at the New York International Independent Film & Video Festival (phew, quite a mouthful)! Anyway, I have recently been contacted by ITN Distribution in the US (I am in the UK), who have offered me a distribution deal on my film. This would involve me parting with $2500 market expenses and some additional expenses should my film sell. According to ITN they have already had 3 parties interested in my film. However, they need the contract signed asap due to everything kicking of in January.
Basically, what I am asking is if this sounds like a good thing. Of course in paper it does, but as a struggling filmmaker trying to work out funds on my next project $2500 is a lot of money. Is this the norm on Short Film distribution? I am not expecting to really make any money out of short films but haveing a distribution deal is only a good thing and could at least help me on future projects. Sorry for the length of this post but I am in need of some good advice. Thank you in advance.

Rachel
 
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Misnomer: I dunno... if I were pregnant (probably have to be a woman first, but yeah..) and thinking about a Trans-Atlantic flight I think I'd be a bit nervous too.. It is, afterall, a LONG ride.
 
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Itn

Well it seems that ITN has driven many filmmakers to this website. I am a new member to this site, and was looking for information about ITN. Today I received an email that they were interested in acquiring my film for distribution. I had never heard of them and wasn't sure how they had heard of me/my film. I'm glad there is a forum/community where filmmakers can gather and share information about things like this to protect and inform one another of what's going on in the industry.
 
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Well, like CYAN stated, they are not a "SCAM" in some sense of the word. Instead of a SCAM list, perhaps we should assign a grade to companies, much like film reviews (A+ to F-), based of course on the opinion of the person dealing with the company. For example, from all that has appeared about the company in question, they may be about a D. Of course we'll need a legend to explain exactly what each letter grade means, but it may be a good alternative to calling someone a SCAM. If we know its a SCAM, F- is the grade automatically :)
 
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How much of that $2,500 is he going to pocket as taxable income for himself? Is he going to give you monthly expense reports so that you can be sure that he isn't pocketing that money for himself? Having to PAY a distributor is not the industry norm. You don't have to PAY for DVD distribution deals. I remember a company out of New York that used to charge bands $2,000 to get "set up" for CD distribution. They probably made a lot of money off of desperate bands.

I know of someone who was told by this distributor that she had a distributor in an Asian country that would distribute his movie; She just needed $2,000 (or something like that) for marketing costs or something. He thought it was a really shady situation, probably a scam, and never took her up on her offer.
 
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