Something’s been puzzling me ever since I released my first feature.

Distribution is the only part of making a film where directors are totally willing to give up control.

And full transparency, I was more than ready to hand over the reins and have someone else take my film into the world.

But I’ve learned the hard way that it’s a huge mistake.

My focus on distribution lately was sparked when I found The Distribution Playbook from Seed&Spark and Kinema. I thought I’d write a newsletter summarizing what I’d learned, but we’re going to need more than one week to dig through this. If you want to dive deeper into everything indie distribution on your own, feel free to dig in. https://thedistributionplaybook.notion.site/

So this week let’s start with step 1, or maybe even step 0: finding an audience:

• Why your audience is your most undervalued asset
• How to find your audience
• The difference between a rented and an owned audience (this is super important!)

This is the kind of stuff they don’t teach in film school and that most filmmakers gloss over.

Let’s roll.

Everything I’ve learned about distribution starts with audience

I’ve been reading and learning a lot about indie distribution over the last two years. What almost every article, book or video has in common is the emphasis on audience.

Most filmmakers make their film and don’t start thinking about who their audience is until the film is done.

This puts you at a huge disadvantage when it comes time to market and distribute your film.

The first question a distributor is going to ask is: who’s going to watch this movie?

If you can’t answer, it means they’ll have to figure it out, and that takes work. Between me and you, most people don’t like doing the work.

So if you want your film to succeed, you need to figure out the answer to this question.

Your giant advantage?

You can figure it out before you even start making the thing!

Even if you’re only armed with a short synopsis, a genre, and a general idea of what your film is going to be, you can start thinking about who’s going to watch it.

And if your answer is “men 24-35” or even worse “everyone” you need to dig deeper.

A film that is for everyone is for no one.

Make sure your film is for someone specific.

Here’s what you unlock by having a clear idea of who your audience is:

• You can start building interest around your film from the beginning.
• Financiers and distributors will be more likely to work with you. (An audience means it’s easier to figure out how to market the film, which makes it easier to predict how much money it can make.)
• You put yourself in the driver’s seat, making sure your film can be successful no matter who you end up partnering with once it’s done.

Having an idea of who your audience is makes everything at the end of the filmmaking process a lot easier.

But how do you even find these people?

How to find your audience

I’m a strong believer in the idea that you should be your film’s first fan.

Making a film for “someone else” can be done, but if you’re doing this out of love and passion, do yourself a favor and make a film you’d want to watch.

Being your film’s first fan also gives you a good idea of who your audience might be: people like you.

This is an easy way to get started with gathering characteristics about your audience. Ask yourself:

• What kind of movies do I like?
• Where do I hang out online? What social media platforms do I prefer?
• Where do I hang out in real life?
• What kind of events get me excited?
• What brands am I into?

You can keep adding to this, but the idea is to create a picture of a real person who would be interested in spending time and money to watch your film.

One important thing to note is that we didn’t ask about age, sex, location, or other generic markers because that’s not as helpful for describing our audience.

Once you’ve created a persona for your audience, it’s time to start connecting with them.

Start sharing your filmmaking journey where they hang out, and invite them to follow along.

When you start this process in pre-production, you’ve got time to build the audience.

One important note: We made the mistake of creating social media profiles only for our film, Wild Boys, when we were building our audience. That’s short-sighted as it makes you start from scratch with every new film.Instead, build an audience that’s connected to you, the filmmaker. The advantage of this is that you can build your audience over the course of your career, and it’ll grow from film to film. It’s also much easier to build a following around a person rather than a brand (your film) or a company. People follow people; take advantage of it.

Why you need to be an owner, not a renter of your audience

When you first start sharing your filmmaking journey, social media and other popular haunts where you can connect with your audience are the natural places to start.

Growing a social media following is great, but it’s important to remember that the relationship between you and your audience is completely controlled by the platform.

Most social platforms will only show your content to a small percentage of your followers, and you’re at the mercy of their algorithm and rules. If they decide to change things up you might lose your way of connecting with your audience.

This is what we call a rented audience.

What you want to have is an audience you own, that you can connect with when you want, in the way you want.

The king of an owned audience?

Email.

You’re receiving this email today because you decided to give me your email address, thereby giving me permission to send you this article.

You and me can talk one-one.

That’s super powerful in a world of one-to-many communication.

The way I think about it is like this: social media is for meeting new people and spreading the word about what you do.

But the real connections are made in the inbox.

With email you have a direct line to your fans and you can build trust and create a much deeper relationship than you can on social media.

So what you need to do is to have a way to capture emails from your followers.

There are plenty of ways to do this, a simple landing page with a sign-up form works great.

And then you want to nurture those fans who trust you with their email.

Give them exclusive behind the scenes content, early access to trailers and clips, and invites to special events.

When you own your audience and you grow it over years instead of just around the launch of your film, you’re creating an asset for yourself as a filmmaker that’s invaluable.

And cut!

That does it for this week. Here are the key takeaways I want you to bring with you into your directing career from today:

• Start figuring out who your audience is before you even make the film
• Build a persona for who your audience is and start finding them where they hang out
• Once you connect with your audience, guide them through an email list so you can take ownership of your audience.

As always, thanks for reading.

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