The 10 Crucial Steps Of NonDē Distribution

Part 5 of the HFF INVISIBLE NATION Case Study & NonDē Exploration

you tell me: why is this what I chose to illustrate this post today?

Forgive me. This is a bullet point post. Mostly.

I needed to get it down, not just for you, but for myself. I think it is important to get this out NOW. I hope to expand upon the points as we go forward.

I broke it down for you last go round in this 30 chapter (! and growing) Case Study / Exploration into three phases. The Three Phases of NonDē. Those are the waves. That’s what you have to pace yourself for once you enter the water.

But there is also the work within those phases that you have to feel, that you have to embrace. And that’s what I want to help you with today. Consider it just another way to look at it things. One is your breath. The other is your exertion. Or something like that. Maybe you can explain it better for me?

I feel if you are going to go the NonDē route, and I hope that many that you do, you kinda gonna need this ‘lil map I have for you today. These are essentially some of the scenic stops on the route.

Yes, a lot of this I have shared in different forms earlier… But assuming you are reading this entire multipart Case Study of INVISIBLE NATION distribution and NONDĒ exploration, it is worth taking a breather here and look under the hood at the engine strategy. The details are going to come but this is the route we are taking today — another overview. And as your resident coach, I consider it a #MustRead.

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The 10 Crucial Steps Of NonDē Distribution

1. Mindset — Get it, my friend, get it. Cinema-makers need it. Service providers need it. This is it:

50 Concepts To Embrace To Benefit The Non-Dependent Distribution Of Your Film

One of those 50 concepts is to recognize that you are in a system, and that system is within you and others. Inevitably if that system doesn’t want what you want, you are going to have to either change yourself and your work, or change the system. I choose the latter, and these are what I believe are nine systemic issues that we can do something about. In fact, in the year that has passed I believe we’ve made significant progress on one third of the “issues”.

What Should The Non-Dependent Filmmaker Be Most Concerned About Right Now?

And just in case you haven’t been reading this case study from the beginning, you need to embrace the slow and the long of it:

The Beauty Of Slow

2. Audience build & maintenance — oh so crucial, for all cinemakers.

   Build Your Audience, Own Your Future

   The ultimate goal is first to transform customers to audience, but then from audience to community, and from community to collaborators.

3. Supplementary material

   1. (often can’t raise funding for this until later)

   2. easiest to create, if you plan for it from the start.

   3. including Merch

      1. Not so much for revenue, but for community-building

   4. Short form

      1. Mine the edit room floor for gold

   5. Curriculum build

   6. Lectures with clips.

4. Pre-Distribution

   1. Market Assessment

      1. All platforms & media

   2. Film Audience Assessment

   3. Festival Strategy (I have a post coming on this!)

   4. Dynamic Distribution Strategy

      Use my template:

      Q: How do you best prepare for your film's distribution? A: far, far, far in advance.

      1. Roles Needed

      2. Candidate assessment

   5. Sizzle production

5. Staged Financing: Raise As You Go (NonStop)/ One Campaign after another — although doc filmmakers have learned how to function with staged financing for production and post, we now have to apply the same tactics to distribution funding.

   1. During Post / Raise for Festival tour

   2. During Festival / Raise for Awards or Release

   3. During Awards & Release / Raise for the other

   4. Same as above but in reverse, plus curriculum

   5. During NT/Community / Raise for college & Broadcast

   6. During college & Broadcast / Raise for curriculum & Supplementary

   7. Raise for archive & event