What format do you distribute your movies?

[NzoMatrix]

With the popularity of dvds. I was interesting to know how many of you guys have gone digital to distribute your movies.

[Thanabol]

"Grave October Moon" will be sold direct-to-video DVD in 2004. If there is a Director's Cut, it will be sold in VHS. The reason? DVDs are actually pretty complicated and expensive to make. Plus, most DVD makers will create the menus and record the movie to DVD, but they won't supply units. You have to then hit another place to supply the units. VHS you could conceivable do at home, but unless you go DVD-R this is impossibly expensive. Of course, if you want a wide consumer base, DVD-Rs are ruled out on account that they don't work in most DVD players.

Luckily, Black Gammon Pictures found a programmer who will create the original DVD for cheap, so our money will go primarily towards developing the units. The VHS will be designed at our office.

We also got a European TV company interested in the film, but no American ones. HBO asked for a screener. (Our agent is a GOOD people hunter.) But, we won't know if HBO will pick us up until we can supply that screener. We haven't tried contacting the others yet, figuring we'll get similar responses, so we're planning on hitting that hard during postproduction.

One thing I learned: BELIEVE in your film. Don't think that just because your film is low-budget that only the 'small people' will look at you. Think big. Then work down. Cinamatrix actually was impressed with our drive and seriousness and actually supplied us information that will help us sell to them when it has been created. They're mid-level, but I wouldn't have thought that we'd have a chance with them until we got the 'nads to contact them.

Distribution is the hardest part of producing a movie for sale. The more work you put into it the better the results. It's a numbers game, really. We spent days and hours, weeks... and it began to pay off in the end.