What’s in a press kit? That’s the question that this article is here to answer.

List: Components of a good film press kit

A press release

Probably the most important and basic element of a film press kit is a press release. You can easily look around the internet for sample press releases so your format matches theirs, more or less. Typically a PDF document, your press release will concisely explain:

• That you have a film coming out in a festival/on television/on DVD, etc
• What the film is about and why that’s newsworthy (ideally to the publications you’re trying to pitch to– if the topic of the film or shooting location is local there’s an easy angle you can leverage)
• How people can see the film
• How you can be contacted for more information

Often times press releases will have quotes from the filmmaker and sometimes the participants in your documentary film (or actors if it’s a fictional film). Press releases are ideally short: perhaps only a page long but can overflow on to a second page if needed. They should include your contact information and links to your film’s website and a trailer video (ideally one that’s hosted on a site like YouTube that’s embeddable by news organizations on their own website). More on links later. If your film is screening at a film festival, include specific showtimes and addresses of the theater. Have a few people read your press release and make sure that it includes all the relevant information.

A written synopsis of the film

A synopsis might be a paragraph or two but not longer than that. If you’ve already made the film, we’re going to assume you’ve already figured out a synopsis that works well!

Bios of key figures

Filmmaker bios – If you’re pitching the film as a story, journalists will want to know who made the film. Including your past credits as a filmmaker can be useful, and, depending on your relationship with the story, any personal connection you have to the subject matter (i.e. “John first became fascinated with tractors when his grandmother was run over by one. So making a film that took place in a farm equipment factory made sense…”).

Key film participant bios – If you’ve made a documentary film about this one specific sculpter, you’re going to want to include a short bio of them and their work alongside your own bio as a filmmaker. In the case of a film where you have a somewhat well known actor you may want to include their bio as well with their past acting credits.

Video links

If you’re at the stage where you’re promoting your film to the public you should defitely have a proper film trailer. And ideally it should be hosted on YouTube– the easiest video hosting platform for people to share videos from (yes, it’s easier than Vimeo for most regular folks). As a filmmaker you want your trailer to be shared as widely as possible, and that means embedded on news organizations websites, blogs, people’s Facebook and Twitter feeds– all over the place essentially. You should include a link to your trailer in your press release and in your press kit generally.

Additionally you should make it clear in the press release or elsewhere that a private screener link is available to watch the full film for journalists or bloggers. Don’t include this link and password combo in the document; people should have to reach out to you to get it if you’re posting the press kit publicly on your website.

High resolution photographs

Images have great power in selling films– almost as much a video in some cases. There are several types of photographs that can be great additions to film press kits. They are:

• Still images from the film – either taken as actual frame grabs from the film or (even better) taken on set with a real still camera like a DSLR
• Behind the scenes action photos of the film getting made (i.e. the director with a camera, etc)
• Headshots of the filmmaker(s) and/or of the principle people in the film
• The film’s poster image and/or key art

You’ll want to provide a selection of nice high resolution images that make your project look professional and interesting. Not too many to have to sift through– under ten images, journalists are busy after all– but ideally at least a couple for the photo editors to choose from. It’s common for newspapers to request images at 300 DPI or higher but in reality they’ll take any image if it looks good enough.

Contact information

You’ll want to include your contact information or that of a designated team member to handle media requests. It’s a good idea to include both a phone number and an email address — you want to be as easily contactable as possible if a reporter is interested in the story.

Link to relevant websites

A press release and press kit might include links to:

• The official film website
• A trailer on YouTube
• A link to the production company or filmmaker website if applicable

Additional film press kit materials

Optionally you might also include a director’s statement on the work or a logline. Fuller credits for the film might also be included, although these are typically not printed or used by journalists.

What does a press kit for a film look like?

There are different ways of structuring a film press kit. Sometimes a press kit is entirely self-contained in a PDF document (with images embedded and so forth). Other times the press kit is a section on a film’s website whree people can download photographs, a PDF of the press release, find contact information, and so forth. Sometimes a press release might take the form of a bundled zip file that people can download on to their computers.

The two types of articles about films

Generally speaking there are two types of articles that news organizations publish about films. These are film reviews, where the writer is a movie reviewer and not a reporter, or feature stories, in which case the writer is a reporter and not a movie reviewer. The purpose of a movie review is to tell readers whether or not a film is worth seeing.

The purpose of a feature story on the other hand– which is often longer in length and will commonly involve an interview with the filmmaker– tells the story of the film getting made as a news item. Feature stories can sometimes also be published even as a film is still being shot and not yet completed. Both types of articles can be helpful for filmmakers.

Similarly, feature stories can also appear on radio and on television news shows.

Related:

How to license TV news footage for a documentary: How much does TV news footage cost to license?

The post What is included in a film press kit? [List] appeared first on Documentary Film Cameras.

The steps to make a documentary film:

No two documentaries follow the exact same path from conception to completion but what follows below is a rough guide for the process by which many documentary films are made. Not every filmmaking process will include every step, and many films will include additional steps beyond the basic ones listed here.

Phase 1: Documentary Film Pre-production

Research & Writing – Every film starts with an idea. Sometimes for a documentary film, this might end up being quite different from the eventual finished product but documentaries often times start with a fair amount of research. That might including writing a documentary script or treatment for what you expect the film may include, and it may involve approximate hypothetical lines that you expect the people in your film to say. Many documentary filmmakers do all sorts of extensive research, much of which doesn’t actually make it into the film itself.

Pre-interviews and interviewee selection – Unless you’ve already decided to make a documentary about a specific historical or living individual, you’ll probably need to do some “casting,” or deciding who will be in your film. If it’s a doc about a particular issue, say, climate change, you might need to choose which scientists or experts you want to interview. Most documentary filmmakers end up talking with many more people than actually end up in their film. You might conduct pre-interviews where you’re doing research into both who will be enough of an expert to be in your film, but also who seems like they can talk in an engaging manner.

Simply being a subject expert is not enough to be “cast” in a documentary– you also need to be good on camera and able to speak in an understandable and engaging way that won’t confuse or put your audience to sleep. As the filmmaker or documentary film producer, you need to vet your film’s subjects and decide whether or not they’ll be good on film for the “role” you need them for. Sometimes even experts who aren’t well suited to speaking on camera (perhaps they have a stutter or they’re located in a remote location you can’t afford to travel to) can still sign on as advisors to your project which can help inform your process and answer subject area questions you encounter or give you feedback on rough cuts of the film later on.

Fundraising & building a team – Next the filmmaker will create a rough budget for what it will cost to make the film. On a super low budget doc you might be able to self-fund it, but often times you’ll need to do some documentary fundraising either through a Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign or applying for media grants. There are many documentary film grant-makers but there’s also plenty of competition for their funds. Depending on the type of film you’re making you may also need to start building a team at this phase (hiring camera and sound technicians, an editor, etc). You’ll also want to secure any filming access you will need, like getting permission to film in a government building or confirming with your film’s interviewees or subjects that they’re willing to be part of your project.

Phase 2: Documentary Production Phase

Shoot interviews & follow your subjects – Depending on the type of documentary you’re doing, you may be shooting a variety of material. For a historical documentary, you might be filming re-enactments and collecting interviews with historians. For a documentary film that follows a modern day living person as they try to accomplish a goal (run a marathon for instance), you might be filming them as they train and work to accomplish their goal. Of course, you’ll want to get documentary film release forms signed from all your participants so you can legally use the footage you shoot with them.

Collect b-roll – B-Roll is the material that isn’t interviews in your film. If you’re making a film about woodworking you might want to collect lots of cool footage of people sawing wood or fitting joints into grooves or sanding rough edges or staining finished chairs. This footage will come in handy later when it’s time to piece together your interviews and other footage into telling a story. The b-roll can cover up edits that you make in your interviews and help you stitch together a visually compelling story. See our related article Creative B-Roll Ideas for Documentary Filmmakers.

Find archival materials – Not every documentary film relies on old photos or archival video but many do. If your film does, you’ll want to find, collect and digitize those materials so they’re ready for you to use in the editing process. You’ll also need to get permissions and documentation that you have those permissions from the rights holders or creators of this imagery if it’s not in the public domain or covered under the fair use loophole.

Phase 3: Documentary Post-Production

Editing – Depending on the length of your film (feature or short) your editing process might be quite long and complex or simpler. Feature length documentaries often start with a paper edit or a compilation of interview transcripts that roughly sketch out the structure of the film before any footage is actually edited. Shorter documentaries might just leap into the editing phase, making adjustments where the plan from pre-production didn’t quite match the finished results. You’ll also record any temporary and final voiceover if your documentary has narration.

Getting feedback – Almost every film, nonfiction or not, involves a substantial feedback gathering phase once there’s a rough cut ready to be shown. Just like writing a book, you’d want someone you trust to read it (and preferably lots of people) before you send it off to a publisher for consideration, filmmaking is much the same way. Documentary filmmakers will often hold rough cut screenings of a few people like subject matter experts, general audience member types and other filmmakers to help figure out what the weak or unclear parts of the film are. These days you can also send a private link to the film via email for feedback to people.

Polishing – Finally, once you’ve reached picture lock and your film is done with editing you’ll probably need to get a sound mix and color correction done to really make the film shine. If you have a film score composer they’ll also work during this stage to add custom music underneath some scenes. See our related article: How to boost film production values.

Phase 4: Documentary Distribution

Every film is unique and every film will have a unique distribution trajectory. What follows here are some examples of what the distribution phase may include, not every film will do each of these.

Submit to film festivals – This is a common step in the indie filmmaking process. Documentarians might submit their film to submission services like Film Freeway that will, for a fee, send your film to various festivals around the world. If you’re accepted to some you may attend them in person to show your film, give Q&As afterward to the audience, and sometimes meet with other filmmakers or distribution representatives from companies if there are any in attendance who are interested in your work.

Get a distribution agent to pitch your film to studios – This might be another step although not every documentary film does this.

Submit your film to broadcasters like PBS – Specifically, PBS has their POV and Independent Lens for 1 hour long stand alone docs.

Put the film online for streaming/VOD purchases – Online storefronts like Amazon, iTunes and others will allow you to market your film and sell directly to consumers.

Not every film will include all of the steps in this step by step documentary filmmaking guide, and just about every film will include other unique steps that we haven’t mentioned. But hopefully, now you have a bird’s eye view of what the documentary filmmaking process is commonly like. Browse around our website for more documentary filmmaking information.

Related:
How to write a script for a documentary film

How to boost film production values

Download documentary film release forms

Best documentary filmmaking cameras

10 Common Documentary Filmmaking Mistakes & How to Avoid Them

How to get audio/video transcribed – speech recognition & manual transcription programs

The post What are the steps to make a documentary film? How to make a documentary appeared first on Documentary Film Cameras.

The most obvious idea is probably to throw it up on YouTube or Vimeo, post the link on Facebook and hope it goes viral. But we’ve got some more sophisticated ideas. Check out our short documentary distribution guide below.

Submit Your Short Film to Film Festivals

The festival circuit may not be a good fit for every short documentary but with so many film fests out there these days you can probably find a few venues for a mini-doc on just about any topic.

Festivals will typically program shorts either as companion pieces for short feature films (showing them as an appetizer before a thematically related feature-length film) or in blocks of shorts in which a handful of shorts are programmed together to fill up a normal film’s time-slot.

Knowing what types of films a festival is looking for will radically improve your chances of acceptance. Film festivals can be grouped into roughly these categories:

• Top tier prestige festivals (e.g. Sundance, TIFF, etc)
• Local film festivals (Chicago International Film Festival, San Diego Film Festival, etc)
• Thematically programmed film festivals (Bay Area International Children’s Film Fest, Austin Music Video Festival, etc)

There are also film festivals that program documentaries primarily or exclusively, and even specific sub-genres of documentary (like music films). Choosing fests that are either thematically or location-wise relevant to your film will often improve your chances of getting programmed. Getting your film accepted into some film festivals (and maybe even winning an award or two) can help market your film and also help market yourself as a filmmaker for future projects.

What length is your short film?

In addition, it’s worth considering what length of films fests are looking for. It’s easy for a programmer to find slots for short docs that are 1-5 minutes long. It’s a tiny bit harder to find room for films that are up to about 10 or 12 minutes long. After you get past 15 minutes it becomes increasingly difficult to find time-slots to program your short in. If your documentary doesn’t fit into these time-slots, you may have difficulty getting selected unless your subject matter is extremely relevant to the festival. Each fest will have a different cutoff for how long a short film is but it may be worth shaving down your film to fit into an easily-programmed lot.

Resources for finding appropriate fests and submitting your film to festivals: Film Freeway, Withoutabox.

Submit Your Short Documentary to Broadcasters

Many short documentaries may not be a good fit for broadcast because of their length but if you have a film that’s too long for many film festivals, you might consider trying to get it broadcast in a half-hour time-slot. For documentaries, local PBS affiliate stations may be a natural fit, especially if the subject of your film is location-based in the same area as the broadcast (i.e. a half-hour documentary that explores housing issues in Miami might be a good fit for WPBT, South Florida PBS). You can generally find information for the programming director of PBS affiliates by searching or using the Contact Us page on their website. If all else fails, you can call them up and ask for the email address of the person you can submit to. If you can get a local broadcast, you might end up with tens of thousands of people watching depending on the size of the market and the number of times the program is repeated– many times more than any film festival can accommodate.

PBS does also occasionally gives national broadcasts to truly exceptional short documentaries through its POV strand.

Submit Your Short Documentary to Online Outlets

There are several online outlets for short films. Depending on the style of your film, one or more of these might be worth submitting to. Here is a selection of a handful though you may find others by searching.

New York Times Op-Docs – The NYT pays a license fee for exclusive short documentaries, typically under 10 minutes. These can also be part of a longer work, cut down to fit their length requirements, although films should also work as a stand-alone film without any other context required. Submission information is available here.

Upworthy – A venue for short uplifting videos that get shared on various media platforms. They are looking for “original stories that support our mission of creating a better world.” Submission information available here.

Field of Vision – A clearinghouse for short documentaries with a global focus (although US-based films are welcome too). Submission information is available here.

Al Jazeera and its video-only site AJ+ – Provides visitors on multiple platforms with newsy topical short documentaries and news pieces. Submission information available here.

Subject specific websites – Depending on what your short documentary is about, you may be able to find a great home on a website that’s about that topic. For instance you could imagine a short film about a soccer player might earn ESPN.com‘s interest.

Depending on the style and content of your short doc, you might also have luck pitching the film to outlets that don’t normally accept solicit video submissions like BuzzFeed, Vox, Vice, NowThis, or The Guardian. Local newspaper websites in your area might also be receptive to your pitch depending on how “newsy” or “current” it feels if the topic is a local focus.

Upload the film to YouTube, etc

Once you’ve researched, submitted and perhaps exhausted all other outlets first, you should consider uploading your film to YouTube. Some outlets like the NYT’s Op-Docs have exclusive submission policies, meaning if you upload your film publicly to YouTube first they won’t consider it. So you may want to save posting the film to YouTube for last. But when the time does come to post the documentary online for everyone to watch for free, here are some ideas for success:

1. For general distribution, YouTube videos are more easily shared than Vimeo videos. Most non-filmmaker people aren’t quite as familiar with Vimeo but everybody knows how to share a YouTube video. As a result, videos posted to YouTube have a higher chance of going viral than ones posted to Vimeo. Of course, you can always post to both as well, but the YouTube version is the one we’d use to share on social media.

2. Speaking of that, share it to social media! Be sure to give it appropriate tags and a nice long text description to help search engines find it. Post the video on Facebook and other social media accounts and invite your friends to share it too. Email a batch of your friends, colleagues, and family and ask them to help you share it with others. You may also have luck submitting to various communities on sites like Reddit which feature niche forum boards who may be interested in your film. Posting your video to topic-related Facebook groups may also be a good idea. (Be careful to avoid the appearance of shameless self-promotion, however.)

3. Make sure your description or the end of the video gives people an opportunity to learn more about your work or subscribe for future videos of yours. If your goal is to build a following for your future work (and we’d argue that should be your goal even if it isn’t yet), offering viewers an opportunity to subscribe or visit your website or join your newsletter is a great idea. Your fans can help fund your future films through crowd-funding campaigns and they can help share them as well.

The post How to Distribute Your Short Documentary: The Ultimate Short Doc Film Distribution Guide appeared first on Documentary Film Cameras.

Here are some of our favorite resources for selling a film online:

• Gumroad – Set your own price and sell your film online. Gumroad works with either streaming or downloads and can do rentals as well. No annual fee, you only pay a tiny percentage of each sale. Quite cost effective for low budget documentary filmmakers and you can even bundle deleted scenes with your work. Integrates with your own website.
• Square Merchant – Online and in-person credit card processing for your films, whether you’re selling DVDs online or at events, even comes with a free credit card reader that plugs into your iPhone or Android device. No annual fee and a much smoother checkout experience than PayPal. Integrates with your own website.
• Amazon Createspace – Get your film in front of millions of Amazon customers. Unfortunately, you can’t quite set your own prices (Amazon sets them for you based on your request) but they can produce DVDs for you one by one and ship them to your customers, as well as video on demand streaming rental and purchases. No annual fee.
• VHX – VHX is an online streaming distribution platform that allows you to upload your films and sell them to your audience without having to create a complicated website or deal with any of the tech stuff. VHX is especially great for episodic content because it can manage branded subscription services, not just one-off films. You can set your own prices, offer rentals and purchases and even build coupon codes. You can get started and sell for free, but once you’ve uploaded more than 10 hours of content you will need to begin paying.
• Vimeo Pro – Once you pay a subscription fee of about $20/month (or a discounted flat rate for the year), a subscription to Vimeo Pro gives you tools to sell your films. You can set your own prices and upload art according to their specifications to create beautiful-looking sales pages with trailers, synopses, stills, and more. Note that unlike some other platforms with Vimeo Pro you’ll need to pay a monthly fee whether or not you actually make any sales. On the flip side, however, you also get access to expanded Vimeo video hosting features like advanced branding of color-schemes of the video embeds on your website, expanded analytics, and more.
• YouTube – If you really and truly want to get as many eyeballs for your film as possible, nothing beats putting it up for free on YouTube, which allows you to monetize it through ads (or if you meet the eligibility requirements, you can offer it as paid content on YouTube). But even if you want to sell your movie through a more traditional route, putting a great film trailer up on YouTube with a link to purchase the film is a must.

Selling a streaming or downloadable version of your film online can be a great way to get the film out there for next to nothing and also get some buzz for yourself as a filmmaker. We also recommend collecting the email addresses of your buyers (which Square and Gumroad allow you to do– but Amazon does not) so you can let them know when your next film is out.

Extra tips for how to sell your film online

Here are some additional tips to consider, regardless of what platform you choose to sell your films online with.

Upload your trailer to YouTube – Whether or not you’re hosting the film on YouTube, it’s worth uploading the trailer there and tagging it with lots of related tags and giving it a nice, long keyword-rich synopsis in the description area. You should also include a link in the description to where people can purchase/stream the full film. It’s also worth including a URL in the video itself as text on screen in case someone is watching it on a platform where they can’t see the description while they’re watching (like on a cell phone in full-screen mode or embedded in another website). Uploading your trailer to YouTube will make it much more findable.

Market your film to an email list – As you’re making your movie, keep a running list of email addresses from people who are interested in it that you interact with along the way. Send these people (along with crowd-funders or friends) regular updates on your progress as you go through the process. By the time your film is ready to be released online via streaming platforms, you may already have a built-in audience. On your website, you can also include an email signup list for people who come across your film’s website and are interested in watching it once it’s finished. Make sure you also capture people’s first names in addition to their email addresses (but don’t make the signup form too long or complicated because fewer people will fill it out!).

Make the option to purchase your film easy to find on your website(s) – If you have an official film website, make sure it’s easy to find the page where people can buy the film. This means ideally putting it in the menu/navigation and also sprinkling links to it throughout the website on all sorts of other pages where it’s relevant. If you have other websites, like a professional website as a director, consider putting links to buy the film there too. Generally speaking, the more links there are to that purchase page, the better.

Related:

How to Make a Low Budget Documentary Film

The Best Low Budget Documentary Cameras

Cheapest 4K Video Cameras for Documentary Filmmaking

What is the Best Cheap Documentary Camera for Filmmaking in 2016?

The post How to Sell a Film Online Using Streaming Distribution Services appeared first on Documentary Film Cameras.

Documentary filmmaking can be quite expensive: budgets can reach hundreds of thousands of dollars or more for a feature-length documentary. If you’re interested in making a low budget documentary film, especially if you’ve never made one before, you’ll need to spend wisely and count every penny.

10 Low Budget Documentary Film Tips

Don’t start until you’re really and truly ready to make a documentary film

This first tip might be a bit of a buzzkill but the truth is, making a documentary film is extremely hard work and it’s important to know what you’re getting into. Many filmmakers could have saved a huge amount of money if they planned a bit more before they even picked up a camera. If this is your first documentary film, we recommend picking up a good book about documentary filmmaking which will help you plan out your journey ahead.

In addition, if you’re paying at least some crew or renting gear, you can save money by doubling up multiple things when you schedule shoot days– i.e. on the same day that you interview a film subject, also get some b-roll of them in their everyday life so you don’t have to get it later, if there’s even a chance you might need it.

Shoot your film with a cheap documentary film camera

Photo credit

One of the most expensive things for first-time documentary filmmakers to purchase outright is a good video camera for documentaries. Having your own documentary film camera is quite useful because you never know quite when a potential shoot could come up.

To help you find a great doc camera on a budget, we’ve put together a list of some of the best cheap documentary film cameras.

Apply for grants & try a Kickstarter campaign

Famed hockey player Wayne Gretzky once said you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. In the same way, you miss out on 100% of the documentary film grants that you don’t apply for. Many of these are extremely competitive, but if you focus on smaller grants, non-documentary specific grants aligned particularly well with the topic of your documentary, or general arts grants for artists in your city or state, you may have a better shot. And of course, you can always try a Kickstarter campaign to raise additional funds for your documentary.

It may feel uncomfortable asking for money but take solace in the fact that for crowdfunding campaigns you can let your footage speak for you to a certain extent. If you craft a dynamite fundraising trailer with all your best footage and a compelling or unique premise, you have decent odds of success. Just make sure you lay the groundwork by prepping your potential donors months in advance and reading up on the best way to conduct a crowd-funding campaign.

Enlist the help of your friends and/or do skill trades for crew

Paying a documentary film crew can get expensive but if you’re able to interest your friends/classmates/colleagues in your project you can definitely save some money. Just keep in mind, you often get what you pay for. So if you have a critical shoot or event you need covered properly or a very important interview to shoot, you may want to hire a pro to help shoot it or capture audio.

You can also do skill trading with others– working on their project in exchange for them working on yours.

Edit your film yourself– or at least get started on it

Professional documentary film editors with many credits under their belt can charge $5,000+ a week and it can take many weeks to edit a film, meaning it’s easy to rack up a huge bill. Often documentaries can get stalled in the post-production phase when they run out of money to pay their editor.

You can save huge amounts of money if you’re hiring an outside editor by organizing your footage well and prepping it for editing. We’re talking about putting each shoot in its own folder and making sure your footage is converted if it needs to be (all in the same edit-friendly format) and ready to be edited before you hand it off to your editor.

Related: 10 Ways to Boost Documentary Film Production Values

You can, of course, save even more money by editing your documentary yourself. NLEs (non linear editing programs– like Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere Pro) are cheaper and easier to use than ever before. And you can find online training tools as well to help you start.

Use stock music instead of a composer

Composers for a documentary film can charge $10,000 and up to score your doc. For a low budget documentary that’s often out of the question. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have great music– using stock music from a website like Storyblocks Audio, which charges an annual subscription fee for $99/year allows you to download as many royalty free music tracks as you want to use in your documentary film. Pond5 offers an even larger selection of music and sound effects (though it’s pay per individual track used).

Save money by using public domain archival footage & photos

Old archival film footage is another one of those costs that can cost thousands of dollars for even a few seconds. You can save money by using public domain films from places like Archive.org, or CriticalPast.com, which charges a fee but provides HD footage of old public domain films on a variety of topics whose copyright has expired.

Old photos whose copyrights have expired are also fair game for documentary filmmakers. And so are photographs and videos/film footage shot by US federal government employees as part of their job (which aren’t eligible for copyright in the first place). Pond5 has a great public domain photograph collection which it offers for free.

Leverage Fair Use to your advantage

The Fair Use clause in US copyright law means you can use even copyright material without paying for them– so long as you’re using them to critique them, or in a few other limited circumstances. For instance, if you intend to critique Hollywood’s portrayal of Hispanics, you can excerpt short bits of movies that demonstrate your point, even without paying a dollar in license fees. Check out the Fair Use for Documentary Filmmakers guide for more info on how this works.

Be strategic and selective about film festivals

You might think that once your documentary film is finished, you can finally relax your budget. But the truth is, in the 21st-century film festivals can be a bit of a racket. In order to submit your film, they charge (sometimes large) entry fees whether or not you’re selected, and they can result in very little from your perspective– not to mention cost a lot to attend if they’re out of town. So if you want to send your documentary to film festivals, be strategic about your festival strategy. Check out our article specifically about film festival strategy.

Distribute your film online for cheap

Distributing your film online can be done virtually for free– if you do it right. Read our article about online film distribution to learn more about getting your film out there, and getting people to watch it.

Related:

The Best Low Budget Documentary Cameras

Cheapest 4K Video Cameras for Documentary Filmmaking

What is the Best Cheap Documentary Camera for Filmmaking in 2019?

10 Ways to Boost Documentary Film Production Values

The post How to Make a Low Budget Documentary Film appeared first on Documentary Film Cameras.

Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide (Check reviews & prices)
by Chris Gore

This book calls itself the guerrilla guide to marketing and selling an indie film. Some people are just there for the loot bags. But most of the people at a film festival are trying to market and sell an independent film. Don’t be just one of the horde. Use Chris Gore’s Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide to help your indie film stand out! Entertainment Weekly loves Gore’s book, calling it a “treatise on schmoozing, bullying, and otherwise weaseling one’s way into the cinematic madness known as film festivals.” The newly revised and updated fourth edition includes full listings for more than 1,000 film festivals, with complete tips and contact information, plus in-depth analysis of the Big Ten festivals.

I Wake up Screening: What to Do Once You’Ve Made that Movie (Check reviews & prices)
by John Anderson

The explosion of independent cinema over the past fifteen years has created thousands of would-be filmmakers, all dreaming of becoming the next Quentin Tarantino or Steven Soderbergh—and all working away like beavers, making thousands of independent films. But what do they do once the movie is made? In I Wake Up Screening, powerhouse authors John Anderson and Laura Kim tell emerging filmmakers how to (and how not to) get their movies talked about, written about, sold, and seen. The authors’ advice is supported by insightful interviews with more than sixty top industry insiders, all offering priceless behind-the-scenes tips and tricks.

Film Festival Secrets: A Handbook For Independent Filmmakers (Check reviews & prices)
by Christopher Holland

Every year thousands of filmmakers like you unleash their newly completed movies upon the film festival circuit. Whether you’re a first-timer with a comedy short or a seasoned veteran with a documentary feature, you all face the same set of problems. You all ask the same questions. You all want the pleasure of seeing your film play before a festival audience and gain the recognition it deserves. This is your book. Film Festival secrets will help you select the right festivals for your film, prepare your festival screener, save money on festival fees, create marketing collateral, and craft a screening sell-out plan. And that’s just the beginning.

Related:
List: Top Books About Documentary Filmmaking

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