DISTRIBUTION
This is where things get a little tricky. We are under no illusion that our knowledge of distribution is limited.
This is partly down to us never having been in a position to need to know how to distribute a film.
Prior to this our short films needed nothing other than popping it out to festivals and eventually up on YouTube, Vimeo and Facebook for free.
It’s also down to the fact that not too many filmmakers want to share up to date information about their own distribution deals.
This can be for contractual reasons as many deals often include a non disclosure agreement due to the individual nature of the contractual agreements being made.
Unfortunately that leads to a big black hole when it comes to trying to find out what a good (or bad) distribution deal is.
So I have spent months finding out as much as possible about how to avoid many of the issues that poor distribution deal can cause for any independent feature film.
Over this time I have researched financial information for indie films, much of which is outdated,but served as good starting point.
While up to date financial information is hard to come by, people’s personal stories of how they distributed their own films is far more readily available.
So I listened to the stories of so many first time indie filmmakers and while there were stand out success stories there were far more about filmmakers who had put so much time and money into their films, signed a poor deal to then see very little to no return in the end while the distribution company takes much of the profits from deals made.
And often these deals run for years. Anywhere between 3 and 15. But even after many of these years, the filmmakers see very little money back and sometimes NO return.
By no means is this every distributor but it happens enough to muddy the water.
It happens all too frequently and although we have a had several interested parties wanting to take on the distribution of Tellurian, we are adamant that we will wait for the right deal for us.
FINANCING POST PRODUCTION
Having sat down and worked out what we still need to complete the film, we have been trying to figure out the best way to raise the remaining funds.
We have already completed 3 indiegogo campaigns that raised a combined total of £6K. This plus some additional private funding made up our initial budget.
Some of this was earmarked for post production costs but an increased number of shooting days from around 15 to 21 has depleted these funds.
These campaigns stretch right back to 2017 and while we have been able to complete a number of perks, many of our amazing contributors have been hugely patient in waiting for perks.
We haven’t forgotten about them, they are coming, it’s just that most of them are tied to the completion of the film. So hopefully not too much longer to wait for those!
We haven’t discounted doing another crowdfunder to raise the remaining funds.
This may be more successful than the previous crowdfunded as the film is 90% complete and we can show some more footage and there is less risk for backers that the film won’t be completed.
but we are also looking for alternative ideas and funding opportunities and have a few potential leads.
As a team we are working hard to try and find the best way forward for this. We will hopefully have some concrete plans to share with you all very soon!
We are open to any ideas though! 😬😁
In our next update we hope to include where we are in post production. Have some information regarding funding and perhaps some exciting new trailer news!