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KEVIN LINDENMUTH: This is Kevin Lindenmuth for Expert Village talking about distribution
for your independent film or documentary. The running time of the program is important
because it somewhat determines your distribution. With features, I believe they have to be over
seventy-five minutes, seventy-seventy-five minutes before they're considered like a feature
film. And, of course, DVD distribution, people want extras. So, not only do you have to make
the program and you got to put together a mini documentary or blooper reel or whatever,
'cause they always ask for the extra stuff now. For documentaries, it's a slightly different
thing, for like an hour long documentary the longest it could be is fifty-eight minutes
and thirty seconds. Let's say for PBS there's the general broadcast length they want, it
could be between fifty-six minutes, fifty-eight-thirty and that's for documentary. For a feature,
again, seventy-five minutes, it could be as long as you want but I wouldn't advise making
a three hour movie. For shorts and stuff, it just depends of where you want to send
it. Some websites and such and some competitions they specify, you can't be any longer than
twenty minutes, fifteen minutes, whatever. So, the length really again depends on what
you have in mind for distribution and even though distribution might not be in your mind
until where you're going to send it and while you're making the movie, you just should have
some inkling of it. I mean, it just kind of think it out that, well, when the movie is
done, I'm going to send it here, and as for this, it should be this long. It'll just make
it a lot easier because the whole filmmaking process, and there's all the planning now
stage. And so, distribution is the same thing. I mean, you're planning it out somewhat as
much as you can.