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KEVIN LINDENMUTH: This is Kevin Lindenmuth for Expert Village talking about distribution
for your independent film or documentary. When you send out copies, I mean I come from--when
I was first doing films, and some are VHSs and since VHS' basically no longer exist anymore,
DVDs. And generally if you just burn DVDs, that should be fine. DVD players are more
forgiving lately, and so, I would send one or two copies just in case one DVD-R or whatever,
doesn't play in their player. They have the other one. So, I would send a couple of them
out to a distributor. And also when you send it out, if you have the box art already which
you should and some publicity and stuff, send the DVDs, send that label, send it in a case.
You got clamshell case with any box artwork you have just to make it look better. You
want it to get their attention. You wanted to be noticed. You want to be as professional
looking as you can. So, package it up like it's a real movie 'cause that is what it is
or a real documentary. And your publicity, your quotes, all that hippest stuff in it,
email and mail it. Don't spend a fortune on mailing. If you send stuff in media mail,
send stuff media mail, sometimes first class is cheap because DVD's are pretty light. And
also the tracking, do that the green tracking from the post office just so you know that
they got delivered because when you call and usually you do a follow up call several days
after you send it 'cause sometimes it takes weeks or months or whatever for them to view
something. When you call them and say, "Oh, did you receive my DVD, blah, blah, blah?"
They're like, "Oh, no. I never got it." And then you could dig up their form and see,
"Oh, it was delivered two weeks ago." And then they're like, "Oh, yeah, you're right,
you're right." So, it kinda prevents them, the distributor, from blowing off saying they
never got it. So, that's another thing. You just gotta kinda cover it because if you're
spending all that money sending out a package, and that probably cost you between the postage
and the DVDs and artwork and stuff, I mean, it could cost you up to ten bucks a package.
And you're sending out, you'll be sending out between publicity and to distributors,
you'll be sending out a lot of DVDs, a lot of copies, a lot of packages. It would be
hundreds and hundreds of dollars. So, be as careful and keep track of everything so you're
not wasting your money.