Being rather new to the filmmaking world, I have endeavoured to improve my knowledge as much as possible. Raindance do some excellent courses and I'm looking forward to participating in more. In the wider world of learning, I've been a subscriber to FutureLearn for a few years now and they do courses in every subject imaginable - just short online ones run by universities and institutions around the world. The last course I did was a Spanish language one, as one day I am determined to be a fluent speaker. In any case, it just so happens they have a film distribution course running now (September 2021) and the timing is perfect. The team of people working on our film Desires and Delusions are soon to go into the post-production phase which is very exciting so the more knowledge as independent filmmakers that we can absorb, the better!
Right at the start of the film distribution course, one of the questions is, "How does the marketing campaign of a film – as with any product – turn it from something people haven’t heard of, into something they are interested in, want to see, then actually pay to consume? This is a pretty straightforward question but is not so simple to put into practice and might go some way to explain why the UK film distribution industry is worth hundreds of millions of pounds in direct and indirect revenue. It made me think about my own film consumerism. This really made me think and surely is has to do with what people tell each other about films. I mean I notice website articles about new films and they spark my interest. If I'm in London, I notice the posters on the tube and buses etc. But imagine if every friend I talked to told me the film I'm thinking of seeing is rubbish and will be a waste of time and money. I probably might not bother to go and see it at all. So it seems like there's a short window for the distributors to disseminate information about the film but BEFORE it gets seen by enough people that potentially would put others off. Alternatively, friends can tell us a film is fantastic and then it turns out not to be our cup of tea, but by that point of course, we have already spent the money on the ticket or download!
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