Movie Making Forum II: Day Of Distribution

Running time: N/A

Don't Just Make a Movie, Sell it Too. Hal Todd Theater San Jose State University. Part I: Producing a Movie that Sells. Taking a script and turning it into a motion picture are a major achievement, BUT making an independent movie that is seen and sold is an achievement of a different feather. Successful selling is built on promoting and distributing your movie during the development stage. Peter Belsito, co-founder and executive vice president of Film Finders, will moderate a panel of buyers, producers, and distributors discussing how to produce a movie while incorporating the elements and strategic planning necessary to realize an audience. The script-to-screen process will be thoroughly discussed from the producer's point of view. Most filmmakers focus most of their energies on making their story, their idea, and assume that the rest will take care of itself. Belsito and company will explore the proven strategic methods of experienced producers who know that the end success tends to start in the very beginning. Part II: Selling Your Movie. So you made your movie; now what? Peter Belsito will moderate a second panel of sales experts discussing historical and leading-edge methods of getting a movie sold and distributed at home and abroad. How does a producer best create a strategic sales plan and execute it? What is the role of a producer's rep? Compare a sales agent versus a distributor. What is an international sales company compared to a domestic distributor? What about the various media: Theatrical, DVD, TV, Internet? How does one best secure sales and distribution worldwide? How can film festivals help? What about industry screenings? What do attorneys do? And consultants? Publicists? Moderator, Peter Belsito, long-time Cinequest friend, is the co-founder of Film Finders, the standard acquisitions tracking tool utilized worldwide, that has the reputation throughout the film business for quality and comprehensiveness of information. Belsito was the founding member of the Independent Feature Project (IFP) in New York and Chicano Cinema Coalition. His produced documentary, Valley of Tears, is currently playing the festival circuit and is being distributed in the U.S. by Seven Arts.