Never too late for schmoozing!

It's one thing to make a film.

It's another thing to get it out into the world.  What's the answer?

Schmoozing is good.  Sometimes it's getting your film into festivals that have high schmoozing factor.  Like Cannes and Toronto - or Sundance - but that requires plane trips and hotels (although Park City is more DIY than the others).

There's another way to schmooze - and that's online.  Build a website at Facebook for your film, get your film a twitter account, and very important to build a blog so anyone who searches for the name of your film can find it easily, and not just at IMDB.com - that's important too - but if you're going to market and sell your film at some point, it's important to make it easy for people to find it.

Blogger offers an easy solution if you have a gmail account.  There are a million other ways to promote and sell your film, and the first and best way to do that is find a film you like, check out the website, see how it's built, and either hire someone to do the same for you, or figure out how to do it for yourself.  After all, we are about DOING IT YOURSELF here at the DIY Film Fest.


And in light of this profound information, I submit there are a few other things you can do, if you have enough money saved over from production to promote and distribute your film.  And that is CreateSpace.com - it's owned by Amazon.com, it's simple to build a page and submit your film, and once the DVD is submitted, the film goes live through Amazon - streaming, downloading, etc - and the account you've set up at CreateSpace pays you monthly.

But one final step might be to join an organization that has a proven record of helping filmmakers - it's Film Independent.  It's based in LA, they hold the Spirit Awards every year, but its a way for completely independent filmmakers to reach out and contact other filmmakers. Their deadlines are in Sept to submit films, but they have forums and workshops where you can learn more about distribution and sales.  There are conferences held at AFM every year - but the ones held through Film Independent are more often than that.  And they cover all disciplines, from shorts to features, from documentaries to animation to fiction films.  So if you have the extra cash lying around, it's something to look into - basic memberships are under $100, but the schmooze factor can be high if you get your film accepted into their festival, or just attend some of their events.  Good luck!!