Ep. 93 - Four Walling and Self Distribution

Kent: 0:24

Hi, everyone. Welcome this week to the podcast today, we're going to do an episode a little bit, to teach briefly about the concept of four walling, which is like one small facet of self-distribution. It's an optional facet, but let's get into what that means. And why it's so valuable to understand. some of these principles of self-distribution. so. I think. Before I get into that, I want to talk about some perspectives that, I've started to learn and that I've been reading. We're going to go back. We're going to touch back on a lot of the education right now that we're getting through the podcast and, and literature that, is authored by Alex Ferrari at the indie film hustle podcast and his book. Rise to the film preneur. So once again, I'd recommend all of that learning, but you can use this podcast episode is a touching. kind of, springboard into that material. And. There's one key concept that if you get nothing else out of, I think it's, it's really valuable. It's something I wish I'd known for making my first feature And it's like, it's the most basic concept. It sounds super dumb when you say it. But I don't think 98% of filmmakers are doing it. When they set out, set out to make a project. And. It's this one. Key fact, and. It sounds ridiculous, but I really think that. A large chunk of money for whatever amount of money you're raising, whether it's your own money or somebody else's. For your first feature or any feature film? Should be set aside for marketing. And that's going to deal with four walling a little bit, but this principle sounds so basic and obvious, and yet almost nobody in the indie film world is doing it. No The typical story is that if we're lucky, we've set money aside for post-production right? Like we actually had enough money to finish the edit and color and sound and score. maybe via effects if there are any, which. Hopefully there aren't much, if any. It's like the,

Anna: 2:28

because it's the end of the line. If you're going to run out of money, it's by the end of the line, you've done it. And so I think that even if you have set aside in your budget, Some money for that purpose. Yeah, something else comes up and it seems more important or urgent or necessary. And. And so it's frequently the case that you'll end up out of money at this point. I also think that. Potentially people don't know how to spend that money. Like what does it mean to market? How much does it cost? How do I budget for it? Because I don't even know what that is. I'm putting it in festivals. Is that like, You know, I think, well, yeah. We don't know what that is. It's unlikely that we'll know how to set aside money for it, but do

Kent: 3:12

And it's like all of the above, right? I mean, what, what is marketing it? Festivals check. Social media ads check, you know, creating a, a website, creating posters. if you need to set money aside for trailers, if you're not doing all that yourself. you know, yeah. That's marketing money, taking time or putting money behind traditional marketing billboards, going to conventions. There's a ton of ideas and he goes over this a lot in Phil intrepreneur. rise to the film entrepreneur. but, but you know, it's no different than any other business, right? There's a million different ways to market and there's a million different places to try and put your movie. So that people get eyes on it and become aware of it. Specifically, the people that you think are the best fit. As an audience. for your But I want to touch on what you just said. And I like it's the end of the line. Typically we're running the money I mean, that goes back to another thing that most of us don't do, which is actually budget contingency. We shouldn't be eating our post-production budget during production. If we have a production contingency budget. And if we also have contingency for post-production, we shouldn't be eating into that either. Now some of us, you know, you might be hearing this and thinking, oh, well, that'd be nice, but you know, I'm just barely scraping enough money just to, you know, like I don't have any money for contingency. Well, contingency is 10% of whatever it is you do have. It's all proportional. So if you only have 700 bucks, For production on your movie.$70 is contingency, right? So you're really only going to make it for$630 now. You might think that sounds like an absurdly cheap amount But I mean, The Polish brothers made a movie black and white shot on a DSLR in France. With two actors one and both of them were basically volunteers. One of them was mark Polish. And. And they made the movie for no. They had a scriptment they didn't have a script. And they had no overhead costs at all. There was no costuming. There was no anything. They literally just made it. Now, I'm not saying that that's what you have to make movies. I'm just saying if all you have is I'm a hundred dollars. You can make it. If you have 7,000, if you have 70,000, if you have 700,000, if you have 7 million, right. We can just keep adding zeros. For some, at some point, you're going to say this isn't They only made. A quiet place, which was a small film for 10 million. That's seven millions of not enough. And it's, you know, it's enough, you know, you have enough, whatever it is. Pull your resources together. Whatever they're yours or you get some equity financing. I'm a big believer in inequity financing. I believe all of us have contacts with enough work. We can raise that money. Set money aside, make sure there's contingency so you don't run out. And then. Set aside as much for marketing as you can, minimum 20%. I would recommend doing double your budget. So set, 50,000 aside, If you're able to raise a hundred thousand, 70,000 aside from the beginning of half of half. Half the budget. For marketing and here's why. It's obvious. Well, because you'll have money to market your film, but it also goes farther than that. It goes into. Most of our plan for how to make money on our feature films. And it's not just making money. It's how we all make these movies to be seen. And we, and no one's gonna see it. If it gets done and it just disappears, which is what happens to a lot of our films. They don't sell, they're not successful. They don't make profit at the box even if you get lucky and you do do sell it to a distributor, sometimes those distributors do nothing just to distribute the movie itself. And then not only do you not make money, but, No one sees it and that's, that's not why we were making these things is so that they can just. Kind of be a drop in the bucket that disappears into the massive. Indie films that are being made today.

Anna: 7:04

Yeah. So I think that's the simple definition of marketing is anything that helps people know that your movie exists. Yeah. That's what marketing is. But what about organic marketing? You know, just. Sharing the word invoice that are free on Facebook groups, on, you know, your networks, like, is that an option as

Kent: 7:27

Well, of course it is. Yeah. I mean, you don't have to have money to market. but I would still set aside money to market and. Supplement that with as much powerful, organic marketing as you possibly can. and. Part of that I think is sharing the process of making your film, sharing details about Without spoiling it, as much as you possibly can throughout the entire process. And as you do that, you will slowly grow your audience. and then even if you do have money for marketing, when your movie's done. You'll have slowly. Already been marketing organically the whole time. And there's lots and lots of ways to organically market, but. I still recommend having budget for it. And the main reason is. Is because. Even if we can only raise, like, let's say you only raised 10 grand for marketing. That sounds like a pretty measly amount when you think of like, oh, but if Sony were to distribute my movie, how much would they put behind marketing? The sad truth is, is that unless your movie has a huge name actor They're probably only going to put a few thousand bucks behind the marketing, right? Like the. They're going to see if it sticks or if there's any momentum behind it. And if it doesn't seem like it's taking off. Often. It kind of just fizzles out and they don't, they won't fight for your movie the same way you will. I'm not trying to be doom and gloom. I really do think there are still some good distributors and good distribution deals that can happen. But. Or going for a traditional distribution sale of the movie. We just want to do a one and done sell it and at Principal American distribution. That's a great plan. Okay. Let's hope we leverage that to the best it can give But if we have marketing set aside, Uh, budget for it. Then you're in a position to. Actually walk into the meeting. Without feeling any need whatsoever to make a sale. Like you don't have to sell the movie. Because. You have a whole plan in place. To market it. Yourself all by yourself and, you're confident that the, you know, who your audience is and you can reach them. And so that that's a big thing. To be able to walk in and that, that will actually increase your ability to do it. Maybe the more traditional way of selling it to. Um, distributors. and making a profit. For your investors in a big sale. And if not, once again, You're prepared. You're completely prepared. And so to me, it's just obvious, good business. Like no one would go into like product development, unless they said, what, how are we going to bring this thing to market? Like, do we have a plan? You know, And can worst case scenario, you could raise some marketing money on the backend. like mark Twila did with me, he had money set aside to, but he didn't even use it. He, he ran an Indiegogo campaign for his movie monsters of man. Or monsters and Anyway. robot movie that he made and he raised a big. Chunk of cash. An Indiegogo. Basically pre-selling. Licenses to To rent it and. He raised like 25 K I think is what he said. And they use that for their Facebook. Ad spend so they could split test the trailer and. that goes a long way on a release, on an indie film. And, that movie went on to make millions. I'm sure he spent way more than that in the long run, but in their initial release, they. They used to$25,000 to get the trailer in front of 50 million You know, So, These are all just. Anecdotal things. But to get into the idea of four walling, four Rawlings, when you use that marketing money to. Self fund at theatrical distribution. And that could One premiere screening at your local movie theater. Or it could mean several showings at your local movie theater on multiple screens or multiple nights on one screen or or it could mean that you're actually. showing it on several screens using, some sort of a on demand screening method where you're reaching out to people and. Seeing if they can garner enough interest, if they break a threshold, oh, you know, whatever, 120 people in Chicago said that they would like to see the movie will that broke the threshold for booking a screening. And they've all purchased tickets. Therefore the screening is now happening and they all go and watch it. If it's too low, then it doesn't justify the cost of the screen. Right. So you don't do it because you'd be upside down. I think that. I want to talk about four walling, just because. It's an interesting approach to being able to. Risk-free distribute your movie. In a way that lets you have access to, they buy a ticket, they give you their email address. Now you have the email addresses of everyone who watches the movie in a theatrical setting. And then you can later market, Hey, here's the DVD or the Blu-ray or the digital release, or here's some news about it. And you can share this on social and that's just like good access to your audience and, A good way to continue to market, and you're actually making money with your In a theatrical setting, which is kind of a dream for most of us as filmmakers, I think, to think, wow, we're actually going to put the movie up on a big, giant screen.

Anna: 12:50

Now, are you renting the theater and putting it up or is this. Actually working with theater too. List it and have the showtimes and people can buy tickets through the theaters.

Kent: 13:02

So I think what we're doing is you're basically renting the theater. One way you do it is you basically rent the theater and. You just drive traffic straight there. And the advantage of that is that if you're driving traffic through your own platform, they, you get their email addresses. They're paying you. They're not paying. Technically the theater. The theater at that point, they don't care if you make your money back or not. You're paying the theater for the seats. They care that you fill up the seats as a bonus for them. Right? Because then people are walking through the doors and buying overpriced popcorn and candy. Right. but either way that. They're covered for the cost now. By doing it. strategically you can say, if we are able to sell X number of tickets, Well, then it makes more than it costs to rent said theater. Therefore, we will proceed. If it doesn't. We won't proceed and Hey, no skin off anyone's back. Right. So you

Anna: 13:58

say a date and have people purchase their tickets in advance before us. And before you actually reserve the theater for that.

Kent: 14:06

Yeah, and you've got to have enough advance so that like, if it goes through, there's still time to get to book theater. Yeah. Yeah. And, and if it doesn't go the theater isn't. you know, upset or whatever. so there's a system for that. And there are websites and services, even that will help you. To do that, but, The point is, is that there are ways to do it. And mitigate that risk. And so. I think. Even if you break even. Let's say it's a premiere, there's still advantages to screening. Even if it doesn't make a lot of money, because let's say your, your main strategy is to distribute. Via. transactional video on demand. They're just going to pay for it on Amazon for five bucks to watch your movie. On the computer. And. And you're saying, okay, well, what we'll do is we'll fill up a theater. Maybe we break even. All the people in the theater, we encourage them to. Share it on social media, we shoot a bunch of. You know, footage of everyone packing the theater and getting all excited and show reactions and do little interviews outside of the door and ask people for their impressions. And then you've got a ton of social media content for that traditional indie online distribution model, which you're doing as like a transactional video on demand. Approach. So either way, the screen is actually still really beneficial for your marketing strategy, even if it only breaks even. So for me, it's just something I've been pondering is something that's really valuable. It's valuable, it builds hype. It could actually make you a lot of money and it, and in some cases, You might even be able to show the movie in several cities across America, if you're strategic about the movie and how you're reaching your audience online and how well you're able to target them and either grassroots or paid marketing, Phillip theater seats.

Anna: 16:02

It's possible. If you're marketing on Facebook, you could actually market to that particular city. And limit the ads to people who are nearby. who'd be local to, and also to people who you think are the audience that would enjoy the film the most. It's interesting. Cause when you were saying that. It made me think about the difference between. Applying like submitting to film festivals versus just holding a screening yourself. And how that's almost the same as. Auditioning for small roles in films versus making something yourself.

Kent: 16:40

Yeah, that's a good parallel.

Anna: 16:42

Whereas like you could audition and hundreds of people audition for the same role. And a lot of times. The competition is high. And you may or may not get a role and it may or may not be a role that you really like that much. Even though you're getting paid. If you get selected. Most people. Are. Spending time and not getting selected, right? Yeah. Of the hundred people who applied 99 of them do not get selected. And so. In the same way with the film festival, you're paying money to submit. It's competitive.

Kent: 17:17

You might not get picked. I might not get

Anna: 17:18

picked. And then you don't make money off of it, even though it is still good marketing. I don't make ticket sales. The festival Yeah, it's interesting.

Kent: 17:30

And most films that are even decent can get into festivals. They won't necessarily get into the best festivals. But I still think And I say that as a marketing thing, because like you get laurels and you can, it just helps for trailers and posters and things, but you're right. that as a distribution planner is like a big, like, this is my break. You can audition all day and it's such a slow grind and you can OD you can submit it. A thousand festivals and get into five, you I'm not. Preaching doom and gloom. You'll actually probably get into a lot more than five because most festivals. They're all different tiers. Tears and the, and the low tier ones will take a lot you know, some are high competition in some art Sundance that's way high. You know, statistically, you're not probably going to get in. But there are a lot of festivals. You can get your movie no matter how bad it is in the most festivals. And not getting into Sundance. It doesn't mean you have a bad movie by the way. They have their own brand, just like anybody else, but, To quote Sebastian from Lala land, right? You should stop auditioning and. You won't have to do all this pushy. Whenever he says. He says and make

Anna: 18:39

history. She's.

Kent: 18:41

You should make Yeah, stop auditioning. And you're a child prodigy playwright. It's basically make something. I go back to this all the time, make stuff, share stuff. That's just what all the great successful filmmakers in the world have done. They make stuff and they share stuff. And like you're saying you could. Submit to a place where you could screen your film or you could create an opportunity to screen your film. You can audition or you can create the role and write it for yourself. You can. Lobby studios to make your movie and fund your movie and distribute your movie, or you can. Right. Your movie and create your movie and fund your movie. And I mean, maybe not with your own money, but you can go do it, you know? And distribute your movie. You can do that If you don't like distribution, that's being handed to you. Then create the distribution you wish was handed to Look, I'd love to put my movie on Wheaties boxes and McDonald's toys and get like a massive merchandising deal and put it out there for millions of dollars. But frankly, I don't really have any movies that would justify that. I mainly want to reach people that will value the film and the story. And I value the film. You know, I'm, I'm spending all this time. I'm just talking about the movie I'm making right now. I am spending all this time making it. I don't want to just sell it to someone, even if they pay okay. Money. Who's just gonna like throw it on a shelf. And watch it disappear. I don't think that would even do as much good, even if it takes more time and effort to get the same financial ROI. If I can reach more people and learn more. And that's been RMO hasn't. I mean, we even paid a company to help us make a pitch deck, and then we made it ourselves when we really were paying them to do it. And this was a professional company that did this for a lot of big movies. We did that because we wanted to be able to make pitch decks. Ourselves. And we've been told over and over again that our decks are some of the best anyone has ever seen. That knowledge was more valuable to us than them doing the job for us. and that's kind of been our emo and that's kind of what we teach, why we created the feature filmmaker academy. Cause we're like, Trying to equip people with really high class. Knowledge. super high value knowledge to be able to create. The career and the filmmaking and the infrastructure that they wish people were giving them. And we all just keep walking around, just wishing people would give us these opportunities. And it. It's kind of a silly way to live life. It's kind of an exhausting, disappointing way to live life and try and make a career in filmmaking. So, That was a long way to get around to four walling, but that's some context and, and hopefully I've described the term for walling is basically. self distribution through theatrical means, Whether that's one screen or a thousand. It's really buying out That's a four walling is.

Anna: 21:31

It's definitely worth considering, especially because you can do pre-sales and not lose any money. You know, you can know if the theater's sold out before you pay them. Yeah.

Kent: 21:41

So that's smart or you could go the Kickstarter method and just say, all right, theater, here's the money. And I got to fill up those seats. I mean, that makes sense. In our case, for example, it's local, let's say I did a local theater and I said, all right, here's the day. Here's the time. And I just put posters and, and, you know, Facebook ads or billboards or whatever I had to do to like fill up the seats and kind of made it like a special local screening. But if I was going to try and reach across the United States, I would definitely not do that. I would just, I would just say. Kind of a grassroots, Screenings on demand, sort of a thing where it's like, if we break the threshold, We'll hold the screening. And on

Anna: 22:24

big movies, we'll do that too. LA LA land did that too. They did limited release in a few cities and then it performed well. So they released in a few more. And they just grew as it performed. Well, not

Kent: 22:36

quite the same grassroots But they had a testing phase, like you said, like a lot of movies will do that. Yeah. That's very common. Yeah, this is more like we'll only hold the screening. If the tickets are already sold. But, I mean, like, even to your point star wars, you know, they'll, pre-sale. So many tickets and that might affect the number of screens that it plays on. Yeah. I mean, to be honest, it's every variable screen United States, usually with movies that big, but like

Anna: 23:03

top gun is still playing in some places. Oh, yeah. And

Kent: 23:07

so it's and you know, that's another thing I'm glad you mentioned, because top gun is a good example. I found a place. I'm really interested in world war II history in aviation history in Georgia. And there are museums here in Georgia that are still showing top gun Maverick. On private screens in the museum. And I think that's actually relevant to this conversation because there are so many botique. Venues that are not movie theaters, where you could show your film. Like, museums or educational institutions or schools, or, you know, places where that films specific audience might gather. To hold or enjoy a screening. Our film. Was involved to make the movie. We had to have the involvement of so many local businesses where we live in, in Georgia and Peachtree city, Georgia, specifically. So many different businesses were involved. And we actually have such a good relationship with. Even like the visitors bureau here, because we've made video for them. That it would actually make really a lot of sense for us to have a. Some sort of a private local screening because. The relationships surrounding the production of the movie span. So many entities in our city that it would actually be really easy. I think to grassroots market. screening for our film once it's done. Is that something to consider as like, who are your people? And would it play well at a school or at a university or at a museum or at a town hall or, you know, whatever, like, could you hold a screening in a grassroots kind of way? And if you haven't budgeted, let's say you're already into it and you haven't budgeted marketing money. That might be a really good way to budget some marketing money. Is you just, I had a friend A short film. He for Walder theater. For a short film. He premiered And I think he made two grand and that was all the money he needed to put that short film through festivals. Which was brilliant. He did a great job on that and that movie. Ran a lot of festivals and, and that was a short and if he could do that for the short and I was there, I went to that screening and I both went. It was packed. Which one. bear Bergen's the next door. Oh. It was a pack It was a brand new theater built out in the middle of Oram and a field. Or I'm Utah. And so, he filled up a theater. This is a kid who is in his first year of film school. We've interviewed him on this podcast. He actually finished his first feature and just got distribution and sold it. And he's selling it to multiple territories through a sales agent right now he's having great success. So. If he can do that with a short film. Then you can do it with a feature. People are actually wanting to sit down for a couple hours of entertainment. Or even 75 minutes of entertainment, if that's how long your feature is.

Anna: 26:01

So especially if they know you and know you've been working on it for years and they want to see what yeah. Yeah, we've been up to this

Kent: 26:08

whole time or even, you know, three months, let's say you made a real cheap, quick, fast, dirty feature. They're

Anna: 26:13

involved in, in some way, like you

Kent: 26:15

said, So, yeah. If, if, if we screen our film here, With just all the people involved, we could almost fill up a theater. So like, you know, just how many favors we call it and everyone's curious about it. So, hopefully this has stimulated some ideas for you and Whether you are still writing your movie or whether you're about to distribute it. Or sell it or I hope that this has given you some realistic expectations and hasn't been discouraging, but encouraging for new ways to look at. Getting your movie to people. And the more people it gets to, the more people that can help, right. Because we make movies to share perspectives. And to help ourselves. And the more successful our careers are, the more we can help. Our collaborators careers. And so it's all good. You know, we're trying to create goodness in this industry. And we hope that this podcast episode is done that in the form of dissemination of knowledge. Right. So yeah, just

Anna: 27:08

more ideas and possibilities to open up your mind So those are some of

Kent: 27:11

the things joining us. Yeah. Some of the things on our minds. So. Thanks for joining us.

Anna: 27:17

All right, we'll see you next time. Bye. Bye.