kane

I worked in the film biz for a while and made a couple of shorts and worked on a lot of movies. Here is what I would say:

once the movie is shot, edited and mixed then the hard part comes. You have a couple of options.

1. the festival route. You basically submit your movie to as many festivals as you can and show it at the festivals. Some give you money if you win anything at them and it will give you exposure. The ideal situation would be that you would get is distribution company that would see your movie and would buy it from you. You would get a blanket amount plus some of the profit.

2. the 4 wall route. This is kind of like the festival route but more for profit. What you do is go town to town renting out independent theatres ( meaning movie theatres that are not part of a chain ) and you show your film, advertise it and sell tickets. You make money off the ticket sales. If you have a good movie that can get some decent reviews and you have the time and money to advertise it you can make some decent money doing this but it takes a long time because you have to go to each town with your movie and show it.

3. the distribution route via movie markets. One of the main movie markets is the Canne Film Festival. Basically what you would do it rent a hotel room and set up a shop and then sell the rights to show the movie to various markets. At things like this you can sell to a ton of places at once. I had a friend who made a small horror flix for about 50K and went there. He sold the foreign rights to about 35 countries each for about 5-10K so he did pretty well.

4. Major distribution. basically what you do is set up screening for the big distribution companies like universal, miramax, sony, warner bros ect and show them the movie and hope that they like it enough to buy it. This is not very likely in that most major studios only put out 10-15 movies a year and most of those they make themselves but there are smaller distribution companies you can also sell to. With a small budget you don't need a massive release to make your money back.

5. straight to video - simply put you put the movie on DVD and VHS and sell it to video stores.

there are other ways like TV rights, Cable rights ect but it would take me forever to tell you all of them.

as for books I would suggest you go to a good bookstore and buy about 10-15 books on the various areas of film making. this will give you an idea of what is needed to make the movie. Many of the book out there don't talk much about what to do with the movie once it's made but at least once you've read these books you will know how to make it even if you do hire people to do it.

here's a couple of ideas of books

Making Independent Films: Advice from the Filmmakers

Digital Filmmaking 101: An Essential Guide to Producing Low Budget Movies

Make Your Own Damn Movie!: Secrets of a Renegade Director

Feature Filmmaking at Used-Car Prices: How to Write, Produce, Direct, Shoot, Edit, and Promote a Feature-Lenth Movie for Less Than $15,000

The Feature Film Distribution Deal: A Critical Analysis of the Single Most Important Film Industry Agreement


Independent Feature Film Production: A Complete Guide from Concept Through Distribution



hope this helps you out some.

kane