14 Oct First Steps for Shopping Your Indie Film

So you’ve finished shooting your first indie movie? Congratulations! After months of pre-production, shooting, and editing, you’re now ready to push your film to the masses.

What’s next?. Shopping your film to and working with an independent film distributor can be a challenge if you don’t prepare yourself. At Freestyle Digital Media, our goal is to make the process easy for all filmmakers — from the first time to the most seasoned. Here are a few things you should have ready before getting started.

Start from Day One

From the second you start putting your thoughts to the storyboard, you should consider the “sellability” of your film as you need to entice people to watch your film. Assuming your movie is great (of course it will be!), you can’t just rely on the quality alone to get your film to theaters, online, and streaming platforms.

Create a Sales One-Sheet

A sales one-sheet is a crucial document for shopping your indie film.  This one-page document will list a brief overview of the film’s plot, along with your audience, and information about the cast and production crew. This sheet helps to provide Los Angeles indie film distributors with some quick information about the film. You’ll send this sheet to different distributors in your area, and they’ll be able to, at a glance, determine whether they want to work with you.

Create a Trailer

Every great movie has a compelling trailer to get people excited about the film. Creating a winning movie trailer is more than just stitching clips together. There is practically an art to creating a great movie trailer, and just like you spent weeks and months prepping and filming your movie, you should take your time with your trailer.

The trailer should show just enough about your movie that will get audiences and distributors excited, but not so much that you tell the whole story in a two-minute clip. With this trailer, distributors can tell more about the production quality, style, and theme of your movie to see if it’s a good fit for them.

Choose Freestyle Digital Media in Los Angeles

Your best-case scenario is to find an experienced independent film distributor that takes care of all the work. Freestyle Digital Media is your number one choice for independent film distribution in the Los Angeles area. We’ve had the privilege and pleasure of distributing and promoting films of all budgets featuring Academy Award-winning actors and are ready to work with you!

Ready to get started? Get in touch with us today and tell us about your project!