The next step is to ask yourself where the audience for your film hangs out online. You may already know this, since after all you've been working on a film about it for years. But Google your subject and you may be surprised. One of our first stops was, surprisingly, Wikipedia. The entry for Budd Dwyer was one of the only sources of information out there. We added information about the film to the entry, and in the early days our web site received a lot of traffic from there. In your case, maybe there are other message boards or Facebook groups. You probably already know where they are. It's important to get your URL out there without being perceived as pushy or a spammer. Gently push people to re-post and get the word out. They won't do it on their own.

How did we know that? Meet your marketing campaign's new best friend, Google Analytics. This free tool allows you to track traffic to your web site, so that you know where people are coming from. If you're getting more hits from Vimeo than YouTube, ask yourself why that might be. Can you change the text of your YouTube entry to make the URL more prominent? If you're getting more traffic from Facebook, maybe it's worth being more active on that group. Lavish attention on your fans and they won't let you down.

To use Google Analytics, it's important to host your own site and funnel as much traffic through there as you can, so that you can add Analytics' tracking code. Services like CreateSpace or FilmBaby don't allow you to do that, so ideally you don't want to send people directly there. Just put a big, obvious link to BUY THE MOVIE on your home page that sends people to the store, so that Analytics will register the visit.

Another lesson we learned--all publicity is good publicity. At first we found some people who were skeptical of our film. They believed that we were going to exploit the Dwyer tragedy. It's really hard to not get caught up in that, especially when they haven't seen it. You want to go in there and give them what for! Don’t do it! We politely responded and backed up our claims, encouraging them to check out the film for themselves before they jump to conclusions. Turns out, they did and more importantly, they liked the film. The olive branch goes along way. It builds a relationship between you and your viewers and ultimately that translates to better word of mouth and sales. So the next time somebody leaves a nastygram on your YouTube page, respond nicely‚and mention your URL. For every person that says something mean, ten more will see your post and go to your site (and you'll be able to verify that with Analytics).

Along those same lines—all publicity is good publicity–we were approached by the Pennsylvania Cable Network, which is sort of C-SPAN for the state. They wanted to show the film. At first we thought maybe we shouldn’t, because somebody else might want it and they would be put off if it had shown elsewhere. But we’re really glad we did. PCN let us put callouts for our web site on the film, and their broadcasts drove massive traffic to the site.

On the 25^th anniversary of Budd’s death, we were mentioned in an article in Der Spiegel, a very influential German magazine. As it happens, they seem to have cribbed their entire article from our film. Some people would have complained. How dare they! We’re happy, because Germany is now our film’s #2 market.

And this February, we’re going to be featured on Vodo.net, a P2P sharing site that will allow people to download the movie for free. Some people are afraid of letting their film get out there. We’re providing a shorter, censored cut for free, in the hope that people who really respond to the film will want the DVD so they can get the extras. This “freemium” model works well for a lot of Internet content, and to date we've had close to 400,000 downloads! 

So who knows where this will go? We don’t have much, but we’ve got patience and drive. And much to our surprise, it turns out that will get you pretty far.

Our documentary Honest Man: the Life of R. Budd Dwyer (dwyermovie.com), about the Pennsylvania State Treasurer who was caught up in a bribery scandal and killed himself at a televised press conference, was a labor of love. The film’s director, James Dirschberger, spent roughly 5 years shooting the film and financed the entire project out of pocket.  He spent very little money (around $12,000) but due to the time and care we put into the editing, it looks like we spent much more.

So when it came to distribution, we weren't about to spend more promoting the film than we had spent making it. We knew that would mean rolling up our sleeves and doing a lot of the work ourselves. We also knew that it would mean making a lot of mistakes, but we lived to tell the tale. That said we’d like to share our experiences and hopefully spare any other filmmakers some of the mistakes we made.

Most of you will probably start, as we did, with the idea that you'll send your film to festivals. It'll play at Sundance, there'll be a bidding war, it'll get picked up by Sony Pictures Classics, and your film will play around the world.

Or not.

Maybe you got into one of those big festivals, had a great time--but no distributors came calling. Maybe you played at some smaller festivals, where the distributors didn't show up. Maybe you didn't have the luck or the connections to get into the festival circuit in the first place. Maybe you just suspect all those entrance fees are a rip-off and they won’t even watch your screener.

But even if nobody at all shows interest in distributing your film--that's okay. You'll probably see more money from your movie if you don't have a distributor, because you'll keep it all.

Now, in the past, you'd have been completely hosed without a distributor. You wouldn't have gotten into theaters, and stores wouldn't have carried your DVD. Without any theatrical distribution, you wouldn't have gotten any reviews, and nobody would have known about your film.

But today‚ well, you're still hosed when it comes to theaters. We were very lucky to find an independent theater in Harrisburg, PA that showed our film for a whole week (where it massively outsold “Inside Job” and “Waiting for Superman”, and ended up being one of the highest grossing films in the theater’s history!) But most theaters depend on the publicity that studios pay for to drive people into their seats, and they can’t afford the financial risk of a smaller film.

And you’re probably hosed when it comes to Netflix. We tried everything to get them to stream our film. We had friends call them night and day. We heard about their open submission policy, only to find their “submission” page had been taken down. They were the nicest, politest people we’ve ever spoken to, but it went nowhere. Their deal is, “don’t call us, we’ll call you.” If they read about your film in The New York Times, maybe they’ll want a copy. Until then, don’t bother them.

If you want to be on Amazon Instant Video, though, that’s no problem. Through CreateSpace.com, you can self-publish your movie to their service. You won’t make a ton of money there, because Amazon takes most of it, but our philosophy was that we wanted to maximize the chances that people would stumble across our film.

We really, REALLY wanted to get our film on PBS—what documentary filmmaker doesn’t? And we finally did. Actually, a few PBS stations in Pennsylvania contacted us and asked if they could play the film. Of course we said yes. But just so you know, they paid us exactly zippo. We got to stand a little straighter that day, but we didn’t get any richer.

When it comes to money, DVD is another story. People will pay more for a DVD than they will for a seat at a theater, and if you self-distribute and do your own fulfillment that's almost entirely profit for you. We found that nobody was really interested in a Blu-Ray. It would have been extremely expensive to produce, and we doubt people would have been willing to pay much more for it. Maybe your film will be different, but we quickly abandoned the idea.

First of all, you have to make sure you have a good product. In our case, that meant a DVD with tons of extras. We did a commentary track ourselves, of course, but we didn't delude ourselves that anybody would really pay a lot of money to hear us blather about our own film.

So we also asked Budd's children Rob and Dyan to do a commentary track. We located a portion of Budd's final press conference that had never been seen before and put that on the disc, along with speeches Budd had made, his campaign ads, and much more.

And we tested the DVD extensively. There's nothing more embarrassing than selling a DVD with a broken link or an ugly transfer.

Next, make sure you're prepared to make the most from each DVD. The more DVDs you run at one time, the cheaper each one will be. If you think you can sell 1,000 copies, it's a lot cheaper to order them all at once than to order 100 at a time. Just keep in mind you’ll be sitting on the inventory. And while we decided to go with the standard DVD Amaray case for aesthetic reasons, we have to admit that mailing them is expensive ($1.73 for postage + mailer + your time). There are more compact DVD packaging options these days that allow for equally attractive packaging but cost less to post--and if you can save $1 in postage for every DVD you sell, and you sell 1,000 DVDs‚ then you’re in good shape.

Next, start getting your name out there. For distributors, it's all about "buzz" and making the maximum amount of money in the least amount of time. For self-distributors, it's about building word of mouth slowly and gradually and promoting yourself constantly and actively.

Do you need a web site? Yes. A Facebook group? Yes. And update them frequently so people have a reason to go back. An IMDB page? Yes. A trailer on YouTube? Oh yes, and on Vimeo, too. Make sure that everything, everywhere, links back to your web site, because that's where you're going to be selling the DVD from. And make sure the web site, in turn, links back to all those resources. 

Stay tuned for Part II...