So What Are You Guys Doing?

We have published a few blog posts about our distribution strategy. Since things have changed a bit recently, I thought it would be good to fill everyone in on where we are at right now.

We are currently in the middle of our theatrical release. During the month of November we will be screening Self Helpless in NYC, Boston, Hartford CT, and Burlington VT. This is a completely independent theatrical run. We book the theaters, we do the promotion, sometimes we even set up the projector. The goal of this short period of theatrical-only release is to drum up some popular support and some good press for the movie before our DVD and digital release.

Around Christmas time we plan to release Self Helpless on DVD and digital download. The movie will be for sale from our website, and possibly from iTunes or Amazon (we haven’t decided if these outlets will bring in enough sales to be worth the money and hassle required to deal with them). We are also planning to stream the movie FOR FREE on our website. I know this sounds counterproductive. Why give something away for free when we are trying to sell it? Our goal with Self Helpless is get the movie seen. Like seen in a big way; we are shooting for cult status. We want to be the movie that people pirate and pass around and tell their friends about. As far as sales, we are basically just hoping to earn enough money to subsidize our tour.

We are planning to spend December and January setting up a screening tour. Our ability to do this will depend on how much buzz we manage to generate during our mini theatrical run. If all goes according to plan, at the beginning of February we will pile into a car and hit the road. The hope is to travel around the East Coast screening Self Helpless at colleges and art house theaters. Depending on how many stops we can set up, we hope to be on the road showing the movie for a month or so. After that, we will come home and take a nap!

We are aware that this plan may change by next week. That is the great thing about self-distribution, we can adjust to take advantage of different opportunities. This model is by no means going to get us rich. But if we work our asses off we might just be able to get Self Helpless seen by a lot of people, and who knows what that could bring.