Big Filmmaking Mistake to Avoid, Part 1

Every Christian filmmaker has a multitude of mistakes to avoid. Several years ago, Geoff Botkin recorded a helpful lecture titled, “The Twelve Most Common Mistakes of Beginning Directors”. Some mistakes to avoid include bad theology, poor story structure, and sloppy production values. Bottom line – if you’re a filmmaker, get the CD. Period.

By God’s grace, there are many resources to help filmmakers excel in actually producing actual movies. Just to start, I will highly recommend The Christian Filmmaker’s Academy, Outside Hollywood, and ChristianFilmmakers.org. If you want to make movies, you can learn just about everything you need to know about the production process by drawing from those resources.

But there’s one problem that hasn’t been adequately addressed.

There’s one problem that makes my top ten list of mistakes to avoid. And most filmmakers neglect to think about this one problem until it’s too late. What am I talking about?

One word. Distribution.

Why do so many Christian filmmakers never breakeven, much less turn a profit? Why do most Christian filmmakers wait until the movie is finished before they try to set up distribution connections? Do we still need traditional movie distributors? Is it true that independent filmmakers can market their movies without any help from a distributor?

Over the next few weeks (or perhaps many weeks), I’ll be tackling these questions head-on and dispelling some myths. Let’s dig deep into the nitty gritty of independent film distribution and clear up the mystery of the process. Find out how the system worked in the past, why it’s not working now, and what we intend to do about it.

Stick around. This could be fun!