Shownotes
Episode 84 - Film Distribution Strategies with Tyler Sansom
In Part two of our interview, Geoff and Jaclyn talk with Tyler Sansom about his experiences and strategies for film distribution, especially for independent filmmakers. Tyler shares his passion for creative problem-solving in distribution, insights into the impact of COVID on the industry, and the importance of early market research and audience targeting, illustrated through his current project, 'Merry Christmas, Elijah.' He provides a detailed breakdown of theatrical release costs, his guerrilla marketing approach for 'I CAN,' and strategic phases of distribution including physical media, TVOD, subscription VOD, and AVOD. The discussion emphasizes the significance of aligning filmmaking with ministry work and maintaining a focus on faith-driven goals.
Highlights Include:
- Distribution: a Love / Hate relationship
- Challenges in Post-COVID Distribution
- Pre-Production and Market Research
- Case Study: Merry Christmas, Elijah
- Guerrilla Marketing Strategies
- Theatrical Release and Financial Realities
- Creative Distribution Models
- TVOD and The Role of Social Media
- Subscription Video on Demand
- Advertising Video on Demand
- The Best Way to Support Christian Films
- The Importance of Market Research
- Staying True to Spiritual Goals
Tyler Sansom’s insights remind us that independent filmmaking involves more than creation—it's about strategic distribution, community engagement, and remaining true to one's values. His experience demonstrates that even within an unpredictable industry, creative approaches and thorough planning can maximize a film’s impact and reach.
Bio:
Tyler is a pastor and filmmaker based out of Corydon, IN. He is married to his amazing wife, Sarah. They have a 22 year old daughter and a 2 year old granddaughter. He is 31.
The Faith & Family Filmmakers podcast helps filmmakers who share a Christian worldview stay in touch, informed, and inspired. Releasing new episodes every week, we interview experts from varying fields of filmmaking; from screenwriters, actors, directors, and producers, to film scorers, talent agents, and distributors.
It is produced and hosted by Geoffrey Whitt and Jaclyn Whitt , and is brought to you by the Faith & Family Filmmakers Association
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If you’ve ever felt like your life was a movie…Think of God as your Author
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Copyright 2024 Ivan Ann Productions
Transcripts
welcome to the members only portion of the Faith and Family Filmmakers Podcast.
Jaclyn:Today we've got Tyler Sansom with us, and we learned in the previous podcast that he's a grandfather at 31.
Jaclyn:If you didn't catch that podcast, you want to go back and listen to it so you can understand that math.
Jaclyn:But we also understood his journey of getting into film and making films with his church.
Jaclyn:But what is actually really interesting is that he loves distribution and distribution seems to be a bit of a mystery for a lot of independent filmmakers and so I'm really looking forward to understanding more, like, learning from him.
Jaclyn:So I'm just gonna give you the floor, Tyler.
Jaclyn:So go ahead, tell us about distribution and all the stuff you love about it.
Tyler:What's a love hate?
Tyler:Let's put it that way.
Tyler:I love, I love creative problem solving within distribution, but, a lot of the stuff that you're going to hear probably is like mistakes that we've made, um, that you can learn from.
Tyler:Um,
Geoff:Sometimes that's the best way we learn.
Geoff:Mm
Tyler:I agree.
Tyler:such a hard concept, and post COVID, It's even harder.
Tyler:before you'd have like a studio project that would put movies in theaters and they would put all this money behind them and people actually went, uh, then this disruption happened.
Tyler:that was already on the way with streaming.
Tyler:but then COVID kind of put the nail in the coffin, and now the theatrical, um, whole industry is, trying to figure it out as well.
Tyler:So, we've got a unique opportunity as independent filmmakers, to kind of pave our own path and, um, find ways to creatively distribute our films.
Tyler:One of the things that, when I talk to new filmmakers is they have these great ideas, but they don't start with a strategy.
Tyler:that will allow people to actually see the film once it's completed.
Tyler:So the first thing with distribution, for me at least, starts like a year before we ever even shoot.
Tyler:We, my, team does a full year of pre production and with that it's market research trying to define our target audience.
Tyler:and I know that in the creative realm Seems like a lot of tedious work, but at the same time, I have no interest in making films that people don't see.
Tyler:so, right now we're in pre production on a film called Merry Christmas, Elijah.
Tyler:And it's a story, that's, about a family close to our town, where a dad takes his autistic son on a road trip.
Jaclyn:Oh, that's not easy.
Tyler:no, no, no, oh my goodness, the, the lead character, um, He has to play, uh, a 17 year old.
Tyler:And then Dream Sequences, he plays the same kid, but not with autism.
Tyler:So it's an incredibly challenging role, yeah.
Tyler:so, before we ever signed on to do this film, our marketing guys had to do market research on, does the autism community have representation within films?
Tyler:How can we use this for ministry beyond just making a film for people to see?
Tyler:Because if you do things surrounding the film with ministry, that's more free marketing.
Tyler:PR comes into play.
Tyler:So like, this is two years before were going to start shooting.
Tyler:We were already defining our target audience and coming up with a strategy for people to see the film.
Jaclyn:Mm hmm.
Tyler:That's before we ever even think about, is it theatrical?
Tyler:Is it streaming only?
Tyler:Does it go to some kind of video on demand, um, like home gathering watching so after that, then we decide to go ahead and try to lock down distribution.
Tyler:prior to ever shooting.
Tyler:And that's a, totally different strategy than most independent filmmakers.
Tyler:Fortunately, we've had, some success with distribution in the past with our films, um, especially with ICANN.
Tyler:And so we start shooting in February, 2025.
Tyler:And we already know that, CAPA distribution will be distributing this film.
Tyler:Then we have conversations with them of, are we going to do theatrical?
Tyler:Um, Well, here's the market research that we've done showing that the autistic community is very interested in group settings.
Tyler:So that helps us identify, uh, yeah, we will do a theatrical release.
Tyler:Um, I was a DP on a, like Hallmark style, Christmas film several years ago.
Tyler:I picked up from that distribution that having the word Christmas in a film immediately gives it a longer lifespan.
Tyler:So if it was just simply called Elijah, no one knows it's a Christmas film.
Tyler:But if it's because it's Merry Christmas, Elijah, then you have residual income for, like, as long as people are watching Christmas movies, which is forever.
Tyler:So all of that goes into play in pre production and development for us.
Tyler:So by the time we're rolling, we kind of already are making informed decisions for our target audience on acting choices and things like that.
Tyler:we can cast people that we think will, hit the target demographic that we are trying to reach.
Tyler:and then we start rolling cameras and we're still making informed decisions while making the film that will impact distribution.
Tyler:All of that is a ton.
Tyler:I realize that's like drinking out of a fire hydrant, but for us at least, we know we're not going to have, like, 500, 000 of P& A funding for marketing a film.
Tyler:for ICANN, we had like 160, 000 of marketing, is basically like one penny for a dollar compared to a normal theatrical
Jaclyn:Right.
Jaclyn:But you must have been very strategic with it because I saw advertising for it, so I knew it was out, do you have, like, strategies to be able to best use that money?
Tyler:Yep, so uh, this was a ton of work, and I don't know if we'll do this again exactly like this, but this is how we did it with ICANN.
Tyler:we identified the cities that we were going to open in.
Tyler:First of all, we built a large social media audience.
Tyler:So we had somewhere around 100, 000 followers for an independent film, which is very
Tyler:good.
Tyler:Yeah.
Tyler:And, so we sent out in our mailing lists and our social media, a big survey and the survey said, would you consider bringing your softball team to a theater to watch this?
Tyler:And then we had this list of like really hot spots and like moderately hot spots.
Tyler:And we targeted those cities specifically for the theatrical release.
Tyler:Then we reached out to the hottest spots, um, the people that filled out the survey and we asked them, would you like to be a team captain and join our team?
Tyler:so now we have these volunteer boots on the ground, like tank commanders that are helping us recruit people to go to these theaters.
Tyler:And we had about 75 tank commanders.
Tyler:So myself and another guy named Eric, we were kind of in charge of rallying the, the captains of each area.
Tyler:We sent them swag and All kinds of stuff to pass out in their areas.
Tyler:So, we were kind of priming the pump.
Tyler:instead of spending lots of marketing money, we were utilizing guerrilla marketing.
Tyler:boots on the ground.
Tyler:word of mouth kind
Tyler:of thing, um, alongside of a digital marketing strategy.
Tyler:So we didn't do any commercials or anything like that.
Tyler:That is a ton of work.
Tyler:I mean, we're talking like, six to eight months of weekly talking to these people that you've never met, and you're counting on them to like bring people to the theaters.
Tyler:Some of them really did well.
Tyler:Like a guy in New York, City, he, he brought like 400 people to a
Jaclyn:Oh,
Tyler:Um, but then you had, others that would, you know, Like say they were going to do that, but only bring their softball team.
Tyler:So it's, it was pretty hit or miss.
Tyler:Um, but I think it was a valid way of stretching our marketing money as far as possible, for that theatrical distribution.
Jaclyn:Yeah.
Jaclyn:And I'm thinking about like, so for your one with, autism and wanting to bring in the autism community, I have a son on the autism spectrum, so it's a world that I understand.
Jaclyn:So one of the challenges is a lot of the time people on the autism spectrum don't actually like going to places with crowds, but in this situation, I could imagine that it would actually be a Different because it's not like they're not going out in just a general crowd when they're going into a crowd where they know that they're going to be relating to other people that they can relate to, and then also have the support of the families and, everybody there understanding them and not having expectations for them to be different or, you know, to accommodate the non autistic worlds, you know, I could see how that could actually be like a really great opportunity for, interaction in a very positive way.
Jaclyn:And I could also, imagine that if the theatres are able to, make some accommodations also that that would be helpful.
Jaclyn:for example, they might even want to, uh, play the movie at a lower volume and, you know, maybe not have the lights so dark, like some of those sensory things, it's very simple to do if you know to do it, but those are things that would really support the community, of people on the autism spectrum and their families that support them.
Tyler:Yeah.
Tyler:One of the things that we learned in market research for that is that just in our area alone, there was like 20, special needs, community, resources for actual kids with autism.
Tyler:There was only like one for the parents.
Tyler:Um, so the parents are the most under supported, and so actually our marketing strategy is for the parents.
Tyler:We've got a five year ministry plan where we, um, hope to have, free counseling opportunities for parents, um, respite teams across the country.
Tyler:We're going to do red carpet premieres for families with autism in markets across the United States, which costs virtually no money, but is a huge PR piece.
Tyler:If you can get like the Dallas Morning News or something to cover this autistic red carpet premiere, then you're reaching millions of people without spending any dollars.
Tyler:Um, so things like that.
Tyler:And I don't want that to sound cynical.
Tyler:The reason for that would be to serve this
Tyler:community.
Tyler:Um, but the benefits are big,
Jaclyn:yeah, God likes to do things where, you know, it's a win win all around kind of thing, right?
Jaclyn:Like, very much like, um, He multitasks.
Jaclyn:When He does something that works for one group, And then also another group, and another, and it all happens at the same time.
Jaclyn:So, you know, understanding that it's going to benefit you from a marketing perspective, but it's also going to benefit them from the perspective of, bringing their needs to light, and then also helping to, provide for those needs.
Jaclyn:So, that's, that's amazing.
Tyler:with distribution, if this is, um, information that you guys already know, you can feel free to cut me off
Tyler:here, but,
Tyler:um, typically, typically how it works would be, uh, window number one would be, theatrical release.
Tyler:So, if it's going to theaters, that's the first window.
Tyler:And then second window would then, go into transactional video on demand.
Geoff:Mm hmm.
Tyler:So that's, like where you can rent or purchase on places like Apple or Amazon.
Tyler:and that window can kind of be as long as you want it to be.
Tyler:If it's doing very well, then you don't want to squash that because you can make significant money, on TVOD.
Tyler:What we did, was like a window 1.
Tyler:after the first week in theaters, for ICANN, It's very expensive to release a movie in theaters, period.
Tyler:I mean, like, had to sell, like, 600 tickets to break even a theater, period.
Tyler:So, like,
Jaclyn:At each theater?
Tyler:yeah, like, you have aspirations to, like, do this large theatrical release, like, I would be glad to break down how much it costs to even put a movie in theaters, because it's, like, astronomical how much that costs.
Geoff:if you're glad to break it down, let's go there.
Tyler:yeah.
Tyler:So, it costs about 600 to produce a DCP, which is the format that you would use to get into, uh, like a, a movie theater.
Tyler:Um, basically, I don't know if you, do you guys know what a DCP
Jaclyn:Nope,
Geoff:I
Tyler:Um,
Jaclyn:I'm just a writer.
Tyler:back in the day there was reel to reel,
Tyler:you'd have film, and the film would be played at 24 frames a second.
Tyler:So each little strip of film had one frame, and they would play it at 24 frames a second.
Tyler:DCP is that exact same concept, but digitalized.
Tyler:So, takes every frame of a movie, creates a very, very high level JPEG file, and then the theater projectors play that at 24 frames a second.
Tyler:So it essentially functions like a reel to reel, but digitally.
Tyler:about a terabyte, the size of a terabyte.
Tyler:So they're very large files, and they're specifically formatted for those projectors.
Tyler:So that costs roughly between four and six hundred dollars per theater.
Tyler:So like right off the bat, you're, you're out four or six hundred bucks.
Geoff:Per theater.
Tyler:yeah, you have to physically mail those to the theater.
Tyler:So it's not like a, like a Dropbox folder.
Tyler:there's a company called Synodyme that, basically owns all of the projectors in the country.
Tyler:so the theater projectors in the 900, 000 range, um, the local theaters can't afford that.
Tyler:So they rent them from Cinedigm and then both the theater and the filmmakers pay a fee to Cinedigm so that they can yeah, it's like a monopoly.
Tyler:It is what it is.
Tyler:So couple hundred bucks there.
Tyler:So you're like 800 in the hole right off the bat.
Tyler:Right.
Tyler:then if you go through a booking agency, which you have to, because that's like kind of how, how it works, that's somewhere between 200 to 500 per booking.
Tyler:so right off the bat, you're paying a middleman to get your movie in someone else's theater and you're paying that middleman like 350.
Tyler:So let's just say it's 1, 200 or so.
Tyler:Typically the splits are 60 percent goes to the theater, 40 percent goes to the production.
Tyler:Okay.
Tyler:so, if you do the math, you're having to sell, like, 600 tickets.
Tyler:to simply break even from what you've already spent.
Tyler:And then everything beyond that, that's the profit.
Tyler:Um, so it is an extremely complex, model
Geoff:And that's per theater.
Tyler:per theater.
Tyler:Yeah, not like one flat fee.
Tyler:So 300 theaters at, like 1, 000 a pop, you're talking few hundred thousand dollars, before you ever have anybody even watch the film.
Tyler:And that's where, independent filmmakers have these big dreams of large theatrical releases until they start seeing the dollar signs.
Tyler:Um, that's why you have to have so much, print and advertising money.
Tyler:Um, because not only does it have to pay for movies to go in the theaters, but then you have to market it so people actually know it's going in the theaters.
Tyler:Um, very, very expensive.
Tyler:that's window number one.
Tyler:Whenever ICANN came out, it did pretty well opening weekend.
Tyler:We actually made back, more than what the movie costs, but we knew that we did not have enough in the reserves to like expand it to a thousand theaters.
Tyler:even though it was like ninth in the box office, which for an independent film, that's
Tyler:huge.
Tyler:Um, so a lot of theaters inquired about it and we decided that we weren't going to expand.
Tyler:We were just going to keep it in the ones that we opened with.
Tyler:And we were going to open up, kind of a hybrid model called the ICAN experience.
Tyler:And so any softball teams that didn't have a theater anywhere near them, we offered the movie at a 200 cost and they could have their own movie night and it would be unlimited amount of people.
Tyler:And people jumped on that.
Tyler:We sold it to like, yeah, we sold it to like 200 softball teams in like two weeks.
Tyler:so that was like extremely passive income.
Tyler:we, uh, partnered with some professional baseball players and softball players and they did like coaching videos, that came along with this package and a few other perks.
Tyler:And all it was was like one Vimeo, package and people could just purchase it and then it costs us nothing beyond that.
Tyler:So that was like a creative way of continuing this.
Tyler:like theatrical window, but doing it in a way that, uh, isn't traditional because like I said, it's the wild west right now.
Tyler:There's no rules.
Jaclyn:So I have a question.
Jaclyn:If it had not gone to theaters first, do you think that that would have, played out the same way, or do you think the fact that it was in theaters and then you pursued that, that that's what allowed it to be, so successful?
Tyler:it's a great question.
Tyler:I think that, it could go both ways.
Tyler:I think that that fear of missing out the FOMO, um, played into it because there were teams that saw other teams.
Tyler:we asked any softball team to send us pictures.
Tyler:So we were just blasting the internet of all these teams going to theaters.
Tyler:So there was this FOMO.
Tyler:That, like, helped build this, desire for, this experience, but at the same time, I think had we started with the experience and put all of our eggs in that basket, it might have been more profitable, simply because there wasn't as much overhead
Tyler:cost.
Tyler:So, uh, it's, it's, I don't know, which comes first, the chicken or
Jaclyn:Yeah, yeah.
Jaclyn:Sometimes it's hard to tell anyways, like you'd have to actually go back in time and do it the other way to see how it plays out.
Jaclyn:Interesting.
Tyler:so, after that window, it goes into TVOD, um, which is the transactional video on demand.
Tyler:with that, we had been posting on social media for three years every day.
Tyler:So we meticulously
Tyler:spent time building an audience.
Tyler:one of our producers is a guy named Justin Overlander and Justin, was one of the guys that helped pioneer the chosen social media strategy.
Tyler:so between him and another guy on our team named Ty, they're pretty good at marketing.
Tyler:And so they built this huge social media strategy.
Tyler:So once the ICAN experience was over, we shifted every effort to having people pre order DVDs.
Tyler:and we knew that it would be released like 10 days before Christmas.
Tyler:So this was like our, our big strategy was, Hey, buy this as a stocking stuffer for, for your, your girl that has never seen a softball movie before and help her get inspired.
Tyler:And I did not think that was going to work because I don't even have a DVD
Tyler:player, but it has done like, it has
Tyler:done unbelievably
Tyler:well selling like
Jaclyn:awesome.
Tyler:000 kind of DVDs, like unbelievable.
Tyler:So, so that gave like a natural push because once people start pre ordering things on Amazon, their algorithm kicks in and it starts pushing it to more people.
Tyler:So we've been in the top 10 on Amazon, uh, in the faith category since December 12th.
Tyler:And we have like the little Amazon choice badge.
Tyler:So they helped push it out.
Tyler:But all of that was because of the social media that we had built up for like three years.
Tyler:And that's just a testament to just tenacity.
Tyler:I think a lot of filmmakers think that the movie's over after the being on set experience is
Tyler:over.
Tyler:And that's just, like getting started.
Tyler:Like you just have to persevere even when it's, you're posting the same kinds of
Tyler:things over and over and over.
Tyler:Part of marketing is tenacity.
Jaclyn:I think that's where a team comes in really handy, because some people, uh, they thrive on marketing and other people, you know, they don't.
Jaclyn:It's like, dentist's chair.
Jaclyn:I don't know how to do it.
Jaclyn:And, and it's like, I'm pushing myself to do something that I'm really not interested in even learning.
Jaclyn:And so, yeah, marketing is really tough.
Jaclyn:Um, I think for people that are more interested in creating the next project.
Jaclyn:So like, yeah, team is so important.
Tyler:Yeah.
Tyler:And, it's human nature for us to want to cling on to control, but if you can get outside of yourself and allow others to really, um, thrive within their area of expertise, then the team is better.
Tyler:So like, if I had tried to do all the marketing myself, my goodness, we would, no one would have seen it, but by giving that control to another team member, at least people knew about
Tyler:it.
Tyler:So,
Jaclyn:Yeah.
Jaclyn:for sure.
Tyler:so after transactional video on demand, you go into a phase of, um, trying to negotiate which deal would be best for subscription video on demand.
Tyler:Um, so that would be, uh, like if Netflix came and said, I'll pay you 100, 000 to license your movie, but exclusively for three months, um, then, You lay that beside Hulu and you lay that beside Pureflex and all of that kind of stuff.
Tyler:So we, we spent quite a bit of time laying beside different offers and we ended up going with UpFaith and Family, who is a very, very, quickly growing streaming platform.
Tyler:they went from like 50, 000 downloads on the App Store like a year ago to like 750, 000 downloads on the App Store in a year.
Tyler:Yeah, Great American, bought PureFlix and then there's been kind of a, maybe like a little bit of a split in the audiences.
Tyler:So Up, Faith and Family has really, um, picked up a lot of that.
Tyler:Uh, so we went with them and it's been very good so far.
Tyler:They threw a lot of marketing money, at the film.
Tyler:it's got like 16 million hits on the trailer on their website.
Tyler:so it's, it's done very well on their platform.
Tyler:But regardless of that, what we negotiated was an upfront fee.
Tyler:and so we basically said, like, we'd love to work with you, but like, if no one ever watches it, we'd like the same amount of money.
Tyler:and in that negotiation, window, you have that liberty to do that.
Tyler:So, um, we were paid up front, it's on there for three months, and then it goes into the next, window, which would be advertising video on demand.
Tyler:So that's things like Tubi, Freevi, Pluto TV, um, Amazon, uh, has, I think that's Freevi, yeah.
Tyler:Um, And that is actually where you can make probably the most profit with as an independent filmmaker.
Tyler:if you find a niche audience and you've done your market research, then you can really, really market to them and you get a 50 50 split on the advertising.
Tyler:So that's, that is a huge avenue for revenue.
Tyler:for independent films.
Tyler:And that's where most of our effort right now is going towards strategizing in July is when we'll be able to be eligible for AVOD.
Tyler:Yeah.
Tyler:And so after that, the last window would be, subscription video on demand again.
Tyler:Um, and this would be more like categorized.
Tyler:So not necessarily looking for exclusive deals.
Tyler:but looking for, like catalogs.
Tyler:So Netflix has a bunch of films that aren't Netflix originals, but they're just on their platform.
Tyler:that'd be the type of thing that that last window would be.
Tyler:So you're not getting a bunch of money from them up front, but you're making revenue on the amount of views on the platform.
Jaclyn:Mm hmm.
Tyler:So that's, the distribution windows in a nutshell.
Tyler:It's an ever changing target, but that's kind of the traditional model.
Tyler:But now we have the opportunity to kind of play around with those, um, just because there's no rules.
Jaclyn:So, so then that actually is good.
Jaclyn:I'm just thinking as a viewer when I want to support, content and especially if I find out I have a friend or I see someone online that's like, talking about their movie that came out a few years ago and it's on AVOD, like actually that does support them.
Jaclyn:By watching it, even though it's gotten to that stage.
Jaclyn:as somebody who's wanting to support, Christian films and, you know, to help build that demand and stuff, is there, and maybe there isn't, but is there a particular stage in the process that seems to speak the loudest, uh, in order to support the production and potentially the industry to show that there is definitely an audience?
Tyler:Yeah.
Tyler:I think that's kind of a moving target as well.
Tyler:If you think of like, think of the successful Christian movies from last year, you have like nefarious, uh, Um, the shift is a good example.
Tyler:made 12.
Tyler:2 million in the box office.
Tyler:Praise God.
Tyler:It's amazing.
Tyler:That's pennies though from what it would have been like in 2018.
Tyler:Um, like a 12 million box office is a nothing compared to pre COVID.
Tyler:And so it's, it's a moving target that would show that there's demand, but it shows that the demand is much lower than it once was.
Tyler:We have all of these different streaming platforms now, so it's really hard to quantify what is success versus what isn't success.
Tyler:When it was just Netflix and Hulu, it was easy because there was only two, but now there's like a million streaming platforms.
Tyler:and so everything's kind of just this moving target.
Tyler:The best thing that you can do as a supporter is if the movie's in theaters, go buy a ticket and go watch it on opening weekend because opening weekend makes like completely all of the difference on how wide it will go.
Tyler:Um, no matter who's in it, it could be a big A list star.
Tyler:If it doesn't do well opening weekend, it will drop by half.
Tyler:Half of the theaters will drop it in the first week.
Jaclyn:So by going opening weekend, you are helping to open doors of opportunity for that film.
Jaclyn:you said that you didn't, you chose not to expand, but you could have, right?
Jaclyn:And
Jaclyn:so,
Tyler:could doubled an opening weekend easily, and we decided not to because of
Tyler:cost.
Tyler:But that was because we had
Jaclyn:Yeah.
Tyler:for the softball teams.
Jaclyn:But you had the option.
Tyler:correct.
Jaclyn:Yeah.
Jaclyn:Well, that's, that's
Tyler:Yeah.
Tyler:Opening weekend is king.
Tyler:It's, it's all a, calculated science, in the industry, which is why the studios are not super quick to green light projects.
Tyler:there's a film that's a comp of the ones that we're about to make.
Tyler:It's called Ezra.
Tyler:Um, it's about a, autistic, a kid that's on the Asperger's syndrome.
Tyler:His dad's a standup comic.
Tyler:It came out three weeks ago.
Tyler:it has Robert De Niro and it has Whoopi Goldberg.
Tyler:So like two substantial movie
Tyler:stars.
Tyler:was a heartwarming story, and they never found the right target audience.
Tyler:It's an R rated movie, but it's based around family
Tyler:dynamics.
Tyler:There's this weird dichotomy of you can't really take your kids to watch it, but it's designed for families to watch
Tyler:together.
Tyler:Opening weekend, it did very poorly.
Tyler:And by the next weekend, it was only in 39 percent of those theaters.
Tyler:And then by the third week, it's only in like 11 theaters nationwide, even though it has A list
Jaclyn:Yeah.
Jaclyn:And what people may not realize, like some people might think, oh, there's not an audience for films about autism, when actually it's more like maybe there's not an audience for families watching R rated movies.
Tyler:exactly.
Tyler:that movie was, it was kind of held up in development limbo for a couple of years because there was no season for it.
Tyler:It was an R rated film with blockbuster type actors, but it wasn't a blockbuster style movie that would come out in the summer.
Tyler:It wasn't a holiday film.
Tyler:And it wasn't a Faith based film to come out around Easter, so it just kind of was.
Tyler:And it may do well on streaming, but I don't think that was wise choice on production team's part to do it in theatrical.
Tyler:I'm sure they lost a ton of money because of that.
Geoff:I think, said at the beginning, Just to emphasize the research that was done in advance, with regards to your target audience, and, so much that you talked about at the beginning.
Geoff:I think the point is if that research isn't done, You make the film, find out, Oh, if only we had done this,
Geoff:we could have gotten this area of distribution.
Geoff:If only we had not done that or changed this, then we could have gone here, only to find out that it's too late.
Tyler:Mm hmm.
Tyler:Yeah, so, like, I'll give you a good example of that for ICANN.
Tyler:Typically, you wouldn't bring on a public relations team.
Tyler:Like, you would not hire an PR team.
Tyler:And so right at the theatrical release, because you don't need to do a bunch of, interviews four or five months before a movie comes out,
Tyler:people are going to forget.
Tyler:But we made a calculated risk to hire ours, um, in April of 2023, and the movie didn't come out till September.
Tyler:And the reason we did that is we wanted, to, capitalize on the fact that it was the first ever softball movie.
Jaclyn:Ah, yeah.
Tyler:from our market research, we knew that we could probably get a lot of people to cover that story.
Tyler:and it would cost us no dollars, for marketing money.
Tyler:We just have to pay PR people.
Tyler:So instead of hiring a movie PR team, we actually went out and got the former, PR director for the Oakland athletics.
Tyler:the baseball team because she had sports connections.
Geoff:Uh huh.
Tyler:so now all of a sudden our movie is being featured in USA Today in the baseball section.
Tyler:we were doing interviews on Major League Baseball television.
Tyler:We were at the Yankees game.
Tyler:Like all of these huge, opportunities to share about this softball movie.
Tyler:But that was all because we had done a ton of market research in the, the, background that made us do this calculated risk of hiring this PR team early.
Tyler:So there's opportunities for that if you simply do the research,
Jaclyn:Yeah.
Jaclyn:And I guess each project, has its own individual needs, you know, and I think, uh, given that yours does connect so much with softball community and even the fact that it was, based on a true story, I think something like that does definitely lend to, uh, the value of starting that marketing early.
Jaclyn:because I could imagine, you know, Like anytime that there's a story or a movie that's based on a true story, you can create the hype already without so much of the spoilers because it's already happened.
Jaclyn:You know, like when Titanic came out, we already knew the ship sank.
Jaclyn:So, you know, we can go ahead and talk about the history of what happened and even with the Chosen, someone was asking, I think it was Romy they were asking him, like, do you have any spoilers or whatever?
Jaclyn:And he's like, uh, have you read the book?
Tyler:one more.
Tyler:This is a kind of a cool story that ties into what we were just talking about.
Tyler:We um, the real life girl, Caitlyn, um, she was going to get married in September, to her fiance named Kevin.
Tyler:And um, They became very close friends with a lot of the people that were on the movie crew, so it was like half her family and then half, like, L.
Tyler:A.
Tyler:people flying in to be at this wedding.
Tyler:It was this bizarre thing.
Tyler:Uh, Dan Roebuck, who, um, was in The Fugitive and Lost, he just played Grandpa Munster in the Munsters remake on Netflix . He actually MC'd their reception.
Tyler:it was awesome.
Tyler:but we knew that they were getting married fifth on September 15th.
Tyler:So we actually chose the release date of the movie, for September the 23rd, a week after their marriage.
Tyler:And we actually used, um, their wedding as a marketing strategy.
Tyler:If you'd like to get Caitlyn a wedding present, you can pay forward a ticket and it's going to go to these at risk kids across the country.
Tyler:And people jumped onto that.
Tyler:We got to send about 4, 000 orphans all across America to go see the movie in theaters.
Tyler:for free.
Tyler:and so that's just unique opportunities for marketing that if you think through it in advance enough, you can have these kind of outside the box plays to help people see the film.
Jaclyn:Yeah, for sure.
Jaclyn:Yeah.
Jaclyn:I think sometimes we have to bring our creativity into marketing and.
Jaclyn:I mean, there's, definitely something to be said for, you know, the things people have already done that work, but I think it's also important to keep that, uh, door open for new ways of approaching things.
Jaclyn:Mm
Tyler:Yeah.
Tyler:Not all of us get to, um, me specifically, I don't get to work with big studios.
Tyler:So like the things that Hollywood does that work, independent filmmakers really don't have that benefit very often.
Tyler:But do have benefit of creativity, and there's a of opportunities for it.
Tyler:About three or four weeks before we released the movie in theaters, Our goal as filmmaking team has always been to help people find and follow Jesus.
Tyler:that's it.
Tyler:Like we don't, we're not trying to become famous or make a bunch of money or anything like that.
Tyler:and any money that would come back goes to the church to make other films.
Tyler:So none of us get anything in our pockets, but we felt ourselves as, the theatrical release became ramped up bigger than we thought it was going to.
Tyler:We found ourselves fighting against serving two masters.
Tyler:so decisions were not being made to help people find Jesus, but they were being made to sell the most tickets we could sell.
Tyler:And I am so thankful that I work with a group of guys both here in our town and in LA that recognize that.
Tyler:And we collectively made a decision that we were not going to give the enemy any foothold in that.
Tyler:So we actually decided to give away 100 percent of the theatrical profits.
Tyler:And what was incredible is that God really honored that.
Tyler:Like, as soon as that happened, it felt like a weight was lifted off of us, but then doors opened, one after the other, for more people to see this film, and to date, of at least 1, 100 people that have, given their life to the Lord through ICANN, and I don't know how, um, some of those doors would have opened had we served two masters.
Tyler:And so as filmmakers, if you're doing this for God's kingdom, Jesus talks about money almost more than anything else that he talks about in the New Testament.
Tyler:And there's nothing wrong with making money.
Tyler:Just don't start worshiping it and don't make it an idol.
Tyler:We're idol making factories.
Tyler:It's really easy to turn our films into idols.
Tyler:So, from a personal, faith testimony, that was a really big growing moment for myself, my team and my church.
Tyler:And I'm so thankful that we did that.
Jaclyn:Mm hmm.
Jaclyn:Thank you for sharing that.
Jaclyn:That is, uh, very important.
Jaclyn:I want to thank you so much for your time today and for sharing your heart and your experience and getting to know you.
Jaclyn:It was really great.
Jaclyn:This is the first time I've ever gotten to speak with you, so it's always interesting when I get to speak to new people, and really looking forward to conference, the festival that you're doing.
Jaclyn:I'm really hoping that we can go, so that's, that's in our plans for 2025.
Jaclyn:We're looking into that for sure.
Jaclyn:I pray that God will continue to bless your ministry and your films and, uh, and all the work that you guys are doing.
Tyler:Yeah.
Tyler:Thank you guys so much for having me.
Tyler:This has been awesome.
