Looking back on 2024, it’s hard not to admit that I cooked. I even managed to cross almost everything off my resolutions for the year. (Waking up at 6 a.m. every day? Still not happening. Turns out, you can achieve your goals and still enjoy sleeping in until 8. Thank God.)
In 2024 I released my first feature film in theaters. A documentray called Dirty Coin. While I’ve been an executive producer for years, releasing a film was new territory. It wasn’t just about making the film, it was about releasing it and getting people to pay to watch it. And wow, did I learn a lot.
1. Narrow your focus
Even with years of experience, I wasn’t fully prepared for the financial demands of a theatrical release. Making a film is one thing; releasing it successfully is a whole other level of expensive.
Lock in your marketing budget and be laser-focused about your release. Pick one city, figure out how much money you need to make it buzz about your movie, and go all in. Then move to the next city. With Dirty Coin, we went global all at once, and while that was exciting, it was exhausting.
Indie films can stretch their marketing dollars much further by concentrating efforts in a smaller numbner of cities. Spreading limited resources across marketing campaigns in over 1,000 cities around the world at once? I won’t be doing that again.
I rather be an inch wide and a mile deep, than a mile wide and an inch deep. (Thanks JLD for that tip!)
2. Step away even if you're not done
I've been a fulltime filmmaker for coming up on four years, and there will always be a reason to put in extra time on a project. But a family is worth having and being a part of as well.
I realized this year that constantly prioritizing work over everything else isn’t a good life. Yes, there will always be something urgent that needs to get done yesterday, but living a good life while working is the true key to hapiness and is how I can see myself making movies until my old age.
It is a blessing to be a happily married filmmaker with three kickass children, I'm not taking it for granted like I used to anymore. My family gets worked into every project.
Life isn't secondary to anything. Life is a melody of intentions that drive action in overlapping ways.
3. Expect and plan for success
When I finished Dirty Coin, I decided to self-distribute because I couldn’t find a distributor who saw the potential I saw and still see in the film.
As soon as we premiered on 4/20/24, the documentary spread across the world almost instantly, and I hadn’t fully planned for that kind of success. The overwhelming interest left me scrambling. Student groups, companies, meetups, even government organizations all wanted to host screenings. It was incredible but also chaotic.
Removing myself as a bottleneck has been the key to our growth. For Dirty Coin, it took us a little while to find a tool like Kinema, which allowed people to set up screenings and sell tickets without me having to micromanage every detail. It also kept the film secure as it traveled around the world. We've only been on the platform for a couple of months and I can already tell you that I plan on using it as a tool to distribute future films.
2024 taught me a lot about many things. As I head into 2025, I’m ready to take those lessons and keep cruising.
Thanks for reading,
H. Mediavilla
PS and FYI to filmmakers reading this. These are the options that my fans have to create their own screening events on Kinema. They can pay me for the license for how they choose to share the film or we can even split ticket sales and they can set all of it up on the site- no meeting necessary.