The following case study was provided by producer Samuel Goldberg, as well as the film’s coverage in Forbes and The Hill.
“We’re a SAG low budget film, which means that our budget was less than $2.5 million,” he revealed. “In terms of the fundraising and the expectations of investors, there’s a standard set up in independent film. It’s not too different from other investments like real estate, where you propose that the first 120% goes back to investors, so your investors are making their money back with a 20% premium on that.” - Producer, Samuel Goldberg
Goldberg explained: “In terms of distribution, we were left with almost no options. We’re not a huge studio movie; we don’t have the money to spend on publicity and marketing, marketing to make enough noise in a saturated media marketplace where people go to the movies. We were never going to go out there and raise millions of millions of dollars to buy ad space and billboards and so on. We also didn’t want to go directly to a digital platform or on-demand or play in one or two or three urban theaters, as there’s no money to be made there.”
“Our movie is fundamentally about community and a communal experience, and we wanted our distribution to match that theme in our distribution and business plan. We kept it simple. If you want to see the movie, Silo, you go to our website; you click where ‘Host A Screening’ on the home page, you fill out a form, and then we’ll give you a call. What we tell people is that if you want bring Silo to your town, your local movie theater, or high school auditorium or local university, as long as you’re willing to watch it in a community setting, we are eager to license the film to you.”
He continued: “There are requests that come in from individuals, from corporations, and it’s incumbent on them to raise the licensing fee, which is $2,500. We recently screened the film in a barn in Kentucky with corn in the background. People who screen it also get a curriculum that we’ve written; they get all sorts of publicity materials, they get a dedicated member of our Silo team, helping them organize the event.”
“We ended up doing almost 300 community screenings for north of $700,000 in gross revenue, before the pandemic forced us to change our model and we were acquired by the fantastic distribution company, Oscilloscope Laboratories.”
Website: https://www.silothefilm.com/