Planning

The following steps will help you plan your distribution activities. Occasionally, this process is iterative, because you may find that the budget and timeline required to reach your target audience(s) are outside of your means. Begin with what you know. If your budget is fixed, begin there, and then set realistic goals for working within it.

Defining your audience

Ideally, you already thought a lot about audience before you began
production. It's a good idea to identify and understand your audience
during preproduction, because your distribution plan will inform who, what, and how
you shoot and edit your story. If you're creating a personal story,
your audience may be yourself, your family or your friends. Your
project may serve as a teaching tool, a tool for advocacy work, a way
to raise money for an organization and/or cause, a documentation of
success stories of your organization, or some combination of the above.
Regardless, when the film is complete, it is time to revisit (and
hopefully expand) your target audience(s) for your film.

Here are some questions to ask yourself that will help to define your audience:

• Who is your target audience? Who do you want to see your project?
• Who do you think would be most impacted by the story?
• What language(s) do they speak? (Will you need to create subtitles?)
• Where do they live?
• How old are they?
• Where do they work or go to school?
• Which organizations work with / serve / interface with these people?
• What other issues or topics concern them? Do they already know
  about the issues or topics addressed in your project? Have they
  experienced the situation or topic directly?
• Do you want your project to "preach to the converted" or reach an audience that doesn't know much about your topic or story?
• What resources do they have to view your final piece (i.e. DVD
  player, VHS deck, fast internet connection, dial-up, NTSC/ PAL, etc.)?
• How much time will they have to watch your final project? For
  instance, if your target audience is a foundation or executives at a
  large company, ask yourself if they will really have time to watch a
  10-minute video. Remember, you want to leave your audience wanting to
  see and learn more. In some cases, too much information may not be as
  effective.

Tool: Audience Worksheet.

Setting goals

Prioritize your top three goals for distribution.  The more specific your goals are, the more likely you will accomplish them.  Such
as:

• Advocacy (Be specific: advocacy for what?  To overturn a specific
  proposition?  To eliminate smoking in certain neighborhood parks?  To
  obtain certain legal rights for a specific group?  And at what level –
  neighborhood, state government, international NGOs, etc.)
• Media literacy
• Emotional support & healing(storytelling as a process of sharing)
• Fundraising (How much?  From whom? For what, specifically?)
• Community debate or resolution around a certain issue
• Education/awareness (Define it in terms of the specific goal – decreased homicide rate in area, small business participation in October Fund Drive.)
• Recruiting (Who?  Volunteers, participants, partners, etc.)
• Technology training and technical capacity building (In organization?  In community?)
• Cultural/social documentation, preservation
• Cross-cultural or inter-generational collaboration

Tool: Goal-setting worksheet

Creating a budget and timeline

Now it is time to reflect on your prioritized audience segments and
goals, and to get realistic. Setting goals for reaching your audience
and creating a budget and timeline required to accomplish those goals
can be an iterative process. This is why you have prioritized your
audience segments and goals -- so when your budget and timeline are
unrealistic, you know what to cut first.

• Go through each audience segment.  How can you reach these people /
  get them to see your media?  At events?  In classrooms?  On TV?  On a
  CD accompanied by a brochure sent via regular mail?  If you say through
  your web site, how will you get people to go to the web site to see the
  stories?  How much might these various methods of distribution cost, in
  terms of time and money?
• What might be technical, environmental, lingual, or financial
  limitations that would prevent your prioritized target audiences from
  seeing, understanding, or acting upon your stories?  Can you think of
  ways to overcome those limitations in order to reach more of your
  target audience?
• What contacts do you have?  (For example, who has the most contacts
  in the press? Who works most directly with each target group?  Who
  submits grants to funders?  Who has advocated for your organization in
  the past?  etc.)  If you lack direct access to a given target audience,
  what would be three first steps to creating those contacts?
• For distribution, who will take on which audience segment? Assign
  target audience groups to staff members based on existing contacts and
  programmatic structure.

Tool: Budgeting worksheet