At first, I had trepidation given [a bad prior] experience. But they were the ones that seemed to want the film the most—we liked their embrace of the title, liked their terms and their optimism, and liked their realism about how it could be sold internationally. We believed that they were sincere about marketing the film, and not just aggregating it.

The results were pretty good. They licensed it in a number of territories. They especially did a good job with their in-house editor on a broadcast cut down. She was excellent and I really loved the finished product. It wasn’t overly expensive and came out of our revenues.

I wasn’t crazy about how we communicated. There seemed to be no one up at the top who was available for any email or conversations—it felt like an admin assistant was doing everything and there was no “there there” with management or a point person who was an acquisitions and sales pro. At one point I wondered if the company was legit. But then after some persistence, we got paired with an acquisitions rep named REDACTED and were able to have higher level discussions. They were great. So, I would say initial communications were off-key for a company that wanted to distribute the film, but then improved. The account management was pretty minimal, too. A lot was pushed on us—and we had to go through a somewhat cumbersome electronic process to figure out if the film was generating any revenues and then needed to invoice them for that amount. I would have preferred more service from their end.

Hard to say we’d do anything differently. Perhaps I would have engaged international sales reps sooner. Once we had domestic distribution, a lot of international reps then said it was too late.

I’m still not 100% sure of the difference between a sales agent and a distributor. Is it just a commission-based arrangement vs. a purchase of a chunk of rights? Do distributors typically have a marketing budget whereas sales agents do not?