Five Essential rules for pitching partners

Partnerships are powerful tools that can enable you to maximize your film’s reach and revenue. In years past, a single distribution deal might have been enough to make your film successful. Today it’s critical to build direct connections with audiences and organizations who align with your film.

For most documentary filmmakers, partnerships are more important than distributors, including the big ones like Netflix and Kanopy. Show&Tell founder, Keith Ochwat, first learned how to build partnerships during the distribution of his documentary about the Senior Olympics. Working with AARP, Cigna Health, and other partners in the senior living worlds, he was able to create a campaign that resulted in over 3,000 community screenings and generated $1,543,000—only $64,000 of it came from our distributors. 96% ($1,479,000) came directly from the promotion and support of our partners. We’ll show you how in this guide.

Partners can open doors to funding and support. We’ll show you how to find the right kinds of partners, introduce yourself, and negotiate for what you need.