Self Distribution and Amazon VOD: Getting Your Documentary Seen

I recently saw an interesting post on Doculink, an online forum for documentary filmmakers.  Dawn Mikkelson, a Minnesota-based documentary filmmaker and teacher, shared her success distributing her many documentaries through self distribution. While you’ve probably heard good and bad things about Amazon’s VOD (video-on-demand) distribution platform, there is no question that this sort of delivery service is one wave of the future for the broken documentary distribution industry.

The great thing about Mickelson’s success is that her documentary films are not only being seen, but she’s making money! “I no longer see Sundance or the other big festivals as the only hope for my film’s success,” says Mikkelson. I have fallen in love with self-distribution.”

Mikkelson cites her film This Obedience which brought in six figures through grass-roots screenings, college tours and DVD sales through their website. This is astounding and very inspiring for most of us documentary filmmakers.

Mikkelson is now offering her fourth documentary film through Amazon’s VOD service.  She encourages documentary filmmakers to get their head out of the sand and learn about the new ways to get their film out into the world. We’re entering a new day, one that many of us have been waiting for years to happen, when the fruits of our labor could actually pay a living wage. You can contact Dawn at info@emergencepictures.com.

I’ll end with a plug for my popular course, which I just taught a few weeks ago at the San Francisco Film Society. It’s now available online.

To learn more about innovative documentary storytelling techniques that will attract large audiences, check out “Editing the Character Driven Documentary” at https://newdocediting.com/land/editingdocumentaryecourse/.