Intro to Legal, Distribution & Marketing a Film | Presented by GreenHause at Freelancers Hub – Brooklyn, NY

This workshop covers the second half of a film's life: legal, distribution, and marketing.

By the time you picture lock, much of what a distributor needs should already be in place - releases signed, licenses secured, and all archival footage cleared. All these are ideal to have before moving on. What's usually missing is having all of it organized in a package that a buyer's legal and delivery teams can accept. So we will go through what to track from development onward and how to make delivery a simple handoff rather than a panicked scramble.

Next, we’ll dive into distribution strategy, starting with the premiere and how it shapes the festival run, the press, and the potential offers that follow. We work through what aggregators and streamers provide and how long each kind of deal ties up your film. Most independent films don't get offers right away, so we look at what filmmakers have done to get their work seen on their own.

None of that works without an audience already paying attention, which is why marketing starts long before the film is finished. We get into the assets worth building during production, including utilizing transmedia and how a film reaches people before it hits theaters.

Attendees leave with a legal binder template and a database of 85+ festivals, streamers, aggregators, and distributors, sorted by the kind of deal each one does.

You’ve done the hardest part: made the movie. Now let's get it seen.

What We'll Cover:

• Clear It: The legal binder and why no buyer takes an uncleared film
• Show It: Premiere tiers and a festival strategy that builds press
• Sell It: Pros & cons of a buy out deals vs. exclusive license
• Deliver It: Aggregators and the delivery specs that can stall a release
• Do It Yourself: Self distribution in the current landscape
• Market It: EPK, sizzle reel, key art, and running your own press campaign
• Expand It: Transmedia and how films build worlds beyond the screen

Who Should Attend?

Independent and documentary filmmakers, producers, and anyone who wants to understand how a film gets released.

Gautam Singhani is a NYC-based Line Producer & Post-Production Supervisor with 10+ years of experience across development, production, post, and distribution for features, series, and documentaries. He chairs the Post Production Committee at the Producers Guild of America (PGA) and is an active member of the Post New York Alliance (PNYA). Through his consulting practice, Gotoma, he partners one-on-one with filmmakers to make projects investor-ready: crafting budgets and schedules, supervising post, and advising on distribution.

His credits include THE BARBER OF LITTLE ROCK (Oscar nominee), ALLEN V. FARROW (Emmy nominee), BECOMING COUSTEAU (BAFTA nominee), and LIL NAS X: LONG LIVE MONTERO (GLAAD nominee). Most recently at RadicalMedia, he delivered BONO: STORIES OF SURRENDER, the Emmy-nominated immersive film created for Apple Vision Pro. He also produced BLACK AS U R (dir. Michael Rice) with Billy Porter and D.J. Gugenheim, securing support from Gilead Sciences and the U.S. Embassy.