Elliot Grove and the Raindance Film Festival have issued ten new commandments of low (no) budget filmmaking.

They are:

1. Thou shalt have a fantastic screenplay.
2. Thou shalt understand keywords and SEO tools.
3. Thou shalt secure some development finance.
4. Thou shalt spend proper time in pre-production.
5. Thou shalt understand the shoot and exploit it to maximum advantage.
6. Thou shalt not fix it in Post-Production.
7. Thou shalt clear all music in your film.
8. Thou shalt prepare professional publicity and marketing materials.
9. Thou shalt use film festivals to launch your film.
10. Thou shalt create a distribution strategy.

See the annotated version.

My take: I can get behind all of these except number nine. Seems to me that’s really part of number 10. Not having much, if any success, at film festivals, I’m not convinced. I guess what I really need is a paid-for-performance film festival agent. Any suggestions?