The answer, of course, is marketing

My leaving for Park City in about 17 hours is a good enough reason for me to finally mention Steven Zeitchik’s Hollywood Reporter piece that asks what the Sundance Film Festival is about if it’s not primarily a sales marketplace.

As my title says, the answer is that it’s then about the marketing.

I think the notion that Sundance is about distribution sales hasn’t been completely accurate in about five or six years. Instead it, like many of the other film festivals that have sprung up, has become the launching pad for a movie’s word of mouth and other marketing initiatives. These movies appear on people’s radar now via the entertainment press and eventually find themselves into theaters, where they get to reap the success of that buzz.

When these movies get released in four or six months their posters and trailers will sport the familiar logo of having appeared at Sundance and a couple of them will be labeled as award winners and such.

The problem is that, for those that do find distribution, the buzz they’ve generated online will be more or less lost. The mainstream – and I’m including niche in my definition of mainstream – campaigns will likely not tip their hats to the online press and other members of the conversation that have championed the movie. And that’s a shame.

But the point remains that the film festival market is a marketing component. Some directors and producers will take the opportunity to do it themselves in terms of distribution and marketing, making it an important part of that strategy.