Frequently Asked Questions
What's a Fanlight?  ||  Tips for Searching Our Site
Ordering from Fanlight Productions
Ordering Procedures  ||  Sales, Rentals & Previews  ||  Shipping
Prices & Discounts
Problems & Solutions
Returns & Replacements  ||  Problems in Screening Programs
Rights & Responsibilities
Submitting Your Film to Fanlight
Questions Frequently Asked by Filmmakers
Technical Requirements  ||  Captioning  ||  Contract Terms

Jay Corcoran: Undetectable

Submitting Your Film

Fanlight Productions distributes film and video works on healthcare, mental health, aging, disabilities, diversity, and related social issues. We are constantly looking for new and innovative programs to meet the growing needs of our customers in colleges and universities, in hospitals and other health care organizations, and among government, community, and grass-roots groups dealing with these questions. We are well known by professionals and media users, and have a loyal and growing client base of almost 20,000 customers. Submit Program Now

What We Look For

We are looking for new films and videos that deal effectively with the issues our customers care about. While we're happy to look at projects in a wide range of styles and formats, the programs we can market most effectively are:

Well researched, well produced, and well edited: Technical quality is important, but the quality of the content is more important. It should be thoughtful, accurate, and as up-to-date as possible. On the technical side, we see more tapes that suffer from poor sound quality than from poor picture quality.

Donald Young, with Raymond Hu: Raymond's Portrait

Emotionally and intellectually engaging: We, and the people who use our films, want our audiences to be moved, challenged, and motivated to seek solutions.

Reality-based: Most, though not all, of the programs we handle are documentaries. Whether documentary, dramatic or experimental, they focus on the real experiences of real people confronting real, day-to-day problems. They are not traditional "teaching" films. For example, our most successful programs are more likely to deal with the social, emotional, and philosophical realities of healthcare issues than with the details of medical diagnosis or treatment.

Short: Our best-selling programs are generally under a half-hour long. The users of our videos are interested in something they can use to stimulate an active discussion in their class, discussion group, or seminar — and they need to have time left for the discussion to happen. We will certainly consider, and do distribute, effective films of up to an hour in length (in rare cases even longer), but we have to warn filmmakers in advance that films of this length are less popular with educational customers.

David Simpson, Gordon Quinn, and J.J. Hanley: Refrigerator Mothers

Video or DVD?: The educational market is in transition right now. Most sales are in DVD but we still sell a lot of VHS. We require producers to provide us with both video and DVD masters in order to maximize sales during this transitional period.

Closed Captioned: We require that the films submitted to us be captioned, although we can waive this requirement in some cases. More and more of our customers are requesting, even in some cases insisting upon, captioned programs in order to meet the needs of their constituents and to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). As a national leader in introducing independent video works on disability topics, we strongly support this trend.

Our Promotion
We market our releases primarily through direct mail, as well as through film festivals and professional conferences, reviews in professional and general market publications, and limited advertising and telemarketing. Direct mail promotions include our annual catalog, press releases and new release notices for each film, four or five subject-focused brochures annually, and customized brochures for individual titles and/or groups of programs. Samples of these materials are available on request.

Our Contract
While each agreement may be different, Fanlight generally requests a five-year exclusive contract for the educational or non-theatrical market, worldwide. Producers provide us with duplicating masters of the completed program; we assume all costs of promotion including mailings, festival fees, duplication and fulfillment. We pay competitive royalties quarterly, based on gross receipts. In addition to financial summaries, our quarterly reports to producers also include updates on festivals and conferences entered, as well as copies of any reviews received during the prior quarter.

Keiko Ibi, Academy Award winner for The Personals

To Submit a Program
If you have produced a program that you think would be appropriate for Fanlight's collection, please give us a call — or just send us a copy, along with any descriptive or explanatory material you may have available. Feel free to call or email us for a copy of our current catalog and other materials, or if you have any questions about what we do. We're also happy to take a look at proposals or works-in-progress, and in some cases may have suggestions which will make your program more marketable. Our staff will evaluate all programs promptly, and will let you know if we feel it is something we can market effectively.

Tell Us What You're Sending

If you plan on sending us a production for possible inclusion in our collection please let us know ahead of time by filling in the form below. This will help us speed up the evaluation process and allow us to respond promptly.

 
Programs should be sent to:

Attention: Acquisitions
Fanlight Productions
c/o Icarus Films
32 Court Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201

<< Rights & ResponsibilitiesQuestions From Filmmakers >>

HOME  ||  TITLE INDEX  ||  SUBJECT AREAS  ||  RESOURCES  ||  RETURN TO TOP
CONTACT FANLIGHT  ||  FAQ