Below are a few case studies of recent successes:

Broken Hearts Club (KH5 Entertainment) Under $500K budget

"Broken Hearts Club" is an independent feature film with a budget under $500K, a cast of 24, and a small crew of 25. The film went 0-for-10 with film festivals until it was accepted by the Hollywood Black Film Festival in 2009. The film was later requested by Cinematographic Association of Italy for its CineIndipendente project: “International Festival of the Independent Cinema.” Screenings in the United Kingdom (Portobello Film Festival) and Canada (Wreck-Beach Film Festival) quickly followed. Writer/Director/Producer Angelo Bell received several distribution offers but none were acceptable. After the film was listed on Mandy.com, Angelo was approached by Goliath Arts and entered into a non-exclusive distribution agreement. Upon Goliath's recommendation, the film was adapted into a six-part series for television and aired for three runs on AMGTV. Since then, "Broken Hearts Club" has been picked up by ZillionTV, Simple ME TV and VIO Mobile. Very recently, the film/series was green-lit by NBC Universal to air in its top ten market: New York City. If the series does well it will be rolled out to other markets and possibly renewed for a second season.

The Sensation of Sight (Either/or Films) $1.5 million budget

The film was shot in Peterborough, NH. The production company set up their own theatrical distribution for their film. A one week run was scheduled at The Colonial in Keene, New Hampshire, a 930-seat theater. They estimated that the opening night premiere would have a 400-500 person turnout and they also booked screenings at movie theaters in Peterborough, and Concord. The day before the premiere screening, the entire 930-seat house was already sold out. Extra chairs were even added in the balcony to accommodate the overflow, while over 300 people still had to be turned away and watched the film later on in the week. A large portion of the turnout were local residents. "The Sensation of Sight," being a local production, and Either/or Films, allowing the state to know about the film during production, helped bring in the local audience and they ended up having a month-long run instead of the planned week at the above theaters. "The Sensation of Sight" was listed in Variety for that first week as one of the Top 10 Films Shown Per Screen. This caught the attention of L.A.-based distributor, Monterey Media, which ultimately ending up distributing their film.

INK (Double Edge Films) $250,000 budget

"INK" was shot in Denver, Colorado. Double Edge Films opened the film in an independent theater located in Denver, Colorado. The film ran for 8 weeks, then was shown in Ft. Collins for 4 weeks. These two theater runs established a track record for the film. They showed this track record to other theaters along with the YouTube hit counts on the film's trailer to other independently owned theaters, and were able to run "INK" in 15 different theaters/cities over several months. The theater deals were only made with independent theaters and were usually a 50/50 split of the ticket sales. "INK" grossed $70,000 in the box office. Double Edge Films kept reinvesting the money made from ticket sales back into marketing and continued to promote the film. After a total of 8 months of marketing and theatrical (starting from the time the trailer went on YouTube), they finally released the film on DVD. After the DVD release, theaters continued to request screenings of the film. "INK" is now available on Netflix/Blockbuster, but the deal with these two companies was achieved by using Indieblitz as the middleman, instead of a distributor. The cover art and the trailer were the key ingredients in selling this film. Netflix never watched the film, and solely based it's decision on the cover art and trailer. "INK" was pirated over one million times on piratebay.com and moved up to #14 on imdb.com within a week of being released on DVD. Pirating is actually helping them to recoup all costs. Double Edge Films estimates that all costs of production will be reimbursed after the first year of distributing their film.