How do you get to the stage where a broadcaster will acquire your film? A distributor will have this as one of their aims, but Jonathan Goodman Levitt carved out his own route to this end.

Jonathan came to the NFTS in 2000 as a Fulbright Scholar and began shooting what eventually became the film 'Sunny Intervals and Showers', a story of a doctor struggling to rebuild his marriage and career following diagnosis with manic depression. Funded primarily by credit cards and editing himself, Jonathan had a draft ready for screening by the Autumn of 2001.

I showed a work-in-progress at the Royal Society of the Arts, but I was terribly unprepared for the screening. The cut screened was over three hours long, and I'm sure there were people who attended that would take a lot of convincing to look at anything of mine again. I should have just shown a few excerpts and led a discussion about the issues involved; now I would never agree to a screening before having a film in watchable shape, especially for a public audience.

After that, in between increasingly frequent breaks to do other work necessitated by my finances, I developed a cut with the basic narrative before hiring a more experienced editor, Nick Thompson, to work with me during the final months. It was a big break for us when the film was accepted to Sheffield on the basis of a rough cut, as it was the only independently-financed UK feature to screen. The acceptance motivated me to pour more money into it as I thought we might sell it soon after the screening, and Sheffield Programmer Sirkka Moeller had been enormously supportive of the film since long before its completion.

The screening itself was great, but it was also a wake-up call to the realities of the industry. I wasn't at all prepared to market the film, and it took me a while to understand that distribution was an entirely new process for which filmmaking itself doesn't prepare you.

Over the next year, we had a dozen or so festival screenings, including several at film festivals with a human rights theme, and almost invariably the film provoked a heated debate within audiences after each showing. I also began to send the film to commissioning editors, who either requested it or were eager to receive it when I asked. But I made the mistake of sending an 89-minute version because I didn't realise just how important it was to send a version, typically under an hour, that fits into an established slot. While feedback was positive, it took many months for the film to be viewed in some cases, and UK broadcasters are still deciding whether to air it. I've only shown the 60' minute version to one UK commissioning editor, who is now trying to pitch it directly to controllers on my behalf.

While I couldn't afford to spend as much time as I would have liked in trying to push the film, I had enough cash available and the will to re-edit the film into a television version, which I took to Docs for Sale at IDFA in 2004. I looked to that market as my last good chance to market my film effectively, so that I could sell it for television broadcast and finally focus more on new work. In part because I had done some research on broadcasters, in part because I had finally learned from experience to package my film as a product, a lot of broadcasters and distributors took an interest.

The most important element of presenting it was to have it at an appropriate length for particular slots, and editors I asked were almost universally receptive to receiving a viewing copy. There was no slick presentation package; I've just used a small press pack that includes a synopsis, some stills, a filmmaker's statement. The most useful thing has been a page of reviews and quotes about the film. If I'd been more savvy I would have solicited comments from people, but as it was these were just comments and compliments that happened to come my way.

Although I was starting to get interest from broadcasters after IDFA, I decided recently to sign with a distributor because contracts are yet another area in which I'd be learning from scratch. It also seemed clear that most broadcasters would prefer dealing with companies with which they've worked before, rather than risk any problems with delivery. Beyond that, though, it has been very difficult to make new work while continuing to spend energy and headspace distributing 'Sunny Intervals and Showers'. So my distributor has the film now and is working to promote it. At first when I was looking at contracts I'd be blanching at the thought of them taking a 30-35% commission, but I learned that distribution is another area best left to specialists, at least for TV sales.

That said, I did retain some territories in which I was close to sales myself, and just made a first sale to the US satellite channel Link TV, after their Head of Acquisitions watched the film at the IDFA video library. It's only a few thousand dollars, but they say it's 'evergreen', continually relevant, and that there's a good chance the channel will re-acquisition it for several years. Whether other commissioners to whom I've recently sent copies eventually buy the film or not, I think it will be useful in funding future projects that they have been introduced to my work already. Somebody also suggested that whomever funds or acquires my next film might well want to leapfrog back and purchase 'Sunny Intervals' too.

For educational and video / DVD sales, I'm going to launch a website soon to try self-distribution, but expect there's a good chance I'll eventually sign with a distributor for those sales too. The thing about doing all this work by myself, moving towards what's getting to be successful distribution of the film, is that I now have a decent understanding of the market and my place in it.

A couple of years ago I didn't think of myself as part of an industry at all. The film grew out of my passion to get people talking about discrimination against the mentally ill, and to create positive images of manic-depressives. It took a long time to view it as a product, and to realise that business concerns need to be part of my thinking.

I won't be producing my next film, but I can now have conversations with producers on their level, and make specific suggestions of whom we should approach for funding, for example. With some luck, my working knowledge of the industry from distributing 'Sunny Intervals' will help us cobble together international co-productions much more quickly than we otherwise could.