3. Al
Budget through release. I cannot stress how important this is. It’s great to have a festival copy, but if you don’t have money to apply to festivals, it’s not going to do you much good. Likewise, if you get into a big festival, but don’t have money to transport you and your cast there and maybe even hire a publicist, you’ll be missing a major opportunity to attract publicity and thus buyers. And finally, even if you’ve got your distributor and they do a great job placing your film with iTunes and all the cable VOD providers, perhaps a few theaters (win!)