Marketing meets distribution: introducing Hiway × SceneScreens
The two functions independent filmmakers need most have been sold separately for too long. From today, they’re sold together.
Great films get shelved every week.
Not because they’re bad. Because nobody knows they exist.
The invisible problem
Independent films rarely fail on quality. They fail on invisibility. Marketing starts too late. Distribution starts without an audience. The two functions that decide whether a film is seen have been kept in separate rooms for decades.
Every filmmaker call ends with the same two questions. How do I reach an audience? How do I actually get paid for my work?
The traditional answer used to be: sign with a sales agent, take an advance, wait for a distributor to package it, and hope. Content that might have sold for £100,000 two years ago is closer to £30,000 now. The wait has got longer. The cheque has got smaller. And in most cases, the filmmaker never sees who bought their film.
What SceneScreens do - www.scenescreens.com
SceneScreens is a social media marketing agency built specifically for independent film. Their team of managers, editors, and content creators works with each project from an early stage. They analyse every film’s themes, hooks, and narrative pull, then build a full social strategy around it.
Twenty to fifty pieces of content per film. Dedicated Instagram pages that become the film’s own world. Collaborations with cast, crew, brands, and charities connected to each film’s subject matter.
Their line: they turn film hooks into social hooks. Reels, carousels, cameos, culture-connected content. The kind of thing algorithms actually reward.
Recent work spans Altitude releases including SIRAT and Nouvelle Vague, plus indie titles like What About Gary?. And they run their own film-culture channels on Instagram and TikTok, so they’re not just producing content, they’re distributing it too.
What Hiway does
Hiway is the infrastructure layer behind self-distribution. One place to store the master file, share it as a link anywhere online, monetise it, and get paid in real time. The film never leaves the filmmaker’s account. Every stream, view, and transaction stays visible in one dashboard.
Filmmakers keep their IP. They keep the audience data. They keep the majority of the revenue.
Raindance is already running a full festival platform on it. Independent filmmakers like David E. Valdez are releasing features direct-to-fan on it. Distributors are using it to embed content into their own storefronts.
The gap the partnership closes
Marketing without distribution goes nowhere. Distribution without marketing goes silent.
Independent filmmakers have been forced to solve both problems on their own, often by trial and error, usually too late. What SceneScreens and Hiway close, together, is the gap between finished film and paying audience.
SceneScreens builds the audience. Hiway captures the sale. Payouts run in real time to the content owner and the promoter. There is no lag between attention and revenue.
What’s coming
Over the next four weeks we’re publishing a joint guide, The 3 Steps to Self-Distributing Your Film, followed by a live webinar for filmmakers and film schools. Both sides bring what we know best. Both sides open the doors we’ve spent years building relationships behind.
The University of Westminster is next on our student-programme roadmap, mirroring the work already underway with US film schools.
The point
Self-distribution isn’t a movement anymore. It’s a business model that works, once the right infrastructure sits underneath it and the right marketing sits alongside it.
For the first time, both are in the same room.
▶️ onthehiway.com
