Visibility is not publicity. At development stage it is about being legible to the small number of people who can move the project forward.
Visibility is usually treated as something that happens after a film is finished. For an independent project in development, it is a strategic question much earlier: who needs to know this project exists, and what should they be able to see when they look.
The audience for early visibility is narrow — funders, producers, festival and market programmers, sales agents, and the small press that covers development. Broad awareness is not useful yet, and pursuing it too early spends material that has not settled.
Practically, this means three things. That the project can be described in one paragraph that a stranger can repeat accurately. That the public trace of the project — a page, a credit list, a director's previous work — supports the claims being made in applications. And that festival, lab and market positioning is chosen for the doors it opens rather than the prestige it signals.
Timing matters as much as content. A market pitch before the material can support scrutiny is a closed door rather than a delayed one. The order is: make the project legible, then make it visible to the people who can act.