Tate English and Lynn Mikeska (writer/director and star, respectively, of The Ballad of Friday and June) spent some time at the Oxford Film Festival recording a series of webisodes to document their festival trip. Rather than making the series a simple travelogue, however, they went out of their way to make each episode funny in a self-deprecating way. Well-made webisodes like these capture some of the local flavor of a festival town and involve fellow attending filmmakers involved whenever possible. (You want to give people a reason to link to your videos, right?) Off-the-cuff video blog entries are a fun, inexpensive way to build a fan base and to draw attention to your film’s festival run.
With the Park City festivals (Sundance, Slamdance, and other ‘dances that come and go with the years) just a week away, I thought this was a good time to check in with Chris Thilk about some of the philosophies and techniques of promoting an indie film at a large festival.
Let’s say I’m a filmmaker with a feature film playing at Sundance or Slamdance. I’m aware that million-dollar advance checks are few and far between, but I’d like to give my film the best chance possible for finding a distributor and/or an audience. What are some realistic expectations to set for this experience?
The expectations you have going in should be in direct proportion to the leg work you’ve put in prior to the festival, whatever it is. If, in support of your movie, you’ve already done some outreach to movie blogs that might be interested in the film, have built up an audience on Facebook or Twitter and generally can go in to the festival with some wind at your sails already your chances are much better.
I don’t have a lot of money for a publicist. How can someone with a limited budget be heard over the hype?
First off, dissuade yourself of the notion that you’re going to be heard by a large audience. The best strategy for creators of niche products – whether we’re talking about small movies or small beers – is to be heard by the right audience. That takes a lot of work upfront as you do research into potential communities of fans and such but then participating in those conversations is exactly as hard as having a conversation over email or even real life. You’ll never break through the hype around something like Transformers, but that’s not where your goal line is. Your goal line is finding the audiences and communities who are interested in what you have to say. Again, that takes a lot of upfront work, but it’s every bit as essential to the movie’s success as finishing the script so don’t consider it an add-on effort.
Filmmaker takes my response as proof of fervent interest in his/her film and promptly adds me to an email list, pimping the film’s screenings in cities where I do not live.
Sound familiar? If you’re subscribing people to your mailing list without their permission, you fall on the Goofus side of the age-old Goofus/Gallant spectrum.
For me this happens just often enough to be annoying, but for a festival director who deals with thousands of films each year, it’s a real problem. It only takes a few seconds to unsubscribe (if such a link is provided), but wading through an inbox filled with unsolicited (and usually irrelevant) news from well-meaning filmmakers robs festival staffers of many, many hours. Adding a programmer to your mailing list without their permission will accomplish the opposite of what you want – your film will get noticed, all right, but cast in a negative light.
Don’t hurt your film’s chances by spamming – there are better ways of getting your film noticed.
For more on email marketing best practices, check out the MailChimp blog. MailChimp is a terrific service. I use it for the Film Festival Secrets newsletter, to which you may subscribe – but only if you want to do so.
What this is really about is taking advantage of Twitter and other communication tools to play a major part in the global conversation about your work. (If there isn’t one, you need to start it.) Piracy on Canal St. happened before the Internet, and illegal downloading happened before Twitter. As Abraham acknowledged, you can’t stop it. Beyond pointers to free downloads, people are going to be saying lots of things about your film that you don’t like, including bad reviews, off-brand descriptions of your work and possibly even lies or personal attacks. The power of the Internet is that you can be in on it. You can know it’s happening, you can respond to it and you can preempt it.
Getting your film “out there” – whether that means out to the festival circuit or to a distributor or directly to your audience – is a sales job. A crucial part of any sales job is to figure out exactly what it is you’re selling and thereby determining who might want to buy it. In this exercise you will define your film and yourself in a number of different ways. While this may seem obvious and redundant, forcing yourself to formally document these things about your film can be extremely helpful in later stages of your film’s life.
Defining your film
Start with the basics: Is your film a narrative or a documentary? (It doesn’t quite fit into either category? Maybe it’s experimental.) Documentary filmmakers have a variety of doc-only options in the festival arena; it’s kind of a consolation prize for the fact that theatrical distribution is a rarity for documentaries. Read more »
I got this excellent email “out of office” autoresponder from a festival contact recently:
Absence Alert! I’m out of the office and returning Monday, April 13.
I’ll be warm and dry playing outside dressed in my Patagonia Cold Track jacket, Polartec fleece, OR hat and gloves and New Balance Shoes. I’ll use my Deuter pack to carry extra gear and supplies from Gore-Tex, Mountain Hardwear, OR, Petzl and Mountain Equipment Co-op. You can find me in the beautiful pristince Yellowstone to Yukon region, making tracks at Mount Engadine Lodge, or skiing one of the fantastic areas of Resorts of the Canadian Rockies. Following a great day outdoors I’ll relax with a Big Rock ale or a glass of Redwood Creek wine and enjoy reading about travel, exploration and adventure in National Geographic Adventure magazine. I may fantasize about tripping away with World Expeditions or Canadian Mountain Holidays.
I will check and reply to email only sporadicaly. If you need immediate assistance please contact [snipped for privacy].
Laurie Harvey Manager, Strategic Partnerships Mountain Culture, The Banff Centre
Laurie not only turned her everyday vacation message into something funny, she also mentioned her strategic partners (aka “sponsors”), guaranteeing that existing sponsors would smile and that prospective partners would get the message: even when Laurie is on vacation, she’s doing her job.
If you’re a filmmaker, you can use vacation auto-responders to send messages in a similar way. Set one up to cover your email while you’re away at a festival, and be sure to include the screening times of all of your upcoming festivals while you’re at it. Add a link to your trailer so that everyone who emails you will get a chance to check out your film — even if they’re just trying to sell you “mal3 en#anc3ment” products.
Festival directors reading this can steal the idea outright, but filmmakers may need a little more creativity to make it work for them. Either way, it’s a clever and subversive way to boost your Twitter followers – the Atlanta Film Festival withheld the details about one of their parties, releasing the details only on Twitter. (You can find them at twitter.com/atlantafilmfest.)
Below is a quick snap of the party page of the Atlanta Film Festival’s program guide.
A clever bit of marketing from the Atlanta Film Festival — interviews with indie film insiders (including yours truly) on the streets of Austin during SXSW, singing the praises of both Atlanta and Atlanta Film Fest. Fest director Gabe Wardell and his peeps shot the video using tiny Flip cameras. Festivals often use video to promote their events through film trailers and the occasional “festival trailer,” but creative projects like this one really accentuate the fact that there are other ways to use the medium.
And speaking of video projects, I’m long overdue to plug parts 3 and 4 of Mark Potts’ series of ads for the Film Festival Secrets book. I’ll embed each of them here soon but if you were too lazy to go look for them yourself I didn’t want to deny you the pleasure of watching them any longer. Part 4 is fabulously tasteless.
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With the Park City festivals (Sundance, Slamdance, and other ‘dances that come and go with the years) just a week away, I thought this was a good time to check in with Chris Thilk about some of the philosophies and techniques of promoting an indie film at a large festival.
So here’s something that happens to me a lot.
Film Festival Secrets: A Handbook for Independent Filmmakers