Today’s guest post is from Tyler Weaver; editor in chief of the amazing blogozine Multihyphenate and practicing PMD.

Sitting in a music business class at a shall-not-be-named institution (rhymes with “Jerklee”) during the death of the music industry as we knew it was fascinating. This was in 2003-04, and it was a sad time to be in “the industry.” Nonetheless, we clung to our hardcover and expensive door stops, taking in each lesson as we were told. But the writing was on the wall: you’re learning stuff that was out of date yesterday. Thanks for the tuition check. 

As I sat there, staring blankly at what was going on in front of me, one remark the “professor” made stuck with me: “Those who control the trucks control what’s out there and what isn’t.” 

Funnily enough, my training in business and creative marketing didn’t come from a music business course. It came from majoring in music composition, where self-distribution is the way of life. No one is going to pluck you out of obscurity when you’re writing obscure pieces of new absolute music. You have to bootstrap (as this is Sheri’s blog, I can’t let my first post go by here without mentioning the equally ubiquitous Seth Godin). You have to find your own musicians. You have to find your own performance venues (even if it’s a dude with a guitar in a subway station), and you have to get it out there. 

It was during my time there that I learned the most important lesson of creativity: It doesn’t matter how good you think you are, if no one knows about you, you’re worthless. Creativity is not only a collaboration with other creatives, it’s a collaboration with your audience as you reel them into your work and make your work part of their lives. 

When I made the career switch to film in the middle noughties, that sensibility carried over.  I’ve never been a patient person, so I have no interest in waiting for others to swoop in and get people to see my work. I was hard-wired for self-distribution because it was the only way to survive. 

When I worked at a non-profit, I used no-budget video documentaries to bring in new eyes to bad news and increase readership and site usage. The videos could stand on their own, but were meant to highlight individual stories within the purview of the NPO’s mission and cause. 

So what, you may be asking, does all of this have to do with the newly coined (and rapidly burgeoning) position of “Producer of Marketing & Distribution?” If my time as a music composer hard-wired me to self-distribution as “Plan A,” my film and NPO experience taught me the most important lesson of marketing: 

Never market something you don’t feel passionate about. 

I cared about the NPO’s mission greatly. But I was never as passionate about it as I should have been. For awhile, it was greatly successful, but then the recession hit HARD and the competition for purse strings skewed the direction of more heart-tugging causes. Failure after failure piled up, and weighed heavily. By the end, I felt like the guy trying to market the Titanic as sink-proof after the iceberg.

As a filmmaker, I would never take on a project that I wasn’t completely, unabashedly, 100% passionate about. I would never take on a project if the script wasn’t wonderful, if it didn’t make me well up with tears at the thought of someone else making this movie. As a PMD, I would never take on a project if I didn’t have the same feelings for your project. I owe you that.  

But what stirs up those feelings? A great story. 

My love of marketing comes from a love of storytelling – and in spite of my seemingly haphazard career jumping, I have always been a storyteller, be it in music, film, or marketing. Your career is a story. Your film is a story. The making of your film is a story. I want to help you tell your story. 

Orson Welles famously said, “If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.” I’ve seen stories stop at sad endings, and at happy ones. And I’ve been responsible for both outcomes.

In today’s wild west media landscape where truly, as William Goldman remarked, “Nobody knows anything,” filmmakers and creatives are in a position of power. Our careers are in our hands now. Gone are the days where the magical distributor will discover you like a Tarantino or Rodriguez; we are no longer in the age of “making it,” but in the age of “getting it made and getting it seen.” It’s the latter part of your story that I’m excited to be a part of. 

I’m a creative because I want to see cool stuff. I want to tell a great story. I want to be engaged. I want to be told a great story. And now, I want to make sure your great story is seen and heard. We’re all truck drivers now. Our cargo: our stories. It’s my job to make sure they get where they need to go – the eyes and ears of the audience. It doesn’t matter how great you are, if you don’t bring in the last collaborator – the audience – your story is never fully told. 

And that’s not a happy ending. 

TYLER WEAVER is a storyteller whose chosen medium happens to be that expensive form called film. He’s made some stuff, like THE FOURTEEN MINUTE GAP, IL MIO CANTO LIBERO, and GATHER ‘ROUND THE MIC. He lets the world knows what he thinks as the founder and EIC of Multi-Hyphenate and takes great joy in helping other people tell their stories as a PMD and marketing strategist.  He’s currently developing a transmedia project called WHIZ!BAM!POW! that pays tribute to his lifelong love of comic books. Because he’s slightly insane, he’s simultaneously developing a new documentary. He yaks about that and more on Twitter under the creative guise of @tylerweaver

Revisit every place you’ve played your film in advance of release (all film festivals, community screenings, etc.) and consider how you can bring them aboard as a partner to blast or otherwise promote your release. Most film festivals have a vested interest in promoting the success of their alumni films and their careers, so you can likely get inclusion in their newsletter etc that includes a link to purchase your film.

If you are working through an established distributor, find out if they have “affiliate programs” in place  (meaning your promotional partner can share in a percentage,usually 5 -15%, of the revenue generated by the link from their website), and  find out if you can extend those affiliate programs to your promotional partners. You can also set up DIY affiliate programs yourself through services like Amazon Payments, but the set-up charges are not cheap and probably won’t work for a one-off film. However, if you are building yourself as a BRAND, and expect a slate of films that you can promote, affiliate programs are a must.

We have mentioned what the platforms offer as far as marketing, but they should not be solely depended on to do this work.

Unless you have a real budget to buy significant internet real estate, you will be connecting with your target market via websites and bloggers. You may find it necessary to incentivize those sites in order to promote your film. The most common tactic is contests and giveaways — meaning you provide the website with something to give away to reward their loyal readers….i.e. merchandise, sponsored travel, or free copies of the film. Creating online games themed around your film are another possibility — but of course not all independent films lend themselves to gaming. And if you’re asking the cast, crew, and everyone else you know to FB, tweet, and blast about your release, consider creating an incentive for them as well.

If you’re working far enough in advance, you MAY be able to find an appropriate brand or agency to sponsor some marketing, but know that you’ll need to start this work many months in advance of release.

Studios such as WB and Lionsgate have leverage with the Cable MSOs and work to  get films marketed and New Video has marketing leverage with iTunes. New Video  works via social media outreach by disseminating a release with images & clips  to sites such as Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon and posts a release on PR distribution sites (ClickPress, i-Newswire, eCommWire, The Open Press) along with feed-based announcements on Google blog search, Technorati, Yahoo! News, Topix etc., tagged with keywords for easier discovery. They also claim to do online grassroots outreach, email marketing and trailer and clip tagging.

Gravitas notes that its PR firms and staff release information about new titles to key websites and bloggers and they utilize what they call “VOD Guide Optimization” where they utilize  relationships with operators to raise the profile of certain Gravitas titles.

Distribber makes it clear that the marketing is up to the filmmaker (and they are also referring our TFC Marketing Services), but all the revenue goes to the filmmakers with no backend percentages taken.

CRM cites the marketing it does and we’re not sure what it entails beyond the usual Facebook and Twitter announcements, but we’re looking into it.

Whichever aggregator you choose to work with, make sure you have either a very firm marketing plan in place and committed to and/or know that you need to deploy one yourself.

If you need to qualify your film for Academy consideration, or your SAG contract stipulates you need to play theatrically for a week or so, you can often cut your cost in half by sharing those screens with another filmmaker in the same position.

For example, Academy qualifications require a film to screen 2 times a day for one week in NYC and LA, but that means there are at least two other screening times a day that another film can take. That way you can share theater rental, equipment rentals, and union projectionist fees. Make sure each of you get at least one prime screening time each day and drive your audiences to those times (in other words, don’t take 12 noon and 2 p.m…..but 12 noon and 7 p.m. is ok!). Obviously you can’t maximize your grosses by sharing screens,  but at least you can  meet your qualification requirements at a reduced price.

Whatever subject matter and themes you are tackling in your film, chances are pretty good there are prominent (and not so prominent) bloggers already writing about these topics and targeting folks who will care about your film.

Unlike the traditional mainstream press, you don’t need an expensive publicist to reach them….just find their contact info on their blogs and reach out directly with a nice personal note that includes your synopsis, your web links, and your offer to send them a screener or trailer if they want one. None of this is brain surgery. Within a few days of google research you should be able to identify most of the major players in your niche.

Theme and topic aside, there are also of course many bloggers out there just writing about quality independent film, so remember to reach out to those folks as well.

One additional hint — find a way to INCENTIVIZE the blogger to write about your film! A contest to give away a way a few free DVDS of your film is often the best. It gives the blogger a prize to offer his or her readers and gets you the free viral press you need!

Chances are that whatever your subject matter/theme/niche audience for your film, there have been other films in recent years that targeted the same audiences. Most filmmakers feel some camaraderie with each other and many may offer you advice on how they reached their audiences.

Connect to fellow filmmakers and don’t be shy about asking them to at least mention your film on FB to their folks, or tweet about your film. We can’t emphasize enough how many filmmakers find themselves building lists of organizations and emails from scratch when someone else probably has already created a similar list. Consider the community spirit of DIY filmmaking and ask for a little help, or offer to compensate a filmmaker for their efforts on your behalf.

This is the idea behind TFC’s The Film Collaborators site, a place where filmmakers can share resources