Having just participated in an interview on Film Festival Radio that was meant to cover how to “work” a film festival, I realized that a lot of what I prepared to say didn’t get covered. Time ran short, other questions were asked. Anyway, I thought I would share with you the other points I meant to cover in case you are about to embark on the festival circuit. There is a lot to prepare for and here are the questions and answers I wanted to cover.

So why participate in a film festival?

Film festivals are a low cost alternative to booking a screening in a cinema. It may be the only time your film will see a cinema screening unless you find a distributor willing to do this for you. Use a festival as your theatrical release to gear up your DVD sales. I know that most people think that if someone sees your film, why would they buy it on DVD? But it happens all the time, think of how many DVD’s you own that you bought after seeing the film. People who have already seen it and liked it are more likely to buy it. Studios rely on theatrical release to sell their DVD, so can you.

Festivals give you access to your core audience by piggybacking on the marketing of the event in a community. You still have to market your film so that your screening is filled, but you don’t have the total expense of marketing and advertising the event like you would in a self funded screening.

Film festivals allow you to participate in the filmmaker community by meeting other like minded individuals and important people in the industry. You should do as much networking as possible while you are there. It is a time of being celebrated as a legitimate filmmaker. While you may have other jobs to pay the bills, at a film festival, you are known as a filmmaker. They give you legitimacy.

They should be part of your overall distribution strategy. The more audience you gather for your work (and awards too), the better your chances of selling your film through self distribution or finding a distributor who is willing to do a deal with you because you have a provable audience. Even if you don’t win awards, just being an official selection means someone thought your film was watchable. They are a great marketing tool too. More on that in a later section.

How do you choose the best ones for your film?

Do  thorough research about the kinds of festivals to which you should be submitting.  Unless you have an unlimited budget, you need to target and not shotgun because 1)you’ll waste money on submission fees to festivals you won’t get into 2)it is very time consuming to keep up with all the efforts for multiple festivals. For research, you can visit sites like Withoutabox, Filmfestival.com, Britfilms.com or search for genre festivals on Google to find ones that fit your film’s description. Look at the festival’s past lineups to get a sense of the kinds of films they want. You’re searching for a philosophy and a programming style that matches your film and attracts the same kind of target audience you are going for. If the festival you are thinking of applying to does not have an updated website or many press references that cover their previous event, take it as a bad sign. Probably you will not get any promotional activity out of the event for your film either and choose another.

Once you determine your likely contenders, arrange them in order of desirability and time on the calendar. This is going to take a lot of organization on your part as you only have so many copies, especially if they are 35mm prints, and they can’t be everywhere at once. Also, think how much time you have to keep up with what is due when.

Pick the likeliest spot for your world premiere and some alternatives. Pay attention to what the festival rules are for screening, some are picky about premieres or playing their city before the festival. If you are particularly looking for Oscar qualifying festivals for your short film, you can find a list on the AMPAS site here.

What if I don’t get into anything?

You should take a long, hard look at your film. If you have submitted to over 10 festivals with no acceptance, either you are picking the wrong festivals or something is off about your film. It could be too long, need a little re edit. Get as much feedback from outsiders as you can and listen to what they are telling you. DO NOT SEND ROUGH CUTS. It is the rare director that can get into a festival on a rough cut of the film so only submit your best work.

So you submit and get accepted? Then what?

You should have all of your materials together already. Website up, a poster for the lobby, postcards of your film for tables and nearby businesses. Press kits are ok, but most small festivals don’t have a press room so I wouldn’t spend a lot of time on this, nothing fancy and expensive. Use email to communicate with local press. Most festivals will only give you about 3 weeks notice of acceptance so be ready when you get the green light.

Have business cards printed for yourself as a filmmaker and the film. Include all contact details and the film’s website.

You should issue a press release as soon as you are accepted and know the screening time. Further releases should announce any wins, don’t depend on the festival to do this for you.

You should find out who the press officer is and contact them about possible publicity opportunities. Attitudes vary among staff at festivals. Some will bend over backwards to help, others couldn’t care less. If they couldn’t care less, see who their media sponsors are and where the festival is directing their news. Contact the outlets directly by telling them you are participating in the event and want to contribute to any articles they are doing. Have bios and productions stills in jpg form ready for media submission.

You should already have your social media pages in place for your film. Promote your screenings on these for your fans. Add yourself to the event’s social media pages too, if they have them, and post a trailer and info about when your screening is. Really use their pages to interact with the attendees, both other filmmakers and the audience.

Having a trailer is super important. Even if your film is only 4 minutes long, have a 10 second clip or something to send around. Do not load up your entire film on the internet until after it has played the circuit. Some festivals will disqualify for that and Oscar consideration for short films is out if you do that.

Actively seek out potential fans in the community where the festival is playing. You can do a Facebook search or a Linkedin search. Don’t bug people too much, but let them know about the festival and when your screening is and that they are invited. Do not make your pitch too sales-y or like an advertisement. Make it more informational and invitational.

Can I make any money doing this?

It is the extremely rare festival that will pay a screening fee for your film, mostly any screening fees go to a distributor of an already established film just for the prestige of having it. For sure there are festivals that offer cash prizes if you win and offer expensive equipment from sponsors. Some will fly you to the festival and offer hotel rooms.

Also, you can check the policies, but you may be able to sell DVD copies on site while you have that audience in front of you. If not, please direct them to your online sales channels with a special code for discount because they saw you at a fest.

Don’t view festivals as lost revenue because you are playing your film for free. View them as marketing opportunities that are a relatively low cost way for the audience to “try out” your film and for you to connect with your fans.

Today I will be doing an internet radio interview with Film Festival Radio on the BlogTalk Radio network. Check me out here or I will post the mp3 copy on this site if you miss it.

I will be covering how participation in film festivals is good marketing strategy for your independent film and how to get the most from participation. I covered some of this in a post in July when I was marketing LA Shorts Fest, so if you miss it completely, you can access that post.

I’m on in an hour. Join me.

PS: Here is the interview from today

This post could really be for anyone, but I will focus it on the emerging filmmaker because I think it is just as important to showcase yourself online as it is to showcase your film.

I check out the online profile of everyone I meet or am about to meet. It may sound a little stalker-like, but I like to know who I am talking to and what we have in common. If I can’t find out anything about you when I Google your name, it is as if you do not exist. Well, your personal brand doesn’t exist at least. So what are you doing to build your personal brand? What methods can be used?

The reason for building a personal brand online is to establish how you want to be known. If you want to be known as a director, screenwriter, actor etc., you must cultivate that online. Constructing a simple blog or website, a Linkedin profile, an imdb page, or a separate Facebook page from your personal profile page are all good ways to build and control your personal brand. I recommend that everyone Google your name and see what pops up. It may be a reference to you in an article or a comment you left on some one’s blog or it may be your last Amazon purchase. You can remove that Amazon information by changing the settings on your Amazon profile, by the way. If you don’t find any personal references, that is a bad thing. You don’t exist online and you need to change that.

First, go to this site and use the online identity calculator to assess where your online brand stands right now. How did you do? Are all of the references relevant to your brand? Next, evaluate your strengths, goals, the offerings that can only come from you, and establish to whom you want these traits presented (your target audience like investors, industry contacts, production companies, agents etc.) and who your competition is. You have to differentiate your talents from the billions of other people out there, some with online brands already in existence. If you don’t already own your vanity domain, claim it. You can go to any web hosting site like Yahoo Hosting or Go Daddy.com. If your name is already taken, come up with a recognizable alternative that you can work with. Your personal site will become your baseline on the Web and where everything else will link back to. Since this is the site you’ll have the most control over, this is the one you want ranking above everything else. With your target audience in mind, create your site with information that would be of interest to them.

Now to spread yourself around the Internet. Grab some social accounts (Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Flikr etc.) as having these accounts help you to rise to the top of Google, especially Linkedin. There is a service called Knowem you can use to create social media accounts on a ton of sites with just one submission. You don’t have to join them all, just the ones you plan to keep maintained. You could also maintain a blog, use online networking sites (indieProducer, Tribe Hollywood, MyProducer etc.), publish online articles with services such as EzineArticles and participate in web-based communities. You should try to do all of these.  Use these tools wisely and you cultivate an online presence that ensures you’ll show up in search results the way you want to be seen. Always monitor these references too, as the algorithms that establish the rankings change frequently. Google your name every Monday morning to see if anything has changed. Set a Google alert with your name so that you can track any new progress on your personal brand.

This should get you started on establishing an online brand and as the references pile up, more opportunities to promote yourself will come your way. Good luck.

This should be common knowledge to filmmakers (it certainly is to audiences), but the way your trailer is edited has a large bearing on whether the audience will bother to watch it. It is also the cornerstone of your marketing campaign; the face to go with the copy. Here is a great example of editing random pieces of film footage, putting in  some music and voice over, to give the film any context you want. Scarily, trailers are sometimes made to be deceiving.

Please don’t follow this example, but it serves to show how you make any film fit into a particular marketing strategy simply by the way you present it. Now, if you don’t want a big backlash from such a bait and switch, make your trailer show the true essence of your film, in 90 seconds or less.

I think a definition of Viral Marketing is in order here, because I hear this term bandied about like it is something easy to create and control. Viral Marketing is really just a method to get your message out to as many people as possible using word of mouth techniques. The actual message can be in many formats from an email, a video, an audio file, a photo etc. The idea is getting people who already know you and have your message to spread it to people they know and on it goes. You, the message developer, really don’t have control over how much it gets spread, where it spreads or even if it spreads. The only thing you do have control over is developing a message worth spreading. Something relevant, useful and/or engaging. Play to your audience’s emotions.

A film trailer in and of itself is not viral marketing. A really weird, funny and/or engaging piece (said email, video, photo) that causes a reaction and makes people want to spread it around to their friends and giving them the tools to do so easily, that is viral marketing. Just loading up a video on YouTube and hoping people will see it and spread it does not mean you are carrying out a viral marketing campaign. Trying to make your message spread by spamming millions of strangers with unwanted email; that is not viral marketing and it is illegal and totally ineffective.

So how do you carry out a viral marketing campaign? First, you develop that unique and engaging content. Nobody wants useless crap, they want something that entertains them or that’s going to benefit them (not you!) in some way, like giving a freebie. People can’t resist FREE.  It will be more worthwhile to think about what people really want than to waste your time putting together material that is going to give you no return. If you’re having trouble figuring out what that is, visit online forums for ideas. See what films people are talking about and what they are sending around. What elements can you use for your campaign? The key is achieving a fine balance between spreading your marketing message without appearing like a blatant advertisement.  

Then, you utilize your already existing audience. Viral marketing will not work without an already existing audience. This can be an audience of your friends, your co workers, your fans, your cast, your crew, and any other affiliate networks you have developed.  They are already receptive to your message and on board to support your efforts. Expand out from that by engaging in conversations on Twitter, film forums or filmmaker message boards. Filmmakers like to engage with each other and champion colleagues’ projects.

Stick with your campaign for a while as it may take some time to catch on. When it does and attention starts to wane, follow it up with additional content that incorporates elements of the old message with something new. In video terms, a continuing story line would work or a behind the scenes look at making the original message. But video doesn’t have to be your only format. Games and quizzes on Facebook regularly engage the audience and encourage them to pass it along to their friends. Whatever method you choose, just make it worthy of attention and ties in to your project.

Paramount Pictures decided that it would not sneak preview their blockbuster film GI Joe  The Rise of Cobra for traditional media critics and instead embarked on a more grassroots approach to marketing the film. Box office numbers will tell how successful their marketing campaign has been. Their ROI needs to be high since they have cited a production cost of $180 million. The fact that a big studio is recognizing the value of gathering an audience from a film’s inception instead of throwing money at a large media campaign just before the film is released only serves to prove my point that forming a marketing strategy and implementing it in stages as production gets underway is the best way to go. This method would work wonders with an indie production with much less than $180 mil on the line. 

Through research, Paramount identified their target audience as being blue collar workers in small markets, especially those from a military background. Paramount Vice Chairman Rob Moore said “Our starting point for this movie is not Hollywood and Manhattan but rather middle America. The group of people we think are going to respond to the movie  are not normally the first priority, but we’re making them a priority.” The film’s U.S. premiere was held at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland instead of in a Hollywood theater. Hundreds of soldiers and their families joined director Stephen Sommers, stars Channing Tatum, Sienna Miller and Marlon Wayans on the red carpet.

Paramount reached out to GI Joe fan community leaders to garner their support early in the project. They attended fan conventions and asked what the communities would like to see in the film. Unfortunately, they did not carry through with the communication once production was underway, leaving the fans to mistrust the final outcome. I think they blew their chance to have free PR on those sites and I would not recommend indie films to follow their actions. Keep the fans engaged at every step in the process, let them feel included and they will support you through to the end.

Paramount also used some unconventional venues to advertise the film such as running trailers at  Kid Rock/Lynyrd Skynyrd concerts early in the summer, running a 90 second spot during the Country Music Television Awards and advertising in regional and national military newspapers and magazines. Clearly, they knew who their audience was and where to find them. Only days before the US release did they expand to TV, radio and newspaper ads. The weekend’s box office will tell if they are on target for the $40 million opening they predicted, but I think we are seeing the future of film marketing for big studios as well as independent films.

PS. Box office results hit on Monday with Paramount raking in over $56 million, well above their $40 million target. Seems like this grassroots approach has paid off for them.

Whoa, what a quote! I came across this on the Raindance site from Elliot Grove, founder of the UK Raindance Film Festival and  instructor of the Lo-to-No Budget Filmmaking Course. Elliot’s site is chock full of useful information on the film industry, film festivals, and film courses. You can check it out here.

This particular article is on Hollywood’s 4 Biggest Lies. The first lie is that filmmaking is an art. Making art usually doesn’t involve paying for a lot of supplies and tools, finding additional personnel to help produce it and making a profit from it. An artist largely makes his work for the joy of making it, giving it away for others to enjoy and/or displaying it without regard for pleasing the tastes of other people.  To be a successful filmmaker, one must have regard for the tastes of others. The goal is to have the film seen and ideally for the audience to pay to see it. Successful filmmaking involves raising money, negotiating and generating revenue. Does this sound like art? Sounds like business to me.

The second lie is the filmmaking industry is about making films. The industry often spends more on marketing a film than on making one. The costs associated with marketing are of more concern to a distributor than the cost of making the film. Why? The film industry is a marketing machine that creates perceived values. Making a film has no value to an audience. Anyone with a camera can make a film. Blank DVD’s are sold every day in the office supply store. Audiences pay to see a movie that is packaged as an experience, the experience has value. Packaging a film experience has a large cost. It is commonly called P&A (prints and advertising) and without P&A, audiences would never go to the cinema. They would watch free TV at home, play video games or read a book. The marketing costs of attracting an audience are enormous but they have to be for the return that is needed to pay the cinema owner, repay the P&A investment, provide revenue for the distributor and give the filmmaker and his investors a return. We are mainly talking about theatrical here, but P&A costs extend to DVD releases too. Basically, without marketing costs, a film will never be seen, so what is the point of making it? Hence the title, “the film industry is a film marketing industry, not a filmmaking industry.”

The third lie is what the budget of a film is. No filmmaker, Hollywood or otherwise, will ever tell you the true budget of a film. The largest costs of  Hollywood film productions are star talent and promotion. Never put your trust in the budget numbers that are given for producing a film.

The fourth lie is the film industry makes filmmakers deals. This lie largely pertains to the beliefs of an indie filmmaker. The problem with all filmmakers who want to make a film is they think they can make a deal with a studio or distributor to get the money to make one. Elliot contends that this will never happen, this is putting the horse before the cart. In order to get money from a studio or a group of investors to make a $20 million film, you must have already made a $2 million film that made money. To get money to make a $2 million film, you must have already make a $200K film that made money and so on. So in order to get money to make a film, you have to have already made a film that made money. Make a film and, if that film makes money…then you’ll make a deal!