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 But the writing was on the wall: you’re learning stuff that was out of date yesterday.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

As previously stated, many distributors will have marketing procedures in place to help sell your film when it is ready for distribution. The true use of a social networking strategy comes long before your film is ready for distribution.

A social networking strategy will take many months to a year to implement and it will be an ongoing effort. This effort starts with you and your team first. You will determine whom you are trying to attract into your community and what you have to offer them of interest. It is NOT all about your film, in fact very little direct mention of your film is best. Follow the 80/20 rule, 80% of your assets are about the interests of your audience, 20% of your assets are telling them about the film. You will build your engagement pages and populate them with interesting and valuable content. You will not be asking your supporters for ANYTHING, merely building a solid base of supportive fans who will be there when you are ready for distribution.

You should never do anything that will make them feel that you have formed the community in order to use it for your own purposes. Companies and filmmakers who do this stand to ruin the very thing they have spent so much time developing; a genuine and authentic community that is very loyal and connected to you and your film. That kind of loyalty is extremely difficult to accomplish with advertising and it is really the ultimate goal of all brands.

Plant your marketing and distribution seeds at pre-production / production stage. Think about your audience in advance of making your film and think about your title carefully from a marketing point of view too. Do a little research to see if the title has been used recently and might cause confusion with another film currently in the market.

Buy up all related and possibly desired urls and start on the site, draw in traffic and collect names and contact info.  Make sure your set photography is top-notch from a marketing and publicity point-of-view. Start building community around your brand as a filmmaker and the film itself, and possibly even sharing parts of the content with your future audience.

TFC has a marketing services menu that includes options for access to a DIY Marketing Toolkit to guide microbudget filmmakers in their own marketing initiatives.

I have written two articles for next month’s issue of Microfilmmaker Magazine that will go live on Sunday August 1, but I am so excited for you to see them, I will give you a sneak preview here.

About a month ago, Randy Finch made a post entry on Ted Hope’s fabulous Truly Free Film site explaining a MFA track he teaches at the University of Central Florida called Entrepreneurial Digital Cinema. For some reason, this post turned into something controversial. You should read that post and the comments and then read my article. I decided to follow up on what Randy and crew are doing down there in Florida and a story excerpt is here:

“We wanted a program that did not stress the goal of blockbuster in the first three months. Rather, the filmmaker would take a longer view for a ROI and would develop low cost works that could withstand such a strategy.  Individual filmmakers would have the chance to be more personal with their work while at the same time better equipped to meet market changes and make these changes work for them. One faculty member saw us as creating ‘pirate ships’ with tiny crews, braving the waves of change while the larger entities moved inland for protection. Our ‘pirates’ could be taught how to read the weather, the waves and better assess their risks. The collapse of the distribution models was the proverbial ‘opportunity’ we all hear about – it will redefine everything: the art; the audience; the filmmaker; the business,” said Steve Schlow.

This month I attended the ARG Fest conference in Atlanta and one of the featured speakers was Mike Monello of Campfire.  Coincidentally, Mike is a graduate of UCF film school! You may remember that Mike was part of the team around The Blair Witch Project and helped to shape the early audience engagement that made the film such a spectacular success when internet marketing was barely a term and certainly not being used to market an independent film. I sat down for a chat (and a brain pick, come on!) with him to talk about what techniques they used then that are applicable to the tools we have now (and we have many more than they did in 1999) to market indie films. This bit is about what they did after they got the initial enthusiasm for Blair started.

“The more we put up, the more the people started to devour it.  It was a combination of seeing pieces of footage that were really intense, with a history that had massive holes in it because we didn’t put the whole thing up,  and it gave a space for people to imagine what they wanted and tell each other stories. The mythology was based on stories that were around, urban legend. I don’t want to say they were historically accurate because none of it was factual information, but it all had resonance with people. It gave people a reason to talk about their own local witch legends and their own scary camping experiences and it just all ballooned from there.”

“We were conscious of the fact that we needed to keep everyone engaged until we had the film available to see.  So, we would read the forums of what the fans were saying and looked at the topics they discussed and we’d think ‘that’s interesting, they are curious about this thing in particular’ and we would look at the information we hadn’t released yet and release what spoke to that curiosity. If we had holes in the information people wanted to know, we would fill those in.”

To read both articles in their entirety, visit www.microfilmmaker.com

It is no longer enough to just make a film, you have to create community and anticipation for your film as well. And social media and viral outreach takes a long time to reach critical mass, so build your social media presence into your production schedule.

Just this week a filmmaker asked us…”I’m in post-production, should I wait for a distributor or start thinking about marketing now?”  The answer? — do not wait for anyone! By the time you exhibit your film at a film festival you should already have built a community so that you can make the most of your public exhibition and be best positioned to distribute your film effectively and as directly as possible…  And it also so happens that distributors these days are looking at your number of facebook friends and your twitter followers to help them make acquisition decisions….as it helps them gauge interest in your film.

But even more pointedly, one’s ability to get onto Cable VOD will be impacted by perception of marketing and audience interest and that’s still the lions share of revenue stream in digital and very competitive, and for when your film is available on DVD and digitally, you’ll have a community to distributed to.    Think of your film as a cross-platform story, and allow your community to access it from whatever medium they choose…that way when the film is finally finished they’ll be primed to see it. So don’t procrastinate….start letting people know about your film NOW.

I am so excited to see that the crew position my friend Jon Reiss coined in his book Think Outside the Box Office is being embraced by people all over the globe. There seems to be a lot of interest in this kind of work that is mostly forgotten about or avoided by the average indie filmmaker in the hopes that a distributor will come, give them a big check and take that baby off their hands. I was always a huge champion of the position when I was given Jon’s book as a draft copy and I am glad to see that he is now inspiring so many people to take up this work. But I do have some concerns and advice to share.

I always saw this as a position for a person trained in marketing or sales. It isn’t enough, in fact isn’t even needed, for a person aspiring to be a PMD to be a filmmaker. This work requires a different mindset and a different set of skills and knowledge that are not acquired in film school or behind a camera. While Jon has often maintained that this is knowledge filmmakers need to have, I have always thought it would be easier to teach a trained marketing person about the business of film than it would be to train a filmmaker to be a business person. The workload of trying to be both is just too overwhelming for each endeavor to be done well. Filmmakers have asked where they can find someone to do this work and potential PMDs have asked how they can  find filmmakers to work with? Both are very warranted questions and I am going to share a few thoughts on that coming from the perspective of having done this work.

I have never claimed the title of PMD because I have yet to be involved in a production from the beginning and I am being very careful about the project I pick to work with from conception. Usually projects come to me in the middle of production or more commonly after post, so the work I would have been doing from the start has to be sped up in order to launch properly. Generally this is the work of a publicist, not a PMD. The worst is when a filmmaker comes to me after the film has failed to find an audience or a traditional distributor and now wants me to work miracles. With no money. I do not take those projects because that is unrealistic work, a fool’s errand. Take note of this PMDs! The filmmaker will not have the patience to wait until an audience is built and you will be blamed because you are working with extremely limited financial resources and they will expect sales immediately.

I also don’t think that it is possible for one PMD to take on the work of more than about 2 projects at a time and do them successfully. More than this and the time devoted is too stretched and can’t be done effectively for the amount of time and attention that has to be spent. As a producer, how many films can be produced at one time and do all things necessary to make them successful?

To say you are hanging out a shingle to solicit clients is really the wrong way to look at this job. You aren’t going for volume unless you have an agency with a staff to handle each film. Perhaps in the future there will be PMD agencies, with a staff member to handle the duties of each film project. It is going to take that kind of one on one attention to do this well. My opinion is there are already marketing companies that say they can do this, but this work shouldn’t be outsourced to a company with no connections to a film’s audience. So, they shout at them with messages instead and hope to make enough noise to get some sales. These connections cannot be bought with money, the attention is acquired through spending time with the communities where the audiences live and I don’t know any outside company that can accomplish this because they have to be embedded in the community and it doesn’t scale with a large business. A PMD is part of the filmmaking team just like all of the other crew, maybe more so as their work starts at the beginning and ends long after the tech crew and actors go home.

During a recent interview, I was asked what I thought were good skills and characteristics for a PMD. Here is what I came up with:

-Some kind of marketing and/or sales training. This would be a background in the fundamentals of marketing, advertising, public relations. One of the most important duties of a PMD is being able to draft a marketing plan and budget as well as know distribution pathways for film. Distribution can be figured out relatively easily, negotiating contracts and terms will be done with an attorney if an outside distributor is used and there are those whose work is solely devoted to distribution to help navigate this path. A certain amount of information gathering never hurt though.

-Someone with great communication skills who can speak with knowledge and purpose. By communicate, I don’t just mean someone who likes to talk. There is a lot of listening in this line of work in order to find great communities to connect with, collaborate with, mutually respect. Someone who only knows how to advertise will not make a good PMD. Someone who only knows hard sell techniques will not make a good PMD. This kind of communication is subtle, careful and respectful. Not everyone will love your project and that is ok.

-Someone familiar with online tools and how they are used best. It isn’t enough to be a prolific blogger or have thousands of personal friends on Facebook and Twitter. If one uses these tools as free advertising platforms only, they will yield very limited success. These are tools that demand a strategy behind how they are used. They may not even be useful depending on the audience for the project. They certainly won’t be the only tool to use so don’t be overly dependent on them because they are free.

-Someone with research skills. This is definitely important and strangely the job often given to the most inexperienced intern. Not only must online and offline communities be researched and evaluated, they also have to be contacted and, through the research, a determination will be made as to what motivates these groups, who is the most influential in the circle to convince so that the contact will be done in a respectful and genuine way. No one likes to be contacted out of the blue. The first instinct is trepidation about the motivation. How can communication be genuine if you haven’t done the research yourself? The key to this research is narrowing down the scope of the audience, to really get to the core of the interest in your film. Without a significant media budget, a wide audience cannot be reached and time and effort will be wasted to try. Start small, grow wider as you go. Better still, research niche groups of a special interest where there is a need for content and make that content for them. Again, if you can’t genuinely connect with that audience, do not try this method or it will fail.

Another note about research. You will be researching to find interesting topics to provide for your audience. As I said, your communication cannot only be about your project. It gets boring to hear about you, you, you all the time. You will also need to be a resource for your film’s community. This means constant surveillance on topics of interest, the latest news stories appropriate to both the audience and the film, interesting video content that is not footage of the film. You will populate your site and networking pages with this information and it has to be relevant.

-Someone who can write. There is a ton of writing in this work. Blog posts, feature articles, web content, press releases, synopsis, biographies, social networking content, email blasts, advertising copy. A PMD must be a great writer and have mastery of the basics of grammar and spelling.

-Someone with technical skills like web or widget design is a bonus but that mentality very rarely mixes with the other attributes and it is too easy to find people who are experts at just this. Use them, don’t try to learn these skills too. You’ll have plenty to do on the project.

First and foremost think of yourself as the ambassador of the film. You will be providing the voice the audience hears for the project, figuratively as it will be most likely be online but perhaps it will be off as well at events, meetups, screenings, festivals etc. If a project is presented to you, really evaluate the fit. If you can’t stand zombie films, for example, you will not be effective in presenting that film. Pass and find a more suitable project. This goes for filmmakers as well. Look at the personal interests of the PMD you are considering because they are going to represent the voice of the film in all the work to be done. If they have no discernible interest in your topic, if they aren’t a member of any target audience groups for the film or able to connect with them on some level, find someone who is.

Notice I didn’t say they should have lots of experience. In looking through these skills and attributes, this isn’t a role many people have worked in previously. I can’t think of many publicists, distribution execs, or sales agents that can claim that they were ambassadors for one film, solely. They have worked on some aspect, usually after the film was finished but they didn’t do the end to end job of marketing a film by themselves. Not to worry, most of all this job is about passion, connection building and the ability to learn new things. Most filmmakers who come to me are new too and I don’t judge them because of their inexperience, but if I can’t connect with the project or I see the outcome of the film and decide it won’t be successful no matter how much marketing is done, I will pass.

Most of all a PMD is NOT a consultant. A consultant only provides advice and tells someone else what to do. A PMD actually does the work. I hope to connect with all of you at some point to see what you are working on and if ever you need someone to talk to, I am here.

Now that I have been back for almost a week from the Cote d’Azur, I have been meaning to relate my experience from my first ever Cannes.

First, I horrified my roommates by continually telling them I had no particular agenda. This was absolutely true. I did not set up tons of meetings ahead of time, I wasn’t there to buy or sell a film or to watch any in particular (and I didn’t see any either). What was my purpose there then?

One, I was in the area anyway having participated in two TOTBO marketing and distribution workshops in Europe just prior. Two, if you are in the industry you must be where the industry congregates. In mid May, that is Cannes. Three, the Cannes market is immensely educational. Think your film is something special? Something never seen before? Will absolutely set the world on fire, people will clamor to see its genius simply because it is so amazing? Yeah, so do the thousands (THOUSANDS!!)  of other films being touted at the market and you have to see that to believe it. For all of those who proclaim if you create an amazing story, people will simply discover its genius, they are the most in need of a visit to a film market.

This education seems easier to grasp at Cannes than at AFM (haven’t been to EFM, so can’t comment) because it is much more trade show in spirit. The market floor is open with stands and it is easy to navigate the aisles. AFM is housed in hotel suites and less open to perusal by the non buying filmmaker. Everywhere you look is key art of every genre of film. Some with “stars,” lots with blood and zombies, family friendly animals and fantastical animation. Some with strong imagery but most with the utterly forgettable. Lots of people in suits, some even having meetings. I did not even go to the hotels along the Croisette where the more recognizable sales agencies and distributors house their offices. I had seen enough to know that if your film didn’t have its audience identified and gathered before it reached the Marche floor, you were in for immense competition for attention from buyers.

I did attend many discussions in the UK Film Center Pavilion on succeeding in festivals, the future of microbudget filmmaking (I tweeted that one, see #micromovies), success in short films. All free and very intimate. If nothing else, visit Cannes just to hang out in the International Village pavilions to meet the speakers, heads of film funds and film commissions to talk about co production opportunities. There was also lots of talk about the need for better marketing and distribution opportunities for independent film. You know I was all over that discussion, but our European counterparts do seem a few years behind in their thinking about this issue. Maybe it is all of that film fund money clouding their entrepreneurial judgement. From the workshops we organized and meeting some of the filmmakers on the ground, this issue is one that is slowly gaining prominence as the digital revolution spreads to Europe. VOD, mobile and digital platforms are not as developed as in the USA, and I consider ours in infancy. Not to mention crowdfunding. That has to be the next big subject for discussion in Europe.

I attended an informal brunch in the lovely hills above the Croisette to discuss what shape the digital revolution will take in Europe. Those in attendance ranged from old school film commissions intent on keeping everything as status quo as possible to forward thinkers who could imagine a world free of territories and windows for content. The discussions we had there will continue online and I look forward to participating in them even though I am not from Europe so my perspective is less government support dependent.

One of the highlights was watching the antics of filmmaker Chris Jones as he worked the place to chronicle every part of his Cannes journey. The yacht blag was my favorite story! He did his best to make sure that his readers, and now viewers of his LiveStream show, could see exactly what goes on at one of the world’s most glamorous events. Chris is a filmmaker after my own heart as he shares all he knows with other filmmakers and ultimately he is building up a fan base for all of his future work. A role model for sure to those aspiring to build a sustainable career in independent film.

So, as Chris would ask, what are my top 3 takeaways from Cannes? 1)Go, especially before you make a film. It is very valuable to realize that what you are asking to do when you pursue filmmaking is participate in a business. A very competitive and conniving business. That point is made crystal clear when you enter the Marche floor. 2)Soak up as much knowledge as you can from this or any major film event. Try to go without preconceived notions of how things work. At the moment, everything is in flux, no matter what anyone is trying to tell you. Everyone from the most stalwart studio to the newest venture is trying to figure out the future. Your ideas are just as valid as anyone else’s and you have every right to choose and pursue your own path to success. 3)Cannes is very inspirational. The films that play in the festival are considered among the top in the world, no matter what their gross ends up being. It is exciting to feel a part of this industry and I am not sure you can feel that any better than at Cannes. I am not talking about the fame and the glitz. The true artistry, the creativity, the meeting of the minds. All of this really crystallized for me why I would be drawn to such a bizarre profession, visual storytelling. There is so much energy and hopefulness in being around filmmakers from around the world that it sends you home with the feeling that you aren’t alone in your struggles and that your game has to come up so much more to compete.

See you next year on the Croisette!