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Filmmaking resources for indie filmmakers, including, screenwriting, financing, producing and film distribution

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What is Your Filmmaking Niche?

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In movie marketing, there is this phrase I really like: “Marketing to everybody is marketing to nobody and niches will make you riches.” And while not every movie is guaranteed success, it is much easier to find your audience when you choose a filmmaking niche.

What is a filmmaking niche? It’s making a movie for a small slice of a larger audience. For example, let’s say you were making a horror movie. Horror is a very broad genre. But a subset of the horror genre is zombie movies. So in this example, making a zombie movie for a zombie loving audience would be your filmmaking niche.

So this is where you start. Will you make a horror movie, romantic comedy, action movie or a girl with a horse movie? (By the way, a girl with a horse movie really does well internationally.)

filmmaking niche

What is Your Filmmaking Niche?

Knowing your filmmaking niche is important because in order to make non-discriminatory distribution channels, such as iTunes and Amazon profitable – It is required that YOU market your movie on the internet. This means that you must work on sourcing your target audience and then drive those folks to your point of sale.

Having spent the last few years working in distribution, I can tell you that most filmmakers screw this up. They make a movie for everybody. And it is frankly too expensive to market to everybody! So before you even think about making your movie, answer these filmmaking questions:

  1. Who Is Your Target Audience?
  2. How Large Is Your Target Audience?
  3. How Will You Reach Your Audience?
  4. What Is Your Marketing Strategy?
  5. How Many VOD Sales To Break Even?

Since both iTunes and Amazon are internet, transactional marketplaces, it makes sense that most of your sales will come via the internet. And as a result, you must create a web presence that speaks to your audience. In other words, you need to make sure the right people know your movie exists.

Who are the right people? People who love your type of movie.

Your Movie Website

When it comes to designing a movie website, most filmmakers never think about their filmmaking niche. They know they need a website for their movies. The problem is, most filmmakers put way too much crap on their site. And none of it speaks to their audience.

Goals

It’s essential to have goals for your movie website. When people come to your website, what action do you want your visitors to take? Do you want them to Tweet about the site? Join you on Facebook? Get into your audience list? Or buy your movie?

Distractions

Once you know your website goals, you need to determine if your website architecture and design is inline with your goals. To do this, install Google Analytics and monitor your traffic. If you find people are getting lost in a bunch of silly pages, remove those pages. Keep what matters.

If you like these tips, you’ll love the Independent Producer’s Guide To Digitial Distribution

How To Make A Living As a Filmmaker

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Go to any filmmaking event and you’ll hear filmmakers crying about how it’s no longer possible to make a living as a filmmaker. And while we can all agree that the paradigm has shifted from the physical to the digital, I personally to know many filmmakers who are doing great.

If you want to make a living as a filmmaker, you’re in luck. There has never been a better time to get into the movie business. Inexpensive production technology, coupled with nondiscriminatory film distribution services have leveled the field.  All you need is a camera, editing software and the Internet.

Make A Living As a Filmmaker

How To Make A Living As a Filmmaker

While the prospect of creating your own mini-movie studio from anywhere is exciting, this shift does create new challenges. We are now dealing with an oversupply of product competing for viewers. This begs the following questions:

  1. Can you still make a living as filmmaker?
  2. Can your indie film budget cover allow you pay people?
  3. How many VOD sales will it take to justify the budget?
  4. How will you get these sales?
  5. And if the numbers don’t work, then what?

Here’s the good news. What I’m describing are the same challenges any startup entrepreneur has to overcome. This means we can utilize proven business tactics to increase the likelihood of filmmaking success. I put together a modern moviemaking manifesto to expand on these ideas:

You might also benefit from listening to my filmmaking podcast. I share thoughts on how we can make independent filmmaking profitable. I also share thoughts on VOD (video on demand) distribution – and how modern sales channels finally gives every filmmaker to reach the masses.

My goal is to help you make a living as a filmmaker. To this end, it makes sense if you compare filmmaking to any small business. If you’d like more info, download my filmmaker checklist.

 

Making a Movie

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Image via Wikipedia

The other night, I did a film school talk at the UCLA film school about how to make, market and sell your movie without the middle-man.

And while most of the UCLA film students in attendance agreed that my way of making a movie may not be fully inline with the studio ideal – many of these filmmakers agreed that getting a movie made is better than merely just talking about making a movie.

Thanks to familiarity with YouTube as well as access to affordable production equipment, many film school students, as well as modern filmmakers are embracing accessible, non-discriminatory distribution channels without hesitation or excuses.

And this experience is changing the ways in which filmmakers think about making a movie.

While it’s still true that making a movie can be a pain in the butt, the barriers of industry entry are down.

As a result, filmmakers are now empowered to go out and make their movie. And just in case you are not attending film school, I’ll share the BIG question you need to ask yourself as a filmmaker:

“Given the resources that you have now, what is the movie that you can make this year?”

Check out these filmmaking tools.