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

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The Minimalist Guide to Internet Marketing For Filmmakers

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If you want success in the film industry, one key area to study is internet marketing for filmmakers. This is because the DVD market is dead, replaced by smart television apps in an ever-growing digital marketplace. Direct to consumer marketing is the norm. You must treat your independent film business just like any other small business.

Your product is your film and YOU must figure out how to sell enough units of your product so you can make a profit. And in order to sell your product, you must find a customer and convince them that your film is worth more than their money. Obvious right?

There are many complicated tools dedicated to helping you find new customers. And if you try to learn all of them, your head will spin. So lets keep this simple. Your film marketing plan will revolve around HOW you’re going to recoup the film investment and exit the deal.

internet marketing for filmmakers

Learn Internet Marketing For Filmmakers

One major place to find customers is the internet. But when it comes to marketing, most filmmakers have no idea how to get started. If that describes you, it’s not your fault! Filmmakers are taught to concentrate solely on making film, without considering how to sell it.

Think about it. Filmmakers traditionally depend on some sort of middle-man distributor to come in deus ex machina style to provide a big fat minim guarantee. But that was the old days…

Now, as a result of DSLR technology, you have a whole world of filmmakers flooding the market with awesomely good-looking backyard indies.  It’s an example of supply and demand. There are too many movies! And there are too few traditional deals.

Sadly most filmmakers have no idea how to get their movies seen and selling. As a result, the entire world of indie filmmaking is belly-up. So the only way you can compete and succeed is to find creative ways to produce movies inexpensively and spend tremendous effort (and little money) identifying places where your audience congregate online.

Great… What’s The Plan?

If you’re still working to raise money, depending on your budget (in addition to the tax incentives and soft-money) you’ll need a strategy for both domestic sales and then foreign sales. In both instances working a reputable distributor and/or sales agent NOW can help you calculate projections.

Digital TVOD marketplaces (like iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, Fandango and others) operate on a B2C (or direct to consumer) model. This means that utilizing comparables during the TVOD window may not be reliable. So it behooves you to emphasize your promotional strategies and then make uber conservative assumptions (in ways akin to how one might manage a direct marketing campaign.)

One key performance metric would be your conversion rate. Out of the gazillion people who see your ads, what percentage converts? And what is the profit margin of each conversion? I wrote this article on VOD sales projections that may help.

Hire Name Talent (Seriously.)

The other thing that helps is obviously having a strong NAME cast. Casting a star in your film is one way to pay a marketing expense upfront. And if those performers are also good in social media, and willing to promote, this can also help drive consumers to the buy button.

But even if you don’t have a major star, you still have an obligation to identify an audience for your film. If you take time to do this, and figure out the top 100 sites where your audience congregates online, you’ll be in better shape than the filmmakers who ignore this, period.

  1. Identify 100 top sites where your audience congregates online.
  2. Make a list of these sites and site owners in a CRM like Pipedrive.
  3. Research sties for engagement stats. Visitors? Members? Subscribers?
  4. Compile this data so you can create conservative conversion estimates.
  5. Reach out to site owners and inquire about promotional opportunities.

Out of all of this, remember that people are people. Your goal is to find ways to promote your work so you can bring value into each person’s life. And if you like this sort of stuff, make sure you check out The Indie Producer’s Guide to Digital Distribution.

When Trailers Lie: A Friendly Reminder to (True) Indie Filmmakers

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For years I’ve seen a disturbing trend in the true indie film community that hasn’t much abated—true of course meaning that you made it with no movie stars and you funded the majority of it yourself.

You don’t go out and see movies like London Has Fallen for the depth, right? I hope not. You see an indie film, the kind of film they could only shoot on the weekends because the cast and crew had day jobs during the week.

Yet, if I had a quarter for every “true” indie trailer I’ve watched that forced into it a stirring song and some wild-haired millennial meandering under a dusty bridge or through a sprawling wheat field, subsequently inspiring me to plunk down ten bucks and schlep to an art house to see it, only to within a half hour realize that the trailer was the only part of the project that made me feel anything even remotely tingly… I’d be able to buy my Hell’s Kitchen apartment.

indie_film

When Trailers Lie: A Friendly Reminder to (True) Indie Filmmakers

Even in the indie world, cutting a dishonest trailer is like putting someone else’s picture on your Ok Cupid profile—what’s the point, if you’re gonna have to eventually meet in person?

Yes, art is subjective, and the indie film that didn’t move me could have moved the next person. But let’s be honest here—a moving film is a moving film is a moving film.

There are certainly some good things happening for the underdog these days. The first movie shot entirely on an iPhone got into Sundance. And Indie Maverick Mark Duplass is hitting the trail mentoring young filmmakers about making meaningful films for the price of a pair of designer jeans. But the powers of pretension still control the business from top to bottom, and that will never change.

Aside from the fact that there’s really no such thing as a true independent film festival anymore, at least one considered prominent, these big-festival judges and the general industry powers that be are still blindly wooed more by an indie film that looks just how it’s supposed to look.

They say they want indies to be fresh and different, yet they end up awarding the ones that are exactly the same as every other one before it—ones that had little more going for them than a big name actor and a cinematographer who knew what they were doing.

Most earnest, blue-collar filmmakers who are out there putting their heart and soul into their work, who don’t have the cash, equipment or big industry contacts to put them in the national conversation, aren’t invited to this pretension party thrown by snoots who decide what audiences are moved by. And the snoots, by the way, have no idea they’re even snoots, because they’re so busy being snooty.

As the late great philosopher Alan Watts once said, “the godhead is never an object of its own knowledge.” His point? A knife can’t cut itself. Fire can’t burn itself. So a #snoot can’t ever know they’re a #snoot.

At least once a year a true indie deserving of its praise gets widespread attention, and that’s always a huge win for #TeamDuplass and #TeamTrueIndie. Despite cable and new media dominating the water cooler talk these days, there are still true indie filmmakers out there fighting the good fight and doing it because they love it. This is why I’m even in this insane business, not to make money, because Lord knows I’m not living in a house in the Hamptons—but to tell stories that introduce to the world new and provocative ways of thinking and being.

Film Courage’s David Branin and I shot the feature Goodbye Promise for $10,000 ($500 to shoot it and $9500 for everything else) and by our own admission the production quality was sub par. We had no money. Yet the LA Times and a few other prominent indie publications got a hold of it and lauded it for its heart. And that’s what won out in the end. Not the fact that it looked like it was shot for $75 and a bowl of chili, but that it had a heart.

If you have no money and no access to quality equipment, and you don’t have Scott Rudin on speed dial and that deters you from making a film, then get out of the business and make room for someone else. Mark Duplass would give you the same advice.

Taking it further than Mr. Duplass has taken it… Your job is to not only go out and tell a story with what little money you have, but to do it because you have a script with genuine heart and vision. Because you have a director and a DP and actors who see that and agree to work for little or no money… Because you know to spend every last penny you have on good production audio and a good editor… And because you’re willing to hit social media hard and effectively after it’s shot.

If all this takes place you will make a film that has lasting impact, you will find your audience, and I’ll be the first one in line to see it.

But I can’t end this piece on boring indie film talk. True success is bigger than that, bigger than all of us. The older I get, the more I view success not as how many scripts one has optioned or how many films one has sold to studios, but as nothing more than the ability to wake up every morning, or at least the majority of mornings, with a genuine smile and a genuine desire to help and inspire others through your work. If that is your primary goal, before anything else, then you will tell stories that people will listen to.

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Gregor Collins is an actor, writer and producer working in theatre, film, and non-fiction TV. He produced and starred in the indie films Night Before the Wedding and Goodbye Promise, his writing has been featured in The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Huffington Post, Publishers Weekly, Cinema Editor Magazine, and his stageplays have been performed in and around New York. His memoir The Accidental Caregiver: How I Met, Loved, and Lost Legendary Holocaust Refugee Maria Altmann was adapted into a stageplay in New York in 2015.

Location Sound Crew

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Last time I talked a little on how to get better sound for your indie film, and the reality of the situation is, either you learn to do it by yourself or hire a professional to capture the sound for you. It is always prudent that ‘when in doubt hire it out.’

Location Sound Crew

It starts with pre-production planning. This planning stage sets the wheels in motion, it establishes time line, job assignments, budget requirements of every aspect of the production and every major player in the production must attend.

The location sound mixer is the number one person as far as sound goes. He/she gets the what, where and when of the shoot and they decide on who and how of putting the audio in the can. They decide the need to bring a boom op and or a utility person (read cable pager) or just run and gun by themselves.

They capture the dialogue of the film and any ambient sounds in the area of the location shoot,  They will hold the up the shoot if unwanted noises are obvious (such as air traffic, trains, heavy traffic, etc.) and,  they do some scouting to find good alternate sites that might help. This is a good time for the location sound mixer to get some ambient tones of all of the locations to help later in the post world and as possible ammunition for the change of location argument.

The sound crew starts their day by assuring themselves that every piece of hardware they have works flawlessly.  They post a header and test tone at the start of every days work. The crew takes meticulous notes on every track they record denoting the SMPTE time code at the beginning of each take and the track number as indicated by the recording device. After each take they assign a grade to the tracks so the editor can find the best audio to use in the film.

On the last film I worked on we recorded two tracks of the same dialog from the same microphone at different recording levels to insure we were acquiring the best possible sound. Sometimes the first half of track ‘A’ was great but the tail really sucked, but, the head of track ‘B’ was weak and the tail was great. In post we ‘comped’ the tracks together so the whole line was great. If what I just said flew over your head like an F-15 on afterburners then maybe you should hire a professional sound team.

All of the preparation and attention to detail insures great recordings and less work for the post production team, less ADR, and a great sounding film. In case you’re interested the current budget requirements for a location sound mixer is approximately $300- $500/day and the budget for a boom operator is approximately $150-$250/day.

You might think this is expensive unless you were to buy the field mixer , recorder, microphone, boom all of the cables, batteries, headphones and chargers required to do a day’s worth of recording, learn to connect it all together and operate it correctly, all while trying to film, direct, light and produce the film. Do the words ’Good Luck’ come to mind.

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Tony Tartaglia hold a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree awarded from the International Academy of Design and Technology in Tampa, Florida and owns his own mixing and editing studio. Tony can be reached for consultations and audio production through his website at tony@soniqualitycorp.com.

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What Screenwriters Can Learn From The Inbetweeners

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In Britain all the film talk is about a low-budget film that’s been breaking UK box-office records. I think it offers some lessons on how to make a successful indie film.

It’s “The Inbetweeners,” featuring characters from the three-season TV show of the same name. That’s three of the UK version of seasons: a total of 18 episodes. The show was successful, but at the end of the 18 the creators and cast felt they couldn’t go on without repeating themselves. (Yes, they do things differently over here…). There’s a US version in production for MTV.

The show and the film feature four young guys: one nerd, one likeable but not very bright guy, one bullshitter who claims great familiarity with the female of the species but is a virgin, and one relatively normal guy with a major crush on a girl who is a social level or two above him.

Lesson One: It helps if you have a variety of characters so your audience can identify with at least one—or see their friends reflected in them. Of course it works best if your group is realistic, not thrown together for audience appeal. Adolescent boys do hang out in little cliques, although maybe typically they’re not quite as mixed as this one.

The stories are all based on highly-embarrassing adolescent moments, many of them gross (vomiting, nudity, farting, etc.). The film takes the boys off to a cheap holiday in the sunshine to get very drunk and try to score with girls there.

Lesson Two: As with the characters, plots in which the audience can find their own experience reflected are appealing. The Inbetweeners reminds us of our own horrible teen, with the advantage that probably ours were never as embarrassing as the ones we see here

The movie has even more gross moments than the series, and that has made it a huge hit with the teen audience.

Lesson Three: Comic or dramatic set-pieces are great because they feed word of mouth. The more that people are likely to say, “You have to see the scene in which–”,the better.

Naturally the film benefitted hugely from already having a loyal audience via the TV series. Shortly before the film was released, there also was a TV special of a road trip the actors took for charity, in which they had to visit as many places with rude names as possible in a limited amount of time. They travelled in the rust-bucket Fiat Cinquecento featured in the series and although they used their real names they behaved pretty much in tune with their characters (fart jokes, etc.).

Lesson Four: The more you can pre-build an audience, the better. Of course having a successful TV series is a huge task in itself, but it’s also possible to create a web series, maybe some events that tie in to a charity, and so forth, to build up awareness.

If you’re not easily offended, have a look at the series and/or the film. You can buy the series DVD or watch it on YouTube. In my opinion, they both demonstrate lesson five:

Lesson Five: It really helps if the product is good.

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Jurgen Wolff has written more than 100 episodes of TV, several TV movies, the feature film, “The Real Howard Spitz” starring Kelsey Grammer, and has been a script doctor on films starring Eddie Murphy, Kim Catrall, Michael Caine, Walter Matthau and others. His plays have been produced in New York, London, Berlin, and Los Angeles. He is the author of 9 books including “Your Writing Coach” and “Creativity Now.” If you would like to find out more about “The Seven Things That Are Stopping You From Writing And How To Overcome Them,” check out Jurgen’s screenwriting website: www.ScreenWritingSuccess.com

Keven Smith talks Movie Distribution

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Kevin Smith at the 2008 Toronto International ...
Image via Wikipedia

I love Kevin Smith’s attitude towards modern movie distribution. If you’re like most independent filmmakers, what Kevin was able to accomplish from his days of Clerks has been amazing. Back then, he not only dreamed the Sundance Dream, but he realized the dream.

The Sundance dream is the idea that you will make your movie, get into Sundance, sell your movie and live happily ever after. As I have been telling you all along, the demise of DVD sales channels, replaced by ever evolving VOD marketplaces are impacting Filmmakers everywhere.

These days, if you are going to make movies and profit, you must now view your independent movie business in ways akin to how any business owner handles their business. You must source and grow your own audience list.

In the following video Kevin Smith shares his perspective on modern movie distribution and how the brave new world is impacting indie filmmakers.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90pcHCF2h44

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