Fans, Friends & Followers - Scott Kirsner's new book and Robert Greenwald interview

Veteran tech media journalist and Cinematech blogger, Scott Kirsner has brought a new book to market about building audiences.  Fans, Friends, and Followers embraces IndieGoGo's DIWO (Do-It-With-Others) model across industries.  Find a 35 page preview here.

To support the book, Scott shared with IndieGoGo a few extra nuggets of insight including an exclusive audio interview with Robert Greenwald and some audience building case studies and tactics:

• What are two or three case studies you would like to highlight from the book?

Well, Robert Greenwald was really one of the pioneers of trying to use his fan base for funding, with "Iraq for Sale." I spoke to him for the book about how he's using individual donations now, along with bigger corporate contributions. He's also doing a lot of work with shorter Internet videos, which may eventually develop into full-length documentaries. He posts them on YouTube. He had a really great quote about video on the Internet:  "The audience votes with their ‘forward’ button. If they see a video that they think has something to say, they forward it. All the money in the world and all the king’s horses can’t get them to do that."

And I also feature Timo Vuorensola in the book, who has done some really great stuff with collaborative, or "crowd-sourced" sci-fi filmmaking. He has found people to score his movies, or contribute visual effects shots, over the Web, and even did some online fund-raising for his next project, "Iron Sky." He says in the book:  "Those who will survive all of these big changes in the filmmaking industry are those who know how to activate the community – in production, in distribution, in PR, in everything."

• What are three best practices/tactics to build audiences that you would like to share with the reader?

1. Give people a way to participate. A fan base is much more engaged if you don't just treat them as "consumers" of your "product." IndieGoGo, obviously, is a great platform for this.

2. As you're making the movie, think about places where your target audience congregates online. Those may be blogs, Facebook groups, online forums. Build relationships with the people who run or manage those communities, so that they can help you spread the word when you have a finished film -- or need some help along the way. You don't have to build your own audience from scratch.

3. Build a fan database, and ideally collect info about where people live. One of the most important assets for filmmakers is a list of fan e-mail addresses... and some information about where people live, so that you can get in touch when you're playing film festivals, speaking in their area, or screening your film. In the book, I talk about some of the good tools for doing this -- and I've put most of that material up on a wiki that's free and that anyone can add to, at http://powertools.wikispaces.com