How to Build a Sizable Audience without a Multi-Million-Dollar Marketing Budget?

That's one of the central questions digital media writer/blogger/journalist Scott Kirsner focuses on in his book Fans, Friends and Followers: Building an Audience and a Creative Career in the Digital Age, published earlier this year. It's also one of the themes he'll be exploring next Tuesday at a special "Fans, Friends & Followers workshop in San Francisco, at the Bay Area Video Coalition.  

We're excited to have Scott provide a taste on what you might learn at his upcoming workshop below.  So check it out!  (IndieGoGo friends get a 10% discount when you register here.)

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Scott Kirsner, Guest Blogger

Essentially, I think that we've entered a new era. In the old era, your distributor worried about marketing your film and generating buzz once it was ready for release, after they'd paid you scads of money to acquire the rights. In the new era, you need to start building your audience as soon as you commit yourself to making a movie, leveraging free tools like blogs, Twitter, YouTube channels, and Facebook fan pages. Even if your film is eventually picked up by a distributor, the audience you'll have accumulated will be one of your biggest marketing assets -- people you or your distributor can inform about film festival screenings, a theatrical run, a DVD release, an iTunes debut, etc.

In the book and my workshop, I focus on a number of filmmakers who've pioneered this idea of building up audience over time, and forging alliances with people who can help them reach other adjacent audiences (like editors of influential blogs, non-profit groups with big mailing lists, and experts/academics featured in a documentary). One such filmmaker is Curt Ellis, the co-producer, co-writer, and co-star of the 2007 documentary "King Corn." Ellis and his team did a phenomenal job at two kinds of audience cultivation. First, they created a simple database of everyone they interviewed for the film. That enabled them to reconnect when "King Corn" was finished, and seek their help in spreading the word about it. Second, they also built genuine, substantive relationships with a number of influential blogs about food and agriculture, and did guest blogging for them (like I'm doing here) to help reach a really broad audience for their film.

Here's a short audio clip from my interview with Ellis. We talk about how they used databases, and also their experience giving away a 20-minute streaming version of the film on an AOL Web site. (This interview was done for the book "Fans, Friends & Followers," as well as for a set of case studies I produced for the ITVS Digital Initiative.

Just click play below, or click here to download the MP3.

Friends of IndieGoGo can receive 10 percent off the registration rate for Scott's "Fans, Friends & Followers" workshop on December 1st in San Francisco. Just use this URL to register:

http://fffworkshop.eventbrite.com/?discount=indie

Overview of IndieGoGo Resources (PDF version)

2009 IndieGoGo Overview AFCI Nov

DIWO Creativity Meets Halloween: "Going for Broke"

We love to share creative tactics IndieGoGo filmmakers are using to build their audience.  We also love to share flat out awesomeness.

Here's Dan Ast (Writer / Director of Claire, which was just featured in the latest 6Q series) taking his DIWO efforts to the next level on Halloween.  Don't be scared, be inspired!

Claire has raised over $3,500 and needs another $1,500 to reach its goal.  You can make it happen.

Want us share your creative IndieGoGo images and videos?  Post them to your project profile and let us know!

Audience is King - IndieGoGo Digital Hollywood Workshop Posted

On October 21, IndieGoGo presented a workshop on film funding and audience-building at Digital Hollywood.  I've included the Audience is King presentation below.  Take a look and let us know if you any questions.
Audience is King_IndieGoGo Workshop_Digital Hollywood_Oct 2009

Mill Valley Film Festival - How To Use Film to Drive Social Change

Elisabeth Bartlett did a great write-up on the MVFF panel: ACTIVE CINEMA: 
STRATEGIES FOR CHANGE that brought together the amazing panelists below to discuss how film could be used for social change.  Thanks, Elisabeth!

Check out Elisabeth's "Advice for Activist Filmmakers" write-up and festival pics below.

Panelists (in order of first picture):

• Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, filmmaker, A Thousand Suns, executive director, Global Oneness Project.


• Michael Lumpkin, executive director, International Documentary Association.


• Danae Ringelmann, (Moderator) Founder, IndieGoGo IndieGoGo
• Jennifer Siebel Newsom, filmmaker, Miss Representation
• John Morrison, director of CFI Education, 
film programmer. 



Advice for Activist Filmmakers (By Elisabeth Bartlett)

[Excerpt follows.  Read full article on Fest21.com]

"Many documentaries today address activist issues.  Often after seeing such movies, audiences will ask, 'What can we do?' Sunday October 18, closing day of the Mill Valley Film Festival, a panel called: Active Cinema: Strategies for Change addressed how to best inspire audiences to action.  How do we help audiences connect the dots between the experience of watching the film and doing something? How can we inspire activism?  The panelists discussed. 

'You can't just show them the film and leave,' suggested Michael Lumpkin (Executive Director of the International Documentary Association).  'You have to give them info, a website, etc.'  The audience needs something on which to grasp.

Jennifer Siebel Newsom, First Lady of San Francisco andwriter/director/producer of the upcoming documentary Miss Representation, spoke up about the elements of her film that make up what she hopes will be a film that inspires change and action.  'In our case we have tons of facts.  Then you have to have tons of emotion that people can relate to.  Then you have to take the audience on a journey.  And the last thing you have to do isinspire and empower them so that they see that they can affect change and that it's not all doom and gloom.'"

Read full article on Fest21.com.

Show Me The Money Presentation from Power to the Pixel

On October 14 and 15, IndieGoGo presented in London and Birmingham as part of Power to the Pixel.  Since then many of you have asked for the "Show Me The Money" presentation, so I have included it below in its entirety.  Please let me know if you have any feedback or questions.
PttP 2009 IndieGoGo [Compatibility Mode]
 

The Blend: Tues Nov 7 at Le Poisson Rouge. Join IndieGoGo

7P Doors & Networking
8P Presentations
9P Networking

Attendee List & Registration:  http://theblendnov3rd.eventbrite.com/

 

WHAT IS THE BLEND?
The Blend is a networking/mixer event series catering to individuals in the digital/creative field. Its goal is to strengthen the collaboration between folks in the creative field and new media community.

Each month various influencers, entrepreneurs, artists will showcase their work/applications and briefly discuss their vision followed by a q&a. The floor will then open so event goers can mingle amongst themselves.

The Blend is:
Sauvage Studio
BiancaRocksOut.
Guilherme Cunha

6Q with Dan Ast of Claire

Dan Ast is the writer/director/executive producer of Claire - a story about a high school student's life that spirals out of control as he investigates if Claire, a girl he never met, had a romantic interest in him before her death.

Claire has crowdfunded over 70% of it funding goal on IndieGoGo to-date - making Claire an indie film of the most DIWO-kind.  Read Dan's 6Q and watch the Claire trailer below.

1.  What are your goals for Claire?

Claire is the first feature for the entire crew. Along with creating what we hope is a strong film and compelling story, we also hope the project will act as a springboard for more projects in the future.

Another goal of our project was to create a beautiful movie with strong production value for as cheap as possible. Claire is (and was) a total rag tag production, working with what we had available to us when it was available. I saved up working a day job for about a year, and after a couple false starts, we were finally able to put our project into motion during the spring of 2009.  Everyone (both cast and crew) donated their time. The camera and sound equipment was loaned to us by one of our producers, David Schatanoff of D Studios productions. Much of the movie was shot on weekends for the entire summer and capped off with a ten day stretch in early August. We shot in friends houses and apartments and begged to have other locations donated.

This is going a long way to say that this project was made with very little money and a lot of hardwork and heart from the cast and crew.  We want to prove that the quality of the film is in its filmmakers, not in its budget. Ultimately, Claire has cost about 20k and was shot with the Panasonic HVX200 and we're very proud of the production quality of our project.

On a side note, I wouldn't mind spending someone else's money on the next one. Investors? Anyone? Is this thing on? *tap tap*.

2.  How are you identifying, reaching and building your audience?

The internet was our main tool in generating buzz for Claire. We utilized Facebook to send as many friends, family, and even strangers to our IndieGoGo page as possible. We've created our own webpage you can find here: http://www.claireisdead.com/, but have mostly stuck to IndieGoGo as a main avenue when directing others to a site for information on the film. We sent e-mails to everyone in our email contacts, posted constant updates on Facebook, and then begged others to do the same.

We also created short pitch videos before we began filming that highlighted aspects of the story or locations we thought were interesting, and continued this trend over the summer during production with short on-set videos usually highlighting how much we were doing with so little money and how far even the smallest donation could carry us. To save time and money, we shot these videos during location scouts or after productions meetings.

During Comic-Con 09, our producers handed out free "Claire" drawstring bags with website information and other bags of swag in an effort to send people back to the internet and discover more about us.

3.  What tactics did you use for financing? Any advice?

Financing was tricky. There was none. Having saved for a year or so, I put my entire savings toward this project (And then there was an economic depression. Yay.) We never had a set budget at the beginning of the project. We budgeted per weekend shoot based on what I saved during that work week and whatever donations we had acquired. We created perks on IndieGoGo that would make our donors apart of the project. We offered specific on screen credits to donors and the credit was dependent on how much was donated to the project. Also, for those donating a larger sum to the project, other perks such as posters, t-shirts and screenings were added.

As far as advice goes, I would say building buzz on the internet via social media is the cheapest and most effective way to get a film with no funding off the ground. Keeping the film low cost is another matter. We often found ourselves altering or consolidating the shooting locations in order to keep things cheap. "Do we need a new location for this scene? Can't they just discuss this at Jack's house?" "Hey, this school has a patch of woods behind it. We can also get some non-school scenes here" or our favorite "How about we make this interior night scene exterior day?" Things like this helped us cut costs drastically on location permissions and equipment rentals.

4.  What role does the Internet and social media play in your DIWO (Do-It-With-Others) fundraising or audience-building efforts?

As I mentioned before, Social media has been a huge help for us. I linked a Twitter account for our movie to my Facebook updates (because I almost only ever updated about the movie, anyway) in an attempt to broaden our reach even more.

Much of the online interest in Claire was started when I created a Facebook group for Claire on a whim and people just continued joining.  Interest from friends, family and even people we didn't know continued to build and we began using Facebook as a main hub to direct people to IndieGoGo.

Also during Comic-Con, our producers ran a 'Guess The Location' contest where fans could see a photo and read a short blurb about the location and based on information on the 'Locations' pitch video on our IndieGoGo page, would post the name of the location as a reply and win prizes.

5.  How do you connect your online campaigns with offline fundraising
and audience-building?

Our campaign was almost exclusively online because it's free. We just plain did not have the money to spend on advertising and fundraising in any other capacity.

6.  What is next on your radar?  And where can folks follow your efforts?

We're pushing through post as fast and steady as possible. We're hoping to get cuts of the project off to major festivals in the next month or two and seek out distribution from there. We all hope this project can grab enough attention to be a first step in what we hope will be long careers in doing more of the same.

I would like to direct a horror film next that a friend and I have had in mind for a few years and hope Claire will open a few doors in that direction.

Folks can continue to keep up with us on IndieGoGo and when our next project comes up, I'm sure they'll be able to follow us there, too.

Claire - Teaser from Dan Ast on Vimeo.