I caught up with Michael Mohan, Anthony Deptula and Stephen Hale of One Too Many Mornings, one of Sundance NEXT films in the festival.
This team did Sundance a little differently than others and harnessed the publicity of the festival to launch distribution. The night One Too Many Mornings premiered at Sundancel, fans could purchase it on their website. Watch, learn and buy this Sundance premiere today.
00:25 1. What are your goals for the film? 00:40 2. Who are your fans and how have you identified/reached out to them? 01:30 3. What tactics did you use for financing? 02:45 4. What role has the internet played in your audience-building efforts? 03:20 5. Plans for distribution? Self-distribution? 04:45 6. How can fans follow you?
After a loyal son comes home to visit his aging mother, she assigns him some chores; one of them involves a road trip to help satiate her desire for a certain special herb.
I got a chance to catch up with the masterminds behind My Mom Smokes Weed. Watch to hear the director, producer and lead actor talk about their experience making, funding, marketing and distributing this 2010 Sundance selection. Prepare for funny :)
00:00 Intros
00:30 1. What are you goals for My Mom Smokes Weed, and specifically at Sundance?
01:35 2. Who is your audience and how are you reaching out to them?
02:30 3. What internet tools and tactics have you used during production and/or to engage your audience? (What they tweet about, 3:30; What they should tweet about: 5:15; importance of a catchy title: 4:30 & 6:20)
07:30 4. How did you finance the film?
09:30 5. What are your plans for distribution? Any thoughts on self-distribution (10:30)?
Andrei Nekrasov, with directing partner Olga Konskaya, returns to
Sundance with Russian Lessons - a formidable documentary that energetically delves into
the violent and bewildering conflicts in the Caucasus, with Russia
pitted against the former Soviet state of Georgia, and involving
Georgia’s troubled regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
I spoke with Andrei about Russian Lessons. He provides insight into how the internet affected the documentation process affecting the film (@ 04:30), discusses his participatory editing process (@ 03:40) , and advises future filmmakers to not wait to get started - a theme that has rung true in all Sundance 6Qs. "Just get a camera and go!"
00:00 Intro
01:25 1. What are you goals for Russian Lessons, and specifically at Sundance?
02:15 2. Who is your audience and how are you reaching out to them?
04:30 3. What internet tools and tactics have you used during production and/or to engage your audience?
07:00 4. How did you finance the film? (Thoughts on crowdfunding at 9:20)
09:50 5. What are your plans for distribution? Any thoughts on self-distribution?
10:40 6. How can fans follow and fund you?
11:30 7. (Bonus Question) Any advice for other filmmakers making their 1st, 3rd or even 10th film?
You can follow Russian Lessons at http://www.russianlessons.org
Obselidia was selected for the Dramatic Competition for the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. We caught the directors, producers and cast in Park City... a wonderfully lively bunch who came together to make a heart-felt movie that moves audiences young and old.
00:20 1. What are your goals for Obselidia in general and at Sundance?
01:30 1b. How'd your Eccles premiere go?
02:15 2. Who's your audience and how are you reaching out to them?
05:20 3. What online tools and tactics have you used?
07:00 4. How did you finance the film? Anything new you'd try for your next film?
07:35 5. What are your plans for distribution? Any thoughts on self-distribution?
08:10 6. In addition to IndieGoGo, how can fans follow, fund and support Obselidia?
Interview with the cast of Obselidia: Gaynor Howe, Frank Hoyt Taylor & Micheal Piccirilli
00:10 1. What's the story of Obselidia?
02:00 2. Who should see this film?
03:15 3. What was the shoot like? Any surprises?
03:45 4. What brings chemistry? What was needed to create the magic on set?
05:05 5. What's the one question no Sundance reporter or film fan
has yet asked that you wish they would? (Frank's special secret at
5:30)
06:00 6. What's the one thing you want people to know about the
team, the film, the production, or your experience? Any
transformational moments? (Micheal's nugget of advice at 7:00)
Stephen Eyer and Daneen
Akers have been hard a work engaging their fans and mobilizing them
into funders for Seventh-Gay Adventists.
They've raised over $8,000 of their $10,000 goal, with which
they've funded their entire first round of production and research
through their IndieGoGo contributions.
Seventh-Gay Adventists is fiscally sponsored by San Francisco Film
Society. Through our partnership - all SFFS projects can offer tax
deductions to their contributors on IndieGoGo. Exciting stuff!
Check out Stephen and Daneen's 6Q below to learn their DIWO story.
Q1: Tell us about Seventh-Gay Adventists. What was your inspiration for the project?
SE: Seventh-Gay Adventists is a
documentary about gay and lesbian members of the Seventh-day Adventist church,
a conservative worldwide denomination. At its heart the film is about our need
for belonging and community and the challenges of having two core identities in
conflict.
The log
line is, “A film about love, sex, and eternal life”, and, although it’s
obviously a bit irreverent, I do think that it really sums up the challenge.
How does someone reconcile who they are with what they were raised to believe
God requires? How much bigger a conflict can you get?
DA: Most people know that being a gay
Christian isn’t easy, but being a gay Adventist is especially difficult because
Adventism, to most, is more than a belief system; it’s also a close-knit
community with unique cultural habits. Besides worshipping on Saturdays instead
of Sundays, most Adventists are also vegetarian and abstain from alcohol,
tobacco, and often even caffeine and jewelry. For someone who grew up
immersed in the church, the culture and DNA of Adventism is almost like an
ethnicity.
For all its
apparent peculiarities, Adventism does not deviate from the Christian
mainstream in its condemnation of homosexuality. Like almost every other
Protestant denomination, the Adventist church teaches that the only way for
gays to live within God’s will is to abstain from any intimate relationship.
The approach taught is, “Love the sinner, hate the sin.”
SE: LGBT Adventists face a gut-wrenching
decision. They must choose between the church they were raised to believe is
God's true church and their innate desire for an intimate, loving relationship.
We wanted to explore how people were trying to work through these really big
questions.
DA: We got interested in this project for
two reasons. First, we were both raised Adventist and come from a long line of
Adventist teachers and preachers. When we started this project, I was pregnant
with our first child (our now 1-year-old daughter, Lily). We’d realized that we
had no idea how we were going to raise her from a spiritual and religious
perspective. What we’d been raised with wasn’t all bad. But it wasn’t all good
either!
This was
also when California was in the midst of the Prop 8 fight over same-sex
marriage. At the time we’d been living in San Francisco for five years and had
starting going to a progressive, accepting church (www.secondwindsf.org)
where we’d become close friends with several same-sex couples. We helped start
a group that reached out to conservative religious voters to try to get them to
consider voting “no” on Prop 8. When Prop 8 passed, we were deeply disappointed
but motivated to do more. Since we’d already produced and directed one feature
(about my mom’s struggle with a chronic pain condition, www.LivingwithFM.com),
it seemed like a film was the logical next step.
Q2: What
are your goals for the film? What impact do you want it to make?
SE: You mean besides radical and
revolutionary change?
DA: We hope this film can help create
more empathy and compassion. We’re deep believers in the power of story to
change hearts and minds. We were deeply disappointed when Prop 8 passed and we
saw our friends get stripped of their rights. Our daughter was born a month
later, and we just really felt like there was so much more to be done so that
she would be raised in a world that was more fair and just. We also felt like
religion had been the white elephant in the room that nobody really wanted to
talk about at the No on 8 phone banks and such. It’s going to have to become a
part of the conversation for lasting change to happen.
SE: We felt like a film could do so much
more to achieve the sort of lasting change that happens when you engage in
someone else’s story, even briefly. When you spend time listening, really
listening to someone’s story, you can’t go back. You have entered into someone
else’s life for a brief while, and it changes you.
DA: There’s also needed empathy from
those who don’t know or understand the conservative Christian mindset. I understand
there are some fundamentalists who deserve the criticism and derision (Exhibit
A: Uganda and the Evangelical right-wing that is exporting hate), but most of
the conservative Adventists that we know, including many of our family members,
don’t deserve the stereotype. Many people want to be loving. And I think they
want to know that they can support gay rights without turning their backs on
their faith. Of course this has happened in the past with the anti-slavery
movement, women’s suffrage, and civil rights, to name a few, and I think this
is slowly happening with gay rights as our cultural norms change.
SE: If our film could be a small part of
that change, we’d be completely satisfied.
Q3: Who
needs to see this film and who do you want to see this film? How are you
identifying, reaching and building your audiences?
DA: We want to reach an audience both
within the Adventist church and beyond who is willing to engage in a meaningful
conversation about religion and homosexuality. This topic has become extremely
contentious recently, and the Adventist church makes an interesting case study
for the broader political and cultural conflict between religion and sexuality.
SE: We’re really in the beginning stages
of this project still, but we’ve turned to a few resources so far to start
identifying our audiences. One group that has been extremely helpful is SDA
Kinship, a support group for current and former Adventists who are also gay,
lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. It’s through them that we’ve met the
majority of our subjects. We set up a story booth at their annual convention
this past summer and started meeting potential film subjects (and supporters)
there.We knew after the convention that
we needed to get out and talk to more people about this issue.
DA: We actually just returned from a
three-month, 11,000 mile production road trip around the U.S. for the film. We
spent the entire fall on the road pulling a small travel trailer behind our car
visiting major Adventist population centers and setting up more story booths.
We did this with our nine-month-old daughter, Lily, along for the fun. I was
pretty nervous at first about going on the road for three months with a baby--I
had no idea how she would do, and we didn’t have money to bring along a
babysitter. But the timing was right (we were in-between apartments, so we could
go on the road without paying rent), and we just really felt like we needed to
get momentum going on the project.
SE: Whenever Daneen started to worry
about what someone would think about us showing up with a camera and a baby,
I’d remind her that nobody else was signing up to tell this story! And Lily did
really well. She’s a total extrovert, and she just loved meeting new people.
Along the way people hosted us, babysat for us, sent us on our way with
homemade goodies and encouragement, and they continued to give to the project.
We’ve had one individual and one group make significant contributions
(offline), but all of the online fundraising has been through individuals, many
through $25 donations here and there.
DA: On our recent research/production
trip, we had quite a few conversations both on and off-camera with thought leaders,
and we’ve really been slowly building our audiences from the ground level. We
often laugh about the fact that we’re making a film about two topics people try
to avoid talking about--sex and religion. So we’ve been trying to meet key
individuals who can support the project in person first.
We’re just
beginning to start having conversations with other groups who might be
interested in this project (like the religious arm of the HRC), so we feel like
there is still a lot of work to be done in this area.
Q4. What role does the Internet and social
media play in your DIWO (Do-It-With-Others) efforts?
SE: Building
an audience is one of the most important things an independent filmmaker can do
these days.The question is how to get others involved and engaged
with your project.We all know there are
350 million people on Facebook, but how many of those are interested in seeing
your work?
We wanted to find out ourselves
and thought that building up a fan page for our film from the very beginning
would be a good idea.Luckily, one of
the great tools on FB is how easy they make it to do target advertising.So we created a new page for the film and
started advertising to people who we thought would be interested in the
topic.We didn’t have a big budget, but
spent a few dollars a day for a few weeks to see what kind of results we would
get.Before we knew it we had over 1,000
fans.
Now the trick is to build
relationships with those fans because right now there are many people on there whom
we don’t even know.We hope to do this
by providing regular meaningful content, exclusive behind-the-scenes
information, and personal interactions.And yes, we will occasionally ask for contributions and point people to
our IndieGoGo page to make it easy for them to give (but, we’re trying to be
careful not to overdo it).People give
to someone they know and something they care about.So we’re trying to do both -- make sure our
fans get to know us a little bit better through our posts and provide helpful
information about the project and the issues our film covers.
Q5.What
tactics did you use for financing?How
has IndieGoGo worked out for you?
SE: We
knew when we started this project that we wanted to bring other people in to
help finance the project, rather than do it all on our own like we had on our
previous film.I think we’d been hesitant
before to get others involved because we were so green, and we didn’t want to
risk any one else’s money while we tried to figure it out.After finishing the film and winning a couple
of small awards we had more confidence in ourselves and in audiences to find
and fund these smaller, independent films this time around.
IndieGoGo and our fiscal
sponsor, the San Francisco Film Society, teamed up to offer an online way for
supporters to make tax-deductible donations. The timing was perfect—I had just
been looking around for a way to do this when I got the email announcing the
new partnership.
DA: The
Facebook integration with IndieGoGo has also been really helpful. We realize
that we have a lot more work to do to really take advantage of social
media—three months on a production trip with a nine-month old meant that we
were barely managing to post status updates on the film’s Facebook page—but so
far it’s been extremely helpful. We funded our entire first round of production
and research through our IndieGoGo contributions.
Q6: What is next on your radar? And where can
folks follow your efforts?
DA: Next up
is a pitch trailer. We still have a lot of filming to do as we continue to
follow our main subjects. That will mean more fundraising. I’m making Stephen
promise that next time we’ll raise money for a babysitter!
SE: The main
website for the film is http://www.sgamovie.com where you can sign-up for our newsletter,
become a fan on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.Thanks!
In 2001, funny brothers Josh and Jacob Kornbluth headed to Sundance with their office comedy Heiku Tunnel (later picked up by Sony Pictures Classics). Now they're back again with Love & Taxes the first pro-tax romantic comedy of its kind!
For this month's 6Q, the Kornbluths decided to spice things up with a video.
6 Questions:
0:00 1. What are your goals for Love & Taxes?
1:35 2. How are you identifying, reaching and building your audience?
4:53 3. What tactics did you use for financing? Any advice?
8:10 4. What role does the Internet and social media play in your DIWO (Do-It-With-Others) fundraising or audience-building efforts?
11:25 5. How do you connect your online campaigns with offline fundraising and audience-building?
14:07 6. What is next on your radar? And where can folks follow your efforts?
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.
Richard Parry spent 15 years following war photographer Robert King as he documented conflicts in Chechnya, Russia, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Albania, Kosovo and Iraq. His documentary, Blood Trail, recently screened at SilverDocs 2009.
The road to distribution was tough. Read on to learn how Richard has navigated the DIY Filmmaking terrain.
1. What are your goals for Blood Trail?
After 15 years in production my hopes are high. Hopefully
some kind of theatrical window, TV and DVD. Winning awards would be nice but
I'm not holding my breath. Ultimately, ego aside, getting the movie to a wider
audience as possible has to be the motive, doesn't it? Its a unique and
powerful watch and I don't now when I'll have the opportunity to work on another
film like this one, so I'm trying to 'make hay while the sun shines'. And its
been virtually a full time occupation playing the festivals and trying to get
it out there, since our premiere at Toronto.
2. How are you identifying, reaching and building your
audience?
Mostly festivals thus far. TIFF, SXSW, Silverdocs etc. But
we should be about to start a wider campaign with the ICA in London screening
the film in August, then our UK TX on BBC Storyville in September. I guess the
grass roots approach starts now. The film centers on a War Photographer and so
building good word of mouth amongst journalists has been and will continue to
be pivotal. Creating a word of mouth amongst the journalist fraternity has been
part of the plan. "this is the genuine war hack doc" type of thing.
Obviously journalists are in a good position to help push this film.
3. What tactics did you use for financing? Any advice?
Self financed. 15 years. No cash. I dont recommend it, but
if you're feeling stubborn!!
4. What role does the Internet and social media play in your
DIWO (Do-It-With-Others) fundraising or audience-building?
That remains to be seen. We'll know more over the next few
months, as the film starts to find its way to the public. I would imagine that
twitter and the like could play an important tole in creating word of mouth for
a film like this. But we'll see which way the distributors push it.
5. What is your plan for distribution? Any consideration for
self-distribution?
We have a traditional distributer for the UK, who is
handling a small theatric pre TX. The DVD and download market will come
subsequently. We have looked at 4 walling as a means of qualifying the film for
certain US awards but not decided. There are some US distributors interested in
the project but we have yet to sign. I directed and wrote a movie (South West
Nine) a few years ago that was self distributed especially badly. The theatres
were keen to take the film in the UK and we opend on about sixty screens but we
didn't have the financial muscle to support such an opening. The film would
have been better opening on a smaller number of screens with a concentrated
marketing local marketing campaign. So self distribution is a tricky one and in
this instance not fruitful. Of course, with hind sight, it could have been done
better.
IndieGoGo interviews Mitch McCabe, writer & director of Youth Knows
No Pain, on her approach to DIWO (Do-It-With_others) Filmmaking. Youth
Knows No Pain recently screened at SilverDocs in Washington D.C, at Lincoln Center in New York City and on HBO.
Q1 (0:05): What are the Goals for your film Youth Knows No Pain?
Q2 (1:41): How are you identifying, targeting and building your audience?
Q3 (2:56): Any recommended tactics for raising money?
Q4 (4:46): What role has social media been playing in your DIWO Filmmaking?
Q5 (6:20): How are you connecting your online marketing with your offline events?
Q6 (7:04): What is your plan for distribution? Any plans for self-distribution?
Shot on a shoe-string and self-distributed across the country, Box Elder presents an equally hilarious and poignant look at growing up. Todd Sklar, the filmmaker, was kind enough to share with
IndieGoGo some of his tactics for promotion, reaching an audience, and using
the Internet.
Q1. What were the goals for Box Elder?:
Narrative-wise, the goal was
to tell a really funny, sincere, coming of age story about Midwestern
college life.
Project-wise,
the goal was to make the best film we could using only the appropriate
amount of resources, and not because of budget constraints - I was
originally offered more money than we accepted - but because we didn't
wanna make the film anything that it didn't need to be. For example,
we
didn't need to shoot on film because we know we'd be screening it
digitally on the tour, and we knew that story and setting didn't need
lush tones or cinematic atmosphere. We also knew that the film was
gonna be heavily dependent on loose natural performances and improv,
and there's something about a 35 setup that sort've brings an air of
professionalism and importance to a set that we wanted to avoid, as
it'd intimidate our actors and stifle the creative energy. That said,
we also knew that we'd be bringing the
film to a relatively wide audience through the tour, and that it'd be
an audience that generally doesn't see independent films, so they
probably wouldn't accept our film as a "real" movie if it was just
DV footage. So we went w/ a 35 adapter b/c it gave the film the
necessary depth
of field to make it look and feel like a "real" movie when projected in
a theatre. If we weren't gonna be screening the film theatrically or
bringing it to a wider audience, I would've shot it on Flip camera's.
Every decision from the conception of the story
through the design of our DVD was catered around that same process,
with our intended audience in mind.
To me, film is purely a
storytelling medium, and there's no point in telling a story if you
don't have an audience to listen, so it just makes sense to tailor
everything you do around your intended audience -- which doesn't have
to be the film's intended audience mind you - there's much to be said
about a filmmaker who tries to bring a story to people and places that
don't necessarily fit it's themes or content. On the other hand, I
think a lot of times with independent film, we can error on the side of
only telling stories that aren't getting told for that reason alone,
and I think that's a little short-sighted, especially if it's not done
responsibly in regards to the economics. Everybody would love to make a
5 million dollar movie, but I don't think every story needs 5 million
dollars to be told effectively, especially in terms of reaching it's
audience.
Q2. How were you identifying, reaching and building your audience?
For
Box Elder, this was easy. We felt like the film's natural audience was
going to be an extension of the film's creators and it's characters, so
it was really just a matter or identifying people with similar tastes
and interests as us and our characters. So on top of the already
inherent audience (college students, fans of comedy, dudes with beard,
etc), there were all the niche audiences that we targeted by just
dissecting what we loved about the project and the characters and
related them to people on social level in each market we took the film
to.
We looked at reaching them in the same manner by mapping out ways
that we'd wanna be reached. i.e, nobody in our camp would ever grab a
bullshit flier at a coffee-shop or respond to a mass facebook mssg --
we'd much rather hear about something through a friend or through
something we're already interested and involved in, so we'd strive to
make really personal connections with our audience and then let them do
the work by passing it on to their friends. Or we'd connect with an
organization that fit the film or our interests well and then tailor
what we were doing to something they were interested in, which was
usually aligned with the film/tour because f the similar interests.
Marketing a film is really easy when you're only marketing it to people
who'll probably like it in a way that meshes with how they already
discover content.
Which any film can do really, you just gotta figure out how you'd
wanna discover your own film if it was made by someone else, and then
apply that to your marketing platform. And you gotta accept that not
everyone is gonna love your film. That's step one. Get realistic, get
strategic, and get to it. None of this bullshit waiting around for
somebody to buy or market your film for you.
As far as audience building goes, it's just an extension of the
outreach process - just a matter of staying connected and being
involved with people, which is easy to do if your audience generally
has the same interests as you because you end up liking the same things
and staying connected / audience building quickly becomes hanging out
with friends. Which is awesome.
Q3. What tactics did you use for financing? Any advice?
Well, we shot the film twice, and the first time I used a VC group to fund the project.
When
we decided to re-shoot it all, me and my producer believed in it enough
that we just put our personal money into it and the rest on credit
cards - it made sense financially at the time because the tour served
as a realistic point in time when we'd start seeing revenue come back
and could start re-couping.
As far as advice goes; don't do what I did. Way too much work.
Instead, find a rich kid who wants to be a producer. Tell him that he
can be the producer on your film if he finances it. End of story.
Richie rich gets his first credit, you get your first film made,
everyone's a winner. Or rob a bank. Seriously, nobody ever robs banks
anymore. OR, is it that they do but we never hear about it because the
only time it's in the news is when people get caught.... and nobodies
gettin' caught these days.
In all honesty, from my limited knowledge from bank robbery movies,
it seems a lot easier to plan and pull off a small heist than it does
to put together financing on a film. Looks like a lot more fun too.
P.S. I was watching Rififi earlier tonight. And the shoot-out scene from Heat. And that might've influenced pt. 2 of that scenario.
Q4. What role does the Internet and social media play in your DIWO (Do-It-With-Others) fund raising or audience-building?
We
didn't use the internet at all in our fund-raising strategy, but I'm
helping a friend on a film right now and he's using that kickstarter
site - you can check his page out here - it seems to be working really well. As far as audience building goes, the Box Elder Facebook and Myspace pages have been pretty integral, and our Youtube
page has been incredibly important as well, and those three are the
main hubs for our social community, so i'd say we've used the internet
quite a bit as far as audience building is concerned.
The internet is also where I first discovered the You're Business Card Sucks guy,
and I'm not sure how integral that's been in our audience building, but
it's certainly become an important factor in our overall operation, as
we still watch it several times a day, and would probably be more
effective at doing a lot of things if that video didn't exist.
Q5. How do you connect your online campaigns with offline fund raising and audience-building?
That's
a really good question - I'm not sure we've figured that out yet.
Thankfully, with the tour, we have a strong on-line and off-line
presence, and we've been able to find the right mix as far as how,
when, and where to execute on each, but we haven't found a hybrid model
that specifically plays them off each other quite yet. I feel like
Lance Weiler and Arin Crumley and a lot of those folks over at theworkbookproject.com would know how to do that - those guys are light years ahead when it comes to this stuff.
Q6. What is next on your radar? And where can folks follow your efforts?
There's
actually quite a bit on my radar right now - I'm actually having a
pretty tough time not drowning in everything to be honest;
For starters, we're knee deep in planning the Fall and Spring
tours, and we're trying to bring 40 movies out this time while hitting
over a 100 cities and putting on a different screening series in each
one - should be daunting, but awesome to say the least.
I'm also producing a bunch of movies right now, some of which we're
still trying to get financed, and some of which are moving forward, and
it looks like 2 or 3 of them are gonna be going into production at
various points this summer, so that'll be interesting to balance while
we move into the Fall tour in Sept. - will definitely be a test in time managment.
On top of that, I'm writing a comedy with my good friends James
Ponsoldt and Alex Rennie this summer, and also directing another flick
later in the year, so I'm trying to keep the creative juices flowing
through all of this distribution, marketing, and fund-raising stuff.
Would all be a lot easier if someone gave me a bunch of money to be
doing this stuff, or if I robbed a bank.
I'm also playing three scrabbles games on Facebook and winning two of them.
As
far as following these efforts are concerned, we're working on the new
Range Life website right now, so I guess the best place to stay in
touch is either via my Facebook or Twitter - would love to connect on both, or either.
