Marketing 101: Synecdoche

Okay maybe this the long way around, but here's a great inexpensive way to get the word about your film out. First come up with a title that people don't understand, ideally a single word.  Then, make an incredibly unique and heartfelt film illustrating the full meaning of the word.  Finally, approach Dictionary.com to feature the same word as your title.  Genius!

If you are late to this post, check out the word of the day for Wed. Oct 22, 2008.

Film Festival Plan A: Basic Web Stuff

It seems ludicrous to head into a festival these days and not have a website or blog for your film in advance. It seems silly not to have that web address built into you film end credits. It doesn't have to be a final or even a polished site, but there should be something. How else will you tell your audience how they can participate in the experience or even see your film?

Beyond a website or a blog, filmmakers should do the simple outreach chores. Build a Wiki page for your film. Create a MySpace and/or Facebook profile for your film. Make sure all the info is in IMDB. 

And don't forget images. Post some stills. Hell, post some clips up on YouTube. For years, filmmakers have been told to make presskits, but why not do the things that let the audience find them directly?  Why wait for the journalists; they have all been fired!

Film Festival Plan A: Logic & Strategy

If you are so fortunate as to have your film selected for Sundance, there is a good chance that your festival screening will be the peak point of media activity on your film. Unless your film is going to be released by a major distributor, more attention will be paid during this period ever again. Are you going to take advantage of this attention or are you going to squander it?

We all know very few films get picked up these days for distribution, so why are you going to bet on that?  Well, you're not.  Over the next few days I will explore some of the questions you should ask yourself and strategies you should consider in heading to the festival.  And I won't avoid the obvious either, because these days it is still being overlooked.  I am sure I will miss a lot and I hope others write in to fill this out.

People are going to hear about your film when it plays at a major film festival; their "want-to-see" will be at its highest point when folks are talking about the festival in traditional media, online, and through conversation. What are the options before you headed into a festival in order to exploit this want-to-see?  This is the reason you are headed to the festival, isn't it?

The Story Behind "Under Jakob's Ladder" -- Part 2

A week or so ago, we were giving a bit of a history behind the feature film, UNDER JAKOB'S LADDER...

To understand the world in which Jakob lived.

Winter, 1932-33. Not a pleasant time for those who lived in the Soviet Ukraine. In fact, this year (2008) marks the 75th anniversary of what is called the holodomor.

What happened? Well, in an effort to squelch resistance to the centralized five-year plans, Stalin ordered the harvests be removed from the possession of their owners. In other words, a forced famine.

This included Jakob's village. Jakob and his family barely survived that winter of starvation. Many others did not.

But Stalin got what he wanted; the people lost their will to resist the collectivization of agriculture.

Then, in the late 1930s, Stalin began his political purges. Pitting neighbor against neighbor, even children were enticed to turn in their parents. Men were carted off by the truckloads to face false accusations imprisonment, exile and death.

The secret police would always come at night in a vehicle that was nicknamed the Black Raven. Men became scarce in the villages.

Most of what we know about Jakob and his family comes from oral tradition. The movie is intended as a tribute to the many thousands of German-Russians from the Soviet Territories who did not survive the Stalinist purges. It is also offered as a reminder of the courage of those people who did.

The Conversation: Live in Berkley 10/18

Scott Kirsner, Lance Weiler, Tiffany Shlain and others put together a great program at Pacific Film Archives this past weekend, bringing together folks from the tech, social entrepreneur, and film worlds.  There was a lot of great stuff on the new world of DIY/Hybrid Distribution.  I imagine Lance will post a lot of it over at The Workbook Project.  

This is a nice low angle (i.e. I am not quite so wide in real life -- or rather I still like to think my self not so wide) shot of my "Coffee Chat" with Scott and Dean Valentine of Comedy.com.  It captures and highlights my nasal honk quite well though.   It's the end of the session Q&A and I rant on the transformation from an impulse to a choice economy of entertainment, throwing in some speculation on the coming Post-Fest Era to boot.

On changing Festival world, Variety has an article on how the financial crisis has effected film festivals. Worth checking out.

Preparing For The Film Festivals

Its that time of the year when filmmakers nationwide get all antsy.  Sundance generally starts to let filmmakers know whether their work has been selected for the festival around the end of October.  This ritual extends for about four weeks until Thanksgiving gives everyone a break.

Generally speaking, for fifteen years now, filmmakers approach Sundance with a single plan: to sell their film for a big profit.  The logic of this singleminded pursuit is non-existent.  For several years now, great films with clear audiences screen without getting picked up.  The amount the lucky few achieve has been dropping consistently with a few exceptions.  Simultaneously, the need to work with the mainstream distributors has been dropping rapidly.  One could even argue that these distributors have defined their acquisition strategy so specifically that they need to even bother to attend the festival.

Filmmakers need to recognize that what once was the holy grail now needs to be regulated to Plan C or even Plan D.  I wish it wasn't so and I wish many of the filmmakers could walk off the mountain with their wildest dreams of wealth realized.  But we all need to recognize what Plan A and B really should be these days.

Plan A has got to be that you will need to be the leading force in the distribution of your film.  This is the DIY model.

Plan B is that various experts will all want to work with you on Co-Distributing your film, albeit for a fee.

Plan C is that buyers for different media will want your film and you need to be able to evaluate how to mix and match these offers -- or even accept those offers at all.

Plan D is that someone will make an offer of such an amount that it is worth considering giving up all your rights to your film for the next twenty years.

There are many aspects of each plan that need to be considered in addition to these various plans.  I will be doing my best to examine these aspects in the days ahead.  Although Plan D doesn't really need any further thought than where to find a good lawyer; the indie world has relied on this plan long enough.

Navigating Film Festivals

Scott Macauley linked to yesterday's post on the Filmmaker Magazine Blog and included a link to Chris Holland's book "Film Festival Secrets".  Seems like a good thing to read up on as you dream about being selected for Sundance.  I am going to give it a look.  You have to sign up, at least temporarily for Chris' newsletter and then they send you the book -- so I haven't gotten to look at it yet.

I am going to be posting some basic advice over the next few days on how I personally recommend viewing the festival circuit, and in particular Sundance, -- once you are in.  Chris' book is a very comprehensive overview on selecting your festivals,  how to get in (and manage when you don't), marketing, building your team, preparation, troubleshooting, and followup.  It's a quick read and an incredible resource.  It compiles what took me years to learn.  It does though take festivals a bit as an end into themselves, whereas Truly Free Filmmakers must see them as just the first step in building awareness about their films.  

Festivals have to be used very judiciously these days.  Festivals are going to change from many diverse and singular events to much more of a unified community focused on year round programming.  They are the keepers and maintainers of aggregated film lovers and cinephiles nationwide.  They will be able to leverage that community into a truly valuable resource for TFFilmakers, but a new model needs to be found.