Essentially an independent film publicist’s job is to do the filmmaker’s outreach work for them.  They will pitch for you, help you pilot through the film festival circuit, help your film receive reviews in local and national media, get your film online coverage, get “features” written about you and your film and help track and shape your project. They are also often responsible for creating “buzz” for your project, not only by rubbing shoulders with those who can help launch your film, but also by doing administrative tasks such as writing press releases and designing Electronic Press Kits (EPK’s).

Film publicists are not just spin doctors that manipulate audience’s into going to see the next tent pole Hollywood production. Film publicists are in fact an integral part of the indie landscape. A good film publicist will act as your film’s advocate and conduit to the media. This all being said, independent filmmakers now have the opportunity to train themselves and do all of their own film publicity in-house rather than paying the fees to get someone else to do it for you.

Due in large part to the changing media landscape (i.e. internet, democratization of the production process and too many films and not enough screens… to only a few issues) Independent films are not receiving much attention in the press nowadays. Of course there are some anomalies, but for the majority of filmmakers there is a common sense of anxiety knowing that your film likely won’t meet your publicity or distribution expectations.

Gone are the days when your film would be accepted into a festival and the crowd would be full of hungry and generous distributors looking to buy the next big indie hit.  For example, at Sundance last year (roughly 4000 films are submitted… roughly 177 films are accepted). Out of those 177 films, there are very few high profile deals.

Even when Independent films are being picked up by distributors at these festivals, the advances the filmmakers are making are often only just enough to cover the film’s expenses. Advances for many independent films are ranging from $25,000 to $50,000. This often doesn’t even cover the cost of making the movie in the first place.

Not only that but filmmakers are required to relinquish creative control which leaves their hard work in the hands of a company that may simply shelve their project in order to focus on the more profitable sections of their film catalog (i.e. films with named talent, high production standards and so on)

Example:

Lance Hammer’s film “Ballast” which was a Sundance sensation in 2008. The film won prizes at the prestigious Park City festival for both Best Director and Cinematography, but Lance pulled out of a deal with IFC Films in order to maintain the rights to his film since the offer, which was a normal offer (most offers currently range from $25,000 – $50,000), was not seen as a sustainable offer. Not only that, but the terms of the contract seemed “crazy” according to Lance who was referencing the part of the contract which would have him give away internet rights for 20 years. In an interview with indieWIRE Lace states:

“IFC is a really good company…The problem is the larger issue that’s plaguing every filmmaker right now: The distributors don’t really offer any money. That’s not that big of a deal if they would allow you to have control of your project, but they don’t.” Lance continues by saying: “Now that the film is done, I have to think responsibly because I want to have sustainability as a filmmaker. If Sundance is considered the acme of American festivals, and ‘Ballast’ was one of the films that was rated highly there, then it would be a total tragedy if I couldn’t make another film like it again.
It’s disheartening to know that independent filmmakers are having difficulties even just recouping the cost to make their films. Companies like IFC or mini-majors like Sony Classics, Fox Searchlight or Focus Features, are offering filmmakers back their cost (or less) for their advance in exchange for giving over virtually all creative control.

It’s the purpose of this blog post to help you re-strategize how you draw attention to your film and how you look at the publicity process. .  This blog post will help you come up with ideas on how to get more attention for your documentaries and films over a longer period of time.

Your goal is as follows:

Treat your film as a product within your catalog, not as a one-off sale.

Just as  entrepreneurs build their businesses slowly be increasing their product offerings, relentlessly working on improving quality, customer satisfaction, brand loyalty and repeat visitors, these are all things that filmmakers too need to start considering.

Think long term about your catalog of films. While you may not be able to create more than 1 film or documentary each year or two, over the years, this increasing number of projects under your belt becomes disproportionally more valuable.

What if you had some central hub (such as your website) where you have been audience building since your first film. Not only do you have your loyal supporters who have been purchasing your films since your first film, but you’ll also have new audience members who are not familiar with your first 3 films. This would give a prolonged shelf life to each of your projects. The idea however, is to create a type of HUB where not all of your promotional work goes into each project individually, but is geared towards your catalog of work in general.

This way each new project you undertake will start out where your last project ended. This will  allow you to leverage the efforts of your previous marketing campaigns.

In order to do this you need to build your audience. There are numerous ways to do this but for the sake of brevity we’re going to focus only on a couple of internet marketing strategies for this post. In future posts we’ll cover offline publicity strategies as well.

1. DEVELOP AN EMAIL MARKETING LIST

You need to have an email list. End of discussion. This will allow you to respectfully contact people who have chosen to give you their email address so you can keep them up to date with your film projects. Building your email list takes a lot of time. You’ll start out with a couple dozen contacts, but over the years your email list will balloon to tens of thousands as long as you’re offering something of value to your readers.

We use a service provided by Constant Contact. It’s easy to set up and implement into your existing web presence. You can sign up with them by visiting their website here.

2 DEVELOP A STRONG SEO CAMPAIGN

Search engine optimizing your web pages is a great way to generate interest in your film. However, in order to do this properly, it’s important that you create a content schedule so you know what topics you’ll be discussing and when you’ll be discussing them.

A few quick pointers for creating search engine friendly content

1. Ensure your meta tags are relevant and popular
2. Ensure your keyword density is high enough without sounding redundant
3. Use your keywords in your URL
4. Get inbound links using appropriate anchor tags
5. Distribute your inbound links throughout your website. Create “landing pages” designed to chase the “long tail” of online searches
6. Strategically internally link your website using suitable anchor tags

To bring awareness about your HUB you need to get online and establish relationships with other people in forums, blogs and social networking sites. Create realistic but ambitious website traffic goals for yourself.

Once you’ve optimized a page for a particular search term the work is done. For instance, if you’ve optimized one of your internal pages for the term “independent documentary” or “low budget documentary filmmaking” then, if you’ve spent the time to search engine optimize your pages properly, over time you’ll start to show up on the first page of popular search engines. hopefully you’ll be able to maintain these positions for years to come. The result could be anywhere from 20 to 20,000 possible leads / day depending on the search popularity of your keywords.

You can find out about the popularity of keywords by using any of the numerous keyword popularity tools online.

At first your website may begin by receiving only a few dozen unique visitors / day. However, over time if you’re working on your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) campaign on a daily basis you’ll slowly build up towards receiving hundreds, possibly thousands of free unique visitors / day to your website.

Again, sticking with the philosophy that you are building your business by building a catalog of films, not just promoting one film, all of this work will serve to benefit future projects as well. You will be able to piggyback future projects off the promotional efforts of your earlier films.

But it’s going to require that you take full advantage of the internet and get involved in forums, establish relationships with bloggers and set specific goals for your expected monthly website traffic. Analyze your website metrics each month and see what worked and what didn’t. Using Pareto’s principle, focus on the 20% that’s working and abandon the 80% that’s not.

3. BUILD YOUR ONLINE SOCIAL NETWORKING PRESENCE

It’s equally important to develop a strategy to grow your social networking empire. Gathering fans to your Facebook group, followers on twitter or YouTube subscribers can take time. The question becomes; how can you create a voice that is worth listening too? Do you offer behind the scenes information that filmmakers would find helpful or that fans would find interesting? Why would someone sign up for your newsletter, follow you on twitter or subscribe to your YouTube channel? You need to offer something in exchange (valuable information, members only information, prizes etc)

You don’t want your independent feature film to be remembered as a vanity project that cost a lot of money and took a lot of time. Through the internet you are now able to compete with multimillion dollar productions with monster P&A budgets. However, you need to have a strategy. The existence of the internet alone isn’t enough to launch your career as an independent filmmaker. You need a growth plan, a strategy and a metrics monitoring system.

You can easily monitor your conversion rates (CR) and website traffic growth. The measurability of the medium allows you to see how your hard work is paying off.

In future posts we’ll discuss in more detail the idea that independent filmmakers should be their own film publicists beyond simply using the internet. In upcoming posts we’ll discuss the idea of doing a strategic localized theater release, designing EPK’s, accessing the gatekeepers ( New York Post, Metro, Village voice, Hollywood reporter, New York Times, Time out New York, Variety etc) in order to help give your indie film a chance at a favorable review.

So while it’s unlikely that any of these gatekeepers will cover your online campaign, this is nevertheless an important first step in building a sustainable audience for your future film projects.

Good luck

With the democratization of both the production and distribution process filmmakers are increasingly curious to know how to create and distribute successful independent films.

If you’re a filmmaker and you have a success story to tell we’d love to hear about your experiences. If your film meets our criteria and we feel our blog readers will benefit from learning from your experiences we would be more than happy to help you gain exposure to your film by publishing your film’s trailer, website, purchasing info and any other relevant information on our blog in exchange for an in depth interview about your filmmaking process. Our blog is viewed by tens of thousands of people each month so your film will benefit from the additional publicity.

If you would be interested in receiving this type of press / publicity please contact us. In the subject line of your email type “Film Interview”. In the body of the email include your name, your film’s title, the film’s trailer and website (if you have one) and we’ll get back to those who we’d be interested in interviewing.

Looking forward to seeing your submissions!

The video is over an hour long, but it’s interesting because they talk about unconventional methods of distribution. The filmmakers use creative PR and the internet to help them distribute their films.

Another interesting point is that they discuss breaking away from film festivals and governments for help making and distributing their films.

They discuss issues of web promotion, Video On Demand (VOD), ARG, film festivals, screenings and an assortment of interesting and unique ideas that engage the film audience through various methods.

These films were made on shoestring budgets and in some cases have grossed millions of dollars.

Lights Film School Question 1:
Product placements are great ways for independent filmmakers to help finance their films. In the past, it’s been the responsibility of filmmakers to approach companies based on the pay for performance model you have suggested on your website. You mention that filmmakers can expect to earn money based on impressions (CRM which is cost / 1000 impressions). What are the average earnings filmmakers can expect to make based on 1000 impressions?

Tadcast Response:
Actually, in the past, product placement has mainly not been on a pay for performance basis – it has mostly been done in individual deals struck with Hollywood productions for a fixed price.  Tadcast is trying to show advertisers that product placement in amateur, non-Hollywood online videos is a great, safe, and effective way to expose their products to niche online viewers.  To prove this, we are hosting a contest where filmmakers will make videos and incorporate one or more of our advertisers into their videos as product placements.  Our advertisers are iced tea company Honest Tea, music equipment and accessories company Zildjian, and hip new cocoa nib company SweetRiot.  If we can demonstrate that unknown filmmakers will do a good job in this contest, we will be able to get advertisers to pay more and more to filmmakers for placing products.

Ultimately, it is our vision that the most successful online videomakers will be able to earn upwards of $100 CPMs, and the average online videomaker will be able to make upwards of $40 CPMs.  It will all depend on the filmmaker’s reputation, so it is important to start as early as possible to develop a reputation with Tadcast for producing quality work and meeting advertiser requirements.

Lights Film School Question 2:
What are the limits to filmmaker earnings? How much would a film featuring 1 product stand to make if it brought in 10,000 impressions? 100,000 impressions?

Tadcast Response:
That will depend on the particular product and deal.  Each advertiser will set a limit for how much they are able to spend.  So for example, Pepsi might offer a CPM of $20 and a budget cap of $200,000.  In that case 10,000 impressions with just the Pepsi product would earn $200 and 100,000 impressions would earn $2,000.  But if many filmmakers choose to accept the Pepsi deal and someone earns 10,000,000 views he should earn $200,000 himself, but because others will also be eating into that $200,000 budget he will likely see a bit less than the $200,000.  In the future, we expect that CPMs will be much higher, especially for the filmmakers with good reputations, and 100,000 impressions could earn somewhere around $10,000.

Lights Film School Question 3:
Filmmakers often see product placements as necessary to help finance their productions however there is a fine line between a produce placement and a full out commercial advertisement. Filmmakers often don’t want to compromise the creative integrity of their films. This means that they will often try to underexpose their product placement. Although each of your advertisers have minimum requirements under their listings, what happens if they refuse to pay for impressions on a production they simply feel doesn’t accomplish what they are looking for? For example, sweet riot, doesn’t have a minimum time listed on their description. If, as a filmmaker using that product in my video, I show the label in a medium shot for 3 seconds they may feel the value of a medium shot for only 3 seconds isn’t worth their advertising dollars. As a filmmaker willing to do product placements in my videos I have my limitations as well. I will likely feel a close up of the product for 7 seconds will jeopardize the integrity of my film or video. How can you ensure both your filmmakers and advertisers that their vision for the placement is similar?

Tadcast Response:
Filmmakers only have to do what is specifically asked of them in the advertisers’ requirements.  If they are not comfortable with the advertiser’s requirements they should not take on that particular advertiser.  If the advertiser doesn’t specify something (such as close-up), then a medium shot, for example is fine.  To better their reputation, however, filmmakers should be sure to use their best judgement on issues that are vague.

Lights Film School Question 4:
Will there be different CPM’s / product?

Tadcast Response:
Yes.  And as time goes by, the better the filmmaker’s reputation the better CPM opportunities he/she will have.

Lights Film School Question 5:
You mentioned that advertisers can have a fixed budget. What happens if an advertiser sets their budget for $1000 and then 10 filmmakers put the time into producing a video with that product in the hopes that they can make $1000. If all of these 10 films do well and make $100 each in the first day, the advertising budget has essentially been eaten up. You mention that all additional hits to the video are free after the budget has been eaten up. How do you plan to ensure situations like this don’t happen that obviously disadvantage the filmmaker?

Tadcast Response:
Next to each advertising opportunity we will post the number of filmmakers who have posted videos incorporating that product and have a meter indicating how much of the budget remains up for grabs.  That way filmmakers will know, roughly, the potential amount of money they will be able to earn on each deal before they invest their time and energy.

Lights Film School Question 6:
From the filmmakers perspective is their any way to work with a sponsor that is willing to pay / impressions for a set budget based on that specific project alone. For example, if I’m willing to place product “X” in my film and know I’ll be able to get at least 300,000 views of the video how do I ensure that I will be compensated for all of those impressions and not simply half of them or a quarter of them? What happens if the film is a hit and produces millions of visits?

Tadcast Response:
Once a filmmaker develops a great reputation on Tadcast, not only for meeting advertiser requirements, but also for regularly high viewing numbers, the filmmaker would have the opportunity to engage in a more direct relationship with the advertiser.

Lights Film School Quesion 7:
Do you allow filmmakers to put the website on multiple video sharing sites? If so how do you protect your advertisers against click fraud?

Tadcast Response:
Yes, filmmakers can put their videos on any sites so long as we can prove how many views each video receives.  We are working on technological ways to prevent those who commit click fraud from getting away with it.

To learn more about Tadcast, and sign up for the Tadcast Contest visit www.tadcast.com
First prize: $5,000
Second Prize:  Adobe editing suite (retail value $1,699)
Top ten: free 3-month subscriptions to IMDbPro
Everyone: Be a part of a mission that will help filmmakers earn money for doing what they love.

We will feature short films, documentaries and feature length films on our blog. This is a great opportunity for you to get your film exposure. We will embed any video files you have on our site and provide a small profile summary of you and your film.

Each month thousands of people visit this blog. All of them looking for films, filmmaking tips and some of them even being movie producers looking for new projects to promote or support.

Contact us if you have a film you’d like promoted on our blog. We’re more than happy to help independent filmmakers out there who have a knack for filmmaking. I hope to hear from you soon.