Year: 2011

Several weeks back, I joined Steve Wax of Campfire at the MIXX conference for a discussion about the potential of collaboration between Indies & Brands on feature films. Often conflicting agendas mess every thing up, but does it have to?

Our Proposition: Brands can associate themselves with films, particularly independent films, without relying on product placement or other forced connections. There are new ways both sides benefit from the marketing association offered in our new connected culture.

Ted: Product Placement has always been a bad phrase with filmmakers of all sorts, particularly indies. It can mean sacrificing their audience’s trust and their relationship with their fans. Whenever it’s proposed, filmmakers’ balk.

Steve: Many of us in the interactive marketing business never bought product placement either – we believe in transparency and authentic messaging. Instead, I’m interested in how certain brands and most independent films lean on strong cultural themes to attract attention from their respective audiences. By finding films whose themes and values line up with brands’, both can gain a marketing lift from a more authentic approach.

Ted: There are common themes that both filmmakers & brands return to time and time again:
1. Triumph over adversity; you can do it; (Juno, 21 Grams/Nike)
2. Family is where you find it; (Kids Are All Right/Benetton)
3. Difference is universal (The Help, Take Shelter, Weekend, Boys Don’t Cry/)
4. Tolerance/Forgiveness will teach us all; aka Open your heart (Precious, Bellflower, Wedding Banquet, Towelhead, /Coke];
5. Be yourself, Find Yourself, Don’t compromise your integrity (Napoleon Dynamite, American Splendor/Apple)
6. Take action; move on; just do it; don’t sit on the fence; make a tough choice; don’t wait until tomorrow. (Super, Erin Brokovich/*)
7. Don’t settle; Raise the bar; Aim higher; dream the dream; (Adventureland)
8. Build it and they will come; dream the dream; (Moneyball, Field Of Dreams)
9. Life is hard but our family & friends get us through it; (Martha Marcy May Marlene, The Savages, The Kid With The Bike)
10. Don’t mess with Mother Nature. (via
11. ‎”There’s hope, but it’s not where you think it is.” (via Mindi White)
12. “Love Hurts” (via @flixfixer). Love saves. Love transforms. (Eternal Sunshine)
13. “Revenge is all-consuming” (via @flixfixer) (The Skin I Live In, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Inglorius Bastards)
14. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely” (via @flixfixer)

*I stopped thinking of brands here – we really need to work with a brand to develop their positioning

Steve : Yes, more and more brands are utilizing cause related marketing campaigns. For instance, Pepsi Refresh (http://www.refresheverything.com/) and Tom’s Shoes (http://www.toms.com/our-movement ) are good examples. (BP and ecological responsibility may not be…)

Ted: The challenge is first how to spot the film if you are the brand, or how to spot the brand if you are the filmmaker – and then to do it far enough in advance so that both sides can utilize the relationship to truly grow their audience. Marketing of movies often only becomes audience facing the six weeks prior to release, but all the elements are in place two years prior to release. We have to change the practice for the world we are currently living in.

Steve: Well, what’s attractive here about the “Digital/Social Marketing” is the seeding of brand content is essential over time.

Independent films appeal to key audience segments by identifying serious issues, having embedded them in entertaining stories with strong characters. If the values associated with these same issues are essential to a brand strategy, they can be mutually discussed, debated and spread over time, supporting both the film release and the brand platform.

Let’s take Hallmark Cards as an example. They have a new line of cards for the unemployed. (http://perezhilton.com/2011-09-30-hallmark-launches-unemployment-sympathy-cards).

What if Hallmark created a campaign that highlighted unemployment and the dilemmas that result for the families? And the themed content behind the George Clooney film, Up In The Air, and shared that content — created by the brand — on behalf of the film? Might be a bit racy for Hallmark, but a campaign like this would certainly give them a lot of cred among people who are struggling.

Or, say, the theme of the new American family? The shared content was created and hosted by someone as large as McDonalds debating the makeup of the “new American family” and including the story of making of The Kids Are All Right? Some of the best and most popular American independents, Juno, Little Miss Sunshine, and Kids, focus on this same theme.

The brand would devote a significant amount of their marketing dollars to this effort, connecting with and supporting the film, gaining access to the films fans, and gaining greater authenticity.

Ted: If the filmmakers have not taken any financing they certainly can not be accused of compromising their integrity – which for some sometimes seems to be even more important than liking a good movie. But it’s still a good movie that drives most people, and certainly drives the audience. As much as I think good movies predominately come from whom the creators are, I do think the structure that creation occurs in, has a great deal to do with the quality of the product too. Artists need ownership of their work. We should consider what this structure’s content might be like.

Steve: Yes, who creates the new themed content and its honesty will be a big issue. A terrific example of a brand using a value theme in my opinion is the ongoing Responsibility Project from Liberty Mutual:

• Liberty Mutual’s TV ads emphasize responsibility and doing the right thing: http://tinyurl.com/42etyky,

• Meanwhile they maintain a site that talks about responsibility: http://responsibility-project.libertymutual.com/#fbid=p6WVZRiYX6D

• What if a new film like the Insider came out (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0140352/) or again, Up in the Air, and had a campaign running that emphasized tough choices. And the content on the film’s issue site shared space with Liberty Mutuals? And the Liberty Mutual Responsibility site talked about the issues faced in the story by the Russell Crow character?

Ted: The challenges are that ideally that it can’t be just a one-off or a series of one-offs. Audiences need a place to return to, a place they can develop trust in, and ideally a place that can participate in. You can’t just build films any more.

To serve all the participants, you need to build a community. Both the filmmakers and the brands and the audiences will be involved in building what it becomes. You can unite them all around common themes & content silos. If the commitment to the brand is only a film or two, nobody will benefit.

You need a long term relationship, akin to what American Express has with Tribeca Film, but only not on a general basis but on a focused thematic. In some ways you had this long ago in television programming sponsorship like Mutual Of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, but now since we can easily add the social aspect to it via the internet, it won’t be run top down but through the community itself. That ownership of the theme by the community allows it to resonate much more fully for both the filmmaker and the brand.

Steve: One of the best examples of ongoing support is Xerox roles in early role in top PBS programming. It would be really great to aggregate support this way for a slate of films. What’s essential is that a brand truly represent and support the theme. A filmmaker’s willingness to share the stage with a brand might be the ultimate test of mutual sincerity.

Ted: I think the demands that are made upon creators and their collaborators start to change under this paradigm, or at least the recommended “Best Practices” start to change. Filmmakers shift from a pure story-centered world to a greater focus on maintaining an ongoing conversation with their communities. It only makes common sense to adopt a strategy of both “audience aggregation” and one of “engagement”. You want not just fans, friends, and followers, but an active community that will proselytize for you.

Steve: Amen.

Ted: Seriously, right? If filmmakers and brands both declare what they want to represent openly and transparently – or even through gatekeepers & facilitators –- we are at the start of both a real collaboration and a new business model. There would be a hub by which audiences discover new work and then discuss and participate in the themes of that work. They transform from consumers to communities. The brand wins by enjoying the positive association with what truly matters to the community. The filmmakers win by having a new home for the discovery, appreciation, and presentation of their work – all important pillars in the cinema equation.

Note: We’ve looked at this possibility in the past on HopeForFilm. Check out Amy Lo’s post on “How Big Brand Sponsorship Saved Our Indie Film”

What are the top individual film websites? What are the top ones not funded by a major distributor?

What makes for a good landing page? What are you trying to accomplish with it?

How come filmmakers don’t discuss this a whole lot more? How come film festivals don’t have panels on this sort of stuff so we can actually learn something?!

I was very happy to stumble upon this blog post that outlined a series of suggestions on what makes for a good landing page for a website.
http://www.formstack.com/the-anatomy-of-a-perfect-landing-page
Thank you formstack! Thanks to Ross Pruden and Danny Dee for tweeting about this and pointing me to it.

Where can we find more information like this?

Will film festivals start to design more programming to truly help filmmakers in this transition to direct distribution?

What’s the goal? Building an audience, or making a profit? Some projects are undertaken for other reasons than getting rich. Sometimes we just want to educate people. And sometimes that noble effort, leads people to give even more.

Well, here’s Hope hoping…

I got to participate in the doc PRESS PAUSE PLAY awhile back.

The digital revolution of the last decade has unleashed creativity and talent in an unprecedented way, with unlimited opportunities. But does democratized culture mean better art or is true talent instead drowned out? This is the question addressed by PressPausePlay, a documentary film containing interviews with some of the world’s most influential creators of the digital era.

The interactive version of PressPausePlay was recently released. It includes the interview with me as well as many others so there is now ten times the original content.

You can now download the original version and the exclusive interactive player for free on: http://www.presspauseplay.com/

PressPausePlay’s interactive player includes many unseen interviews with creative innovators such as filmmaker Michel Gondry, electronic musician Apparat, and founder of Soundcloud Eric Walhforss, and me (producer Ted Hope).There are also extended interviews with those in the film such as Seth Godin, Lykke Li, Moby and many more. In the interactive version you can also view additional information about the people interviewed so you can continue to get inspired by their work. The result is an incredible amount of content and continues the conversation about hope, fear and digital culture.

The interactive player will be an evolving version with updates available as the filmmakers add more content or links to their upcoming soundtrack and other material.

Of course if people want to donate they can, but they can also purchase the film and soundtrack on iTunes, Amazon.com and many more. And hopefully those, that can, will. The filmmakers felt that the viewer should be able to decide how they see the film to get a personalized experience. How often does that happen? Hopefully a lot more.

I truly recommend you watch the entire film. Of course, if you have only ten minutes now, or have a boring conference call coming up, just press mute on your microphone and start watching just my interview right here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKEmp19WewA

Tech Crunch wrote about the film recently, so you know it’s important:
http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/01/buy-presspauseplay-or-legally-download-it-for-free-your-call/

Back in August SherI Candler introduced us to the new curating and distribution service here.

Today, we get the inside view from a filmmaker’s perspective how one might make best use the service from JUNKIE NURSE’s Jeff Orgill.

JUNKIE NURSE: Anatomy of a Prescreen Launch

We’ve all been wondering if somebody would figure out a way to successfully release films online. Shari Candler’s recent article on this site mentioned that Prescreen was taking a stab at it. I sent in our movie Junkie Nurse (Boppin’ at The Glue Factory).

Lee from Prescreen called and said they wanted JUNKIE NURSE. I was jazzed about being featured. I’d been mired in some contractual BS and this was the kick in the pants I needed to get back into the groove. I had an attorney review the contract, he gave me the thumbs up, and I got to work.

Shari Candler looked at our film’s materials and gave detailed suggestions for preparing our release. Her biggest note was get our website up to speed.

I’d met a web designer / filmmaker, John Irwin @Robison Hope Creative, through a FIND meeting in LA. He’d done the site for Jon Reiss’ doc BOMB IT. Irwin suggested a customizable WordPress site which would be easy to update myself down the line.

I’d seen lots of sites that were very focused on selling. They felt empty — if I wasn’t ready to buy immediately there was little to snag my interest. A hard sell tone could be a turn off to a first time visitor. The “come explore” tone of our new site really suited JUNKIE NURSE’s tone of dialoguing with the audience rather than just talking at them. This is the kind of film I loved to see, wanted to make, and our site reflected that. Check it out here: JUNKIE NURSE

People love movies! But they are carefully hunted by big budget marketing. It’s a special animal who seeks out and takes a risk on a tiny film like Junkie Nurse.

If indie filmmakers think of marketing their film as wooing their audience, as a flirtation, it becomes clear that you’re not after a one-night stand or drunk sex here, you want a deeper relationship with your audience.

With all this in mind, and a full time job in tow, I decided to get help with marketing and publicity.

Another Hope For Film blog post had a list of PMD’s for hire. I started calling, and Audrey Ewell understood what I needed to do. She created a press release, and an important thing she did right away was to set a goal. Another film on Prescreen had just set a record for the first day — 100 buys. Our goal – beat 100 buys.

Marketing techniques I learned from Audrey:

1 • TWITTER: follow people with interests related to your film. For Junkie Nurse I Twitter searched addiction, rehab, narcotics, nursing, senior living, elder care, indie film, filmmaking, jazz, swing, big band, Bebop and other related terms and followed the Tweeters (Twits?) I found. There was a gold mine in nursing and elder care which are two key issues Junkie Nurse skewers. Several of these people and orgs followed back. Others read our description and learned about our film.

2 • FACEBOOK: message FB friends with a brief request that is Tweet friendly (under 140 characters) i.e. JUNKIE NURSE, relevant info, the link and a joke in the tone of the film. I left the joke in or took it out depending on who I was sending it to. At first I was shy about asking, thinking it was embarrassing to even ask. But YOU HAVE TO ASK! The 36 people who directly re-posted the link from my request had over 23,000 FB friends amongst them. Not to mention all the other posting and re-linking and “likes” that start flying around when you have that kind of chatter going on. I noticed that each time somebody posted our link we’d get another buy on Prescreen.com. We marched toward our goal click by click.

At about 6pm on launch day my brother Jayson swooped in with both marketing barrels a blazin’!

3 • TEXT: A phone contact, even a text, can cut through the noise. Jayson texted everybody in his iPhone about JUNKIE NURSE.

4 • PARTY: create an event around your premiere. Jayson threw an impromptu Friday night Worldwide Online Premiere bash at his place inviting all his friends over for drinks to celebrate our launch and asking them to buy our film online right there at the party.

5 • EMAIL: On our new site I needed an email sign up. My producer B.Scott O’Malley suggested MailChimp – it’s free! With the Chimps help I did 3 emailings – one before launch and 2 on day of – to my existing personal list of about 1400.

6 • INVITE: The day of the launch I discovered that Prescreen had implemented a new feature called INVITE which allowed users to send a link to buy the film to their Facebook, Gmail, AOL and other contact lists. If you get 3 users to buy a film on Prescreen you would get a credit for a free film. Now there was a real incentive for strangers to promote films to their social networks.

We worked hard launching JUNKIE NURSE on Prescreen.com. I hired a web designer and a PMD. I took 3 days off work. Two brothers and a sister pounded the FB pavement, and I spent about $1,600. I know, it’s not the millions a studio can spend, but it was what we had and we worked it best we could.

And worked it did! JUNKIE NURSE is Prescreen’s biggest seller yet and our conversion rate from our trailer views to purchases was 24% — the highest of all the 19 films on their site. No new lesson here: your trailer is still key in convincing people to watch your movie.

Successes:

• Exceeded our goal of 100 buys
• Guest blogging for two of my favorite film blogs (No Film School and Hope for Film)
• Social network chatter grew from 12 to 180 conversations (we only made 36 direct contacts so it expanded on it’s own)

Things I’ll do differently next time:

• Bring marketing / press person on “the earlier , the better” to pitch press and do blog outreach. We’ve barely scratched the surface of potential interest groups for JUNKIE NURSE (search terms above)
• Enlist and coordinate cast, crew, family and close friends on social networking techniques above
• Instruct the team on using Prescreen INVITE function
• Test your MailChimp emails and have others check them, especially the links.

The goal of Prescreen is not an end all for the run of your film — it’s a first step in determining your audience and your marketing plan. At the end of our 60 day run on Prescreen they will send me a “Performance Report” outlining the audience that did buy JUNKIE NURSE including things such as: age range, gender, top cities, favorite websites, top keywords, and many other stats that you’d use in further marketing with Google and Facebook ads, Youtube tags, SEO and so forth. This is the main reason I got on board – I’m partnering with an internet savvy company mining demographic data about our film’s audience that I’ll use to best situate our film in the long tail for the long haul.

There is an audience out there for our films. We just need to find out who they are, hunt them down, and drag them to see our films.

JUNKIE NURSE (Boppin’ at The Glue Factory) has its Worldwide Online Premiere on Prescreen through December 7th.

Jeffrey Jay Orgill, writer / director, Junkie Nurse (Boppin’ at The Glue Factory) lives in Santa Monica, California with his girlfriend and baby daughter.

It seems Film Financing Conferences are not so much exclusively about film financing, but about the state of the industry and much of what factors in to it. Last week Gary Baddeley reported on attending one such conference, and today he continues to share what he learned. To me it is precisely this process (aka sharing knowledge) that will lift all our boats. It is this process that motivates this blog. We have a great deal to learn and unless we accept how dependent we are on each other to learn it ASAP, our options and opportunities will soon grow far more limited.

Thankfully, today, Gary extends his generosity still further.

In Part 1 of my report for Hope For Film on the 11th Annual New York International Film & TV Summit, organized by BNA / ATLAS, I described the event as being loaded with
exactly the kind of indie film royalty a striving young producer might want to meet, with
the caveat that the conference might well be beyond their budgets. Nonetheless, for
those who could afford it, there were some valuable pieces of wisdom dispensed.

The conference was pretty old school in its coverage of the business of film, although of
course the advice on hand was up to the minute and invaluable if you are producing a
film that is capable of international presales, equity and bank finance, and so forth. Day
One left me thinking that the side of the business that I live in, and most of the people I
know in independent film operate, was far removed from the heady climes of seven-
figure finance that was discussed.

I started Day Two by attending a panel on labor issues in dealing with guilds and labor
unions. It was dominated by Susan Lowry of the Screen Actors Guild, who is a great
advocate for the guildʼs members and very forthright. For instance, she freely admitted
that the collective bargaining agreements are behind the times and donʼt reflect the
reality of film production and finance today. As such, SAG will work with producers …
but she will still insist on collection agreements that give the guilds a first position set
aside of about 10% in the aggregate.

Tom Leo of Sheppard Mullin reminded us that a producer must track the gross receipts
“waterfall” to make sure all obligations can be met at the right time. He identified Fintage
House and Freeway Entertainment as the leading third party collection companies that
will help with set asides and meeting the producersʼ obligations.

Lowry mentioned that in the absence of reliable foreign sales estimates by a sales
agent, SAG will look at the published high and low figures by territory published by the
Hollywood Reporter every six months to estimate foreign grosses. Typically SAG might
allocate 10-15% to theatrical, 30-40% for home video and the rest to free and pay TV.
Itʼs somewhat variable according to the genre, cast, and so forth of course.

The next panel focused on how to get a television series funded and sold to a network.
As the only representative from a network, A&Eʼs Alex McDowell got a lot of airtime.
Responding to the question of how to persuade a network such as hers to buy a pitch,
she advised that if you havenʼt produced for a network before, you really have to nest
your production company inside one that has done so. She suggested looking at the
attendees of the Realscreen Summit in Washington, D.C. as a proxy for a favored
production company list.

She also noted that since A&E Networks now owns Lifetime, we can expect the latter to
be buying a lot of reality and unscripted shows … so producers get your pitches ready,
but with budget included – they wonʼt look at a pitch without it. The best way to get
development execs to attend your pitch? Food – bring lunch for everyone!

John Morayniss managed not to say anything about his employer, Entertainment One,
being an acquisition target whose stock has recently done a moon shot with Disney and
Viacom amongst the potential buyers mentioned in the media. He did say that this is a
fairly good time for producers of original programming, like eOne, especially with
bidding wars for SVOD rights going on (he specifically cited eOneʼs recent experience
with multiple bids from Love Film/Amazon, Sky and Netflix in the UK).

At lunch I had the opportunity to chat with art house film distributor extraordinaire
Richard Lorber, whose name has been on the marquee of more companies than you
can count on one hand, it seems, and is now the owner of Kino Lorber. Richard was on
the post-prandial panel entitled “Latest Developments On Emerging Digital Distribution
Plaforms,” along with veteran entertainment lawyer Steven Beer and New Videoʼs Erick
Opeka.

Richard started things off by telling us that Kino Lorberʼs physical goods business (DVD
and Blu-Ray) was up 40% last year, so donʼt bother telling him that physical goods is a
dead business. As an aside, around about that moment I actually got some connectivity
on my iPhone and noticed that my company had just received our first orders from
Qwikster, which I happily tweeted about, recalling Ira Deutchmanʼs suggestion the day
before that Netflix spinning off its physical goods business was going to drive people
into theaters, to his delight. (Those Qwikster orders may be the last ones we receive
now that Netflix appears to have learned the lesson of New Coke and killed Qwikster off
before too many customers fled.)

It was suggested that Netflixʼs competitors can smell blood in the water and theyʼll
aggressively go after Netflixʼs business, but Greenberg Traurigʼs Steven Beer reminded
everyone that Netflix still represents about 60% of digital revenue. Erick Opeka reported
that it was more like 50% for New Video. Continuing with the statistics, he said that New
Video is responsible for about 17% of the movies on iTunes (about 2,000 movies).
iTunes represents about 60-80% of New Videoʼs transactional (download to own) digital
revenue, but things are shifting rapidly towards rental, where they are seeing about
55-60% annual growth.

The panel shifted somewhat towards a discussion of what they liked to call DIY distribution, which, as readers of my erstwhile officemate Nayan Padraiʼs guest blog on Hope For Film will know, should more accurately be called direct distribution. Steve Beer suggested that independent producers now have two marathons to run: making the film first, then marketing and building a community around the film.

Richard Lorberʼs comment: “DIY distribution too often turns into DWI distribution.”

Echoing Ira Deutchmanʼs comment the previous day about having your film on Netflix
and iTunes being about as meaningful as having your name in the phone book, Erick
Opeka made the point that where digital distributors can really add value is in their
relationships with the gatekeepers of the home pages of the likes of Hulu and iTunes, as
well as the programmers of the barker channels on cable VOD (“the most powerful
people in digital media”). The uplift in performance for a movie featured in the barker is
astonishing, so if you are considering direct distribution, remember that just landing on a
platform is not really enough.

As to the future of digital distribution, Opeka expects that weʼll be seeing the leading
IVOD outlets competing for exclusive rights to content. The panelists noted that
currently distributors can sell their movies and TV shows on a non-exclusive basis to
multiple outlets, but these may seem like the good old days before too long. The other
trend he noted was the emergence of massively popular niche content outlets like
Machinima.com, which is now the number one all-time entertainment channel on
YouTube, serving something like a billion video views a month. Yes, I did get that right, I
just checked: 897 million video views in August 2011.

Thatʼs hard to compete against. Thanks for reading…

– Gary Baddeley

Themes resonate with communities. Communities congregate around common themes. Communities endure whereas films perish at a certain point in time. Community interest can revive forgotten works. Many different communities are vested in similar themes. Common interests between creators, financiers, and promotional entities can exist within the themes of work.

Could new sponsorship opportunities for ambitious work exist within the common interest of common themes?

If we identify common themes found in indie film, and then identify what films have those very themes, perhaps the other entities that are vested in the themes can help support those works.

Why don’t we start with the common themes… What are the common themes found currently in Indie Film? I tweeted this question out a couple weeks back and was a bit disheartened by the limited amount of comments it generated. Nonetheless I received a few suggestions to add to my list (so thanks for that). Perhaps you can add to this now.

1. Triumph over adversity; you can do it;
2. Family is where you find it;
3. Difference is universal;
4. Tolerance/Forgiveness will teach us all; aka Open your heart;
5. Be yourself;
6. Take action; move on; just do it; don’t sit on the fence; make a tough choice; don’t wait until tomorrow.
7. Don’t settle; Raise the bar; Aim higher; dream the dream;
8. Build it and they will come; dream the dream;
9. Life is hard but our family & friends get us through it;
10. Don’t mess with mother nature. (via
11. ‎”There’s hope, but it’s not where you think it is.” (via Mindi White)
12. “Love Hurts” (via @flixfixer). Love saves. Love tranfsorms.
13. “Revenge is all-consuming” (via @flixfixer)
14. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely” (via @flixfixer)