By Rahul Gandotra
A few days ago I shared a sampler that allowed people to watch my film for free with a dear friend. Just to make sure the sampler worked and she could put it on her website, I followed up and got this response from her:
“I got everything and it works. I was just not sure that this [your film] is what you actually want to be giving away for free.” I paused and asked myself, “Yes, why the hell are you doing this?” – momentarily ignoring all the months of research I had done.
I replied, “Long story. For now, just share the sampler and let people see the film for free”. This post is about that “long story”.
My film “The Road Home” is about a boy who escapes from his boarding school in the Himalayas to get back to his parents in England. As you might imagine, I poured my sweat and soul into making it. And given I didn’t want this film to be seen only by friends and family, I worked equally hard submitting the film to festivals and trumpeting from the rooftops of Facebook about each screening.
But I was left with a sour taste in mouth after my festival run. Why? Because I got invited to some festivals where I saw 30 people in a 500-seat theatre watching my film. All the while I’d continue to get Facebook messages and emails asking, “Hey when can I watch your film?” I’d reply, “Well it was playing in your city on this date.” And the common refrain I would hear is, “Why didn’t you email me?”
This experience is similar to what I’ve commonly heard from regular filmgoers, “You know, I heard about this film that I wanted to see, but by the time I came around to watching it [generally three weeks after the release], it was already gone from the cinema.” I wished I could have explained to them that the cinema exhibitor probably didn’t see good sales numbers in the first and second weekends for that film and thus decided to yank it out of the cinema.
Hearing stories like this has always stopped me in my tracks. Could it be that a lot of independent films sink in the box office because of a communication delay between the film’s release and people hearing about it? From my tiny festival-run experience, this definitely seems to be the case. After the chaos of my Academy Award shortlisting died down, I sat down and pondered how I could prevent my festival experience from happening again with my next film?
And after months of reading and researching articles like 1,000 True Fans and Ted Hope’s “38 Ways the Film Industry is Failing“, I’ve arrived at a seemingly simple but challenging solution: Why not build an audience before the release of the film, and maintain an ongoing relationship with them? Simple to say but how does one actually go about doing this?
I’ve already tried Facebook and Twitter but 1) I don’t have enough space there to share in-depth and interesting things, 2) my updates on Facebook aren’t distributed to all my followers, and 3) my tweets can get lost in the fast flow of the Twitter stream. And putting my film on Youtube and Vimeo doesn’t ensure I’ll be able to have future conversations with those who’ve watched my film. So what to do?
Isn’t there a saying that goes, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear?” In my case, “that teacher” appeared in the form of a company called Topspin. It’s hard to fully explain everything they do, so to keep it simple, one of the things they create are tools that help you grow and maintain your audience.
You can create, for example, email-acquiring mechanisms (or what Topspin likes to call widgets) that allow you to give something away for free (in my case my film) in exchange for a relationship with that person (via their email address).
Just to give you an example of what these widgets look like, here’s one I created for the general moviegoer:
Here’s another widget I created for a more niche audience that gives away much more (commentary clips, interview clips, photos, resources, etc.):
(As a side note, Topspin has made it really simple to share these widgets over Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. You can also embed them anywhere on the web (as I’ve just done above).
You must be asking, “But Rahul, a relationship with your audience?” Yes, a relationship but not in the “romantic candle-lit dinners” and “long walks on the beach” sense. Rather, I’d imagine writing occasional emails (every 3-ish weeks) in which I share the insider’s scoop on the film I’ve made or my next film when it goes into production.
These emails could answer in a direct and intimate way questions I am often asked about “The Road Home”. For example, during my festival run, I was always asked, “How did you go about doing your casting?” Rather than saying, “Well it was a lot of work as I didn’t have a full time casting director and had to do it three times over in two different countries,” why not show what was actually involved? I could edit the three finalists for my lead character with a bit of an introduction from me and then share it.
The way I imagine it is: we’re all around a virtual campfire with me giving interesting insights into my journey on the mysterious path that is filmmaking. In the future, I envision the conversation becoming a two-way street. As I love getting feedback during post-production, I can imagine, for example, sharing two different cuts of a scene and hearing from my audience which one was more emotionally satisfying.
In time, I’d hope that my audience would come to care for what I share, where they look forward to the next interesting tidbit, where their thoughts and feedback could influence the course of the story, and where they perhaps look forward to seeing my next film well before it’s out in the cinema – more so, at least, than watching a standard, one-off ad on the television.
Some of you might be thinking, “Isn’t this a lot of work?” I suppose it is but it sure beats pouring your heart and soul into making a film and then have most people not see it because they got your information too late, no?
This, at least, is my working hypothesis, as I’ve only just created the infrastructure to build an audience and interact with them. Perhaps, if I’m invited back to Ted’s blog in a year or two (and if you’re interested), I can share with you how this all panned out and see if my hypothesis holds up to the rigors of the real world filmmaking and viewing.
Rahul Gandotra is an Academy-Award shortlisted director. He’s expanding “The Road Home” into his feature film directorial debut. In the meantime, Rahul and his screenwriting partner, Andreas Eigenmann, are also writing two additional feature film scripts: a comedy about the war on terror and a hard-boiled thriller set in the world of politics and media. You can view “The Road Home” through either the general or specific widget or at the film’s website.
