Category: Truly Free Film

We are on the verge of a new film culture and infrastructure.

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Truly Free Film

Post-Fest Era: Further Festival Initiatives

In a post on Variety’s Festival Blog, The Circuit, Steve Ramos writes about the unique launch and partnership Miramax is doing with the Heartland Film Festival and their film “The Boy In The Striped Pajamas”.

Battsek approved the call to partner with the 16-year-old festival on a single-night, 31-city screening program to promote “Boy in the Striped Pajamas” to Heartland partner organizations like the Boy Scouts of America in an attempt to build national awareness for the film.

This type of re-imagining of the film festival is critical these days.  Hopefully other festivals will follow suit and find new ways to increase a film’s exposure when they commit to play at a festival.  A 31 city simultaneous single day screening is possible even for the Truly Free Filmmaker in these days of digital projection.  How many festivals can extend beyond their home base?  Festivals have to think beyond their immediate community and increase their reach if they are going to offer filmmakers something truly meaningful.

I would be curious to hear what other festivals are doing to further their impact and partner with filmmakers.
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Truly Free Film

Film Festival Plan A: Beyond Bonding

For years, I have recommended filmmakers do all they could to bond with the other filmmakers they met at festivals, for as the films travelled festival to festival, these other filmmakers would become their support group, their friends, perhaps even more. 

As we enter the Post-Festival Era, this support group needs to be transformed into a far more important alliance. It remains a top priority to find like-minded filmmakers, but now these fellow conspirators should be sought out as fellow distributors. With five united filmmakers you have a booking block, a touring film festival of your own making. 
If there was a way to locate all the other festival programmers, community center programmers, or independent theater bookers that attend the festival, this alliance would be in business.  Hopefully this type of independent booker will recognize that this is a new era and they can go to the filmmakers directly for an engagement.  Somehow I don’t think that’s going to happen this year, and these people remain hard to find.  Filmmakers need to share this information where ever they can find it.
I recognize that some may be hesitant to pursue this approach immediately after the festival.  The dreams of acquisition will still be strong.  Yet this sort of booking engagement is not a theatrical release in the traditional sense.  It is closer to a publicity tour — a publicity tour on someone else’s dime.  Field publicity is direct communication with the audience and that is the most successful way to build word-of-mouth on your film.
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Truly Free Film

A Few Words Of Inspiration…

from Lance Hammer, courtesy of Ray Pride.  Check them out here.

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Truly Free Film

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.
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Truly Free Film

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!
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Truly Free Film

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?

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Truly Free Film

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.