by Kirsty Stark (Producer), Ella Macintyre (PMD) and Victoria Cocks (Writer/Director)
Part 5. Release: Wrap-Up & What’s Next
Our final step in this stage of the Wastelander Panda journey was to release the films. We did this in three stages – a preview at the SXSW Film Festival in March, two back-to-back screenings at a local cinema in Adelaide on May 27th, and an online release that same evening.
We had different reasons and goals for each of these three steps:
by Kirsty Stark (Producer), Ella Macintyre (PMD) and Victoria Cocks (Writer/Director)
Part 4. Production: Keeping our Audience Engaged
Once we had our project funded, we needed to find a way to keep our audience engaged over the year it took to write, produce and release our three Wastelander Panda films.
When we released our Prologue, it was nothing more than a three-minute film, so all of the traffic we gained was directed back to our production company, Epic Films, via our website and Facebook page. This was far from ideal, especially considering that the company’s two other short films, L’Artiste! and Landscape Scene, were very different in tone and subject matter. We needed to separate our Wastelander Panda branding in order to give it the best possible chance of succeeding online long-term, so our first step after funding the project was to create a new Wastelander Panda website (at this stage a WordPress blog), Facebook page and Twitter account.
It turned out to be much more difficult than anticipated to migrate all of our fans over to the new pages. This taught us a great lesson
by Kirsty Stark (Producer), Ella Macintyre (PMD) and Victoria Cocks (Writer/Director)
Part 3. Financing: Generating Certainty Online
Once we had proven Wastelander Panda was a viable concept and had an audience (through the success of the Prologue), we needed to find a way to finance future stages of the project. Still aiming to eventually take it to television, we looked at what we had done so far, and assessed the likelihood of getting funding, keeping in mind that we were first-time filmmakers. Speaking to experienced producers from the local industry, as well as looking at the questions being raised online from viewers, we realized that we still had a lot to prove before we would be able to attract any kind of significant finance:
by Kirsty Stark (Producer), Ella Macintyre (PMD) and Victoria Cocks (Writer/Director)
Part 2. Promotion: How We Drove our Prologue to 100,000 views in 3 Days
The day we posted our three-minute Wastelander Panda Prologue online, our intention was to share it with friends, with the hope that others would also enjoy it. The accessibility and overwhelming amount of content on the Internet gives you a sense that you can easily put something up and people will find it. What we realized is that realistically, you have to put it in front of them. The evening we uploaded it, we happened to be at our friend Ella Macintyre’s house. She’s one of those people that has grown up on the Internet, and knows it backwards and forwards – which blogs are owned by which media companies, who pays attention to whose content, and how information spreads from one place to the next. The first thing she asked us was “So, where are you sending this thing?”
Despite our initial ignorance, and lack of prior planning, we managed to have our Prologue seen by over 100,000 people in its first three days online.
When I was in Australia & New Zealand recently, I was asked by Screen Hub journalist Andrew Einspruch to explain what I meant as the difference between Traditional Indie Film and my favorite phrase “Truly Free Film”:
I think it is one of consistent evolution and transformation to some degree. I come from America, and that’s my perspective. In America, the process of indie film creation has always been, essentially, to write for the market, whether people really think it through or not. I think it interferes, or at least enters and influences, their work process.
We don’t have any state funding in America for cinema; there’s no subsidised system. So when a film is produced, it is often made with the intent that it will be sold to a buyer/distributor, and ideally one of the studio-controlled specialised division.
Even in a film that is 100% private equity financed, those that create it tend to self-censor to some degree in an effort to make sure the film can sell to one of these well-capitalised entities.
Today’s guest post is from Louise Smith, the producer of Nash Edgerton’s THE SQUARE (out now in theaters in the US and highly recommended).
I’ve just returned from a trip to New York & LA for the release of my film THE SQUARE.
In the lead up to the opening weekend, I was part of some Q & A sessions with Nash Edgerton (the director), and we were asked a couple of questions that I thought I’d share with you:
Had we ever thought to subtitle our movie (the lady who asked the question said she couldn’t understand our accents)
Does everyone in Australia have a mullet
Hmmm… no and… um, no.
The cultural gap between Australia & America is always bigger than we Aussies anticipate – especially from the eyes of an American looking toward Australia. We however, consume American movies and TV all the time, so there’s no language or cultural things for us to learn about your characters when we watch them… we know them already because we’ve grown up on them.
