Tag: engagement

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Truly Free Film

5 Things I Learned About Selling Films from Selling Fashion on eBay

If you asked me how I came to the film world and I told you I essentially started by selling vintage clothing on eBay, you would probably think I answered the wrong question. This myopic line of thinking is exactly why you might think it’s hard to make, sell, and distribute a film. When I started selling on eBay 10 years ago, it was like the Wild Wild West – there were no instruction manuals or established models for success. I was trying to figure out how to sell something that my customers couldn’t touch or feel (or even see that well, as I still had no idea how to operate a camera).

The new world of independent film is looking more and more like this uncharted territory everyday. With existing consumption patterns becoming outdated, crowdfunding emerging as the new normal, and myriad new digital distribution models developing, there’s really no *one* right way to get your film made, sold, or seen.

Here are five things I learned from selling on eBay that might help:

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Truly Free Film

Filmmakers: Why 1% is the Most Important Number

By Scott McMahon

Screen shot 2014-04-14 at 10.13.43 PMFilmmakers, what comes to mind when you think of 1%?

The “Occupy Wall Street” movement perhaps?

1% Milk?

Hmm … maybe …

1% RULE OF THE INTERNET

(From Wikipedia, because it’s fact)

In Internet culture, the 1% rule is a rule of thumb pertaining to participation in an internet community, stating that only 1% of the users of a website actively create new content, while the other 99% of the participants only lurk.

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Truly Free Film

The WASTELANDER PANDA Saga! Part 5. Release

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:

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Truly Free Film

The WASTELANDER PANDA Saga! Part 4. Production: Keeping our Audience Engaged

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.

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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

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Truly Free Film

Theatrical is Dead – Long Live Theatrical: Events, Experiences, Scarcity & The Age of Abundance

Part 3 of How to Make Money in the Age of Abundance

By Jon Reiss

Theatrical is Dead Long Live Theatrical. The holy grail of a theatrical release still rings as a delusion for many.  Fighting words still for untold thousands of filmmakers. Who doesn’t want their name in lights – long lines around the block – a packed theater of adoring fans.  I believe this live engagement with fans is crucial for artists.  But traditional theatrical is probably not the way you are going to do it.

In the first post in this series, I indicated that filmmakers need to create scarce resources in order to compete with the abundance of digital.  Today’s post will focus on events – or what I have termed Live Event/Theatrical. The essence of this renaming is for filmmakers to reformulate and to reclaim what the industry calls theatrical – for more on that see Think Outside the Box Office. (PS – I first said this was a two part series – then I said three parts – well I lied again and now it will be four parts – with Part 4 tomorrow).

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When films were only available in a movie theater – that was a scarce resource that could be charged for – it was the only way to see films.  

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Truly Free Film

Ask Not What Your Audience Can Do For You – But What You Can Do For Your Audience

Part 2 of How to Make Money in the Age of Abundance

By Jon Reiss       

When I wrote the first post in this series, I thought this would only be a two-parter, but I decided to expand this to a 3-part series because of a little voice in my head that said I needed to talk about audience engagement more. 

Yes, I said in Part 1 that I wasn’t going to address it in this series because I had addressed it before – sue me. The truth is, audience engagement is so central to this whole process that I needed to add my evolving thoughts on it. I think you’ll appreciate my change of heart.

Audience engagement is a term that I have recently come to use interchangeably with “distribution and marketing.” What else is distribution and marketing – if not enticing, conversing with, and ultimately wooing your audience?

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Truly Free Film

When Did I Sign Up For This “Audience Development” Thing?

By Chris Dorr

Peter Kafka of the WSJ recently interviewed Robert Kyncl, the man who heads up the channel initiative at YouTube.  Robert was asked what he had learned from his experience at YouTube thus far.  He states:

“Lesson one: Audience development is equally as important as great content. By creating fantastic content and spending zero time on audience development, you are certain that you will not succeed on YouTube. You have to focus on audience development as much as you focus on creating content.”

Kyncl goes on to discuss how the task of TV programming and marketing have to be combined in the new world of on demand content viewing. Kafka then asks who is supposed to do audience development, the content creator or YouTube. Kyncl responds:

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