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Truly Free Film

SEO for Film Part 3: 10 SEO Best Practices for Filmmakers

By Annelise Larson             

All hail the power of search! If you have read Part 1 and Part 2 of this series I hope I have made you a true believer and helped you understand why it is critical to be search friendly. Now here are 10 search engine optimization tips to help you walk the SEO walk:

#1 – Get problematic technology out of the way.

Technologies like Flash, JavaScript, splash pages, redirects and even too many images instead of text can cause HUGE problems for search friendliness. They can get in the way of the search engines understanding what your site is about, which still lies predominantly in the visible text on the page. Find a balance between the wow and the words.

Hope4Film Part 3

#2 – Leverage tags.

Here are some of the places you can include keywords from your research:

  • HTML title tag (Appears in your page programming, the top of browsers and is the title seen in search results. Make it intriguing to human searchers but also include keywords reflective of the content on your page.)

  • Meta description tag (Appears in search engine listings as the description for your page. Allows you to control your branding, but doesn’t help improve search performance.)

  • Video & image titles (Visible titles for your video and image assets can include important keywords to help with findability in search, but they need to  be relevant.)

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Truly Free Film

Indie Street Post #4: Maximizing Your Story-telling Capital

By Jay Webb

Screen shot 2013-08-19 at 4.51.06 PM

Previously: IndieStreet Post #3: “Indieconomies of Scale Part 1”

Indieconomies of Scale, Part 2 (of 3): Production Benefits & Vertical Integration

There is one aspect of business that seems to remain constant no matter the advancements in technology: the pressure placed on producers to create better products for less money…the story telling business is surely not immune to this stress.  In my opinion, there is no better way to accomplish greater story-telling on smaller budgets then by having a group of filmmakers that are cooperative, competent, but most importantly, alarmingly passionate about the stories being told.

Screen shot 2013-10-01 at 10.14.09 PMWhen considering how to apply business concepts like economies of scale to Independent film, in the case of production we have to reorganize our thought process a little.  In this post, we start by treating a small group of Indie filmmakers as a story producing company with each member having both objective story telling capital (skillset, equipment, etc.) and subjective story-telling capital (interest in project, loyalty, emotional connection to material).  The more story-telling capital that can be attained through cooperation, the more a group can benefit from production Indieconomies of scale.

Traditional Production Economies of Scale

Decreasing Costs per unit:  When companies look at production economies of scale, they find a wide range of advantages that stem from increasing their production to a certain level.  With the growth of a company’s operation, cost per unit will decrease so per unit profit increases.

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Truly Free Film

Diary of a Film Startup: Post # 37: Cutting Checks, et cetera

By Roger Jackson 

Previously: Secret 19-Point VoD Marketing Plan, Part III

We want you films

KinoSmall

Kinonation wants your film to distribute to dozens of video-on-demand outlets, with no cost, no risk and 100% integrity.  Click to Get Started.

Cutting Checks

We’re now cutting checks to filmmakers for Q2 2013. Very satisfying. It takes a while, since VoD outlets tend to pay 60-90 days after the end of the quarter that the film made money. And then Kinonation has to process the cash, take our 20% and PayPal the rest to the content owner. Not simple, not fast — but we’re doing it and this month will see payments to some of our amazing filmmakers. How much can you make? It’s hundreds at a minimum if you do nothing or if your film just isn’t very good. It’s thousands if your film is good, genuinely impressive. It is tens of thousands if your film is outstanding. And that’s the bottom line — how do you make your film, and the marketing & distribution of your film — outstanding rather than just festival average? 

New Outlets

We’re busy signing deals with VoD outlets around the world.

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Truly Free Film

SEO for Film Part 2: 5 Ways to Use the Power of Search for your Film

By Annelise Larson      

In Part 1 of this series, I looked at how search offers an amazing opportunity to find and connect with your audience. I also mentioned keyword research, which is the first and most fundamental step in search engine optimization, and how it provides information about the words and phrases people are typing into the search engines. If done well, this important SEO step can be used in many ways to help your film. Here are just five of them:  

#1 – Inspiration

Looking for the next great idea? Stuck on several and can’t figure out which one to choose? The data from keyword research can provide you with the spark of an idea that suggests a direction and gets your creative juices flowing. It also allows you to test and compare which ones have the most interest and potential audience. It shouldn’t be the ultimate deciding factor but it can help you be more strategic in your creative choices right from the beginning of a project. Or it can suggest a direction to get your creative juices flowing.

Hope4Film Part 2

#2 – Prove Market Viability

This research includes hard data on how many searches for a particular phrase; in other words its “search market.” It can give you an idea of how big the established audience is for your lead actor, the enthusiasm for the title of the work you are adapting, the current level of interest in the specific topic of your project and other salient facts.

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Truly Free Film

How I Gave Up On The Film Industry and Did What I Loved: PART 2

By Jacob Kornbluth (See Part One HERE).

inequality-for-all-poster-600-longSo there I was. I had totally given up on my film career in LA, and gone to live in Berkeley, CA. In trying to put together a fiction film, I had met Robert Reich and become friends with him. Reich and I had started making short videos together, they were successful, and I had begun thinking about how to make a film about what had happened to the American economy and the Middle class. But I had no idea where to start.

The first thing I did was try to get some sense of who was making films in the Bay Area.

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Issues and Actions

FILMONOMICS: How to Qualify for General Solicitation Fundraising

By Duncan Cork

The ban on General Solicitation in the US has been lifted!

Filmmakers are now able to advertise their fundraising publicly, so long as they make “reasonable efforts” to ensure that investors financing the film are accredited. This historic day comes with caveats though. So we advise all filmmakers seek out legal counsel before taking advantage of General Solicitation. Here’s what we know…

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The SEC’s rules for Title II of the JOBS Act became law today. This post will address mostly what you can do now. However, the SEC has also suggested further proposed rules which will go into effect another 60 days after the SEC has taken into account comments from the public. These should be considered for the long fundraising periods associated with film financing.

As of today, filmmakers are able to market their fundraising publicly, which means Tweeting, Facebooking, shouting from the rooftops, and taking billboards out on Sunset Boulevard.

However, under Rule 506c (the rule allowing for General Solicitation),filmmakers must make “reasonable efforts” to verify that their investors are “accredited”.

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Truly Free Film

Why on Earth Would I Give Away My Academy Award Shortlisted Film For Free?

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”.

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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?”

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