By Jacob Kornbluth
My first documentary, INEQUALITY FOR ALL, opens theatrically on September 27th in the top 25 markets. This is an extraordinary release for a doc, and I couldn’t be any more proud of the film.
As I go from film fest to film fest, people ask me all the time – when did you get the idea for the film? The strange but true answer is this: I got the idea for the film when I gave up on the film industry.
By Annelise Larson
If you are online and want yourself, your brand or your work to be found, then you need to worry about SEO. Search engine optimization or SEO is a jargony, awkward term, but it is really just about making your online content and presence findable.
Search, Search, Everywhere Search
While there is much that has changed about the Internet over the years, one of the things that has remained consistent is that people search. It is how we deal with the information overload and find our way through the overwhelming amount of content online. The latest studies show that search remains the second most popular online activity. The 2012 PEW Internet Project Survey showed that “91% of online adults use search engines to find information on the web, including 59% of those who do so on any given day.” And the great thing about search is that is crosses all demographics. Everyone searches.
It is also important to note that Google is not the only search engine in town; any site with a search box is a search engine, from Facebook to YouTube to blogs like this. Search really is everywhere and offers content creators like filmmakers an amazing opportunity.
By Jay Webb
Previously: IndieStreet Post #2: “Word on The Street”
The “Word on the Street” is: Cooperation
Indieconomies of Scale Part 1 (of 3)
How can we apply the word “cooperation” to an industry whose namesake automatically pushes us away from the very notion? At IndieStreet, we are hoping to bridge the conceptual gap from “artistic & independent” to “business-minded & together” through a simple explanation of what we call Indieconomies of Scale.
We hear a lot of buzz in the Independent film academic space about how filmmakers must start cooperating for the industry to survive, but we have yet to see many examples of execution. This post will not express a concern about the “industry” as an abstract whole, but is more concerned about you as an individual filmmaker. I love great storytellers, and there is a threat to individual independents who do not start grasping technology advancements that can uncover the benefits of community and emerging markets. You are a hard worker who makes a film and tells a touching story with all of your heart, but you can’t figure out the best way to navigate the transitional market in a way that will maximize your film’s potential reach or return. Well you are in luck! You (single frowning Indie filmmaker) are not the only one with this dilemma…and you are also not the only one in the world with a quality story told in an innovative way. There are others just like you. My bet is that you can find at least one other like-minded filmmaker (or better yet another filmmaking team) from somewhere on the globe who you admire that has a similar passion, energy, niche target market, and can mutually agree that you are at the same career stage (which, let’s admit it; the level of “Struggling” encompasses at least 90% of Indie filmmakers).
By Roger Jackson
Previously: Secret 19-Point VoD Marketing Plan, Part II
Before I dive into the final part of the Marketing Plan, a quick Kinonation update. We’re now delivering 3 or 4 films a day to video-on-demand exhibitors. That’s a thousand films a year. Not bad, and we’re just getting started. For me the best part is when people respond to films we distribute. One of the dozens of Kinonation films that went live on VoD in August was “Good People Go to Hell…” It’s an honest, objective and entertaining doc about hard-right Christianity. My favorite online review: “Great movie. Great education about a world I didn’t know much about. Though I don’t share their views, I love listening to people that have passion for what they believe in.” Kinonation isn’t the director, obviously, but there’s enormous satisfaction from helping filmmakers get their films seen, worldwide. That’s what we do. That’s what we love.
OK, back to the Secret 19-Point Marketing Plan. Here’s 13-19.
13. Mailing List: For indie films, building and exploiting a mailing list can be the single most important marketing action. Why? Because these are the people you’ve already connected with — maybe via Kickstarter, or at a festival screening. They CARE about your film. So you’ll get a high return on investment (in time & effort) from communicating with them. You should start building your mailing list early — at the inception stage of your film project. Collect emails relentlessly — at parties, events, festivals. Ask for business cards, and then be disciplined about adding that name & email to your list. You don’t need fancy software — a simple list in Excel or Word is fine.
14. Google and SEM: I truly believe the holy grail for VoD marketing is effective SEM — Search Engine Marketing. It’s what Wall Street brokers would call arbitrage. The internet just makes it scalable. Here’s an example: your film is on Vudu, price is $5 for a rental. You get 50% of that five bucks — $2.50. So you can afford to spend $2.49 on advertising for each rental, since you’d still make a penny. Obviously that’s cutting it a bit fine, so let’s say you’re OK spending $2 to get $2.50 back. You could do that all day, right? That’s SEO arbitrage, and that’s the Google business model.
By Reid Rosefelt
Why are you using social media? It takes a lot of time. What is the exact benefit you think you can get from it?
I don’t know about you, but the most important thing to me is to send people to my blog. Certainly I think that utilizing social media to build traffic on your website or blog should be high on your list.
What about Mobile? As people increasingly use
By Jay Webb
Previously: Post #1: Introducing “Group” Distribution
A problem with our construction: Our street must be built on the active tectonic plates known as the Film-Tech Fault.
So how do we build a film/tech company when the dimensions & planes are constantly shifting?
By Roger Jackson
Previously: Secret 19-Point VoD Marketing Plan, Part I
Here’s Part II of our 19 point plan…
This post was going to be Part 2 of Two. But I try to avoid overly lengthy posts. And feedback over the past couple of weeks has convinced me to focus this post on just a couple of points: VoD Windowing, and Facebook Marketing. So…here are points 11 & 12 of the 19 point plan, with the final 7 to follow in a fortnight. It’s not bait & switch, just that, as the Dude said, “new shit has come to light.”
11. VoD Windowing: The film industry is adept at double, triple and quadruple-dipping. They are one of the few businesses that have found a way to sell the same product to you over and over …and over again. It’s genius if you think about it. You pay to watch a movie in theaters, and then maybe you buy or rent the Blu-Ray or regular DVD, or you catch it on Cable VoD or subsequently online Transactional VoD. And even on iTunes or Amazon or Vude there’s a form of mini-windowing by this oh-so-devious business — the choice of watching the film in Standard Definition, or pay a buck extra for HD. A few months (or, these days, weeks) later it’s on television pay-per-view, which more or less lines up with Subscription VoD, like Netflix. And somewhere in there you also “pay” (via your airline ticket) to watch it on that flight to Paris. And while this is definitely a business model under pressure, with shrinking windows (and therefore profits) it’s still very much the way Hollywood does distribution…and VoD is no exception.
