Tag: Marketing

Web Marketing For Filmmakers

Post author By Ted Hope
Post date December 17, 2008
2 Comments on Web Marketing For Filmmakers

Here’s a great blog post about the very very basics of marketing your film’swebsite. I’m sure you know a lot of this – but a lot was news to me (post excerpted):

1. Go to Godaddy.com and purchase a domain name. Get one that ends with .com. Get your movie title. If it is unavailable add “movie” or “themovie” or “film” to the end. (You don’t need to purchase any other services during check-out.)
2. Sign up for WordPress.com. Make your blog the title of your movie/ domain. Start posting press releases and other articles, such as reviews.
3. Sign up for Youtube.com. Make your username title of your movie/ domain. Post your trailer, or you can do a video “pitch”.
4. Sign-up for an account on Facebook.com.
5. Sign-up for Flickr. Get your username title of your movie/ domain.
6. Sign up for an account at del.icio.us. Bookmark your domain, facebook page, blog page and you tube page.
7. Sign up for a google account, to use their alerts, place connect with people who talk about you.
8. Sign up for Box Office Widget. Place this on your website and on your blog. Use it as your signature on forums.
8. Sign up for Spottt. Place this banner code on your myspace page, blog, and the thank you page from Box Office Widget.
10. Go to Yahoo! Groups and find all the groups that may have interest to your film and join. Participate in the group, rather than just spam the group.

This was written by one of the co-founders of Neoflix. Neoflix themselves have set up a number of marketing tools for filmmakers – they are going to give me a tutorial in the coming weeks and I’ll be passing that information along.

And this DIY Flix sites seems pretty amazing at first glance as well.

But back to marketing. I think marketing does not come easy for most filmmakers. Even filmmakers who pitch well – when it comes to the nuts and bolts business aspects of DIY filmmaking – they blanch. Its quite different from being creative. Very different. Doesn’t feel right and doesn’t feel fun.

I have an extra handicap of coming from the punk era where this kind of straight business had a certain smell. But its time to get over that – web marketing necessary if you are going to create an audience for yourself and survive as an “independent” filmmaker in these changing times. My mission for then next couple of months is to become immersed in all manners of web marketing for filmmakers – I’m going to use Bomb It as a case study and I’ll keep you posted.

-Jon Reiss (jon@jonreiss.com)

Tags Marketing, Neoflix

Truly Free Film

Who Is Really Prepared For Sundance?

Post author By Ted Hope
Post date December 16, 2008

If only I had more hands. And more time. And less things that really got me excited — like movies I want to make.

Anyway, I have been wondering what films and what filmmakers had gone ahead and made a trailer, built a website, had been blogging, placing clips on line. You know: all the sort of stuff that needs to be done so you can truly launch at Sundance.

It currently looks like the list of Those Who Are Prepared is not surprisingly dominated by those that have the most funding (and thus the most hands). But it really doesn’t have to be so (I know that’s a lot easy to say, than do, but still…).

Cinematical has run with a good opening list of the trailers for Sundance films. I hope someone does a list of websites soon too.

Tags Adventureland, Cinematical, Marketing, Sundance

Truly Free Film

Marketing 101: Synecdoche

Post author By Ted Hope
Post date October 22, 2008
100 Comments on 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.

Tags Charlie Kaufman, Marketing

The Next Good Idea

The War Against Omnivideo

Post author By Ted Hope
Post date June 24, 2008

Scott Macauley at the Filmmaker Magazine blog tipped me to a stock market blog, SeekingAlpha, and the post “How Video Is Going To Take Over The World”. But the reality is that its not “going to”, it already has.

It feels pretty damn close to Bladerunner in NYC with video coming at you in all directions: in taxicabs, on subway station signs, and in corporate elevators. Where’s the escape? Scott pointed out a comment on SeekingAlpha where we will soon need to have anti-video glasses to squash the onslaught.

There needs to be a Citzens’ Bill Of Rights enacted that guarantees that the marketeers don’t have the right to invade our minds in the public space. Turning On should be a matter of personal choice. Soon we will have no escape from commercials others than our own home. If I was backpacker, I wouldn’t be surprise to find a large flat screen at the top of the hike, selling me more cheese.

How are we going to stop Omnivideo World from materializing everywhere? I like daydreaming.

Tags Marketing, video

The Next Good Idea

Virtual Front

Post author By Ted Hope
Post date June 15, 2008

Last weekend I was walking home and saw that one of the stores in my neighborhood had been cloned and flattened. I greatly enjoyed the marketing prank and looked forward to the punch line the next day, not yet sure what they were selling. Sure enough, the butcher was back on Monday, it’s full dimensionality entact, albeit a little eyesore in the window completing the marketing. A lot of work for the few who saw it, but I appreciated my glimpse.