18 Steps to GROW your Filmmaking from Shorts to Features

Every filmmaker wants to see their work on the big screen.  However, given the state of the indie film theatrical market, very few filmmakers can pull it off outside of the festival circuit.  Especially for their first films.   It requires a lot of skill, and an idea that appeals to a wide audience, ideally an audience you already have an in with.  So how do you scale your films to that point?  Well, this blog can get you started.

In order to get a theatrical run for your film in today’s day and age, you need a distinctive voice, flawless technical execution, great writing, an audience you know how to reach, and some level of recognizable name talent.  But those things don’t come cheap.  Here’s a roadmap starting with what you can start as soon as you finish reading this blog. 

1. WATCH A LOT OF MOVIES.

I know, this is about filmmaking, but in order to develop your voice you need to consume the work of others.  If you consume the work of others, you’ll find things to emulate.  There’s no reason not to do this.  Many professional filmmakers I know try to watch 2 movies they have not seen a week and at least 2 movies they have seen in order to revisit and better understand the craft. 

2. MAKE SHORTS AS QUICKLY AND CHEAPLY AS YOU CAN

In order to develop both your Voice and your skills, you need to churn out some content.  Assuming you’re working full-time, you may want to try to make 12 limited to no budget shorts in a year.  One per month.  This will let you hone your skills and develop your work.  Don’t spend any money on this. 

3. GET CRITIQUE ON YOUR WORK.

The Filmmakers Subreddit as well as many groups on Facebook offer the ability to share your work for the purpose of critique.  Getting critique from other filmmakers will help you both develop your network, as well as your skills.  This can be a tricky prospect, but I've seen some decent feedback happening on the R/Filmmakers Subreddit.

4. SCALE UP FOR A BIG SHORT.

Now that you’ve honed your craft and developed your voice, you should try to make something of a calling card.  This time, instead of spending a month on it, spend 3 months on it.  Limit yourself to a few locations, but get a bigger crew and spend a little money on this.  Continue to grow your presence on social media while you’re at it.

5. SUBMIT THAT SHORT TO FESTIVALS TO BUILD YOUR BRAND.

You need more than rapid iterations to scale your brand.  You also need validation.  Start submitting to local fests so you can attend them and build your network.  As you’re submitting, make sure to continue to build your brand and your engagement on social media.  Do everything you can to get press once you get into festivals.  You probably won’t get major press, but you should definitely reach out to the smaller local papers. 

RELATED - 6 Rules for contacting Press 

6. START WRITING YOUR FIRST FEATURE, WEB SERIES, OR OTHER SALABLE PRODUCT.

As you’re doing this, start fleshing out the concept for something bigger. Something more than skill building.  Something you can actually sell.

7. AFTER YOUR FESTIVAL RUN IS DONE, DO ONE LAST SHORT.

This one is for all the marbles.  Make the short in the same genre and generally same feel as your feature.  It doesn’t have to be a proof of concept short, or the short to get the feature financed, it has to show you can pull off a feature.  Spend between 3 and 6 months making it perfect. 

8. SUBMIT THE FILM TO GENRE FESTIVALS AND BIGGER FESTIVALS.

Now that you’ve got what will (hopefully) be your last ever short, time to start making relevant contacts in the corner of the industry you seek to inhabit.  Submit your film to the relevant festivals, including one or two big ones then finish your big project script.

9. CROWDFUND YOUR NEXT BIG THING.

Yeah yeah yeah.  I know everyone hates crowdfunding.  However, if you do it right, you can fund a large portion of your movie for free, and get a huge piece of validation to help you, close distributors and investors.

10. SHOOT AND EDIT A FEATURE FILM

Expect this to take a year, but make sure you finish it well and in a technically adept way so that you can get distribution.

11. SUBMIT THE FILM TO ALL THE FESTIVALS YOU GOT INTO BEFORE, PLUS THE MAJORS

The reason you did your last two festivals was to make contacts, time to start calling them in.  Submit your film, and travel to all the ones you can.  Only wait for one major before giving your premier to a tier 2 festival. 

12. GET DISTRIBUTION FOR YOUR FEATURE OR WEBSERIES

This product won’t do you much good if no one can buy it.  Distribution is hard though and it helps to have good people on your team.  If you’re already here, check out my submissions portal through the button below.

13. MARKET YOUR WORK

After the festival run is done, make sure you work with your distributor market your movie. If they’ll let you this process will take a while

14. REPEAT STEPS 9-13

Make another feature.  If you can, double the budget.  Go back to the same people you worked with before if you liked them and they did well. ​

15. MAKE A BRAND FOR YOUR COMPANY

You should also consider monetizing your intellectual property in another way, like starting to brand your production company by creating T-Shirts for your crews, and other perch for your friends.

RELATED: 4 Reasons Niche Marketing is VITAL to your Indiefilm Success

16. HELP OTHERS MAKE THEIR FIRST FEATURE

If you want to be successful you’ll need to have a strong network and weird considerable influence.  No one can survive as an island in this industry, and helping others build their resumes and work can pay huge dividends.
​

17. GET AN AGENT, OR REPEAT STEPS 9-13

If you want to scale up, you’ll need help.  An agent can help you immensely.  You’ll need to live in a hub to get one, or at least have a MAJOR win at some film festivals. 

18.  RINSE AND REPEAT STARTING WITH STEP 9. 

Unfortunately, there isn’t a single roadmap to make this work. No one could give an 18-step process for foolproof success in any industry, and the film industry is particularly tricky.

The best we can do is more a flowchart and a series of steps until you can catch a big break. The real key is making a sustainable life while you wait for that break. It’s not easy, but it can be possible.   

If you liked this, share it. It helps a lot.  Also, sign up for my mailing list to get a bunch of free goodies including an ebook, whitepaper, investment deck template, festival brochure template, and a whole lot more. Get it today!

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The 4 Types of Media Entrepreneurship

Traditionally, when we think of entrepreneurs we think of Steve Jobs starting Apple in a Garage, or Jeff Bezos Traveling across the country to raise funds while writing his business plan in the back seat of the car while his wife drove.  However, there’s more to entrepreneurship than that.  Entrepreneurs find new and novel solutions to problems by building organizations despite a huge amount of risk and uncertainty.

Since this month is Entrepreneurship Month on both this blog and the blog I run over at ProductionNext, I thought I’d start out the month with a little of an expansion of Film Entrepreneurship in general.  In this post, I’ll adapt a rather notable post by Steve Blank from a decade ago to the current landscape media entrepreneurs face, as well as where you’ll most likely find those entrepreneurs.

In his post, Steve outlines that there are 4 types of entrepreneurial organizations which are generally accepted as follows small businesses, scalable startups, large companies, and social entrepreneurs.  You can (and maybe should) read Steve’s post before reading this one.  (it’s short)

If you still don’t agree that filmmakers are entrepreneurs, I recommend you read more of my writing on that topic, in particular this blog and this blog.  While I could expand these into how other film industry stakeholders like sales agents, distributors, press, critics, or YouTubers, in the interest of keeping the scope completely addressable I’ll be working with a more traditional indie film archetype. 

Small Business Entrepreneurship Exemplified by Truly Indie Filmmakers.

According to Banks, these are the entrepreneurs who run a small businesses like a bodega or mom-and-pop shops.  They have no intention of nationwide franchises, but they still do what they can to make a living for themselves and their family.  This is where the vast majority of filmmakers are.  They’re the people wanting to do what they love and find a way to get paid for it.

The owner of the bodega must figure out who buys what from them, and the way they stay afloat is through personalized service that creates a deep connection with their customers.  Convenience also plays a factor.  They can’t compete on price alone with the huge multinational chains down the street, so they need to make sure that they offer something that the mega-chain down the road doesn’t. 

In this day and age, the job is similar for indie filmmakers.  We can’t compete with the major studios, but those studios don’t target a small niche, they target everyone who has 12 dollars.  As a result, they miss a lot of people which leaves a hole open for clever filmmakers to establish an audience, keep them engaged, and build a business for themselves. ​

Scalable Startup Entrepreneurship: Best Exemplified by Indie Filmmakers on the Traditional Studio Path.

Scalable startup Entrepreneurs are people like Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, or Jeff Bezos.  They start a company from (next to) nothing, and then look to do more than address an existing need, they want to disrupt the entire system by creating a need and then filling it.  In doing so, they become mega-wealthy and change the world. 

Those starting a scalable startup are faced with an incredibly high degree of uncertainty, as well as a long road to profitability.  In general, they need significant outside funding in order to succeed.  Most of the time, they must invent something that can be patented that demonstrates a novel solution to a widespread problem with a working prototype in order to raise significant funding from institutional investors.  After that, they’ll need to take on an experienced team and specialized advisors in or If they have a track record in their industry, it helps significantly.

For filmmakers, these scalable entrepreneurs are those who have already made a successful project or two and are scaling up to make something bigger.  They’ll need to have proven themselves by getting validation either in the form of a huge engaged audience, a hugely successful film, or a Tier 1 festival win just to get their foot in the door.  Once their foot is in the door, they can then seek to raise money using their previous work or a concept trailer to raise the funds to make a much bigger movie.  In order to successfully raise those funds, they’ll need a strong package of people with specialized skills and followings of their own. ​​

Large Company Entrepreneurship: Best Exemplified by Digital Divisions of major studios & networks. 

Large company entrepreneurs are people within large organizations seeking to either create new projects that solve a need that has not yet been addressed by the company that they’re working for.  Sometimes this is achieved by creating a new division, other times it's a new product from an existing research and development division.  

A couple of examples of this would be when Intuit started what would become Quickbooks, as well as many other similar projects like Quickbooks pay, expense tracking, and what would become the among many others.  For the Film Industry, I’d say the most notable recent example would be Disney+, although the digital divisions of every major network would also qualify.  Adult Swim starts new experimental projects like this on a regular basis. 

The challenges faced by large company entrepreneurs outside the film industry are as you would expect.  With a large company comes bureaucracy, bureaucracy tends to move slowly, so adapting to change can be extremely difficult.  Funding also becomes highly political, so it can be difficult to keep projects afloat.
​
For film companies, this is extremely similar.  Much of the top brass don’t want to give up the cash cows they’ve build for risky divisions that will burn through cash and not necessarily make more of it.  Also, at least until recently many of the digital divisions were considered a career downgrade from the more traditional media divisions.  We’ll see if it remains true.

Social Entrepreneurship: best Exemplified by Documentary Filmmakers.

Social entrepreneurs who care more about the benefit of the work than the bottom line.  They don’t just want to change the world, they want to save it.  Think of Tesla, OSIGroup (Makers of the Impossible Burger) or Jinko Solar.  Similarly but on a smaller scale, there’s BiosUrns (makers of a biodegradable clay urn that grows a tree from your ashes.)

Success on this front is hindered due to the perception that it’s not much of a money maker.  It can be harder to find investors as well since you’re specifically saying profit isn’t your primary concern.  Most successful companies started with one idea that they could refine and execute before moving to other ideas that complement the same customer base.  They also are very conscientious about stating that their product does more than they provide whatever it is you bought.  There are other intangible benefits associated with the purpose that customers may consider weighing in their purchase decision.

For film, this is best exemplified by documentaries, but more recently diverse media has also been put into the spotlight in as a similar cause for social change. Documentaries are different when it comes to funding, but when they’re well done there is an addressable audience that’s hard to ignore and easy to convert.  Some movies do tree-planting campaigns with ticket sales as an additional incentive to convert, and most community screenings also benefit a non-profit organization.

Thanks so much for reading!  Let me know what you think of this in the comments, and PLEASE share It helps more than you’d think.

Also, if you would like to know more about the business of film and media, one of the best ways to do so is by joining my mailing list click the button below. It’s got a free monthly digest of educational content, a free e-book, a whitepaper, and some templates to help you raise money and market your film.

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Why you NEED to HELP your Distributor Market your Movie (If They'll Let You.)

If you think your work is over when you finish making your film, and someone will just give you a few hundred grand more than it cost to make it so you can make your next one then you’re in for a real wake-up call.  Sadly, there’s no money in making films, only in selling them, and the work of selling them is no longer solely on your distributor.  Or, at least you shouldn’t count on it being that way.  Here’s why.

But before we get started on that, it’s worth a few sentences analyzing the distribution and marketing are related, but NOT the same thing.  So what is the difference between film marketing, film sales, and film distribution?  The simplest way to put it is that Distribution is making your product available for sale, and marketing is convincing end consumers to buy it.  Sales is the process of getting it to the various distributors.  Now that that’s done, on to the topic at hand. 

Also, before we get started it’s important to note that not all distributors will accept your help.  Some control and participation in your home market should be part of your negotiation with your distributor if you’re dealing with them directly or your international sales agent if you’re not. 

1.More sales and more money for everyone!

If you want to make money from your film and have the distributor keep the marketing for the film intact, you’re going to have to give them a reason WHY they should listen to you.  As such, you’ll have to help push the film out there.  Also, after they recoup the money they put in, you will be taking the lion’s share of future sales, so it does have a dramatic impact on not only how much you get paid, but also how soon you get paid. 

Also: most distributors don’t do a lot beyond the initial publicity push.  If you want to continue sales and generate awareness of your movie, you’ll need to keep talking about it.

2. Marketing your work builds your brand

In the words of Alex Ferrari of Indie Film Hustle, "if you don't think you need a brand as a filmmaker, you're wrong.

​Generally, a brand is defined as every interaction you have with customers or potential customers.  So the first step in building your brand is building awareness of your work.  That means marketing your movies. 

Do make sure not to be spammy or a jerk about it though.  No one likes a jerk.  Unless you’re a wholesaler to the jerk store.  #DatedReferences

Related: 5 DOs and DON’Ts for selling your film online.

3. You’ll get a much deeper understanding of the process

If you want to make a career in film, you’ll need at least a cursory understanding of what it takes to sell a film, unfortunately, there’s no money in making films, only in selling them.  Getting a much better idea of how this process works will make it easier for you to make a salable film in the future. 

4. Helping Gives you a better idea of what’s going on with your movie

One of the biggest frustrations faced by many filmmakers is not understanding what’s going on with their films.  One of the best ways to stay in the loop is to help your distributor with marketing.  This can give you a lot more up-to-the-minute data that you can act on to make better marketing decisions and with luck get closer to creating a positive feedback loop of sales.  Admittedly, in the current system that’s A LOT of luck. 

5.  If you’re putting the work in, your distributor will be more likely to take your requests.

If you’ve got more face time, and your film is performing well, your distributor is more likely to make pitches they might not otherwise make. Part of that comes down to perspicacity, and part of it just comes down to numbers.

Thanks for reading! If you liked this post, please share it with your filmmaking community on your social media, or drop a comment down below with your thoughts about what you’d like to know about film distribution, grab my free Indiefilm business resources packet for an e-book, a whitepaper, a bunch of templates, and more.

As you may know, I don’t just talk about distribution, I’ve run companies that do it, and still connect filmmakers to the better players in the game.  If you’d like your film to be considered, use the services button below.  That’s my primary business, in fact.

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The Most Important Parts of your Indiefilm Marketing Mix RIGHT NOW.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been writing about how we used to market movies, vs what works in marketing them now.  So to expand on that, here are the most important things in marketing your movie in today’s day and age.

Consumer Reviews

It’s been decried as outlandish and treasonous by many studio heads, but among the most important things that filmmakers need to do to make money making movies in today’s market is to focus on getting good customer reviews.  The same is true across any consumer product in any industry these days. 

People tend to look closely at what other people who bought the product think of it.  As such, negative reviews have a hugely negative effect on your bottom line.  The fact that the reviews are often tied into various algorithms or listed across multiple platforms generally makes it the most important single factor in how your film will sell. 

Genre

Genre is still as important as it ever was.  It’s a classification of both what you like, and what you’re presently in the mood for.  When I watch a movie with my wife, one of the first things I ask is what sort of movie we want to watch, and then we list through a few genres.  Not sure of what genre or sub-genre is? Check the links below.

Related: How distributors think of Genre

Related: How distributors think of Sub-Genre​

Professional Reviews

The term professional review has become more varied than it used to be. I don’t just mean someone reviewing your film for the LA Times or the NY Times, in this instance, I could also mean The Nostalgia Critic, Lindsay Ellis, MovieBob or any one of dozens of prominent YouTubers. (I understand that a lot of these are more in-depth film criticism than standard reviews, but I would lump them in there.) Sites like Bloody Disgusting would also fall into this category.

Traditional Press

Traditional press other than reviews is more important on an industry level and as such is much more important for traditional distribution. This would be things like acquisitions announcements trade magazines, or something of the sort.

The other way the traditional press can be useful is if you can get some kind of coverage on YOU or your company in a paper for where you grew up, or something of that sort.  Like most things in the entertainment industry, this is largely relationship based.  

Related: 6 rules for contacting press

​Poster

The poster for the film will always be important, but given that all of the pieces I’ve listed above tend to either greatly influence search results or Search Engine Optimization for your film, the poster has ended up down there. As I’ve discussed in other blogs, the post needs to be both authentic and eye-catching enough to drive the potential viewer to click through to the next stage and find out more information.

Related: The MOST important thing in Marketing your Movie RIGHT NOW.

Trailer

On an independent level, unless you can get some press with it, the trailer is most likely going to help convince people to watch the film more than help them discover it. That being said, next to the reviews, this may have the biggest impact in convincing them to watch it.

Synopsis

Finally, people want to know what the movie is about. It needs to be short, punchy, and focus more on SELLING your story than telling it. 

Thanks for reading! If you liked this blog, you’ll probably like the stuff you get on my mailing list.  For signing up you get a film marketing & distribution resource packet, as well as monthly digests of blogs just like this one.  Or, if you’re researching whether or not you want to self-distribute your independent film, you might want to submit it.  I have hybrid models for distribution that help filmmakers build their brands, and get the right amount of visibility for their films so they can rise above the white noise of content being created.

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The SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT Asset for growing your Indiefilm Career RIGHT NOW

Last week I wrote about how distribution has changed over the last several years.  This week, I thought I’d expand on the number one most important thing for independent filmmakers when it comes to building their brand and marketing their movies. What is it?

AUTHENTICITY

Gone are the days when you could simply push out your product with a cool poster and bomb trailer that had nothing to do with the film and expect to make a lot of money.  If you’re going to be a creator, especially one who focuses on selling content to Gen Z millennials like myself you’re going to have to make sure you’re authentic about it. Here’s why

Authenticity makes you more relatable

Most people (especially younger people) have been watching insane amounts of media from a young age.  As such, we’ve learned to tell when someone is full of it.  Most of the time, we can tell when people are playing a character (even if that character is TOO idealized a version of themselves) and when they’re not telling the whole truth.  The rise of youtube and social media has shown us that millennials crave authenticity. If you want to relate to your audience, you’ll need to be authentic. 

Authenticity helps you build stronger relationships with your community and fan base.

Similarly, if you’re not authentic, it’s very difficult to build a relationship with your audience or your community.  It’s not the 80s anymore.  You can’t just blast out music and ads in a pink windbreaker, puffy shirt, big hair, and striped socks and expect people to buy your movie.  Every brand tries to build a relationship with its potential customers using various social media platforms.  However, you can have the advantage, if you’re careful about it. 

Major brands are such a large collection of people it’s not possible for them to maintain an authentic, personal brand.  As such, they generally need to spend a huge amount of money on advertising and sponsorships to keep moving their products. ​

You, on the other hand, need only be authentic and work to speak for your audience in a relatable and non-condescending way. 

Authenticity helps you organically grow your brand reach

Paid growth on social media is expensive.  Authentic, valuable content has more viral reach, and as such it will help you grow your brand, your impressions, and as a result your audience.  If something seems extremely corporate or sponsored or unrelatable, nobody is going to share it. Most filmmakers can’t afford the fees to boost content regularly enough to build their entire brand by it. 

Authenticity correlates to higher reviews

I talked about this at the top of this blog, and in much more detail in this blog. But you can’t just sell your film as something other than it is anymore. If you do, the reviews will suffer. If you made a wonderfully written break in narrative time thriller and then it gets marketed as a heart-racing action film, people are going to be pissed. I would be too, if I was expecting Commando and got Memento.

Thanks so much for reading! If you want to know more, you should join my mailing list for blog digests of blogs just like this one, as well as an awesome film marketing resource pack. That button is right below. I don’t just write about film distribution, I also used to run a US distribution company, and I still represent films to bigger players to myself. If you still need distribution for your film, you should consider submitting it. I rep on commission and there’s no submission fee.

7 Things to Prep BEFORE STARTING your Festival Run

Far too many people consider the festival circuit as the be-all and end-all of their marketing and distribution plans.  While there are quite a few things wrong with that approach from a distribution standpoint.  (See last week’s blog here for an outline of why) film festivals can be a great way to market your film.  Although getting ready to attend a film festival is generally a bit hectic.  There’s always a lot to do, and it’s easy to forget something.  So with that in mind, I’ve prepared a prioritized list of the top 7 marketing assets you’ll need to prep before going to a film festival.

1. Business Card

​If you bring nothing else, you should bring a business card.  Well, also a set of clothes I suppose, but I digress.  If you want to make lasting connections, you need a way to follow up with people.  If you want people to follow up with you, they’ve got to have a way to reach you. 

Simply saying that you’re easy to find online is not really an acceptable answer at networking events like this.  It’s far too easy to forget that they were going to reach out at professional events like this.

2. All your social media pages Set up and active

As we discussed last week, a big part of the reason to attend film festivals is to build your brand and build awareness of your film.  You want to make sure your film is easy to find online, and that there’s a way you can establish a connection with anyone who might want to buy it in the future as soon as you’ve connected with them at a film festival. 

For more, check out this article I wrote on proper Facebook management.

Related: How to manage your indiefilm facebook page

3. Your Website

Its 2019.  Your film needs a website.  Even if it’s just a splash page going to your social media outlets.  The only reason this is below social media is that if you’re going to drive people to your website when you’re not at a festival, you’re going to need something like social media to do it. 

For more information on what should be on your website, check out the blog below.

Related: 13 things you NEED on your Production Company Website

4. Printed Materials to give away

Even a business card can sometimes be hard to remember, and it’s nowhere near enough to capture the attention of the overworked journalists that may attend this film festival.  That’s why you need larger, harder-to-lose festival printouts.  These can give all the information a time-strapped reporter would need to write a quick blurb about your film, and direct to something like an EPK for more detailed information.  Learn more with the article below.

Related: Printed materials for your festival run

But speaking of EPK…

5. An EPK (Electronic Press Kit)

Every filmmaker will have assets that would be useful to a reporter, but not really something that could be easily handled by a printed brochure.  That’s where an EPK comes in.  The EPK is more detailed information and assets that can be used by a journalist or reviewer.  It should have blurbs, links to your trailer, sizzle reels, and interviews if you have them. 

For more information, click the link below.

Related: Everything you need in your Indiefilm EPK

6. An Email List Capture page

Going back to your website, if it’s anything more than a simple splash page, you need a way to capture the email address of people visiting your site.  With their consent, of course.  This will be much more valuable to you than almost any other social media, as it’s more static and doesn’t change its terms as often as other platforms may.  Although that’s been less true as of late with Gmail’s aggressive filtering systems. 

Related: 5 Steps to Grow your Indiefilm Email List

7. A Giveaway for people joining your list

Finally, if you have an email list set up, you should give something away to entice people to join.  I’ve listed 5 ideas for filmmakers below, as the standard fallbacks of ebooks, and other marketing giveaways aren’t always valid.  Check the article below to see what I mean. 

Related: 5 Giveaways for your IndieFilm Email Marketing

Thanks so much for reading!  If you want more content like this, you should join my mailing list.  Just as it says in #7, I have a few giveaways for you including a monthly blog digest and a FREE Film Marketing Resource package!

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5 Steps to Grow Your Filmmaking Email List

At least as of right now, if you’re going to sell anything on the internet, you need to build your email list.  Since most filmmakers aren’t really marketers, here’s a basic guide to building your email list of potential customers so that you’ll have an easier time selling your film once it’s time to distribute it.

1. Provide Value in the form of content.

Marketing is telling people how great you are.  Content marketing is SHOWING people how great you are.  You need to provide a steady stream of content to your followers to really build your following and your brand.  This content can be something as simple as behind-the-scenes photos, bits about how the film production is going, or even quick little live streams talking about how everything is going on set.  You can also blog using your own site, or share your blogs on ProductionNext.com.

2. Offer an Exclusive Value Add in exchange for signing up for an email address.

If you want to sell something on the internet, you need to provide value before you do.  The product itself can’t be the value add, no matter how awesome you think your content is.  You need to build a relationship with your customer, and giving them a simple gift is a great way to start that relationship off on the right foot.  It’s good to think of this as a sample of your future value, similar to a Pink Spoon and a Sample at Baskin Robbins. 

​For ideas on what sort of giveaway to use, check back for next week’s blog.

3. Drive traffic to a form built using Mailchimp or another platform.​

Once you make the offer of the free giveaway, you have to capture their email.  Generally, it’s good to categorize people to help get them on the right list as well.  I use checkboxes on my list to sort by event location, and associations with film schools or bookstores.  I’d recommend that you do something similar, but be careful not to go beyond 3 sets of questions.  If you do, your rate of return is going to drop significantly. 

4. Have the confirmation email automatically deliver the Exclusive Giveaway.

The less work you have to do on this the better.  I recommend you have your email list automatically deliver a link to the final giveaway.  A setting on mail chimp will let your final opt-in take the new subscriber to a hidden page on your site where you can set up a download or viewing link for whatever you decide to use as a giveaway. 

5. Provide valuable content in the form of emails, as well as the occasional sales hook.

Finally, the work isn’t done after you get the email. You need to provide valuable content to each new member of your mailing list, as well as make the occasional sales hook. The way I strike a balance is by using simple Mailing Automation provided for free by Mailchimp. I use the automated mailings to send out blog digests to each new member on a monthly basis based on when they signed up. I keep adding to this automation when I have time, and I try not to include sales hooks in the first automated emails.

Anyway, Thanks so much for reading. If you like this content, you should check out my email list! As I said above, it gives your free blog digests organized by topic, as well as access to a free film market resource package and a whole lot more! You’ll also stay up to date on new releases and events from Guerrilla Rep Media.

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Everything you need in an Electronic Press Kit (EPK)

Last week I shared a few different types of printed materials to use at film festivals.  This week, I thought I’d follow up with a post on the essential components of the Indiefilm Electronic Press Kit.    I will say that this is one thing where reasonable people can disagree, so if you think there’s something I missed, comment below and I might change the post to include it.

How people should access your press kit

Your press kit is not the same as the press tab on your website.  The press tab on your website is primarily to promote your film to consumers and assemble the press that you’ve gotten for both your company and your film.  The EPK is a kit to give potential reporters and reviewers of your film so that they have most of everything they need to do an article on you, or a report on you.  Here’s what you’ll generally need to provide them.  (Often, this will be behind a password firewall, that you’ll include on your printed materials.)​

Synopsis

You’ll want to include a catchy summary of your film.  This will be in lots of places on your site, but you want to make it easy to reference for the press. 

A Running Festival Acceptance/Award List

This section will be on the press tab as well, but you should keep everything on a single page for your film.  It’s essentially just a list of any and all film festivals you’ve been accepted to, as well as any and all awards you’ve won. 

Trailer/Clips from the film

You should include your trailer and maybe a scene or two from your film to give those who are writing an article on your film the ability to do their job both easily and well.  I’d also include a direct link to wherever the videos are hosted. 

Full Bio of Cast/Crew/Production Company With Social Media/IMDb links.

Your regular site will have a lot of this information, but you’ll want to make sure you include the names, bios, previous credits, and links to public-facing social media profiles of all your key cast and crew.  These would be the producers, directors, leads, and strong supporting characters.

Photo Gallery/Downloadable Zip File

Articles tend to come with a few photos, so I’d include around 10-15 photos including stills from your movie and headshots of key personnel.  Make sure they’re high-res, but not Raw.

A Password Protected Screener

You should definitely include a password-protected screener for your film. In this instance, it’s acceptable to have something akin to an email for a password below it. Normally this isn’t something you’ll want to do to people reviewing your movie, but since you’ll probably hand the other password out as part of your printed materials that may end up in the wrong hands this one might be wise to include.

If you’ve got too much to do and wish you had templates for your printed materials, I’ve got your back. My resource pack is chock-full of templates including festival brochures, investment decks, contact tracking, form letters, and exclusive educational content to help you grow your filmmaking career. Click the link below to grab it.

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13 Things you NEED on your Production Company Website

One of the things that most filmmakers tend to struggle with tends to be creating a website for their projects.  Given that it’s nearly 2019, your business needs a website, and it needs to be good.  However, many filmmakers’ websites tend to be hard to navigate, overly complicated, or focus more on the photos from the shoot than the subject of the project.  So, I thought I would create a post outlining some of the best practices in creating a website that I’ve come across.

Domains and Subdomains

So one of the first things you need to consider when creating a website is the domain.  Generally, I’ve found that creating a master domain for your production company and subdomains for your project is a very effective tactic.  As an example, this would look like www.myawesomeproductioncompany.com for the main domain and myawesomeproject.myawesomeproductioncompany.com for the subdomain.  Obviously, you wouldn’t want something as long as your subdomain, but that’s more to illustrate a point than a practical example. 

The exception to this would be to give a custom domain for the first year or two of release and then have that page redirect to a subdomain listed above.

There are a couple of reasons that I favor the subdomain layout.  One is that you don’t have to maintain as many domains.  Another is that it simply feels cleaner.  There are a few drawbacks to this approach though.  A lot of WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) design platforms like Weebly, Wix, and Squarespace don’t have great support for it.  As such, you may have to use a platform like WordPress or Drupal to build your site, and doing that requires at least a basic understanding of web design.  I used to use Weebly but I switched over to Squarespace.

Tabs and What they contain

The rest of the blog is an outline of what tabs your production company site as well as your project subdomains should include.  To start, I’ll list the tab on the page, then I’ll list major features on that tab, and then I’ll explain a little bit about why each of those features needs to be there.  But before we dive in…

Every Tab gives you the ability to join the mailing list

Developing your mailing list as a filmmaker is a really important piece that you absolutely NEED to do.  Your mailing list is a vital part of your community, and it’s one of the most effective ways to actually sell your products.  In general, you’ll give something of value away for free, I use my resource package.

The basics of your funnel should be that you move people from social media to your website, then from your website they join your list, then over time, you turn them from prospects into customers and from customers to repeat customers.  But in order to make that funnel work, you need to make it easy to join your email list.​

Homepage

Trailer
Sales/availability Links for the most recent project
Sales/availability links for your most popular project
Links to all your social media

For those of you who are very far from fluent in Webspeak, the homepage is where you land when you first visit a website.  As such, you want the most important information there.   Given this is the homepage for the company, you’ll want the trailer for your most recent and upcoming projects, and the sales/preorder link if it’s available.  If you’re running a crowdfunding campaign, this should be front and center on this page.  You’ll also want to make sure you include prominent links to your social media, just to make sure that you can get as much repeated contact with the people who visit your website as possible. 
​
You may also want to include logos of all the places your company has been featured in the press. ​

About Tab

The About tab is where your key personnel get their bios and photos posted.  There are a lot of ways you can do this.  If you have a large staff, then you can do click-throughs for each of them.  If you’re like most startup production companies, you probably have 3-5 staffers at most. If that’s the case you can just do it all in one page.  

You may want to consider adding a mailto link, or you may not.  If you include a mailto link, you run the risk of being contacted by spammers.  But you also never know what may come of those links.  I’ve gotten hourly consulting clients just from the mailto links on this site.  If you want to split the difference, use something like Fname (at) Domain (Dot) com or use a captcha plugin.

Projects Tab

Includes links to all your project subdomains
​
This is a listing of all your projects.  I’d recommend having poster images of each as well as loglines, synopsis, and the number one sales link that you want to emphasize. 

Press Tab

This is where you keep all the press coverage your company and your projects have gotten.  I think some of this should be a feed with links to all your press, but you should also have a graphical representation of logos where you or your company has been featured. 

Blog feed for what’s going on with your projects.

I’m (rather obviously) a big fan of using blogs and content marketing to support your business.  If you’re reading this, it’s clearly been somewhat effective.  I think blogging about your journey as a filmmaker is a good way to keep engaged with your community.  They don’t need to be as long or involved as the sorts of blogs I do, but they can be a really effective way to grow your fan base. 

Contact Tab

Make yourself available for contact through your site.  Even if all you’re doing is putting a mailto: contact form.  You’d be surprised what can come of this.  I know at least a few sales agents use them to get the films they really want. 

Project Specific Site(s)

As I stated at the top, you should have a base website for your production company and subdomains for your projects.  Here’s what goes on for your projects.

Homepage

Trailers
Social Media Information.
Sales Links
Festival laurels/Awards

Just as with the Production Company page, you’re going to want to list everywhere that you can find the film online.  You’ll also want to show where you can find the film online.  In general, it’s better to link to the company pages rather than give each individual film its own social media account.  After a while, that just becomes incredibly tedious and cumbersome to maintain.  For more information on that, check out the blog linked below.

Related: Facebook Page Management for Filmmakers. ​

About page for key cast and crew.

This page goes into a lot more detail about the top-level crew on the film.  You’ll basically want all your department heads listed, with pointers to their IMDb, their chosen social media outlet, and maybe a brief bio. 

Contact page for distribution inquiries

Most of the better sales agents I know go after really good films. Make it easy for them to reach out to you. In your contact dropdown, list distribution inquiry as an option. Make sure that one goes to the relevant person, distributors do look for content regularly.

I hope this was a good resource for you. If you want more resources, I’ve got a free package for exactly that. It’s got an e-book, monthly content digests, a whitepaper, templates for Decks, promotional festival brochures, Sales agent contact tracking templates and form letters, and a whole lot more. Oh, did I mention it’s free? Grab it with the button below.

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Why Every Filmmaker Needs a Strong Personal Brand

Most filmmakers want to make movies.  However, few think about establishing themselves a brand as a filmmaker.  In the immortal words of Alex Ferrari of Indie Film Hustle: “If you don’t think you need a brand as a filmmaker, you’re wrong.”  As wonderful as I personally find that quote, I think it needs a little elaboration. What follows are 5 reasons you NEED a brand as a filmmaker.

1. It helps to further relationships with your customer

A brand is essentially the cumulative interactions any potential business partner or customer has with an entity or organization.  So in a sense, saying a brand helps you further your relationships with your customer is a bit redundant.  However, the idea of you your brand, is essentially the personification of your company.  Having this personified image of your company makes it much easier for your clientele to establish a relationship with your company.

2. It helps people better identify with the creators behind the content.

At least when a brand is starting out in the film industry, the brand will be heavily associated with the filmmakers themselves.  As such, for the first couple of films your company makes, the brand you’re developing will also be furthering the personal brands of the key crew.  If your key crew tends to put out similar films time and time again under your production company’s brand, then eventually the brand itself will develop a following of its own.  After a time, it creates a feedback loop.

3. It gives your audience something to you and your work with beyond a single film.

​If you develop your brand correctly, then consumers will come to know what films you make that they like.  Giving your customers a brand to rally behind can really help them to develop a relationship with the creators.  Instead of being able to say I really Liked Paranormal Activity, customers can say I really like the movies Blumhouse puts out.

4. It helps you develop a community around yourself.

People can have a really deep association with brands.  Look at what happened when Coca-Cola Released New Coke.  Even though taste test after taste test proved that consumers strongly preferred New Coke to Coca-Cola, the brand eventually experienced a tsunami of customer complaints for getting rid of the old flavor of Coca-Cola.  Essentially, the brand had built such a large community that were so attached to their original product, when they took it away a small but extremely vocal part of their community couldn’t handle it. Even though many of those parts of the community were shown they liked New Coke Better in blind taste tests. 

Branding and Community building can be so powerful that even when a customer prefers an alternative product, they’ll keep coming back to yours for that warm fuzzy feeling they get when they use your product. Don’t forget, that can be a double-edged sword if you ever want to pivot to somehting new.

5. It turns you from a person to an icon.

Most of the people reading this already know that JJ Abrams is the head of Bad Robot Productions. However, there are a lot more people involved in Bad Robot than just JJ Abrams. The bumper of the robot running through the field gives sets the scene for an exciting time at the movies since you associate it with other times you saw great movies that were preceded by that bad robot bumper. You remember that bumper, it’s iconic. Such associations are how JJ has become an icon that will likely outlast him.

If you want help building your brand, you should check out my FREE indiefilm business resource package. It’s got an e-book, a whitepaper, lots of templates, and a monthly blog digest to help you grow your knowledge base so you can build a filmmaking career.

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5 Essential Elements of a Filmmaker’s Personal Brand.

Last week we outlined why your brand is so important to your career as a filmmaker. This week, we’re going to dive into how you begin to define your brand.  Your brand is the cumulative outcome of all the interactions anyone has with you or your company.  As such, this list is far from complete, however, these things are quite important when you’re getting down to defining your brand.​

1. What Genres you do primarily work in? 

If you start working primarily on thrillers, then it can be hard to effectively transition to something like family.  Generally, filmmakers and film companies will have certain genres that are heavily associated with their brand, even if that’s not all they work on.  An excellent example of this is Blumhouse, which primarily focuses on the thriller and horror genres.  After you’ve got more of an established brand, you can begin to expand into other genres, ideally with some level of stylistic relation to the ones you built your brand on.   

Your ideal audience is more important than any specific project or genre, but your audience will have a lot to do with your genre.

2. What elements of your style are similar or the same across your projects?

This is probably more important to keep consistent for your brand than genre is.  There are certain stylistic elements that remain largely the same across a director or even a high-level producer’s work. 

For Stephen Spielberg, there’s a certain wondrous quality that often feels very clean and expensive.  For Quinten Tarantino, his films generally have a pretty strong 70s vibe to them, even when they’re set far outside that time frame.  For Jerry Bruckheimer, most of his films are bombastic, with lots of special effects and explosions, and often feature a glorified music video in the film itself to boost soundtrack sales. 

3. What unifying themes or motifs do your movies have?

Generally, directors have recurring themes and/or motifs that occur throughout their work.  Hitchcock had a long-standing fascination with birds, eyeballs, and Freudian Psychology.  All of Kevin Smith’s movies seem to take place in the same extended universe and almost always feature Jay and Silent Bob.  Quentin Tarantino’s work almost always features lengthy banter that’s largely disconnected from the plot of the film but serves to flesh out the characters and is almost always incredibly entertaining and enlightening.

4.  What is your creed? (Mission statement)

Most business books call this a mission statement, but I personally prefer the tact that’s taken by Primal Branding in looking at your mission statement as a creed.  A creed is what you live by.  It’s why you exist.  It’s a deeply personal thing, and it informs every piece of content your company will ever make. 

Film companies don’t have these as much, so we’ll look for other examples to illustrate my point.  Apple’s mission statement is “Think Different” Google’s mission statement is to “Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.”  Google used to have a similar sort of tagline that was “Don’t Be Evil,” But they took that down recently.  For my other venture ProductionNext, the creed is “You do the Creative Part, we do the rest.” For Guerrilla Rep Media, the creed is to make that I don’t make movies, I help filmmakers MAKE MONEY with theirs.

5.  How do you engage with your audience?

As stated at the top of this article, a brand is the culmination of all interactions any potential customer or business partner has with a company or individual. In this day and age, it’s absolutely VITAL that any entrepreneur finds a way to effectively manage their interactions with their community and their customers. For most of us, that will rely heavily on our social media presence. You’ll need a strategy of what content you share when you share it, and how it both provides value to your potential customers and fits within your mission statement.

Thanks so much for reading!  If you like this sort of content, you should sign up for my resource package, it’s got an e-book, a whitepaper, and an evergrowing list of templates and resources. Plus, you’ll get a monthly digest of content just like this blog organized by topic, and a recommended reading list including an entire section on branding. Click the button below to sign up, and let me know what you think of this blog in the comments.  Also, if you liked it, share it!  It helps a lot.

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How to Write an Independent Film Business Plan - 2/7 Company Section

Last time we went over the basics of writing an independent film executive summary.  This time, we’re diving into the first section of a business plan.  By this I mean the company section.  If you want an angel investor to give you money, they’re going to need to understand your company.  There are some legal reasons for this, but most of it is about understanding the people that they’re considering investing in.

The company section generally consists of the following sub-sections.  This section only covers the company making the film, not the media projects themselves.  Those will be explored in section III - The Projects.

FORM OF BUSINESS OWNERSHIP

​This is the legal structure you’ve chosen to form your company as.  If you have yet to form a company, you can tell an investor what the LLC will be formed as once their money comes in.  I’ve written a much longer examination of this previously, which I’ve linked to below. Also, I’m Not a Lawyer, that’s not legal advice, don’t @ me.

Related: The Legal Structure of your Production Company

THE COMPANY

This subsection talks a bit about your production company.   You can talk about how long you’ve been in business, what you’ve done in the past, and how you came together if it makes sense to do so.  Avoid mentioning academia if at all possible, unless you went to somewhere like USC, UCLA, NYU, or an Ivy League School. Try to make sure this section only takes up 2-3 lines on the page.

BUSINESS PHILOSOPHY

This is what you stand for as a company.  What’s your vision?  What content do you want to make over the long term?  Why should an investor back you instead of one of the other projects that someone else solicited? 
Your film probably can’t compete with the potential return of a tech company.  I’ve explored that in detail over the 7 part blog series linked below. ​

Additionally, you might want to check out Primal Branding by Patrick Hanlon it’s a great book to help you better understand how to write a compelling company ethos. I use it with clients as it frames it exceptionally well for creative people. That is an affiliate link.

Related: Why don’t rich Tech people invest in film?

Since you can’t compete on the merits of your potential revenue alone, you need to show them other reasons that it would behoove them to invest in your project.  See the link below for more information.

Related: Diversification and Soft Incentives

PRODUCTION TEAM

These are the key team members that will make your film happen.  List the lead producer first, the director second, the Executive Producer second, and the remaining producers after that.  Directors of photography and composers tend to not add a lot of value in this section, but if you’ve got one with some impressive credits behind them, it might make sense to add the.

Generally, if you have someone on your team with some really impressive credits, it might make more sense to list them ahead of the order I listed above. ​

Essential Reference Books for Indiefilm Business Planning

PRODUCT

This should talk a little about the films you’re going to make, and the films you’ve made in the past.

OPERATIONS

This is a calendar of operations with key milestones that you intend to hit during the production of the film.  These would be things like:

• Financing Completed

• Preproduction Begins

• First Day of Principle Photography

• Completion of principal Photography

• Start of post-production

You’ll also want to include when you intend to finish post-production, as well as when you intend to start distribution, but that should be less specific than the items listed above.  For the non-bullied items, I would say that you should just give a quarter of when you expect to have them happen, whereas the bullets should be a month or a date. 

CURRENT EVENTS

The Current events are as they sound, a list of the exciting events going on with your film and with your company.  This could be securing a letter of intent from an actor, director, or distributor, completing the script, or raising some portion of the financing.

Assisting filmmakers in writing business plans is a decent part of the consulting arm of my business.  The free e-book, blog digests, and templates in my resource package can give you a big leg up. That said, If this all feels like a bit much to do on your own you might want to check out my services page. Links for both are in the buttons below.

Thanks so much for reading!  You can find the other completed sections of this 7 part series below

​Executive Summary
The Company (This One)
The Projects
Marketing
Risk Statement/SWOT Analysis
Financials Section (Text)
Pro-forma Financial Statements.

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