Live blog: Create your own (film) cult
By Ivo Vegter. Filed in sxswsa |
Fans, Friends & Followers – create your own cult
Scott Kirsner, with Gary Hustwit
In the past, studios were the major gatekeepers. More and more, however, filmmakers turn to identifying, recruiting and building their own audiences, people they think will resonate with the theme or genre of the film.
Making media used to be a monologue. But on the internet, people want to engage. They want a window into your process. They want some kind of relationship which makes them feel involved. They’ll help you out in incredible ways.
Witness Girl Talk, a remix artist, who got a free rotoscoping animation from a bunch of students which he included in his own film.
Another example is an artist who paints in public, and realised that when people are more engaged, talking with her while she paints, they’re more likely to buy her paintings.
Witness, Ok go, here it goes again, which has been emulated and copied and remade by many viewers. They noticed this, and ran a competition to get people to make their own versions, and gave the best one an opportunity to dance with them on stage. They got 50 million YouTube views. That sold a lot of music.
Recognise the power of links. Example, 24 Hours On Craigslist, where the filmmaker got
got links on every Craigslist site.
Kirsner himself got a link on Boing Boing, by knowing someone who happened to be guest blogging. He offered free downloads of his book.
Whatever you put online, make it easy for people to include it, embed it, retweet it, Facebook it. The reason viral videos spread, is because you can see it all over the internet. The best anti-example is ThinkFilm, which requires a username and password for press downloads, and never gives you instructions how to get one.
One big caveat about audience-building: you can’t wait until your post-production headaches are open. You have to start early with pre-promotion. Start as soon as you’re committed to make the film, start building an audience. It happens over time, not instantly.
See also these free tools for audience-building, distribution and commerce.
Gary Hustwit sent his trailer for the documentary Objectified to Gizmodo, which promoted it widely because it is about product design including consumer electronics.
“By launching a blog, and soliciting comments, I get a ton of ideas and feedback, which have influenced both Helvetica
and Objectified,” says Hustwit.
Hustwit has 18 000 Twitter followers. He doesn’t know how it happened, but he started it at SxSW last year. It’s in his e-mail newsletter. He used it for announcing preview screening dates and location, and he’d sell out shows only using Twitter.
“Now, the most active thing I do is tweet to keep people updated with what’s going on.”
There are also merchandising ideas, like putting the film on a 60GB USB drive, for $75. Limited edition of 500 is sold out. That gets a lot of people to pre-order the DVD, and to talk about it in social media. Make something a little cooler, a little extra, they’ll buy it directly from you, which means you make a little more margin and fans feel a little more engaged.
Does he seed the world with reviews? No, he lets it happen organically. For both his films, he got involved with festivals like SxSW, which has an audience that largely coincides with people who’d be interested in his films. But once he can reach the audience directly, he doesn’t bother to invest in festivals anymore.
His site is built in the form of a blog, based on Wordpress, and not a typical film-trailer format. This engages the audience much more.
Using crowdsourcing and participation is growing as a means of promoting, selling, and even creating films. There’s a lot to learn, but there are new revenue models here that are waiting to be exploited.
