Filmmakers today must think about audience engagement from day one.

What are the best strategies for building an audience both online and off? What’s a fair offer, and what are some of the myths around distribution? What are possibilities for self-distribution? What’s all this talk about transmedia and participatory audiences?

Brian Newman will help you think about a range of plans for your film and workshop distribution plans for some films in the audience – as a group, because the audience is also the expert.

Regardless of your approach to distribution, knowing your audience and the best strategies to engage them is crucial. After all, you aren’t just building an audience for your film, you’re building a fan base for your future.

Brian Newman is the founder of sub-genre consulting, helping filmmakers and organizations to distribute content and connect with audiences through innovative uses of new technology. Brian was most recently CEO of the Tribeca Film Institute, and has been the executive director of Renew Media and IMAGE Film & Video Center. He speaks regularly on new media, audience development and the future of the industry, and contributes to a blog on these subjects at Springboardmedia.

Presented by Shooting People & DCTV

Mon, 02/22/2010 – 7:30pm

DCTV, 87 Lafayette Street, NYC

$8 DCTV & Shooting People Members

Get tickets in advance as the masterclasses tend to sell out.

Scott Kirsner’s CinemaTech blog is always a great place to find out about technical innovations in the film world and now he was written a book, Fans, Friends and Followers: Building an Audience and a Creative Career in the Digital Age, that compiles interviews with artists doing great and interesting things with their work and includes lots of useful content for filmmakers in search of an audience (yes, that means you!).

In the introduction Kirsner introduces us to the New Rules:

We’ve entered into what I call the era of digital creativity. In this era, artists have the tools to make anything they can envision, inexpensively…They can build teams and collaborate across great distances, bridging divides of language and culture. They can cultivate an audience and communicate with it regularly, carrying it (or at least a segment of it) with them from one project to another. And they can take control over the transaction, whether it is selling a work of art on eBay, a book through Amazon, or a ticket to a live performance via Brown Paper Tickets.

If you are a glass-half full type, you’ve already realized that the era of digital creativity presents incredible opportunities. You can do what you love, reach an audience, and earn some money. What starts off as a small fan base can quite suddenly go global, enabling you to quit your day job and earn a solid living.

The flip side is that there has never been a noisier, more competititve time to try to make art, entertain people, and tell stories. Everyone is doing it, and so there is an incredible surplus of content in every art form.

In 2000, 973 full-length films were submitted to the Sundance Film Festival, generally considered the best platform for launching a new indie movie. By 2008, that number had risen to 3,624. (Just 121 were accepted.)

And to that I would add that most of those 121 did not receive any kind of traditional distribution offer!

Kirsner includes a list of useful strategies, things he learned while interviewing people for the book (eg. Create Opportunities for Participation, Understand the Power of the Link, Choose the Platforms You’re Going to Use). Some of these strategies may sound obvious but it’s one thing to say them and quite another to actually do them.

The interviews are divided into five sections: Film & Video, Music, Visual Arts, Writing, and Comedy & Magic. The Film & Video section includes interviews with a diverse range of people including: Sandi DuBowski, Robert Greenwald, Ze Frank, Steve Garfield, and Gregg and Evan Spiridellis (JibJab Media).

There’s also a useful reference section in the back with a bunch of great links and some supplemental reading, including links to smart people like Kevin Kelly, Lance Weiler, and Clay Shirky.

You can download a 35-page sample of Fans, Friends & Followers on Kirsner’s website and order the book there too. Or buy it from Amazon using the link below.

Opening Up Production to Participation
During pre-production and production, how are filmmakers communicating with audiences, widely dispersed teams, funders and prospective subjects in new ways? What new opportunities for involvement and participation are they exploring?

Finding New Audiences
Once a project is completed and ready for release/broadcast, how are filmmakers using blogs, social networks, games and other technologies to reach audiences that will care about their project?

New Distribution Opportunities
How are filmmakers presenting their work on websites, cell phones, iPods and the new generation of Internet-connected TVs and set-top boxes? Do these distribution avenues create conflict with more traditional outlets? Are there substantial economic benefits or simply promotional positives?

You should check out the suggested strategies for connection-creating, marketing and promotion and distribution.

Case studies include:

Byron Hurt:HIP-HOP: Beyond Beats and Rhymes
Katy Chevigny: ELECTION DAY
Curt Ellis: KING CORN
David Iverson: STILL LIFE
Hunter Weeks and Josh Caldwell: 10 MPH
Tiffany Shlain: The Tribe

As Arin Crumley remarks, this is similar to the Four Eyed Monsters heart map. Except this is being masterminded by MovieMobz’s owner, Rain Network, Latin America’s biggest digital cinema operator – rather than by the filmmakers (which is refreshing as it can sometimes feel rather irksome when EVERY new truly-independent distribution strategy seems to fall on the filmmakers’ broke and exhausted shoulders). As we debate how theatrical release strategies for independent films need to change in today’s glutted marketplace this is a model we should all be paying close attention to.

Early Bird Booking for Partnerships 2.0 closes at 5pm, Wednesday 10 September 2008.

The Forum, which is being is being hosted by the Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen, will explore how to develop audiences for the arts, film and the wider creative industries by maximising (Web 2.0) technology and new partnerships.

Chaired by Scottish broadcaster and journalist Muriel Gray, international keynote speakers include Zurich-based Gerd Leonhard, one of the world’s leading media futurists, and Brian Newman, CEO of the Tribeca Film Institute in New York. Pat Kane, lead singer with Scottish band Hue and Cry, will lead a seminar on a musician’s quest to find a business model in this age of networks. Further participants – just confirmed – include Richard Hadley, Audiences Europe Network, Hannah McGill, Edinburgh International Film Festival, and Roberta Doyle, National Theatre of Scotland.

The Forum will attract a wide audience of professionals, united by their passion for audiences and audience development.

For booking information, please visit www.scottisharts.org.uk or contact forum08@scottisharts.org.uk.