The very smart and savvy Sakia Wilson-Brown has written a series of posts for IndieGoGo on viral marketing. You can read the 3rd post here and then follow the links at the bottom for parts 1 and 2 (the IndieGoGo blog is doing funny things to my browser which is why I’m linking to Saskia’s blog).
Scott Kirsner of CinemaTech was commissioned by ITVS to investigate how indepedent filmmakers are working with new technologies and to answer the following questions:
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
I’ve been meaning to blog about Anita Elberse’s Should You Invest in the Long Tail article for a while now because it highlights some key misunderstandings about what the long tail actually means for producers and aggregators/retailers of niche content ie. it absolutely does not mean that niche content is suddenly turning into blockbuster material and neither does it mean that niche content producers/aggregators no longer need to worry about big, mainstream successes. In fact the hits are vitally important to support the content in the tail (and savvy aggregators will exploit this key relationship between mainstream/hit content and the niche – between the head and the tail). Her advice to producers:
1. Don’t radically alter blockbuster resource-allocation or product-portfolio management strategies. A few winners will still go a long way—probably even further than before
2. When producing niche goods for the tail end of the distribution, keep costs as low as possible. Your odds of success aren’t favorable here either, and they will probably become less so
3. When trying to strengthen your presence in digital channels, focus on marketing your most popular products
4. Leverage your scale to improve online exposure and demand for products across your product portfolio. Again, hit products play a key role here.
The Tribeca Film Institute’s Brian Newman has some very astute comments on Elberse’s research:
She gives many scenarios of advice for both producers and distributors of content to consider, but the implications are pretty clear – the long-tail does exist, but the business models to best exploit it may not be what many in indie film have thought. It’s very clear that aggregators, online stores, etc. need to have a mix of both popular and niche content – there isn’t some mythical consumer that only values niche content, and your little film is much more likely to be found if someone can get there while investigating something much better known. This is nothing new of course. Film festival programmers have always used the strategy of mixing an experimental short, say, in front of a more popular feature to build audience for the more obscure title. It works this way online as well. Anyone thinking about how the long-tail impacts the indie film business -festivals, distribution, producing – should study these findings closely because it’s very possible that the idea of separating indie/niche content from popular content (i.e. current practice) is not a good idea in an online, interconnected world.
John Tozzi’s Business Week article Indie Filmmakers Hit Their Target shows the abundance of new methods of distribution available to independent filmmakers. He details success stories of films and their creators who, rather than following traditional routes, are opting to take distribution on with the same entrepreneurial spirit they channel into their films. By maintaining their distribution rights, these filmmakers are carving new roads into advertising and distribution, while managing to draw a greater interest in their films (as opposed to the traditional methods of the past). The tools available on the internet as well as the niche communities who post, blog and communicate with each other across the web, have mustered a huge amount of support for films that ten years ago might have spent their time attracting nothing but dust, forgotten on a shelf.
Read the full article here. There’s a slideshow too!
Thanks to Peter Broderick for the link.
Jeremy Walker is taking the Summer, and possibly the rest of his life, off from film publicity. He has written a piece for indieWIRE reflecting on the nature of publicity (and the importance of good film stills!) Read it to find out more about what publicists should and should not do. For example:
Filmmakers should not think about what goodies a publicist can “get” for them; rather they should think about how a publicist can integrate their film into both the culture of news and the culture at large.
