ASK & DISCUSS INDEX

8 years ago - Alève Mine

How about stating the theme instead of a title, like "the documentary that will show ...."?

8 years ago - Dave Hall

I think you'd be best building your social media following as a team, individual or production company. Talk about the project through that and get people interested. Then, when the title is finalised, you can set up accounts using the new name, and cross-post everything on both your company profiles and the new project's profile. You can also encourage your existing followers to sign up to the new profiles once it's ready.

Transparency is always a good idea with social media, so there's no harm in saying, "we're working on a project about X ... it doesn't have a title yet and here's why...". Your followers can learn about the project at the same pace you do.

8 years ago - Giulio Gobbetti

Thank you for your input!

Alève, yes, that's pretty much what we were planning to do, and that's what will happen for the most part, I think. But since with social media the shorter is usually the better, I was just wondering if any of you had best practices in place.

Dave, I think you're right here, it sounds like the best strategy. I am also thinking about using our self-explanatory working title as the title of the whole project, and then making the film just a part (even if the core) of such a project. What I mean is that we hope to do a lot of community engagement, engage people about the issue and not just the film, release clips that go alongside the documentary, etc. That way we would have a project name and within that a film with its own title. If that makes sense at all. Do you think that is just making things too complicated?

Thank you again for your help!

8 years ago - Franz von Habsburg FBKS MSc

I've experienced the same problem. One film was called Slapper - about a dog - but that had to be changed and the other Knicker Spy until someone pointed out Americans didn't know that word!!! Why not run it here like a competition??

8 years ago - Matt Turner

I'd say you might be best to focus on growing an audience for the platforms you are using for yourself, or your production company / organisation, before trying to build something for an individual title.

If you have something developed for yourself / an org, the audience is there for all projects, and you don't have to build from scratch for each title (especially when you don't yet know what that title is). Then, if you did want to make specific accounts and pages for that film, you have the audience to launch off from, the platforms with followers from which to redirect people. And you can build general buzz, in an informal capacity via your own accounts without needing to lock a title you might later change, so soon.

Matt
SP

8 years ago - Giulio Gobbetti

Thanks for your replies.

Yes, Matt, that's a very good point. The issue with us is that we've been doing a whole lot of freelancing, where sure, you get the credit, but those are not your own projects. Plus this is the very first film that we develop as a team, and there isn't much to build onto.

At the same time, the current project could appeal to a large audience (we are working with people resettling in communities after spending time in prison), and it could help create an audience for our future projects. Simply put, I think that the film has much more appeal than we do. As of now, to the world we are professionals with a lot of experience but we are yet to prove ourselves as authors, if you see what I mean.