From the article, by Manohla Dargis:

“It is time to blow the whole thing up.” In September 1960, when those words were lobbed at the world by a New York-centric, off-Hollywood circle of malcontents called the New American Cinema Group, there was no mistaking their radical urgency. Given the cold war times — one of the first large ban-the-bomb rallies had been held in Madison Square Garden some months earlier — this call to annihilation might have seemed tasteless. But for this group, whose numbers included the film critic, later filmmaker Jonas Mekas and the not-yet-director Peter Bogdanovich, the time for a free American cinema, one rooted in personal vision and liberated from censorship and the distribution and exhibition strangleholds, was now.

We can see that independent film has been a rallying cry since the 1960s. Now, in 2010, the tools and networks have converged to truly create the shakeup of the industry needed to put the world of film back in the hands of the visionaries who sweat over each creation. The interesting possibilities here are that only truly creative films will make the grade in this audience driven environment.

Leaving us are the days when studios can shove meaningless dreck down out throats at the theater. Sure, there will always be that demographic, but now other films will be able to see the light of day. Even better, viewers will drive what they want to watch. On one hand, in this day and age anyone can be an amateur filmmaker – the tools are out there and low cost – but not all of these creative visions will be able to grab an audience, or better, keep it.

With more and more mainstream press turning the spotlight on DIY film marketing and sales and indie filmmakers, the time is certainly now to follow that dream and that creative vision. The speed at which the film world is changing is dazzling, and filmmakers should be grabbing on with both hands.

Carrying on the trend toward darker movies in general, IFC’s first pick up from Sundance 2010 is a brutal film noir shocker that caused quite a stir at the festival: The Killer Inside Me. The last few months seem to mark the rise of the horror/thriller genre, much to the chagrin of some.

In this film, Casey Affleck, Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson create a dark version of Texas and explore the dark side of human nature. The movie was adapted by John Curran from the book by Jim Thompson. the film, directed by Michael Winterbottom, should create quite a stir when released in the US.

Why are people embracing the darker films coming out now, from Paranormal Activity to noir films like The Killer Inside Me? Some say it is a reflection of the times: as if romantic comedies and light dramas were no longer enough of an escape in the face of the unrelenting march of economic stress and global changes. Regardless, it will be interesting to watch this film as it hits theaters and see how it matches up against other pulp fiction based shockers in its genre.

We’ve been singing the gospel of DIY Film Marketing at Film POP! since day one, and love seeing the wave catching on. Two people who have been just as passionate and vocal about the DIY bootstrap concepts in film marketing as well, Jon Reiss and Ted Hope, are doing some great things to get their fellow filmmakers motivated for their own success.

A recent Filmmaker Summit held at Slamdance was just one example of filmmakers using knowledge sharing and DIY tools to help everyone become successful as the market changes from a studio driven one to an audience driven one. For filmmakers passionate about their art, there has never been a more perfect time to take the risk and make your film than now, when the audience is directly within your reach using social tools.

You can see the tweets from the summit this past week by going to Search.Twitter and looking for hashtag #fs10 (or just click this #fs10 link). You can also see video from the summit, recorded tweets and comments on the FS10 web site. We hope to see many more collaborative learning environments like this spring up, with filmmakers of all sizes riding the DIY social wave.

As I was looking at the site TrailerWars yesterday, I started thinking of all the ways sites like this one could be used by people in the film industry. For the end user it seems like just a fun way to pass the time, but for the filmmaker, the actor and the crew, competition sites can be a great way to find out audience interest level in a film, spread the word about a film or about your work, and showcase new work – even in new genres for a director trying to branch out, for example.

Think about it: if you are considering making a feature length film, it costs money. If you are operating on a short shoestring, finding $100,000 (or even $10,000) to make your dream project will be one of your biggest hurdles. Finding a few hundred dollars (or in the case of many – a few willing friends to work for free) to make a trailer could be much easier.

It’s a little backwards to think of making a “trailer” first, isn’t it? And for the reluctant, sites like this one do accept short films as well, so you could do what Crooked Lane (client) did and make a short that will later become a (wholly different) feature. But I’m thinking out of the box here. Making your trailer first, in the true spirit of the site, also forces you to hone your vision for the full film.

By using a pre-production trailer, made before the rest of the movie, you get an audience viewed storyboard. You can then track the competition and see how your film is meshing with potential audiences. If your film isn’t gelling with people, it will let you know you may need to go back to the script, the set, the character development, actors, etc long before you spend hard earned money producing your vision, increasing your chances of success down the line.

Can you use this concept to run a trailer on your site? Of course you can, and Amy and I encourage people to do so to raise awareness about their film. But running a trailer on your site alone and not including various contest sites like this or content sites like YouTube and Viddler has a few side effects. The first of these is in type of eyeballs. These contest sites draw people who want to play, to watch a few videos to kill some time, and who may not be out there looking at or for film sites. That sounds startlingly like a random movie theater audience, doesn’t it? Think of how much better that will be in getting word out about your film to the non-movie buffs as as the film lovers who seek out new film content online.

The second is in number of eyeballs. It may take a while, using concerted efforts, to build up a following on your web site or blog. That’s fine, fans should be nurtured. But sites like this Trailer Wars and others could bring more numbers of people watching your trailer – doubling up your efforts and having the trailer in more than place will increase your chances of success.

The third is implementation. Implementing a voting system on your site can be a pain in the butt for some people. You can have people vote by commenting, retweeting, sharing on social sites, or if you can afford a web designer or have a willing web smart friend you may be able to make a voting system like these sites have, but all of the solutions can be cumbersome (or cost money). Why not use someone else’s system as a means to your end?

Looking at sites like TrailerWars, you can see the potential of using them in your arsenal. What could the information gleaned by putting your content there do for you as a filmmaker? How would you use it?

We’re bringing our DIY Indie Film Marketing Workshop series to New York City in March 2010! We’ll be holding it at the NYC Indie Film Finance Conference on March 26 and 27, 2010, and you can sign up for the Film POP! Workshop at a discounted conference rate here.

Even if you have attended the workshop before, we work hard to make it new each time, complete with fresh slides and new information, so do feel free to come back for seconds.

We can’t wait to see you there!

I thought I’d throw the slides up from our most recent DIY Indie Film Marketing Workshop. Each workshop will have a new set of slides with completely new, relevant and timely information, custom fitted to the attendees. You can demand this workshop in your town on the half day indie marketing workshop page here. (Side note: I WAS @geechee_girl on twitter and now I am @leslie – please adjust your dials.)

(Not for reuse or sale, © Film POP!)

So often I get filmmakers, actors and others in the industry (and in the music industry) who tell me they haven’t started adding online tools to their film arsenal because the tools change so fast they don’t know what to invest in. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the tools and lose sight of what’s important – your goals for your film, acting career, casting company and more.

Pivot Point 1: Website

One way to deal with the incredibly fluid tools and the rapid changes in what’s out there to use to market your film is to create what I like to call pivot points that allow you to shift your efforts and attention on a dime if needed. One pivot point is your website. I know that right now blogs are the new hotness, but often, a blog gets abandoned by the blogger. There are many reasons for this – lack of material, the end of the festival circuit, a film out of distribution, lack of time, simple blogger burnout – the list can go on endlessly. Part of making a good pivot point is preparing not only for the shift in tools, but shifts in YOU.

I recommend having a website, in which a blog is embedded, because the website is static. It offers an unchanging spot for people to find out about your film (or you as an actor, or your film company). It gives you a platform for self distribution that is solid, as well as a place for you to put your new media and social media outposts so that people can find you. It also offers you a place to send people from these outposts so they can find out what you are all about – the blog is gravy, an added benefit to the site that you can pick up and play with at will. The website also allows you to change outposts fluidly, and keep your fans in the loop. Not only that, you can use tools like BuddyPress to create communities embedded in your site, if you have a film like Food, Inc., for example, that inspires conversation and sparks debate.

Pivot Point 2: Engagement Platform

By this I mean a tool like Twitter that has proven that it will be around for longer than a few months, and that is experiencing growth (and thus has a modicum of stability in this shifting social world). Having a fluid base for communicating and sharing and encouraging others to share your efforts is key. Make sure to link back to your website, and make sure to have a clear foundation: bio, photo, background with added info, and solid levels of interaction that fit your time and comfort zone. Remember, you may have to abandon this tool you choose, whatever it is, if it shifts in typical fluid social fashion and stops working for you or dies as a platform separately from you! To this end, I recommend using Backupify, a tool that will back up your social media interactions so you don’t lose them if the tool goes away. If your tool gets closed (Yahoo has been rumbling about closing MyuBlogLog, even though it is successful, for example – you just never know), don’t panic! Just move on to the next tool – because this new engagement economy will continue to thrive in spite of the tools, I encourage thinking beyond the tools.

Pivot Point 3: Aggregator

An aggregator is useful on many levels. It can help you see how and where you are talking and interacting if it is self directed, and it can help you follow thought leaders and trench warriors in your industry. By collecting information and sifting through it using the aggregator of your choice, you are able to filter information as it goes out and as it comes in. Many of the best aggregators also are a great way to listen for brand mentions, and to catch new tools as they are on the rise, helping you use those pivot points to do a 180 as needed. I use a few – it doesn’t really matter which you choose. The one most used right now is Friendfeed (recently acquired by Facebook, speaking of ever shifting tools).

Pivot Point 4: Cross Marketing

The fourth pivot point is grounding your efforts offline. The tech set can decry magazines, newspapers, television and more as outdated, passé and dying all they want, and they are right; however, it is a slow, painful and much resisted death. Not everyone is ready or able to move online yet (there is a huge segment of the population that can not yet afford a computer or smart phone but who can and do save up to go to your movie as a means of mental escape), and you need a solid pivot point offline that is tied to your website. This can take many forms, from a weekly coffee date with like minds to continuing to run a smaller sampling of your offline ads and adding in your web presence information to start pulling people online, or even to finding innovative ways to use no-cost phone pole posters and other offline methods to tell people where you are and what you are doing. In the end you ignore the offline world completely at your peril, at least for the next bit of time while the planet catches up to the tech that’s out there.

Pivot Point 5: Time

This is possibly the second most essential pivot point behind your website. How you allocate your time will determine your success in every other aspect of this brave new world of marketing film, and how well you can keep up with and anticipate changes in the tools and techniques. If you don’t leave yourself enough time to interact and engage, to plan for the future, and to maintain these blogs and profiles, you will start to feel like you are drowning in minutia, never to catch up, and you will either burn out and stop, or become so overwhelmed that to blog feels like quicksand. If you can afford to hire someone like Film POP! to help with that, you will be able to focus more on your art, but if you can’t and must DIY – make sure those bootstraps are attached to a clock and block off an hour a day, at least, to make all of this stuff you make online keep breathing life into your marketing.

•••

By encouraging you to think of these things as pivot points, I am encouraging a mind set. This flexible, fluid mindset that is less about entrenching your presence and more about flexible engagement will serve you well on many levels. My being less worried about tools and more focused on movement in marketing, you will find surer footing for success and won’t get thrown off balance by the acquisitions and closings than can be common in a new online world in flux – better able to turn your time online into success for your film.

In NH, a group of kids got together with Media Power Youth and John Herman to make a short documentary for a cause. This film is called Team Hannah, and it debuted at the NH Film Festival this year.

These kids are the future of film – they grasp how to use the tools at hand to make a film on a budget, and to do it well – the film was very well done. They grasped the future of film in the importance of having a good team. More importantly, they are grasping the future of film in their use of social media tools and audience building to drive their film’s success and grow its fan base.

They used Twitter, Facebook and other word of mouth tools to get a room full of enthusiastic viewers to attend their online live premiere, followed by live Q&A today. It was impressive – the chat room was full, the film went without a hitch, and everyone from filmmakers to musicians (who donated their music for use) were on hand to answer questions. This documentary for a cause is the first of what we hope are many from this bright group of kids, and we hope that some of the old-guard filmmakers take a look at how naturally and seamlessly this came together.

Team Hannah from Media Power Youth on Vimeo.

Workshop: Indie Film Marketing On A Shoestring

In today’s rapidly changing film world, finding and engaging each film’s audience online and offline is imperative. Gone are the days when filmmakers could depend on a studio to do their marketing for them. Filmmakers are true artists, sometimes getting lost in their artistic vision and forgetting to save time, money and energy for reaching and building their audience. This workshop will give attendees the basic tools needed to plan and execute a DIY film marketing campaign from the ground up using social media, new media, content generation and offline integration.

Workshop Length: Half Day (1:00 – 5:00)

Location: Studio 99 Nashua – REAR ENTRANCE

(DEMAND YOUR LOCATION)

Cost: $99 per person + Ticketing Fee

Agenda

1:00 – 1:50 Laying A Foundation

The tools needed for effectively building an online and offline profile to launch a film’s campaign, including pointers on time management. Includes social media tools and best practices, plus offline integration tips to maximize digital marketing efforts.

1:50 – 2:40 Ready, Set, ACTION!

Tips on online content generation, optimizing content for the internet, audience engagement, building a fan base and methods for putting a film campaign in motion.

Afternoon Break

2:50 – 3:40Tracking Your Success

Advice and tools for measurement, analysis, and analytics to see where and how each online campaign is finding success. Tips on how to adjust as a campaign matures to get the most out of marketing efforts.

3:40 – 4:30 It’s OK To Make Money

How to start using these new platforms to generate financial investment in a film and find distribution avenues. How to leverage each social network for donations, micro-donations and demand for film screenings. Tips on generating flexible revenue streams and finding new paths to distribution.

Final Q&A

This workshop brought to you by Film POP! Reserve Your Seat Now!

*NOTE: If you need to pay cash at the door, contact the event organizer for details*

Amy and I are trying something new. We love films of all kinds, so we thought we get together once in a while and talk about what we’re watching as Film POP! TV. We’re both pretty busy, so episodes will be “as we can”. We hope you enjoy it!

We’re reviewing “They Way We Get By” in this, our first stab at this. Expect the format and location to vary from episode as we review films on the go!

You can visit the web site for “The Way We Get By” here, and read about the grant they won here.