Media Info:

Contact: Leslie Poston and Amy Greenlaw from Film POP!

Website: http://filmpop.tv or http://nhfilmfestival.com/

FILM POP AND NH FILM FESTIVAL, PORTSMOUTH, NH – Film POP! is pleased to announce that it will be working with the Festival this year as a Media Partner, and will lead and execute the online promotional efforts and strategy of the 10th Annual New Hampshire Film Festival in 2010.

“We are very fortunate to have Leslie and Amy of Film POP! onboard for NHFF 2010,” said NHFF Executive Director Nicole Gregg. “Film POP!’s expertise, experience and creativity in new media will help the New Hampshire Film Festival continue to bring greater exposure to high-quality independent film.”

This year marks the Tenth Anniversary of the New Hampshire Film Festival. Portsmouth’s film community members have been dubbed the future “Sundance East” by local news outlet Experience Magazine. This highlights the caliber of films and attending filmmakers each year, as well as the thriving local film community. Past Jury members include Ann Cusack, and Board members include renowned filmmaker, writer and director Chase Bailey and producer Mark Constance. The festival has been attended by actors such as Cusack and Brett Cullen and has also been home to such phenomenal films as Shooting Beauty, Food, Inc., The Sensation of Sight, and Burning Plain.

Film POP! has many exciting things planned for the New Hampshire Film Festival this year, including geolocation tie-ins, local business promotion, transmedia cross over, and Google Earth integration. Film POP! has several other tricks up their sleeves to surprise attendees of the festival as well. From events, films, meet and greet opportunities, festival tie ins, product placement and so much more, the Tenth Anniversary of the New Hampshire Film Festival will be celebrated in style, on and off line.

Film POP! is the brainchild of Amy Greenlaw and Leslie Poston. Between them they bring decades of experience in film, video, television, music and marketing to the table. You can reach Leslie via Twitter at http://twitter.com/leslie or email at leslie@filmpop.tv. You can reach Amy via Twitter at http://twitter.com/girlgamy or email at amy@filmpop.tv. You can also follow the New Hampshire Film Festival news on Twitter via http://twitter.com/nhff or through Film POP! on Twitter at http://twitter.com/filmpop. Film POP! will be joining Vital Design on the New Hampshire Film Festival marketing team, long time print and traditional media outlet and web design firm for the festival.

It’s incredibly difficult to tailor a talk or panel to a room evenly divided between the more advanced users and the social media “noobs”. I like to think I do a good job, but I know I leave as frustrated as my audience when I’ve spent an hour or two trying to address both sides of the coin. Our workshop we offer via Film POP!, educational things I do like PodCamp NH and classes and seminars via Uptown Uncorked do address the issue,  but only a few people at a time.

Learning how to take the temperature of the room at the start and how to read the crowd as you go helps a bit as well, but even then you have half of the room who thinks you’re going too fast dispensing information (and this while your discussing the basic trifecta of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, and not even scratching the surface of the much cooler more advanced stuff), and the other half who craves more detail, more help – more meat.

My call to action in this post for event planners: make a conscious effort to offer two tracks for your attendees if possible: 101 and Senior Thesis, so to speak. Then take it a step further and really screen the folks in each. Don’t be afraid to gently suggest to someone that they may want to attend the other workshop or session based on their knowledge level or skill set. I know social media is all about helping each other out, but at some point that comes with a cost for the more advanced folks in the room as every discussion devolves to answer simple questions.

My call to action for speakers and teachers in this space: let’s make our own tracks when the event planners don’t do it for us. If you want to teach advanced tools, and you have a room of advanced level folks ready to learn that includes  a few 101 level students, set the time up to reduce questions (offer to take them at the end, for example) and allow yourself to teach to the advanced level. If a 101 level student wants to insert a question that will veer the discussion off course, gently remind them that questions will be at the end – don’t allow them to derail the discussion for others. Then at the end, offer to help them with their questions between sessions or over drinks at the after party. If, on the others hand, your room is full of beginning social media stars, teach to that level, and make the same offer of a more in depth discussion to the handful of advanced users who may be in the room.

If you are speaking or educating in this space and are careful with your time, aware of your audience and perceptive, you can make a room of mixed knowledge attendees happy. It just takes care and practice.

What is Social Media for Storytellers? Simply put, it’s about more than just the tools. It’s about crafting, then honing, a real connection with your audience, then putting that audience in your pocket and bringing them with you on your journey. Every creative person hopes to make money at their craft, but social media for storytellers doesn’t make your audience feel like your cash cow. If it’s done right it makes them your evangelists, your cheerleaders, your biggest fans.

It’s not just about building an audience either. It’s about building a bridge, connecting people in a way that matters – that lasts. This connection will be the foundation to your success, whether you need distribution, financing, or collaborators. It’s also about telling a story in a way that is compelling. With a million voices shouting, it’s about how to be heard, and, more importantly, how to be worth hearing.

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?

(Not for reuse or sale, © Film POP!)

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.

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*

Read more about the workshop by clicking this link.