note: video compressed to iPhone size – full size, HD video available on request

“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.

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.

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!

(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.

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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*

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.

Read more about the workshop by clicking this link.

The biggest question for many filmmakers working outside of the studio system (and more recently, even for those working within it) has been how to distribute their film and have it make money. Traditionally, getting your film full box office distribution has been a challenge if you are an indie. More recently, Video On Demand (VOD) has been offering a way to close the gap.

What Video on Demand allows the filmmaker to do is “rent” streams of their video to the viewer. This is occasionally done on their own site, but more often on a site like Jaman, IndieFlix, or others like them. The VOD concept includes the DVR and PVR systems available through most television (cable or satellite) providers now, as well as TiVo, AppleTV, Boxee, Pay-Per-View and other delivery methods already found in many homes. This keeps more of the profit in the filmmaker’s pocket, instead of hemorrhaging money back to a bloated system. With more and more people getting their movie fix online, this is a fast and cost effective way to get your film seen.

Keep in mind, however, that VOD doesn’t allow the viewer to own the movie outright for future viewing. It acts as a streamed rental system. This is fine if your audience is made up of people who don’t feel a need to own the creative content they buy, who prefer streaming. These people may also prefer to listen to music through sites like Pandora, Last.FM and Grooveshark also, and gravitate toward downloadable ebooks instead of audio books and print. That’s only half of the equation, however; and other distribution and sales methods may work better than VOD for the people who like to own their content files outright. It’s best to have a multi level strategy.

When an independent filmmaker decides to include VOD as part of their over all strategy, it helps to research the percentages carefully. Not all VOD sites and systems are created equally. With so many to choose from, it pays to find out precisely what the cut to the company will be to avoid being gouged. The whole point of VOD as an option is to free yourself from the mercy of the studio and make money, not to simply enslave yourself to a new master: high fees.

Don’t let the vast array of options and the need to do your homework before choosing the right VOD vehicle (or vehicles) for your film scare you off! Already there are festivals and outlets popping up to help you navigate the challenge, like the From Here To Awesome Festival. These are designed to take your film, help you get it seen, and help you make money doing it, on a large scale. The From Here to Awesome Festival was created by the people who made the film Four Eyed Monsters, which achieved both limited theatrical release and managed to turn a bit of profit, as well as winning the Undiscovered Gems 2006 Showcase and receiving monies to be used in development of a television show, all using a DIY distribution system, thus proving that the right combination of VOD and other methods can take an indie film far.

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Stay tuned for part two on reaching an audience who wants to own your content, not just rent it.