Truly Free Film

I’m about to get all film geek here, but lately (especially after certain drunken 2am round tables with students), I can’t shake the feeling that a feature film is growing out of conversations sparked by THE LINE. A feature film means years of work, so I’m trying not to get in over my head like I did with the first one… but I am getting excited and itchy to build on what’s there, and start teasing out something new. What’s exciting is how accessible media tools are, and how they lend themselves to collaborating with subject-audience-filmmaker.

This is an excerpt from the blog Truly Free Film, by indie film producer Ted Hope. Ted is part of a cohort of mainstream film professionals that have fully embraced digital and hybrid media distribution, as well social media and networking tools as the wave of the future, and a way to save and enhance indie film production. I’m happy to see a lot of the advice about “producing the distribution” has been applied to our strategy with THE LINE and campaign. The underlying message to filmmakers seems to be, make sure there is a need for the conversation you want to create. Here are some things to think about before you get started:

1. Recognize it is about audience aggregation: Collect 5000 fans prior to seeking financing. Act to gain 500 fans/month during prep, prod., post processes.
2. Determine how you will engage & collect audiences all throughout the process. Consider some portion to be crowd-funded — not so much for the money but for the engagement it will create.
3. Create enough additional content to keep your audience involved throughout the process and later to bridge them to your next work.
4. Develop an audience outreach schedule clarifying what is done when — both before and after the first public screening.
5. Curate work you admire. Spread the word on what you love. Not only will people understand you further, but who knows, maybe someone will return the good deed.
6. Be prepared to “produce the distribution”. Meet with potential collaborators from marketing, promotion, distribution, social network, bookers, exhibitors, widget manufacturers, charitable partners, to whatever else you can imagine.
7. Brainstorm transmedia/cross-platform content to be associated with the film.
8. Study at least five similar films in terms of what their release strategy & audience engagement strategy was and how you can improve upon them.
9. Build a website that utilizes e-commerce, audience engagement, & data retrieval. Have it ready no later than 1 month prior to first public screening.
10. Determine & manufacture at least five additional products you will sell other than DVDs.
11. Determine content for multiple versions of your DVD.
12. Design several versions of your poster. Track how your image campaign evolves through the process.
13. Do a paper cut of what two versions of your trailer might be. Track how this changes throughout the process.
14. Determine a list of the top 100 people to promote your film (critics, bloggers, filmmakers,etc)
15. Determine where & how to utilize a more participatory process in the creation, promotion, exhibition, & appreciation process. Does it make sense for your project to embrace this?
16. How will this project be more than a movie? Is there a live component? An ARG? An ongoing element?
17. How can you reward those who refer others to you? How do you incentivize involvement? What are you going to give back?
18. What will you do next and how can you move your audience from this to that? How will younot have to reinvent the wheel next time?
19. What are you doing differently than everyone else? How will people understand this? Discover this?
20. How are you going to share what you’ve learned on this project with others?

Tags: communication, film, independent