5 Things Every Filmmaker should do once Your Film is accepted at a
#FilmFestival. For context as a regular Festival attender and the Founder of
FilmTVDiversity, I strive to help Filmmakers of color and for that matter all our followers reach their greatest potential. This post is in that vein and also a precursor of some of the things we will be expecting once we offer our first Film Festival and for anyone eventually accepted into it.
These are 5 simple things You should be doing for Your indie film regardless what others might be telling you, if You want to build an audience for You and Your work.
1. Be on Social Media
The days of simply ignoring social media are gone! If You want to expand beyond your “neighborhood” buddies and friends You need to really let go of any social media hang ups You may be harboring. It is the biggest and easiest way for filmmakers and content creators old and new to level the playing field in the Entertainment Industry.
Establish a Social media presence, especially on Twitter, because contrary to what You may hear, twitter provides the most up-to-date real time happenings at Film Festivals especially for those festivals that use #hashtags. Hashtags have only recently been instituted on Facebook, long after it was the norm on Twitter. Your presence on Social Media is an invaluable way for You to easily connect with others attending the Festival for reference. The Networks and Major Studios and Film Distributors get this and are doing it with Great
Success. Don't be fooled you can't achieve the kind of reach you hope for without doing this.
Why especially Twitter over Facebook, little known to some is that Facebook implores algorithms for many posts that you make so that not all your posts are seen necessarily by everyone, unless you pay for more exposure, especially anyone that’s not “following” you on Facebook. In Contrast, Twitter on the other hand gives your posts free access to be seen by any and all who may be following you or doing searches on Twitter and consequently by others when the aforementioned discover and share what you have shared when they visit hashtags. Twitter does also offer paid targeted advertising for posts, but it’s not as much as a requirement to do so to reach more people via your posts.
2. Follow The Festival
Follow the Festival Page, on Twitter especially, and be sure you know what the Festival’s twitter
#hashtag is and post to it, as well as browse it while you’re at the Festival. As an example is the recently held:
Sundancefest and their hashtags
#Sundance #Sundance2014 which many festival goers shared from and by the way I did not attend, but because FilmTVDiversity follows the festival and its hashtags we posted happenings for our followers to experience like these:
Following the Festival and its Hashtags allows you to post your experience, photos and extras and create buzz for you and your film for future festivals, as well as future projects, not to mention helps connect you with others attending the film festival or your film’s screening. Stop following just your friends on Twitter. If you want to to focus solely on Festival happenings you can at a very minimum create a
Twitter list with that particular film festival in it so you can refer to it easily while at the festival.
As another example, our recent visit to 2013's Hollywood Black Film Festival included building a list for the Festival:
HBFF2013-Films-Filmmakers, which then served and also now serves as a great reference point for Filmmakers to know. In addition to this our own updates like these below were made while at the Festival using the Festival's hashtag
#HBFF2013:
Your film and ideally You are headed to a Film Festival for goodness sakes, not an easy fete by any account. You’re also trying to build buzz for your film and yourself as a filmmaker, that is unless of course you don’t care about building more buzz for your film or your work, be it current or future. Some festivals like Sundance even follow back, but don't be so focused on getting a followback, because the Festival you follow today may be the one that gives you a leg up for your next project tomorrow.
3. Have a Trailer
Ensure that the Film Festival has a copy of your film’s Trailer on their website, and a link to your film’s website, if any, plus any social media links related to your film, if they also take social media links (ie Twitter/Facebook). More importantly be sure your trailer is uploaded to a service like
Vimeo or
Youtube, both of which are free services for uploading videos. These services allow for the ease of the trailer being directly embed on the Festival’s Page or for that matter a bloggers page. Website visitors don’t like jumping through extra loops just to see your trailer, ie going to your web page from the Festival page. Take the time to make sure the festival has a link to an easily embeddable copy of your trailer and that the festival has actually posted it on your film’s landing page for the festival.
Almost every festival creates a landing page for the films they are screening with related info. As a Great example look at the landing page at the upcoming 2014 Pan African Film Festival for the film
"Jaimeo Brown's Transcedence". If you look at each of the three tabs: Film Info, Trailer and More Info you'll see a complete picture of the kinds of things you should be doing. This related info is your resume and calling card to get people to see your film over what in some cases may be tens or even hundreds of film’s. Visit your Film’s info page at the Festival you’ve been accepted at and make sure it is as complete as possible.
Your friends attending the festival may go see your film to support you, but the average film festival goer who is not your friend needs some kind of hook to draw them in to commit to seeing your trailer less film over one that has a trailer other than a write up on the festival’s page.
Hollywood doesn’t release films without trailers and expect a film to do well, neither should You, even if it is a short film. It’s even more important at Film Festivals because as mentioned there’s even more to choose from.
Breaking News: Yes even film festival goers are selective about which films they go see just like everyday movie goers.
Get your Trailer to the Film Festival you’re accepted at. Film is about visual media not write ups. It’s simple marketing.
4. Promote Your Film
At a very minimum, at least once a day til the moment your Film screens, regardless if you can or can’t attend the Festival screening you should at least be posting to your followers on Facebook and/on Twitter that your film is screening and include a link to the screening info which is almost always found on the festival’s website.
If you’ve connected with the Film Festival as noted in 1 or 2, make use of the hashtag and/or @ the festival in some of these postings, you don’t necessarily have to include these in every posting, but within some of your postings it will help to at least acknowledge the Film Festival and more often than not the Film Festival itself will share the posting you’ve created to their followers, because you see, “they want people to come to the Film Festival just as well” and what better way to build buzz than for the Festival itself to share Filmmakers who express some kind of excitement about their own film by reposting something the filmmaker themselves have shared.
Mix up the time you post daily reminders and the types of posts to maximize who among your followers becomes aware of it, given that your follower’s all hang out on social media during varying hours: ie your morning only posts may never be seen by your late night followers nor are they likely to single you out and go check what you posted in the morning.
In addition, consider including in your posts behind the scenes photos or even simply the film’s poster or trailer. The reality is that posts with pictures or visual content are the most likely to be shared by others by an almost 10 to 1 ratio vs those without. Why is having other’s share your screening important, because if the person sharing it can’t attend they may be able to reach someone who follows them that can attend your screening.
As an example , you might send a tweet that looks something like one's we've been selectively posting for Films at the upcoming
@_PAFF like these:
Repeat this or something similar, being sure to mix up both what you post and when you post.
The Film Festival is focused on promoting the Festival overall, not necessarily promoting Your film at the Festival, that’s Your job. Take ownership of it!
5. Be There or Find a Surrogate
In General Film Festivals follow up screenings with Q&As with the filmmaker/content creator which is a Great way for you to gain exposure. If you can’t be there or have no intention of attending a particular film festival, this begs the question, why are you even spending, maybe even wasting, money to submit to it. On the flip side, it’s understandable if you for example get accepted at multiple Film Festivals and have to pick and choose which to attend, but that’s still no reason to simply not have anyone show up. In the latter case, consider asking someone associated with the film to attend or even ask a friend whose familiar enough with your work and the film that may be going to the festival, if they’d be willing to stand in for you.
In the event You can’t attend nor find a surrogate it becomes all the more important to make sure you’ve done items 1 and 2 above, that way you can at least do follow up to maybe people who did attend your film’s screening and simply Thank them for attending it. The reason you’d know this is that you’ve already put into action numbers 1 and 2 of this list.
It’s simple marketing not rocket science, help build buzz for your current film and Future projects, you don’t need a marketing manager per say if You simply apply these 5 simple basics, You become the Marketing Manager.
What’s the point of all this you might ask, you never know who is attending a Film Festival and you want to be the person that stands out among the crowd of filmmakers, because it’s the person that stands out that will likely get noticed by people who could do something to boost your film career. These people are not looking for nor taking much note of the filmmaker who doesn’t attend their own screening nor promote their own film, because it says to them if you’re not using your own energies and resources to promote yourself and work you almost most definitely will not wisely use their resources, financial or otherwise, they may be willing to offer.
As a BONUS: FilmTVDiversity is here to help You as well, if You are our follower on Twitter or Facebook did you know You can submit your upcoming general Screenings or Film Festival screenings to us and we’d be happy to help promote it at no cost other than making sure you are following us. Simply submit the info: Including dates/times website or social medial links, Trailer, Poster or even photos to us at
diversitypromos@fatdive.com and we’ll work up something to help your general screening or upcoming festival screening build buzz.
