Breaking through the noise to market indie films in 2024
This simple tip can give you months of marketing material
Do we advertise our trailer on Facebook or Instagram? How do we create buzz around an indie film without a studio marketing budget?
Easy marketing tip for your next screening/premiere:
Hire or designate someone from your team to take vertical videos after your screening as people are coming out, and ask permission to share them on social media to help get the word out about your film.
Instead of waiting on a movie reviewer or PR source to interview you or watch your film, why not capture your audience's reactions in real-time as soon as they have seen the film?
When they walk out of the theatre, they will be in the most heightened emotional state on how the film affected them, and you can use that energy and emotion of them being moved to market your film to your future audiences, whether it is future screenings, or when you release to AVOD/SVOD/Youtube etc.
Also, on the days you receive a lot of rejections, whether its distributors, film festivals, etc, you can go back and watch how people have been moved/changed by your film.
Last year, Cul-de-sac, a film I had the privilege of playing the lead in, had its world premiere at the Brooklyn Film Festival. The opening night party, I met Apollo, director of Aligned, which was also having its World Premiere at Brooklyn Film Festival. Apollo won "Best Producer" at the festival, and there are a lot of reasons he deserved that award.
1) This strategy right here - as soon as his screening finished, he asked people to come over and share their thoughts about the film.
-What three words come to mind when you think of "Aligned"?
-What was most surprising about the film?
-What resonated with you most?
-Who should come see this film?
-Why should they come see this film?
He went on to have an amazing festival run, and had months worth of content to share, and the most valuable kind; the testimonials, reviews, thoughts of people who saw his film.
2) Aligned was a production in both Greece and the U.S. Imagine the work visas alone.
3) Apollo did an incredible job of making each filmmaker feel special, going to as many screenings as possible, and in turn, people wanted to support him.
I learned a lot from Apollo during that week at BFF. When we had our World Premiere of Shredded in Columbiana, OH last month, I told my production partner we should do the same thing. It was invaluable, and we plan to do it for all of our future screenings.
Click here for a short snippet showing how you can do this.
People are busy. If you wait until after the screening, and chase people down later for their thoughts, you may never get them. Right after the screening, people are most primed to share how they were moved. And THAT is the power of viewing a film in a theatre with an audience!
Implementing this and sharing videos has led to more upcoming Screenings of Shredded! We plan to utilize this at all of our screenings, so that when Shredded releases to platforms, we can recycle all of the videos and post in stories again!
PS - Make and order a step and repeat that goes with you to each screening. Do the videos in front of the step and repeat, so that when you post them, the name of your film/production company is easily seen.
PPS - We hired a professional photographer/videographer for our world premiere. You do not have to hire a professional, but make sure that you do have a microphone to plug into your recording device, or a way to capture clear & crisp audio. Like film, it is most important that we can hear the reviewer easily.
This is such a great tip! There's so much demand for IRL events right now, so I could see how this works on a couple levels: it gets the word out about the film itself, but it also gets the word out about the SCENE the film is creating around it. Powerful messaging. Saving this to use for my feature. Thank you for sharing/writing!