How to begin marketing before pre-production

Posted on October 3, 2018 by Michael Korican

Elliot Grove of Raindance proposes that you begin marketing your next film before it’s even written.

Elliot starts by narrowing down who you should market to and where to find them. Then he lists five marketing techniques:

Posters

Elliot relates how Roger Corman reverse engineered his films.

“Roger is a morning guy. He would meet me in my London office with the morning British papers. Over a cup of coffee, he would tear out keywords and mash them up on the table. When he saw a good movie title he would hand-write it down and I would fax it to his office in Los Angeles. This is how he came up with titles for some of his 750+ features. Titles like: Grand Theft Auto, Death Race 2000, Rock ‘N Roll High School, Slumber Party Massacre, and The Fast And The Furious. When he saw a title in his mash-up he would handwrite it down, and I would fax it to LA in the days of the flimsy paper fax machines. Roger would leave my humble Soho office and do what independent film geniuses do, and return about 6pm. LA would be awake and through my fax would come a very lo-res poster with nothing more than the image and the title. If Roger liked it, he would tear it off, stuff it in his pocket and in the evening mingle with the great and the good of the London film scene…. He’d tell me the next morning, if enough people liked his film he would hire a screenwriter to write the script suggested by his poster.”

One Sheets

According to Mr. Grove, “A one-sheet is deemed to be good when at first glance you know exactly what genre of film it is.” A striking image can be used to market the film before the cameras roll.

Trailers

Elliot offers, “A good trailer is 90-120 seconds long and gets the emotion of the movie across.” If you’ve shot a few scenes or even locations from the film, you can conceivably pull together a trailer before principal photography.

Crowdfunding

Think that crowdfunding is a way to raise money for your movie? Not so.

“The reason you initiate a crowd-funding campaign is to raise awareness of your project. Getting money is a secondary benefit.”

Supporters that get behind your project are “invested.” Find ways to leverage that support.

Genre

Elliot is outspoken on how to describe your film:

“There is no surer kiss of death than to describe your film as a drama. The term drama is too general. All stories are dramas…. The quickest way to narrow down your film from the thousands of others is to describe it by genre. Are you horror? Or action? Better yet, are you a genre hybrid? Action/Adventure? Romantic/Comedy and so on.”

Who should you market to?

Mr. Grove starts his article using the Socratic method:

Q: “You want to sell your film, right? Who do you target your publicity at? The people who buy films, right? And who buys films?”

A: Film Buyers, a.k.a. Acquisition Executives.

Q: “And where do acquisition executives go to look for new films?”

A: They go to film festivals and film markets.

Therefore, you want to get your film in front of the right film festival programmers, the right film sales agents and the right film acquisition executives.

Where should you market?

Elliot believes:

“Most films, whether festival films or not, end up at a film market like the American Film Market (AFM), the European Film Market (EFM) or Cannes (Marché du Film). With hundreds and thousands of films competing for acquisition executives and festival programmers, marketing should really start here.”

My take: with today’s glut of movies, Elliot Grove’s advice is more valuable than ever. Personally, I start with the title, next the logo and then a table tent. Now my idea is tangible.

Self-distribution de-mystified

Posted on September 26, 2018 by Michael Korican

Big thanks to Chris O’Falt, writing on IndieWire, for shedding some needed light on feature film self-distribution.

In his article he shares the dilemma faced by SXSW Film Festival Grand Jury Prize winner Jim Cummings: take a $100K all-rights deal or gamble and D-I-Y.

“Thunder Road” cost Cummings $200K. What to do?

Because he received a Sundance Creative Distribution Fellowship grant, he decide to self-distribute:

“Sundance encouraged us to try all these different things a smaller distributor would have never done. It’s been a total learning experience — some things I never would have guessed would work have, some haven’t, and we adjusted.”

For instance, becoming a theatrical hit in France, by parlaying exposure at Cannes to the Deauville American Film Festival and finally to opening on 67 screens.

The trade-off? Cummings has to be fully transparent and allow Sundance to publish a case study of his self-distribution, like the one for “Columbus”.

My take: This (and the “Columbus” case study) should be required reading for anyone with a prize-winning feature film. Every film has an audience and its creators are probably more motivated than anyone to find it. Just be forewarned that it will take you at least a year, and there’s no guarantee of success.

Pirates be warned: Blockchain is on patrol

Posted on September 19, 2018 by Michael Korican

Arrgh! Today be International Talk Like a Pirate Day so ’tis mighty fittin’ that news out o’ th’ Toronto International Film Festival announces a new tack on film distribution ‘n online piracy.

Canadian post-production companies Red Square Motion ‘n Unstable Ground ‘ave joined wit’ distributor Indiecan Entertainment t’ launch LightVAULT.

Th’ new crew offers an end t’ end solution fer th’ secure holding, quality control, conversion ‘n delivery o’ film assets t’ clients around th’ globe, promisin’ a one-stop solution fer digital storage, protection ‘n delivery o’ film ‘n media treasure.

“The core of the service is designed with protection of content from unauthorized sharing and piracy in mind, by using a blockchain-based forensic encoding technology.”

They harness technology from South Africa’s Custos who have “built a platform designed to incentivise people in criminal communities from all over the world to protect your content.”

“You never want your film to be on The Pirate Bay. You probably don’t want your film being shared on campus networks. You don’t want the guy from the local paper that you asked to review your movie sending it to his friends. We get people from all over the world to anonymously tell us when they find your film where it shouldn’t be. We have blockchain magic, and we will find them.”

How do they do that?

Bounty!

Pasha Patriki of Red Square Motion explains why he’s promoting this technology:

“My own feature film that I Executive Produced and directed (Black Water, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren), was leaked online several months before it’s official world release date. Since then, I have been researching technologies that could help track every delivery and download of the master files of the film.”

My take: ’tis a smart solution that helps filmmakers keep tabs on thar screeners. ‘Tis prolly worth th’ cost, as th’ price o’ piracy be growin’ in terms o’ lost revenue ‘n compliance. Arrgh!

Ten Indie Film Audience Profiles

Posted on September 12, 2018 by Michael Korican

Sarah Calderón, Raquel Cabrera and Celia Fumanal of Madrid’s The Film Agency have written a fascinating guest article in Film Independent.

In order to assist their film marketing activities, they have used “design thinking tools and empathy maps to identify and shape at least 10 consumer profiles of indie cinema lovers.”

They profile three main audiences:

Indie Movie Selectives
Hyper-connected Movie Addicts
The Silver Audience

Of the Selectives, they say:

“This group is mainly composed of women over 30, highly educated, living in urban areas. They prefer the experience of going to the movie theatre; they like drama (but not too much suffering, they also appreciate feel-good fare!), value the empowerment of women and non-archetypical female characters in main roles, and are highly selective with the content they watch.”

Of the Addicts, they say:

“This group encompasses mainly men over 25, highly educated, living in urban areas. Unlike the previous female-equivalent group they prefer the VOD experience (not always legally), as opposed to movie theatres. They are very eclectic, taking in all types of genres in films and series.”

Of the Silvers, they say:

“Mainly women over 60, with an average level of education, living in urban areas. This group has a great deal of time on their hands during the week to enjoy culture and take in the opera, ballet, classic concerts and feel-good films about the “Golden Age.” They are classical in their choices, reject edgy narratives and appreciate the beauty of music and the arts.”

In addition, they profile more niche indie audiences:

The Genre Fan with “a clear preference for horror movies, thrillers, slashers, gore and B-grade schlock”
The Eco-friendly Film Lover with “a clear preference for documentaries about the environment and how we live in it”
The Spiritual Guru who “watches indie content from time to time when it touches their soul”
The Activist who “watches politically-charged documentaries”
The LGBTQIA Community who “appreciate content where non-archetypical LGBTQIA characters are in main roles”
‘Cream of the Crop’ Cinephiles who “adore the cinema screen and the great auteurs, new and old”
Indie Animation Fans who “love art, illustration, drawing and visual arts.”

In total, that’s ten distinct indie film audience profiles.

My take: This is well worth the read. Finding the audience for the film remains the biggest task of an indie film, after realizing a fantastic script, of course.

How to spot deepfakes

Posted on September 5, 2018 by Michael Korican

Siwei Lyu writing in The Conversation brings attention to “deepfakes” and offers a simple way to spot them.

What’s a deepfake?

From Wikipdeia:

“Deepfake, a portmanteau of “deep learning” and “fake”, is an artificial intelligence-based human image synthesis technique. It is used to combine and superimpose existing images and videos onto source images or videos.”

My favourite technology show, BBC Click, explains it well:

Back to Siwei:

“Because these techniques are so new, people are having trouble telling the difference between real videos and the deepfake videos. My work, with my colleague Ming-Ching Chang and our Ph.D. student Yuezun Li, has found a way to reliably tell real videos from deepfake videos. It’s not a permanent solution, because technology will improve. But it’s a start, and offers hope that computers will be able to help people tell truth from fiction.”

The key?

Blinking.

“Healthy adult humans blink somewhere between every 2 and 10 seconds, and a single blink takes between one-tenth and four-tenths of a second. That’s what would be normal to see in a video of a person talking. But it’s not what happens in many deepfake videos.”

They analyze the rate of blinking to decide the veracity of the video.

“Our work is taking advantage of a flaw in the sort of data available to train deepfake algorithms. To avoid falling prey to a similar flaw, we have trained our system on a large library of images of both open and closed eyes. This method seems to work well, and as a result, we’ve achieved an over 95 percent detection rate.”

My take: Wow! So, basically, now you can no longer believe what you read, hear or see. Interestingly, this means that IRL will take on added value. (Oops, it seems that technology has already moved on: now deepfakes can include blinking.)

The changing media landscape

Posted on August 22, 2018 by Michael Korican

Graeme McMillan, writing on The Verge, claims that “Netflix, Amazon Video, and Xfinity are accidentally re-creating cable TV.”

His thesis:

“Since the advent of streaming online video, industry insiders have wondered what impact it would have on the future of television. As more companies move toward launching their own proprietary subscription streaming services, the future hasn’t been entirely decided yet, but new clues are emerging, pointing toward a potentially surprising answer: all this disruptive new media is just gradually re-creating familiar old-media models.”

As evidence, he points to a recent deal by Comcast’s Xfinity X1 digital cable service to carry Amazon Prime Video, alongside Netflix, YouTube, and Pandora.

This highlights a growing problem for viewers:

“The digital landscape is already fragmented, and it’s continually fragmenting further, as content creators choose to become content providers. In the process, it’s beginning to resemble cable television. Each new app or content library looks like a different channel to consider, and each one is essentially a premium cable offering that requires a separate subscription to view. Services that previously acted as content aggregators are losing outside content with the launch of each new service. Instead, they are creating their own content to maintain value in a crowded marketplace.”

Graeme asks:

“If streaming is, indeed, just New Television — or, perhaps more accurately, Old Television Again But Arguably More Expensive And More Complicated — then what benefit does that actually have for the end-user? The material has migrated to platforms where the audience already exists, but in a more unwieldy fashion that all but eliminates the free-view option of broadcast television, limiting its potential audience and penalizing low-income customers.”

He concludes: “Is it possible that, after all of this change and innovation, the future of television is just… television?”

My take: this is to be expected. See this Harvard Business Review article on the Consolidation Curve. Two years ago, there was an inkling already that there were too many “over-the-top streaming live-TV replacement services.” I suspect the only reason people are tolerating the proliferation of streaming services is rampant account sharing, which lowers fees.

A New Release Strategy for your Short Film

Posted on August 15, 2018 by Michael Korican

You’re proud of your short film! You want to launch it into the world so you create a release strategy. Typically, it looks like this:

Andrew S. Allen, of Short of the Week, thinks it should look like this:

He’s arguing from a partisan position because he’s part of an online festival that can premiere your short, but I think he make a lot of sense.

He even has survey results and statistics to back up his assertions.

In a nutshell, he suggests:

Create an online + festival strategy. Submit your film to online outlets early.

Secure your premiere with a top tier festival or online site.

Find partners — connect with curators to reach their audiences.

Don’t prioritize money — it’ll likely hurt your exposure.

Don’t sign away exclusivity — hang on to your right to ‘be everywhere’.

Go cross platform and get your film everywhere.

Internationalize your film with subtitles to reach even further.

Compress your release window over days/weeks rather than months/years.

Launch, engage and recalibrate during the week of your release.

Be prepared to pitch your next idea or project.

My take: once upon a time, the mediascape was an orderly grid: on one axis you had ‘windows,’ a hierarchy of platforms (theatrical, pay TV, airlines, free TV, libraries, etc.,) and on the other axis you had ‘territories,’ geographic regions (North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, Asia, Africa, etc.) Then along came the Internet that blew away time and space. The ‘Conventional Strategy’ above harkens back to the time of the Old Mediascape. ‘Be Everywhere All at Once’ is firmly rooted in the digital New Mediascape. One great reason to adopt it: you never were making any money from your short, so you might as well get it over with with the BEAAO Strategy and save yourself a couple of years. After all, time is money.

Scientific insights into successful movie making

Posted on August 8, 2018 by Michael Korican

Kurt Vonnegut, the American writer, was one of the first to graph the emotional arc of stories.

In this lecture, he laments, “There is no reason why the simple shapes of stories can’t be fed into computers; they are beautiful shapes.”

Andrew J. Reagan, et al, did just that in 2016 using the Project Gutenberg fiction collection and concluded there are six main emotional trajectories:

Rags to Riches (rise)
Tragedy/Riches to Rags (fall)
Man in a Hole (fall-rise)
Icarus (rise-fall)
Cinderella (rise-fall-rise)
Oedipus (fall-rise-fall)

Does this hold for movies too?

Marco Del Vecchio, Alexander Kharlamov, Glenn Parry, and Ganna Pogrebna harnessed big data to see. They agree, and conclude:

“One of these trajectories — Man in a Hole — tends to be generally more financially successful than other emotional arcs. Furthermore, this relative success is apparent irrespective of the movie genre and does not dependent on the movie production budget. If we assume that IMDb rating can be used as a proxy of viewer satisfaction, we can also conclude that the Man in a Hole emotional arc tends to succeed not because it generates movies which are most desired by the public (i.e., achieve the highest ratings on IMDb), but because movies with this emotional arc tend to be most unusual and spark debate. In other words, the Man in a Hole emotional arc tends to generate most “talked about” movies and not necessarily “most liked” movies and thereby achieve higher revenues than movies in other categories.”

In addition to the story curve, they also explore budget:

“Man in a Hole is the only emotional trajectory which produces statistically significant results showing that it is more financially successful than any other emotional arc.”

And genre:

“When emotional arcs are combined with different genres and produced in different budget categories any of the 6 emotional arcs may produce financially successful films. Therefore, a careful selection of the script-budget-genre combination will lead to financial success.”

My take: I find this fascinating! See the last page that graphs genres with emotional arcs with success and the second last page that graphs budgets with emotional arcs with success (green is better.) It seems to tell me success is possible with budgets of less than $1 million in these genres: war, drama, mystery, crime and film noir, and using a rise-fall emotional arc.

Michael Korican Thinks

Thoughts on Independent Filmmaking and the Emerging Economic System

Category Archives: The Mediascape