Audience Outreach
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Crowdfunding and Audience Myths on Reinvent Hollywood
In late May, Ted Hope kicked off the Reinvent Hollywood series, which employs the opinions and experiences of several familiar faces in independent film to address the industry’s pitfalls. From what I’ve seen in the three Google Hangouts thus far, Hope and his conspirators do a great job of summarizing and highlighting areas for improvement, but speak in more general terms when it comes to solutions. The latest 90-minute roundtable (and recap), which centered on audiences, aims to dismantle some of the more widely held beliefs that have resulted from the proliferation of crowdfunding. Says Sheri Candler of the muddled impetus […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jul 1, 2014 -
Make it More than a Movie: Incentivizing Audiences to Watch Independent Film
Earlier today, No Film School ran a transparency-friendly guest post by VHX about the bonus features included on the film Stripped. The filmmakers offer six distinct packages for purchase through the platform, each of which includes varying degrees of bonus content. The most expensive option at $49.99 — with 16 hours of additional content — accounted for 23% of their film sales and 48% of revenue. VHX determined that majority of these purchases came from pre-existing Kickstarter fans but also genuinely curious consumers who watched the doc on iTunes, etc., and liked it enough to head to their site for more. Since VHX compiled the above data, the […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jun 4, 2014 -
“You’re Really Just Talking to Yourself:” Beau Willimon, David Simon, Nate Silver and Anne Thompson on Audiences and Data
“There are two asteroids corrupting media,” bellowed radio host John Hockenberry at the start of the Tribeca Film Festival’s “Stories By Numbers” panel last week. The first, viewing patterns; the second, data streams. “Narratives,” he opined, pacing before Beau Willimon, David Simon, Nate Silver and Anne Thompson, “are becoming indistinguishable from vices.” It’s no secret that Netflix’s limitless entree into consumer preferences has informed much of its success in the realm of original content. Hockenberry noted that big brother Sarandos can scrutinize viewing behavior down to its utter minutiae: “what people skip over, what sex scenes they replay, is all fed back into […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Apr 28, 2014 -
Catering to an International Audience: The Case of Oppressed Majority
The New York Times recently ran a story on the newfound viral status of a 2010 French short called Majorité Oprimée (Oppressed Majority). The film depicts a day in the life of a schlub who goes about his duties in a parallel Parisian society where women reign supreme. While the daddies run day care, their wives run topless. The protagonist eventually shoulders his fair share of sexual harassment and abuse in an exercise that begins with a touch more subtlety. The majority of the article discusses arguments over the role of gender in France’s workplace, but also of note to filmmakers is the fact […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Apr 9, 2014 -
ornana’s Jim Cummings On How To Combat The Digital Recession and Lessons To Learn From “South Park”
“Our degrees cost us about $90,000 a piece, and in the last five years of making movies, the three of us together have made about $5,000 from our work.” That’s ornana producer Jim Cummings speaking at his Future 15s New Media talk at SXSW last Sunday. Drawing from his article series over at Ted Hope’s Truly Free Film, Cummings gave a micro-keynote on what he calls “The Digital Recession,” the supersaturation of content and what can be done to effectively combat the glut. Cummings made the common observation that nowadays, any old person is encouraged by “camera companies, film festivals, and arts […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Mar 14, 2014 -
Ken Burns Finds New Audience with “Past Is Present” App
“There is no such thing as history,” Ken Burns says at the top of this short promotional clip for his new iPad app, Past Is Present. It’s more like a series of recurrences: “not cycles, but patterns.” To help the average eye better examine such connections, Don MacKinnon conceived, directed and produced this interactive exploration of common threads in Burns’ work. Clips from the likes of The Civil War and Baseball are grouped by both theme and time period, allowing its user to make scenes “20 years apart, suddenly interrelate in a new way.” Burns offers up interviews and his own clip assemblies, determined by […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Feb 10, 2014 -
The Paragon of Audience Outreach? Robbie Bryan Talks Black Hat
Any panel, roundtable or seminar that concerns technological advancements in film is bound to hit upon the issue of audience engagement. How we can best make use of the embarrassment of riches the internet affords us in finding the right people to watch our film. Filmmaker Robbie Bryan has managed to collect (at the time of this writing) 235,427 Facebook likes for his upcoming film Black Hat, that’s still only in the development stage. He’s leveraged his fan base into an ambitious Seed & Spark campaign, interacting with them along the way and soliciting their input in the shaping of his […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Feb 4, 2014 -
Push Notifications for the People (and Super Fans): App.net’s Broadcast
If you own a smartphone, chances are you’re familiar with push notifications. Popularized by Apple’s iOS 3.0 edition in 2009, push technology utilizes open IP connections to forward notifications from third-party apps to your mobile interface. Formerly reserved for large-scale corporations — The New York Times, etc. — San Francisco-based App.net has created a free marketing channel called Broadcast that democratizes the process of push notification. App.net CEO Dalton Caldwell likens this application to “your own promotional arsenal” for users who already enjoy an active social media presence. News that may otherwise be buried in the barrage of tweets and […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Nov 21, 2013 -
ScreenCraft’s Digital Discourse: Build Your Audience Now
“Distributing is easy, marketing is hard.” With that statement, moderator Ryan Koo kicked off the discussion at ScreenCraft’s recent Digital Discourse panel on the future of content creation and releasing. Nestled in the WGAE suite of a Tribeca high rise, the participating panelists included YouTube’s Amy Singer; Erica Anderson, Chief Marketing Director at Seed&Spark; Erick Opeka, SVP of Digital Distribution at Cinedigm; @radical.media’s Adam Neuhaus; and BOND 360 Founder and CEO, Marc Schiller. Chances are, you’ve heard it before: with so much of the independent film world unspooling in a viral sphere at a hair-raising pace, filmmakers must be prepared […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Nov 8, 2013
