I’ve always said that making a film and putting it online for people to watch is a bit like building a beautiful house in the middle of the Sahara Desert, hoping that a load of people walk by and admire it. Chances are, your film will get lost in the deep abyss of the internet unless you tell them it exists. Promoting your film can be a hard slog, you are filmmakers at the end of the day, not marketing gurus! With platforms like YouTube on one side of a spectrum priortising viral click-bait and streaming services on the other like Amazon focusing on big budget content, the space for Independent filmmakers to shine is becoming increasingly narrow and harder to navigate, let alone monetise. And why shouldn’t you monetise?
Whilst you may never set out to make a film to make money, the first thing you need to make another film is, guess what, money. Or even to handle the costly festival submission fees, to pay your editor a little bit or even to pay off the credit card that you dipped in to during the production process.
At paus we firmly believe in the power of freedom to monetise from the friends, family and fans around you, in a way that is fair and transparent. So here are some top tips in getting more money for your film, either on paus or otherwise.
Top 10 Ways to Promote Your Independent Film
- Niche works: choose to make your film about a specific niche subject that will enable you to target a specific set of interest groups (e.g. “Sides of a Horn” on paus is a film about Rhinos in South Africa, so its producers were easily able to target specific wildlife and environmental interest groups when the film was published).
- Capture the journey: document the entire production process from the conception of the original idea right through to post-production so that you will have lots of film footage and photographs to promote your film after launch. You could incentivise a talented student to film and edit your behind the scenes footage by offering to credit them as the Director of this supplementary film.
- Social media: create social media accounts for your film as early as possible, and work hard to establish a following by posting links about your film on special interest groups on third party websites.
- It’s a team effort: involve your cast and crew, ask them whether they would be willing to help you promote your film once it is available online. This is a collective effort, everyone from the editor through to the extras and beyond, should all support in sharing and posting about your film.
- Your little black book: most of the tips you receive on paus will come from people that you, your cast and crew know, so if possible then try to start formulating a contact list that you can use when you start promoting your film. Some of your audience will also be strangers who feel an affinity with one of the themes or subjects that your film addresses. It is therefore also worth figuring out who your audience might be, where you can find them online, and how you can tailor your promotional efforts to reach them.
- Promo material: make sure you produce the best posters, stills, teasers and trailers that you possibly can because these assets will play a large part in helping you attract viewers and tippers.
- Third parties: try to publish articles, interviews, posts and links for your paus premiere in newspapers, magazines, websites, blogs. People are often surprised about how easy this can be.
- LAUNCH: there is nothing special about pressing an upload button on Vimeo or YouTube, thousands of people do this literally every minute, and your film deserves something special. Have a premiere or launch in mind, you don’t need to rent out a cinema, you can run your own exclusive screening event on paus for free, and either charge a digital entry fee or leave it free and welcome tips. Try to avoid showing your film to anybody apart from your post-production team before you premiere it on paus. If possible then we would suggest that you even avoid sharing it with your cast, crew, family and friends. That way when you premiere your film then people will be genuinely excited about seeing something completely new, and hopefully they will invite their friends and family too.
- Think about the entire launch experience: consider the entire screening package for your premiere, don’t just show your film, think about the additional material, and we’d always suggest running a Q&A.
- Remind people, then remind them again: in addition to posting online, you also need to invite people to your premiere personally via emails, WhatsApp, texts, phone calls. And don’t assume that just telling somebody once is adequate. People are very busy, and may need to be reminded multiple times before they remember and commit to attending (research suggests people need to come across promotional material on average 6 times before taking action).
We’re always here to help, so if you’d like to talk to one of the team about getting your film screened on paus, just e-mail hello@paus.tv and a real human will respond!
paus is an on-demand and live streaming service for Independent, hand-picked and award-winning films all based on a tipping mechanism, with no adverts. To find out more, head to www.paus.tv
