Essen­tial Film Mar­ket­ing — How to Gen­er­ate Mas­sive Inter­est and PR For Your Film on No Bud­get!
By Susie Tul­lett

In this film mar­ket­ing guide What do you do if you have lit­tle or no bud­get to pro­mote the film? Some case stud­ies I’ll be using: The Blair Witch Project; Des­per­ado (Robert Rodriguez –Sin City/Spy Kids) which are worth men­tion­ing, and I’ll dis­cuss how you can use cast­ing as a PR oppor­tu­nity. I hope some of these tips will help, both up and com­ing, estab­lished film­mak­ers, as well as those at film schools. Remem­ber one golden rule, don’t be afraid to be pushy and per­sis­tent on the self-promotion front!

Rule 1 — You can’t PR if the story isn’t worth telling

Before we begin I would like to reit­er­ate the above rule because I can’t stress it enough. You will never be able to PR some­thing if it does say some­thing worth saying.

PR– The Short Film

I am going to deal with a short film first, and I am going to assume that you have a day job, but film mak­ing is your pas­sion. You have assem­bled a crew and have a script you are happy with, and actors to play the roles. Word of mouth is one of the most effec­tive tools in this whole sce­nario, so if you are able to invite any of your local press to the set to watch some of the film­ing, do try. They will gen­er­ally pop along if there is a local angle for them.

If it is appro­pri­ate, and you need ‘extras’ it might be an idea to approach the local Scout/Girl Guide troupe, or a local Youth Club. Or, if you require older peo­ple, don’t be afraid to try and recruit your ‘crowd’ from a Darby and Joan Club/parents’ friends, or even your local pub. Some­thing this sim­ple could pro­vide a local angle for your friendly local jour­nal­ist — and you could even give them a walk on role if it can be writ­ten in and make them part of the story.

Quick Tip: Use Cast­ing of your tal­ent as part of the story. Hire (or bor­row) a small the­atri­cal venue for a few hours. Invite the jour­nal­ist along to see some of the tal­ent audi­tion­ing. Get some friends around so that the audi­tion queue seems longer than it is, and take some stills of the busy audi­tion room — allow them to inter­view some of those audi­tion­ing who are likely to be on your short-list. Pub­li­cize (through an ad in the local paper/ facebook/ twitter/onefatcigar) the audi­tion to get more peo­ple along. Imme­di­ately your low bud­get film has bud­ding actors clam­or­ing to be in it, and the jour­nal­ist has another angle to their story.

Rule 2 — Get local news coverage

I’ve got news for you — writ­ers and edi­tors of national papers read the local press, and most of these papers have online ver­sions, so this would be a very good place to start. You obvi­ously don’t have the money to pay your ‘extras’ but as long as you promise them end­less sup­plies of hot tea/coffee and sus­te­nance, they will be thrilled and will­ing to par­tic­i­pate. After all, it’s some­thing to tell friends and fam­ily — again spread­ing word of mouth.

All films are dif­fer­ent, so all PR cam­paigns will be dif­fer­ent. It really is up to you, the pro­ducer, to find the angle. I really do believe that a set of stills that grab people’s inter­est is the most impor­tant pro­mo­tional tool. With no or low-budget film­mak­ing you can­not be expected to hire one of the top UK unit pho­tog­ra­phers. But you could approach a local Uni­ver­sity or col­lege to see which stu­dents might aspire to shoot­ing film stills. Chances are he or she would jump at the oppor­tu­nity of com­ing to your set for the expe­ri­ence, rather than the money.

Quick tip: Face­book is also a great tool for this — I just ran a quick search for ‘pho­tog­ra­pher’ and ‘pho­tog­ra­phy’ and came up with 62,000 results. I’m in Lon­don today so I pinged in Lon­don and fil­tered down to over 500 peo­ple, find­ing out that a num­ber had mutual friends. You might ask to see a port­fo­lio from them and per­haps get intro­duced through a friend.

Rule 3 — Always get a great stills pho­tog­ra­pher and invite to the most impor­tant day of the shoot!

It is vital to choose a key day in the sched­ule where the pho­tog­ra­pher can grab as many great shots as pos­si­ble. You will know what they are, and they should be iconic and not just a pic­ture of an iso­lated scene. If you are shoot­ing a film about a bank rob­bery for exam­ple, some­thing sim­ple but effec­tive might just be a close up shot of two eyes look­ing through a bal­a­clava: some­thing stark and eye-catching.

Tak­ing stills is an art in itself. Tell the pho­tog­ra­pher what you want and how you want to use the images and then leave them to it. If they are good they will give you plenty of options.

Case Study 1

I was reminded while writ­ing this of the bril­liant poster for The Blair Witch Project which was so intrigu­ing it had every­one talk­ing about it for weeks before the film actu­ally came out.

Pro­duc­ers of The Blair Witch project suc­ceeded in cre­at­ing huge pre-hype for their low bud­get hor­ror flick which cen­tered on stu­dents being mur­dered in a for­est. Blur­ring the bound­aries between fact and fic­tion was key to the early buzz that sur­rounded the movie. Allegedly the film mak­ers had cir­cu­lated tapes to col­leges which were pre­sented as ‘real video diary footage’. Clips that were pre­sented as ‘doc­u­men­tary’ rather than fic­tion were shown on the Inde­pen­dent Film Chan­nel. This was one of first fea­ture films to use online and viral PR to build hype. The buzz ensured that Blair Witch was a major suc­cess which took over $150 mil­lion at the box office.

If your film is in the horror-genre, then go for some­thing a bit edgy and mys­te­ri­ous, rather than an in-your-face close up of a bloody fig­ure. The images must tease and sug­gest rather than give the whole plot away.

A romance or love story could very sim­ply be a shot of the lovers in an unusual angle. A shot that will make peo­ple stop and look, and try to work out what the story might be about.

Tac­tics and Techniques

Two things to con­sider: What gen­er­ates word of mouth? What makes some­thing viral? The answers: Great PR — is about build­ing a back­story of inter­est; Great Trail­ers — about visu­ally sell­ing that story.

The Press Release

To start with, write the press release (we’ll deal with how to right a great press release in my next arti­cle). As men­tioned ear­lier, there is noth­ing wrong with send­ing out three releases to cover the one film. Here are my key steps:

1. Build a Database

Start build­ing your data­base, with friends, fam­ily and friends of friends; post­ing the title and a ‘Look out For’ and updates post­ing on Face­book, Twit­ter, One Fat Cigar.com etc.

2. Get some great still pho­tographs and footage early in the shoot

3. Try to cut a short teaser trailer

If you are able to cut a short teaser trailer early on in film­ing, post it on You Tube and MySpace and send the link to every­one you know. If it grabs them, whether it shocks them, or makes them laugh or cry, the chances are they will pass it on.….but don’t rely on them, make sure they do.

4. Learn to write an engag­ing press release — aim for 3 press releases:

The first press release will announce the start date, include a short syn­op­sis, and list the actors and their brief cred­its, the pro­ducer and the direc­tor. Here you can men­tion loca­tions if appro­pri­ate. The title should be eye-grabbing and short.

The sec­ond press release could relate to what I was say­ing ear­lier, about hir­ing ‘extras’ or ‘crowds’ from a local orga­ni­za­tion. This could well make local news, and don’t be afraid to call the local TV or radio sta­tion either and invite them down. You are now slowly start­ing to build aware­ness of your movie, and lit­tle by lit­tle you will find the word spreading.

Your last press release could be about the com­ple­tion of film­ing on time and on bud­get, and should be sent out with an image. Impor­tant to note that some behind-the-scenes pic­tures — pic­tures that con­tain cam­eras and light­ing rig — are the best ones to use here. You may well be lim­ited to the num­ber of actual film stills you have, and you don’t want to start using them yet. Save them for when you are pro­mot­ing the film in earnest. But just keep up the flow of infor­ma­tion, in any inno­v­a­tive (and free) way you can.

Case Study 2 — Bend the rules

Des­per­ado by Robert Rodriguez. Hav­ing made El Mari­achi in 1992 and win­ning at Sun­dance with a bud­get of only $7,000 Rodriguez real­ized the impor­tance of a good trailer. He had a rel­a­tively low bud­get of $6m, but did some great pro­mo­tion behind the scenes. His key ele­ments to sell the film:

1. Tal­ented and ‘hot’ cast in Anto­nio Ban­deras and Salma Hayek — made sure there were scenes in the film where they ‘looked good’ — which he could use as pub­lic­ity, espe­cially on the back of El Mariachi

2. Atten­tion grab­bing Trailer http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi3315663129/ which although now dated made sure that if you loved action films you would want to see this.

3. Added inter­est­ing extras, such as his Robert Rodriguez 10 minute film school http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3Lx2XVR4vI to help with the DVD sell — where stu­dios make most of their money — built an imme­di­ate affin­ity with filmmakers

4. Robert Rodriguez told every­one he could find that he was oper­at­ing out­side the Hol­ly­wood sys­tem — Fan­tas­tic PR again, every­one likes a loose can­non, an underdog!

Your angle might be, the stu­dios wouldn’t fund it so you mort­gaged your house, stole from friends, sold your pet dog on ebay, to make this film hap­pen, because, nat­u­rally its a story that just had to be told.

Rule 4 — The most impor­tant point of the whole process — you should be think­ing all the time about the mar­ket­ing angle

There has to be an inter­est­ing angle some­where, after all if your film isn’t inter­est­ing why are you mak­ing it? Exploit that.

And if I had only $200 to spend on UNIT PR?

1. Hire the best stills pho­tog­ra­pher I could afford

2. Design a ‘Sell’ Poster — don’t print the poster and give it out — just use it in emails to jour­nal­ists (it costs too much to print and look good)

3. Set up a Twit­ter, Face­book Page and One Fat Cigar Account — invite your friends — and put the poster on the front

4. Get a Busi­ness Card, and put your name, tele­phone num­ber and email on it. You’re a Producer.

5. Write atten­tion grab­bing press releases and at the bot­tom direct then to your accounts

6. Get local jour­nal­ists involved. Give them your busi­ness card, an access to the set.

7. Make a trailer that makes peo­ple want to know more and do it early as a teaser.

A few quick notes on how to use Twitter/Facebook and One Fat Cigar to PR your film:

Twit­ter — Tweet from set, what are you doing now? Did some­thing inter­est­ing just hap­pen? Tell peo­ple. Just done seen our first stills pho­tos, why not come take a look. What do you think of our new trailer? See it here…

Face­book — A more mean­ing­ful engage­ment with the pub­lic. At the begin­ning you’re going to know most of your fans, fil­ter your twit­ter feed into your face­book fan updates, and upload images and stills, invite peo­ple along to screen­ings or to be extras — you’ll soon have more fans and word will spread so that when the film goes out there they can be part of it.

One Fat Cigar — Already in beta this site is for every­one like you who loves film or are filmmakers/actors/writers. They’re keen to fol­low your pro­duc­tion from day one, and you can cast and crew through the site and build a fan base. Blog about your film here, do video updates from set, release the trailer, exclu­sive inter­views with key team mem­bers, engage with fans who can com­ment and be involved in your pro­duc­tion. I rec­om­mend sign­ing up to the mail­ing list if you haven’t already to find out more when it launches and read­ing the blog which has a lot more infor­ma­tion about the site.

Three dif­fer­ent mechan­ics– but all equally valu­able to build word of mouth.

For a larger scale production/ fea­ture film

Exactly the same rules apply for a short film and for a larger pro­duc­tion, it just means that the range and scope of pos­si­bil­i­ties are dif­fer­ent — you can approach more eas­ily national jour­nal­ists and it is pos­si­ble to achieve more press with a fea­ture film. PR is, of course only half the bat­tle — the film also has to be good to be a real success.

Susie Tul­lett is a film mar­ket­ing spe­cial­ist and the for­mer head of DDA’s Film PR Unit in Cannes hav­ing worked with names includ­ing Jack Nichol­son, Johnny Depp, Jes­sica Biel, Ed Nor­ton, Robert De Nero and Al Pacino. She is cur­rently a free­lance PR spe­cial­ist and con­trib­u­tor for the film mar­ket­ing web­site OneFatCigar.com

Arti­cle Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Susie_Tullett
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