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Audience Building Starts Before the Camera Rolls · Indie Film Podcast

0:00
Welcome to Indie Film Podcast. I'm Vic.
0:02
And I am Chuck. So Victoria, you've made a
0:04
movie, you've done all the work, put it up online, it's available
0:08
to stream, but nobody is watching it.
0:10
What happened? Well Chuck, before we get into
0:13
the number one thing that indie film makers forget to do for
0:17
their films, I'd like to 1st thank our sponsor for this week
0:20
Spark of Madness Film Festival which will be happening at the
0:23
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0:29
Victoria, do you have a weird movie to submit to film
0:31
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0:33
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0:36
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1:06
That extra room was a bonus I. Like it?
1:08
I like it. So thanks for sponsoring us.
1:10
Do you have a question for me, Vic?
1:12
I do actually, Chuck, just throwing this out there.
1:18
What is the marketing plan for most of your films look like?
1:22
Well, it's usually not a plan, it's more of a disaster
1:27
recovery. Would it make you feel better to
1:29
know that most indie film makers do not even slightly consider
1:33
marketing at all and that is the number one reason that their
1:36
films are not getting streamed? That totally makes sense.
1:39
Should we talk before we get into indie film makers and what
1:41
you all can do to hopefully get your film in front of more
1:45
people as well as the mistakes that we've made we've.
1:48
Made a lot. We have films online that don't
1:50
have a huge amount of viewership, but we're learning,
1:54
yeah, just like all of you out there should.
1:55
We talked about about some famous films and what they've
1:57
done. I think that's a fantastic idea
2:00
because I don't want to imply that it's only indie film makers
2:03
that screw up the marketing for their films, right?
2:05
Like big studios screw them up often.
2:09
Oh, for sure. So I think it's important to
2:11
call out some famous films that have maybe, I don't know, toss
2:15
the baby out with the bathwater, insert other terrible euphemism
2:19
that probably shouldn't still be used in modern day, but we do.
2:22
Right. Do you have an example of
2:24
somebody that was famous that totally beefed?
2:26
I do promotion, what do you? I mean there are tons to choose
2:29
from. Let's be honest, there are a lot
2:30
to choose from. My favorite one was actually
2:32
very recent though, so a 24's re release of please don't let me
2:40
pronounce this wrong. But you know what?
2:42
If the marketing have been better, I would know how to
2:44
pronounce it better. There it is.
2:45
So it's Nija 2 I believe. Right on.
2:51
And it's a sequel. It was released originally in
2:56
February, but it was subtitled. It is a foreign film
3:00
internationally. A huge success.
3:03
This film performed exceptionally well across the
3:08
rest of the world. Domestically in the US in
3:10
February, the subtitle version did fine.
3:13
And so then they made a dubbed version that they just released
3:17
in August, I believe, of this year.
3:21
And none of the marketing included anything about how,
3:26
hey, now you can see this film in English because we know you,
3:30
the American audiences don't always want to read subtitles.
3:32
So we've no shade. Just statistically speaking, the
3:39
subtitles don't perform exceptionally well all the time.
3:42
But I mean, they had Michelle, Michelle Yao as one of the voice
3:46
actors for this. It was a beautiful film.
3:49
It was so empowering and all the marketing hinged on come see the
3:53
international spectacular film. Yeah.
3:55
So this was already a successful movie.
3:58
Yeah, everywhere. They bring it to the United
4:00
States. Boom.
4:01
Flop absolutely. It opened at I have this number
4:06
1.5 million making it the worst wide release opening premiere
4:10
weekend for 2025 so far and it was a 24 which has the
4:14
knowledge. People know that studio because
4:17
they make some pretty decent indie films, because they're
4:20
technically outside of Hollywood, but at the same time,
4:24
their studio's pretty huge. So, and, and expanding and
4:27
growing and, and their entire model is really cool, but they
4:30
obviously know how to market films.
4:32
They have done a wonderful job marketing other films.
4:35
They gave no information about the plot.
4:37
They gave no information about the the actual history and lore
4:41
and legend that this entire film is based on.
4:45
It's very popular outside of the US, but nobody in the US knows
4:51
what the story is. Yeah.
4:53
So it just got destroyed. To be fair, it was also released
4:57
the same weekend that they did the K pop demon hunters sing
5:00
along. OK, so that was.
5:03
Another international. Another, well, Netflix film that
5:08
released in theaters with a sing along version.
5:11
So which was a cool marketing ploy because Netflix knew
5:16
everybody loves the soundtrack. It's sort of pulled The Greatest
5:19
Showman where movie is OK, but man, that music's killer.
5:24
So yeah, they a lot of that international intrigue and
5:29
excitement around, especially the the anime style animation.
5:34
And it's from Sony Animation Studios, so they know how to
5:37
animate things very well. It's a beautiful film, yeah.
5:39
But they marketed it. But they marketed it.
5:42
Yeah, they knew what they were doing.
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So just because you're famous film or if or a large company
5:46
produces a film and the movie gets traction everywhere else,
5:50
you can't skimp on making sure you get your message out there
5:53
because people need to know that your movie exists.
5:56
They need to know it exists. They need to know kind of what
5:58
it's about and they need to know why they want to see it.
6:03
More on that know what it's about thing later.
6:05
But for a film that's all about a heritage that is not the
6:09
majority heritage in America, yeah, you need people to know
6:13
what it's about. Well, you you look at a movie
6:14
like Parasite, they did spectacularly great.
6:18
Movie if. You've ever seen it?
6:20
I was that 824. I forget which studios make
6:23
which movies, but great movie Internet.
6:25
I watch it with subtitles 'cause I hate overdubbing.
6:28
Weren't they the ones that did Enora as well?
6:31
Like, I think so, yeah. Yeah, because, man, these are
6:34
the things I need to make sure I look up before I just say I'm on
6:36
the Internet, because then somebody's going to tell me I'm
6:38
wrong. But I'm pretty sure they're the
6:39
same people that did Anora and yeah, so they're very indie,
6:45
completely outside. But great, great movie.
6:48
And so it's not the language barrier is not, although
6:51
Parasite is kind of about something that we experience
6:55
here in the United States as. Well, it's not like.
6:57
There's no cultural, there's no cultural difference to overcome
7:01
there really. It's more of in the minutia, so.
7:04
But it's it's almost the way that, you know, Brave looks at,
7:08
you know, some Scottish heritage or Mulan looks at, you know,
7:13
Chinese heritage. It's it's similar in that sense
7:16
where you can find a way to tell the story.
7:19
Yeah. Without completely like,
7:22
whitewashing or minimizing the culture, but you can get people
7:25
hyped about learning about a different culture while seeing
7:28
this phenomenal film. Yeah.
7:29
So marketing still need to do it in a big film.
7:33
I have an example that I thought was really interesting that I
7:36
didn't know about it all because I was doing a deep dive on on
7:39
marketing and which films have done well in the past.
7:43
And I didn't realize this, but Alfred Hitchcock in the United
7:48
States popularized showing up to a movie on time.
7:52
And prior to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, people basically in the
7:58
United States would show up to a film.
8:00
Like they'd go into the movie theater and a lot of movie
8:03
theatres would just keep the film rolling over and over again
8:07
on repeat. And so they'd let people walk in
8:09
right in the middle of it, and then people could, like, catch
8:13
it from the middle and then stay.
8:16
Pass the credits until the opening sequence starts again
8:18
and they then they watch the first half.
8:20
And that's where that quote comes from.
8:22
Well, this is where I came in. People would leave the theater
8:25
like halfway through the movie because they started it at the
8:28
midway point. And that's why a lot of those
8:30
old movies too, they'll have expository dialogue right in the
8:34
middle of. It to.
8:36
To get the audience up to date on what had happened previously
8:39
so they can follow the plot even if they came in like 20-30
8:42
minutes late. That's wild.
8:44
The issue was Psycho. Hitchcock.
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Psycho was that obviously act 1 is a misdirection.
8:52
And so I, I, I think I'm allowed to give spoilers on a 60 or a
8:58
movie that came out in 1960, but Psycho?
9:00
I think you're very, very safe to give spoilers for this at
9:03
this point. If you haven't seen Psycho, I
9:05
know I'm including myself in that.
9:07
If you haven't seen it, that's on you.
9:09
You've had a chance. Yeah, I'm sorry.
9:11
So I'm going to spoil it for you Vic, but Psycho.
9:15
Fantastic movie. Basically the first act is a
9:18
misdirection where you think the movie is about a woman stealing
9:22
money, but then she goes to the Bates Hotel and she ends up
9:26
getting murdered and it's actually about the psycho in in
9:31
the story. Norman Bates, right?
9:33
Yes, and. Norman Bates is the psycho.
9:36
The actor is Anthony Perkins, who plays Norman Bates.
9:39
But the the misdirection and then obviously like M Night
9:45
Shyamalan with his his twist endings, like Psycho was a much
9:50
better version of the stuff that I.
9:52
Don't know, I mean old had such a twist.
9:55
It did. Old was people get old on an
9:57
island. If you haven't seen old,
9:58
actually, it's really funny. I'd really like.
10:00
That you know what the twist for OLD was?
10:03
In my opinion, the twist for OLD was that yeah, you did pay money
10:08
to see that. I hope you're happy with
10:10
yourself. Just 90 minutes of expository
10:15
dialogue. So bad.
10:16
I loved it. So anyway, so Alfred Hitchcock
10:21
was concerned about in the United States, about the
10:25
propensity for audiences to just come in in the middle.
10:28
And if they did that in his film, it would ruin the story.
10:32
So he developed, or the studio, I would imagine, developed an
10:36
entire ad campaign about if you don't show up on time to the the
10:42
start time of this film, we're not going to let you in.
10:45
And the, the theaters were very upset about that because they
10:48
were worried it was going to turn people away and they would
10:51
end up losing business. But because of the marketing
10:54
campaign, everybody got really excited about it.
10:57
And the theaters ended up doing really well because they would
11:01
get a line of people, or as they say in Great Britain, a queue of
11:05
people going around the outside of the theater waiting to get in
11:08
to see Psycho because they knew that they needed to show up on
11:13
time. And then when people would drive
11:14
by, they'd see a giant line outside the theater and they're
11:18
thinking, what's going on in there?
11:20
I need to know more. So it was actually very
11:22
advantageous for the theaters to to make it.
11:25
They limited demand on their own, just like freaking toy
11:29
companies do every. Single Christmas present and
11:31
they don't. Have enough toys for the kids?
11:33
They limited supply or sorry while also increasing demand,
11:37
yes. They limited supply.
11:38
Sorry, I'm, I'm not an economist clearly.
11:41
So they limited this, They limited the supply of of, you
11:45
know, people. Obviously the seats are the
11:46
same, but the time was constrained.
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So it helped out a lot. I thought that was kind.
11:50
Of cool. And that also goes right into
11:53
one of the biggest things that marketers lean into now is FOMO,
11:57
right? If you're not there on time,
11:59
you're not getting in and you're going to miss the movie.
12:01
Everyone's going to be talking about it, but you, you're left
12:03
out. If you're over 40, FOMO means
12:05
fear of missing out. I had to look that up a couple
12:07
years ago. I didn't know what it was FOMO.
12:10
I thought it was like some type of new clothing like FUBU.
12:16
I'm like FO FOMO. Does that like athletic shoes?
12:20
It's like FIFO, Yeah, but that's first in, first out.
12:23
And if you've ever worked in a kitchen, which is an indie film
12:25
maker, odds are good that you have either as a server or there
12:29
we go itself, you know, first in, first out.
12:31
That's how you handle inventory. But yes.
12:34
FOMO. It's for real.
12:36
Do you have any other examples to share?
12:37
Famous. Of marketing, actually, yeah, I
12:40
had one more that I thought was a was more of a success 'cause
12:45
I, I talked about one failure. And I don't want to be a
12:47
complete negative Nancy 'cause I know sometimes when it comes to
12:49
marketing, it feels like a huge uphill battle and you don't even
12:52
know where to start. And it's really daunting.
12:54
And so I wanted to give a happy one too.
12:57
Nice. Hopefully one that didn't cost
12:59
millions of dollars because that's not in an indie film
13:01
budget usually. Usually not.
13:03
It's more of the style of marketing that they went for and
13:08
it's almost like a grassroots guerrilla style marketing.
13:12
And it was done before Long Legs.
13:14
So don't worry, I won't be mentioning Long Legs yet again,
13:18
though Long Legs did also do this on their campaign.
13:20
I know I keep talking. Their marketing was so good.
13:23
It was, I mean, Nick Cage markets everything himself.
13:26
So there you go. There's your marketing campaign
13:27
for your next indie film, Get Nick Cage.
13:29
He says he has to like everything anyway so.
13:31
I don't think he needs to go bankrupt again and then maybe
13:33
he'll start picking up some of those oddball films.
13:35
And he'll do the weird. Stuff you go through his
13:37
library, they are fantastic when he was going broke, so they're
13:39
so. Good.
13:42
So the idea was to create mystery, intrigue and the
13:50
feeling of missing out, where there's this big secret, it's
13:55
going to be revealed, and unless you're in the theater to watch
13:58
it, you're not going to know. And they did that beautifully
14:00
all the way back in 2008 with Cloverfield.
14:05
I do remember that Cloverfield. Yeah, and their marketing
14:07
campaign was brilliant because they would have these video
14:12
campaigns and print ads and billboards that were just a
14:17
date. It had nothing or a a glitchy
14:21
kind of date. And it, that's all you knew was
14:23
just something was happening on this day, which, you know, with
14:28
people's propensities to have, like the world ending in 2012 or
14:30
whatever and all that jazz. Like just telling people a date
14:33
immediately sends them into kind of an emotional state where they
14:35
want to learn more and they want to find out what's happening.
14:38
So that was brilliant. They created fake Myspace page
14:42
profiles for the characters and then had them interacting and
14:46
messaging with people. I'm assuming it wasn't the
14:48
actual actors. Yeah, they wouldn't want to pay
14:52
for that. I wouldn't know it would be.
14:53
Expensive. I'm sure it was their marketing
14:55
team doing it, but then suddenly there are these real people that
14:59
you're going to get to find out their story and what happened to
15:02
them when you watch the movie, but only when you watch the
15:05
movie. And it was brilliant because the
15:07
movie was awful. It was a terrible, terrible
15:13
movie. And it was.
15:14
Just Cloverfield was bad. It was so bad it.
15:17
Was like they were trying to keep that marketing like what is
15:20
this because they never really show the monster so that
15:22
everybody. I'm not going to fault them.
15:23
I think that was the best part of the film, that they really
15:26
don't reveal the monster because your imagination is so much
15:28
worse. So everybody's imagining
15:30
something absolutely horrific, and I loved that about the
15:32
movie. Well, it was also 2008.
15:34
And I feel like the issue there is like that was still in the
15:38
era of big cinema where you could only see, you know, like
15:42
Batman or The Dark Knight came out.
15:44
Yeah, that that year or two. And they have large explosions.
15:47
Everything seems grand. People have been used to that
15:50
since the 90s with Jurassic Park and the Matrix.
15:53
And they zagged which interesting way to do it.
15:56
But it was also like, come on, like, where's Godzilla?
15:59
We we want to see the monster Godzilla like I.
16:04
Know it's like the RC Cola to Godzilla's Coke.
16:07
Yeah, kind of. The RC cola's maybe better.
16:11
OK, I like RC. It's because they got the
16:14
Lunchables contract when I was a kid, back when Lunchables still
16:18
had sodas in them, which should tell you how old I am.
16:22
But yeah, I fell in love with RC Cola then.
16:24
It was so good. They're actually called Diet
16:26
right products. I remember I went out to eat
16:28
somewhere and I, I was like, do you guys have Coke or Pepsi?
16:31
And they said we have diet right products.
16:34
I thought, oh OK, well. All right.
16:36
I don't know what that is. I'm glad I brought my own Shasta
16:38
to this joint. So anyway.
16:41
Anyway, so for a film that was like found footage but done so
16:45
poorly that it was like actually made people sick in the theaters
16:49
and just so, so bad. Poorly done film.
16:53
Rough Story still made $40 million opening weekend in
16:58
January 2008. It held the record for top
17:03
opening January weekend for quite some time, I bet.
17:06
Yeah, and then it just dipped off.
17:08
Oh. Yeah, once you saw the movie,
17:10
everybody was like, Oh no, it's terrible.
17:11
Don't see that. So like you know it helps if
17:13
your movies good too but the marketing campaign got people in
17:16
the door. So even if your movie is bad,
17:19
get a good marketing campaign and people too will watch your
17:21
movie. You can pull the rug out from
17:22
underneath everybody that comes to watch it.
17:24
It's great. Just like every single Marvel
17:27
movie. There we go.
17:27
There I go again. There I go again do.
17:29
You have anything else or should we ruin a cinephiles day?
17:31
Yeah, let's ruin a cinephiles day do.
17:33
You want to start this week or should I?
17:35
To you, I feel like I was just talking a lot about Cloverfield.
17:37
OK, well, I'll get started. And if you're unaware of this,
17:39
we take these Runa Cinephile Day audio segments and then we post
17:43
them as vertical videos on the Internet and we see what kind of
17:45
fun comments we can get. So you can go back.
17:48
We had a couple episodes where we said some things about Marvel
17:53
and we said some things about whatever, but you can see what
17:55
people say online. It's just this is just our
17:58
marketing efforts. Yeah.
18:00
This is just this is just marketing because and.
18:02
We're not saying things that we actually believe.
18:05
Sometimes we are. Well, let's do it and then
18:07
everybody can judge. And then you can see what the
18:09
vertical video reaction is on the Internet.
18:11
So here's mine and it's going to be related to Psycho Beautiful.
18:16
After his famous role, Anthony Perkins said that he did not
18:19
mind being stereotyped forever as an on screen weirdo because
18:23
he would rather be stereotyped and be remembered forever for
18:27
the classic movie than not be remembered at all.
18:31
So I think that's a good thing to keep in mind for famous
18:34
people. But also, who is Anthony Perkins
18:37
and what movie was he in? Oh well, if he can't be famous,
18:40
be infamous. Unless you apparently can't be
18:42
either, yeah. Rough.
18:44
Yeah, well, that was obviously main star Psycho, but at the
18:46
same time, like 1960, I don't think he's going to live on
18:49
forever, sorry. Guys, I mean, the character was
18:53
iconic, true. I just don't know if people are
18:56
going to remember Anthony Perkins or if they're going to
18:59
remember Norma Bates. Yeah, exactly.
19:01
So. Well, he is Norman Bates.
19:03
Yeah, but not in the Netflix series, Hulu series, HBO.
19:09
There was ATV series called The Bates Motel.
19:13
Oh, that's right. It was actually good.
19:14
I liked it. I really liked it a lot.
19:16
I've seen that, but I haven't seen like.
19:18
I know, I know, I know. It's OK.
19:22
It's because I watched other Hitchcock films and I was trying
19:25
to catch up, and there's only so many hours in a day that I can
19:27
spend watching movies after a very sheltered childhood.
19:29
I apologize. That's OK, you'll get caught up.
19:31
Eventually I will. I will get there.
19:33
It's just going to take me some. Time all the R rated movies that
19:36
you missed out on. The important thing?
19:40
So why? All right, go ahead.
19:41
OK, this one is a little bit harder because this ruin a
19:44
cinephiles day. Unlike the other ones, this one
19:46
I actually do believe. I don't think I would phrase it
19:49
this way normally because it's a little harsh.
19:53
We'll do it. Let's piss me off.
19:55
OK, all right. Good marketing matters more than
19:58
a good film. And I I get that nobody wants to
20:02
hear this. But if your film didn't catch
20:04
on, it isn't because nobody got your art or that it was too
20:09
elevated for the common man. It's because you failed to find
20:13
your audience and you did a poor job on the marketing.
20:17
It's not Field of Dreams just because you built it.
20:19
They aren't coming. You have to go find them.
20:21
And yes, it does suck that it's on your shoulders as a filmmaker
20:25
to also be a marketer, but it is.
20:30
Ouch, that's so true. Should we?
20:32
Should we talk about what we've done wrong?
20:35
Where do we start? Yeah.
20:37
So I tried to come up with an analogy, not that marketing has
20:40
ever been done correctly on the projects that I'm on, except
20:43
for, I will say this podcast, we do make the effort to ensure
20:47
that we're posting regularly on social media.
20:50
You're using the correct titles and hashtags for all of our
20:53
episodes, which is why this is the first project I've been
20:56
involved in online that has started to see followers.
20:58
Thank you all for tuning in, and hopefully we're giving you
21:01
messages that you all can relate to as indie film makers.
21:03
I really hope so. I hope that it's filled with
21:05
information that you don't make the same mistakes that we did,
21:08
and at least it's mildly entertaining along the way.
21:10
Yeah, but thanks for listening. And so we're, we're since
21:13
January, we started this January 2025.
21:16
And this has been an ongoing process for me learning how to
21:18
do it. And one way I think of it now is
21:21
like a the shot list. So if you go on set without a
21:24
shot list, which we've talked about that in previous episodes,
21:27
you know, after you've been experienced in that situation,
21:30
you know that it's going to be slower and it's going to come
21:34
out worse. If you don't have a shot list,
21:36
it's better to put that prep work in there.
21:38
And that's kind of how I think about marketing, right?
21:41
If you don't spend the time early on figuring out how to
21:46
market things, then you're going to like it's an ounce of
21:50
prevention is worth a pound of cure.
21:52
Yeah, right. So you can't, you're going to
21:55
end up putting a whole bunch of work on the back end, just like
21:57
fixing it in post. You're going to have to spend
21:59
time trying to figure out how to get your project in front of
22:02
people's eyes rather than having a plan from the get go.
22:05
Not to mention you're going to be stuck trying to create all
22:08
these assets without being immediately available to create
22:12
the content that you need. If you wanted to post any behind
22:15
the scenes stuff, but you didn't ever bother to take photos
22:18
behind the scenes, that's not really something you can go back
22:20
and recreate once you're done filming.
22:22
You just miss out on a lot of these beautiful moments that are
22:25
easy marketing content to at least share your film, it's
22:28
message, your creative process, all that jazz.
22:30
You missed it, you missed the boat, and that's kind of sad.
22:33
And that's one of the things. So the project that I most
22:36
recently participated in that's streaming on Amazon is Stockton
22:39
to Table Rock. I've mentioned on this podcast a
22:40
lot, yes. And I do want to mention that we
22:43
kind of had a behind the scenes photographer and what we did was
22:48
we had our friend Wyatt. Thank you, Wyatt for taking some
22:50
BTS photos. He was actually an associate
22:52
producer. So for most of the day he was
22:54
running around doing things, but he also had his camera on him.
22:57
And one of the things that I would do is boom up as well
23:00
since I was close to people is I used my my phone as my Clapper
23:05
because there's apps online that you can get to to use it as a
23:08
slate because we don't we don't use timecode, which is also
23:11
another issue that'll save you time and post.
23:13
But we didn't use timecode and stocking in the Table Rock.
23:16
And so I was using my Clapper board and I would take my phone
23:19
to get BTS pictures. So we never really had solid BTS
23:25
to be able to promote the film while we were shooting it.
23:28
On top of that, you always make time for DIT at the end of the
23:31
day and it's very important to make sure that you try to if you
23:36
can. We didn't have the budget like
23:38
that's one thing that that affected us in Stockton is, is
23:42
trying to find volunteers to take good pictures.
23:44
Didn't have that on all the days.
23:45
So anyone that took pictures, thank you very much.
23:48
But the having the budget to do that is super important and
23:53
taking the time if you, if you don't have a BTS photo taker at
23:57
the end of the day to be like, hey, like let's organize these.
24:00
Or at the end of the shoot while you're working on the movie and
24:02
post. It would have, in hindsight,
24:04
been nice to have those assets go through them and then make a
24:08
schedule to be able to release them online to build a little
24:11
bit more excitement for the film.
24:13
And that is one thing that you can do during the edit.
24:16
I know it's an extra step during your edit and a lot of people
24:18
don't love it, but it's one thing I personally love doing so
24:21
that I always know where to find it whenever I come.
24:25
This is in Premiere. I'm assuming you'd be able to do
24:27
this in Davinci too? I don't know though, sorry.
24:30
When I have all my different sequences and I'm going through
24:33
and just watching every single take to kind of compare to the
24:35
scripting notes and then can put add my own editor notes too as
24:39
well. When I roll through it, if
24:40
there's ever a really funny moment or something kind of
24:42
silly and goofy that happens, I copy that whole sequence and
24:48
paste it onto, I copy that footage and audio collection.
24:54
So I'll copy those files and paste them into a new sequence
24:57
that I have labeled as either blooper reel or BTS or fun
25:02
moments or whatever my brain decided to call it that day.
25:05
It's usually blooper because I think that's a delightful word.
25:07
Even if they aren't like blooper reels, if it's just like a
25:10
really powerful or cool moment that happened on set, something
25:14
really inspirational or motivational, you caught the
25:16
camera started rolling early and you caught the director giving a
25:19
pep talk to somebody. Whatever it is, just throw it
25:23
into a separate sequence or timeline so that way you know
25:25
it's there. And then when you need to go
25:27
create assets for social media, you've got all of them all right
25:32
there. All you got to do is slap a lot
25:33
on that and you're good to go. Oh nice, that is a really good
25:36
idea. That's a really easy way to.
25:38
You're already touching the footage.
25:40
Touch it once, don't touch it twice and go back through it
25:44
again and try to think to yourself, Oh, I remember there
25:46
was a cool behind the scenes moment.
25:49
When was that? Yeah, do not tell yourself that
25:51
you're going to remember when that light fell on that one
25:54
person or whatever. So easy to Oh yes I love it when
25:57
lights fall on people striking. Specifically talking about diet,
26:01
I. Remember that because all I have
26:02
to do is look at the insurance claim and then I know which day
26:05
that was. Know which day and location.
26:07
With the footage on that one. So the other thing that I've
26:10
learned from you, which was, which is really cool that we
26:12
screwed up on our feature film Stockton to Table Rock was a
26:16
branding guide. So before we started this
26:19
podcast, Victoria pulled me aside and we basically spent a
26:22
day choosing colors, choosing fonts.
26:25
And I was thinking to myself, Oh my gosh, this is a whole bunch
26:28
of work. But the nice thing is once
26:31
that's done, you don't have to think about it because whenever
26:35
I'm cutting together a vertical video or trying to figure out,
26:39
you know, like I don't have to figure out any fonts.
26:42
So all I do is look at the branding guide and it's like,
26:44
OK, well, for the background color, I have these options and
26:48
I don't have to use any brain processing to, you know, use my
26:52
horrible graphic design skills to try to come up with
26:55
something. It is already there.
26:57
And that's something that we didn't do on our feature film
26:59
because we thought it would be cool to have the lead actress
27:03
Zoey's handwriting as the font for the movie.
27:06
Oh no, I was like and. Don't get me wrong, that is such
27:10
a cool artistic choice and and really awesome that you had the
27:13
technical prowess to scan her writing the whole alphabet,
27:17
getting the capital and lowercase letters for
27:19
everything. Scan it, turn it into a font
27:21
that you have created. That is a cool asset to create
27:24
and just a cool tech thing that you can do, but not having even
27:32
the the Stockton to Table Rock the title written as you then
27:35
needed it to appear on the poster.
27:37
It was never turned into a vector file to let you really
27:40
resize it easily, and it was never converted.
27:45
That wasn't even in the font. That was just Zoe wrote stocked
27:49
into Table Rock in a certain arrangement, and that went on
27:54
the poster. So cool, so pretty, so artistic,
27:57
so impractical if you need to resize anything, because you
28:01
can't. You can't move what words are on
28:04
what line. And as you heard previously, we
28:06
ended up getting dinged with the quality control where they found
28:11
that the title was illegible. So we ended up having to throw
28:13
that out for our Amazon, our Amazon poster which.
28:17
Is kind of heartbreaking because it was it was really cool.
28:20
We thought it was cool, but the The thing is, is now moving
28:23
forward, we're working on a horror feature which you are
28:26
helping guide us in our marketing efforts.
28:27
So thank you very much, Victoria.
28:29
But we did take the time early on to make a branding guide.
28:33
And now if we're going to make some assets or we're going to
28:37
share something that's related to this upcoming film, all I
28:40
need to do or all anyone needs to do then because it's easier
28:43
to outsource is, oh, let's look at the branding guide.
28:45
Use this font, this font or this font.
28:48
Use this color, this color, this color and you're good to go.
28:51
And having even just a few keywords for your brand voice
28:56
and your overall aesthetic is very important as well.
29:01
Something like our voice is funny, relatable, or our voice
29:04
is dramatic but professional but informative or kind but cheeky.
29:10
Or think Wendy's ads on social media, right?
29:14
If you want to be insulting to people, you can choose whatever
29:16
your voice is, but as long as you have it set somewhere and
29:18
just those notes for your whole team to see.
29:20
That way, when you start making coffee for anything, everybody
29:23
gets to be on the same page about it, and that's kind of
29:26
nice. And honestly, having succinct
29:30
branding elevates your project immediately.
29:34
When you go to somebody's Facebook page for or Instagram
29:37
page or whatever for their movie and you're looking at all these
29:41
images and everything is all over the place.
29:43
You've got a bunch of like neon 80s looking stuff in one because
29:46
that was trending for a while. And then the next thing you see
29:49
is something super pastel and chill.
29:51
And it's like, what is this movie?
29:53
It's all over the place. It just makes you look better
29:56
and makes it look more appealing and exciting.
29:58
And it gives the appearance that, yes, time and effort went
30:02
into this film, which it did. As a maker, you know that, but
30:07
not everybody gets to see that. So having that succinct type
30:10
branding just clarifies everything and makes it look a
30:14
lot more credible to investors, so.
30:16
Yeah, that's good. And from my perspective, when
30:19
you don't have an enormous team yet, that's helping out, it
30:23
takes the effort, cognitive effort off of me when I've
30:27
already had to try to figure out how to cut a vertical video in
30:30
an interesting way or how, you know, if we're working on shot
30:34
listing or editing something that takes a lot of brain power.
30:38
And I don't like to put my brain power in branding.
30:42
It's something that I don't enjoy doing.
30:44
So being able to offload that, put the work in ahead of time,
30:47
just copy and paste or cut and paste from the the branding
30:50
sheet and you're going to be good to go.
30:53
Yep, all of those rules and you're going to save yourself
30:55
time and a lot of headaches later on.
30:58
And honestly, you can start from somewhere so small and there are
31:01
so many resources online. Just Google color palette picker
31:06
or something along those lines. And I think even
31:09
Sherwin-Williams or Bayer, one of the paint companies has one.
31:11
I know Pantone has one. Canva has one.
31:14
If you already use Canva, I think Adobe has one now too
31:17
because they're express is trying to compete with Canvas so
31:19
hard. All you have to do is pick one.
31:21
Color another product? Sorry, I'm going to get
31:23
tangential there. Adobe just shoehorning some
31:26
other random product that you have to use.
31:30
I don't know. I've found Express to be very
31:32
easy to use for rescheduling social media posts because I
31:35
don't want to do it manually. Oh yeah, that is nice.
31:37
Express if you have Adobe. That was something I had to
31:39
learn too. If you have an Adobe membership,
31:41
you can schedule your social media posts with Express, which
31:44
is nice. That is nice because then if you
31:46
built the assets in there, they're already stored in there
31:48
anyway, so it's kind of convenient that I don't have to
31:50
re upload everything to. I do like that.
31:52
Just one more of their apps to work into your workflow.
31:55
I know I'm like, I'm not thrilled about it, but I do like
31:57
the convenience. Either way, Start with one
31:59
colour, pick your favorite colour.
32:01
Just get the little hex code for that and then throw it into any
32:04
of those colour palette pickers and it's going to give you
32:06
options for do you want complimentary?
32:08
Do you want contrasting? Do you want bold statement
32:10
stuff? And you just choose.
32:11
It'll just lay it all out there for you.
32:13
You don't have to be a graphic designer though, You know, if
32:16
you've got the budget to invest in one, definitely do.
32:18
But if you don't ick your color palette, stick to it, everything
32:23
will look fine. Agreed, agreed.
32:25
Do you have anything you want to share about your early marketing
32:28
mistakes that you've made? I think back to my first
32:32
Kickstarter campaign in 2000 and. 11 And what happened there?
32:37
Oh it's terrible. I thought that sharing it and
32:39
getting the word out was posting about it once on Facebook.
32:42
Nice you. Should make you thousands of
32:44
dollars. Obviously we had a video on
32:46
their promo video. It was a 4 minute long video,
32:49
probably not the best. I guess watch time spans were a
32:53
little bit longer than you didn't need just 30 seconds to
32:55
get somebody's attention or else you lose them.
32:57
But one whole minute of that video was just black at the end,
33:04
'cause there was something on the timeline that didn't get cut
33:07
right? No, no.
33:08
Quality control there. No QC I've done.
33:10
That at at jobs, every once in a while I get so embarrassed
33:13
because yeah, I. Just did this one frame
33:16
somewhere wind out? I did it, actually.
33:18
Yeah, I did it once on a professional gig and it's
33:20
embarrassing. And for any of you out there,
33:23
you've felt my pain. It's it's not fun when you send
33:25
them something and you forget to double check the export because
33:28
you're like, I already checked it in the timeline.
33:29
You Kick It Out and you're like, this 32nd video ended up being 5
33:33
minutes long. What the heck's going on there?
33:35
No, it's definitely not great. So so I learned a lot from that
33:38
one. I will say even from the get go
33:40
though, even on that campaign, we never promised anyone any
33:44
form of ownership of the film, which I would encourage everyone
33:46
else to do too. Like if you're going to run a
33:48
crowdfunding campaign and you want to offer something to
33:50
people, I wouldn't offer them ownership as a donor, as like a
33:55
producer. You could offer them a special
33:57
thanks, but I wouldn't label them as a producer unless you're
34:01
actually in contact with them and you can get a written
34:04
contract that you both sign and hopefully your own legal team is
34:07
already approved. So I thought that was the one
34:10
thing we did right on that campaign.
34:11
The rest of it real bad, all over the place, no branding.
34:16
I think we ended up actually getting maybe 2 or $300.
34:19
Oh, nice score. Yeah, but definitely not the
34:23
five grand we were looking for. Oops.
34:25
Sometimes those Kickstarters fall short, which we've talked
34:28
about before, Yeah. Do you have anything else to add
34:30
before we do some updates for people?
34:34
I think I I was gonna chat a little bit about.
34:40
The newsletter, Yeah. Oh yeah.
34:41
Oh, the man who would not shake hands.
34:43
Yeah, do that. So the man who would not shake
34:44
hands is finally available on YouTube.
34:46
Yes. The only place that I have even
34:48
announced that is on this podcast.
34:52
Oh, yeah, true. And it's been up for a few weeks
34:55
now. 2-3 weeks now. Yeah, a little while.
34:57
Yeah. And it's already got over 1000
34:59
views. So I'm gonna throw that in as a
35:01
shameless plug for marketing your films if you would like,
35:05
But it also helps that it's a Stephen King dollar baby.
35:08
And I made sure to use the appropriate keywords and tag
35:11
your YouTube videos. There's a separate place to
35:14
manually input your video tags, and it is separate from your
35:17
channel tags, which you should also fill out.
35:20
Yeah, that's just a random marketing suggestion blur that
35:22
you should be doing on. That very first page where it
35:25
says enter your title and description.
35:27
Click Show more at the bottom and it Scroll down.
35:32
Now you have to check that there is not any AI modifications.
35:36
You check the no box on that if there's no AI modifications and
35:40
then insert more tags in that hidden menu and it will boost.
35:45
It will boost your visibility substantially, so make sure
35:47
you're doing that. Because we were running into
35:49
that with this podcast where the streams were low on certain
35:53
short videos where it was in like the hundreds or something.
35:56
And you basically kick that up about tenfold by making sure
35:58
that we were doing the tags, image, video, so.
36:01
Which is ridiculous. YouTube, if you're listening,
36:05
it's a little ridiculous. Yeah, it's just such an old
36:07
platform. They haven't updated anything.
36:09
So and they won't so if you want.
36:11
To have your film featured, you can go to or you can go to
36:14
indiefilmpodcast.com. I was going in my brain to my
36:17
old podcast, which is now just collecting dust on the Internet.
36:21
But indiefilmpodcast.com, you can, you can submit your film.
36:25
We'll, we'll give you a shout out on this or if you want your
36:27
Film Festival sponsored like we did earlier, we can do that for
36:31
you. And we also have a newsletter
36:33
that will be coming out shortly. So if you want to go to
36:36
indiefilmpodcast.com, there's a link to be able to sign up for
36:40
that. We have some assets for people
36:43
who sign up for the newsletter, such as we.
36:46
Have a shot list template that I personally still use and love,
36:50
and then we also have an amazing Adobe Audition template.
36:55
Yeah, I just made a project file, excuse me, an Adobe
36:58
Audition file, a session file for how I process this podcast.
37:02
So if you want to see how I run my compression, there's also a
37:06
notepad file that goes along with it that explains how to
37:09
drag and drop your audio into that.
37:12
That is not the same as film audio.
37:15
So if you all want to see how I process my film audio, hopefully
37:19
at some juncture I'll be able to share.
37:21
I. Process dive, but dive needs to
37:22
be out first. So if you're interested in that,
37:24
just go to indiefilmpodcast.com, shoot us a message, and we can
37:28
get you that information. Yeah, that way you can get free
37:30
stuff. Yeah, so get free stuff.
37:33
Do we have any updates you want to go over with Dive I?
37:37
Don't think so. OK, you got nothing.
37:40
Sweet. It's going to be at the Chicago
37:41
Horror Film Festival. But I think I already mentioned
37:43
that, didn't I? I think I did.
37:45
I don't know. Well, it's going to be there.
37:47
It'll be there and Indie Film Podcast will be there.
37:49
We'll be there as well. So I'm excited to see that large
37:51
festival. So we're going to do that and I,
37:54
I don't have anything else I need to cover.
37:56
Do you have anything else you'd like to cover?
37:57
No, Just Sundowning is kicking off soon with a gala fundraiser,
38:03
so we'll let you all know how that goes on the topic of
38:05
marketing. Oh yes, we're going to have a
38:07
fundraiser and but basically like a party, Halloween themed
38:11
and we're going to try to use that to get some excitement
38:14
built around our next feature film, which is called
38:16
Sundowning. It's a horror film, so and.
38:18
It's going to be awesome. Yeah, should be fun.
38:20
So with that, so sync farewell. Sounds wonderful.
38:23
Bye bye.