Promoting your film and yourself.
This community we call film is small. Smaller than most know. One of the most important things I have found that you can do is to share your knowledge and also pay attention to what others are doing. I joined Twitter a while ago but didn’t really start doing much with it till around this time last year. I think I had a few hundred followers at best and they were not targeting the audience I wanted to focus on for information and to share what I knew. Its only been the past eight months that I have really decided to share what I knew, pictures, etc with others and started a follow back push to gain an audience. Was I being arrogant and thinking I had some special insight to share? No I wanted to see what others where doing with social media and had been offered a fair amount of jobs via Twitter. I was used to getting a fair amount of emails and questions on the phone on how to break into the business, how to maintain business and who to move forward. I am at a modest 6080 something followers now and think that Twitter has allowed me to stay in touch with fresh up and comers and new filmmakers etc. A lot has changed in the business and there has been a large group of DSLR filmmakers (hate to brand it that way) that have moved on and have become the go to guys for workshops, low budget commercials etc. These are guys I follow. There is also a new generation of filmmakers who drive hard and bust their balls pitching projects and ideas well beyond the conventions or box mentality we saw just ten years ago. I follow those guys too.
Social media is probably the best friend a filmmaker these days could ever have. Referrals a plenty, offers to help or assist on other projects, notifications of project funding, etc are all easy to hear about and take action on. When I came up on this business there were a few forums on the internet but mostly I had to rely on things like www.newenglandfilm.com in order to spread word of casting calls, screenings, crew hires, etc. There simply wasn’t the community there is today. ‘
The other thing I have found is that this expanding community we have on twitter, facebook, etc is amazingly giving and compassionate about what we all do. Outreach coupled with in-expensive high quality HD cameras and post production leave us all with the ability to not only make something great but also promote it in ways we could never have dreamed of before. Promoting a film used to involve hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars to pull off. These days with the right amount of friends and internet campaigning you can achieve goals studios could only dare to dream of in the the past.
As always take advantage of the tools at your disposal. You have a free advertising ticket o promote not only your film but yourself, your business, your ideals, etc. You can find like minded individuals who share a love for film as much as you. Follow as many filmmakers, musicians, artists, etc as you can and learn from them. They will eventually follow back.
Mike Sutton
Follow me on Twitter: MNS1974
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