Pre - Production: FILM MARKETING STRATEGIES AND SOCIAL MEDIA

To ensure our film gets publicity and will reach out to our audience, I want to research into Film

marketing and see the techniques that go into making sure the audience are fully involved and up to

date with the film through social media and other marketing techniques.

Already, I know I want to create a website with a paid domain name (.com) , Facebook page and Twitter page as they are the most popular and key aspects that people visit to keep up to date with everything.

''Instead of simply uploading a movie trailer to Youtube, you can tweet about it, post movie stills onto Facebook, Instagram behind-the-scenes moments and more.''
I need to make sure that I am always promoting any videos by posting links to every page with hash tags and interesting words that will entice the audience. I definitely want to create some behind the scenes footage so will definitely consider 'behind the scenes moments' going onto the social media websites too.

The Hunger Games did a very interesting thing to promote their film. The film released the song ''The Hanging Tree'' onto Vimeo and an acoustic version debuted at number 12 on the Billboard charts. The original song had gotten over 20 million views on the Youtube page and they was played on radio stations across the United States. The reason behind releasing the songs like this was because the filmmakers new that the songs were catchy and people who had no idea of what The Hunger Games was might be interested in learning more about the film and books, therefore drawing in a new number of audiences through just one song. This is something to definitely consider, as it may not only help our composers name get around, it will help draw attention to our film.
Source: http://www.tintup.com/blog/movies-and-social-media-marketing-films-with-new-media/

Another marketing technique I found online was one that is very interested and is a hands on one.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo film focuses on the disappearance/murder of a girl named Harriet. 42

Entertainment composed an interactive game (ARG) for the film called ''Mouth Taped Shut''.  They used a Tumblr

account (another social media which I can consider) to begin the game. The players can solve clues

and go on scavenger hunts for real life evidence and memorabilia including 'characters' diaries books

and clothing. This is such an interesting way to entice an audience and find new audiences' such as

Gamers. They may only be interested in just the game, but it does

reach out to new people and they may end up loving it so much that they look into the film, a great

marketing strategy. I need to remember that creativity is key : audiences want to be entertained.


Other social media I can reach out to will help entice my demographic audience and it will begin to get our film across a variety of platforms.

Instagram and Pinterest are great for sharing pictures and short videos which I can use to my advantage as I can create short videos that will give little snippets of what's to come.
Vine is another I can look into in regards for creating short videos. Vine has become increasingly popular and will definitely be a platform that our demographic audience will reach out to. I need to think creatively and think about what sort of videos would entice our audience, I could think of mystery style videos that lead onto one another, leaving the audience wanting more.
Youtube is the obvious choice to share videos on, it is becoming more and more used around the world for not just music and films but for Vlogs too.

Engagement

I may have all these platforms to share onto but I need to remember to always be engaging with them, a variety of sites that are empty won't entice an audience they will push them away if the sites and boring and have no content.

Looking on http://www.independentcinemaoffice.org.uk/resources/marketing/socialmedia
I have found some very helpful tips on marketing.

People tend to get fixated on reach and neglect engagement - here are some tips for improving yours: 

• Get the tone right and gear it to your demographic for each social media platform
• Keep it short - seriously, there is a lot of digital noise out there so make your posts on all social media economical with limited characters.
• Post regularly but not too much. Obviously social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter have more tolerance for more posts per hour than Facebook or YouTube (if you are live tweeting or running a campaign this will change so remember to warn your audience). 
• Ask questions - one question could be “what do you want to see more or less of?”
• Be discoverable. All social media platforms use hashtags as a way of finding topics. Research the ones relevant to film and use them (sparingly) in your posts.
• Use pictures. Photos have no language barriers. Research has shown that photo posts get more engagement on Twitter and Facebook. Experiment by using engaging photographs that are relevant to your audience.

Asking questions (written above) is a very interesting thing i've not thought of. On the website I want a contact us page but i've never considered to have a poll or anything that the audience can really get involved in. Asking questions will make the content fit directly to what the audience want, it will be much more relatable and based on their views that they will always be excited to see what is coming next. 

Hashtags is also something I should ALWAYS be using on every post. Hashtags are used as ways to search for certain things. I could use unique hashtags that are still relatable to our film but ones that are also Trending on Twitter, therefor when people search for the hashtag to see what's being talked about; our film will come up.

I need to remember to always be using photographs as they always stand out and catch the audiences eye. There has been many times when I've been researching things, seen a photo and got distracted, looking into that one particular thing for hours, so I know pictures that are enticing will definitely work!

Universal created a very interesting and popular marketing scheme that practically meant the audience where doing the marketing for them! 

To further promote 'Despicable Me 2' they publicly placed an interactive advert in popular places such as malls as had the audience send a text and command to the screen and their name came up on the screen along with the minions acting our their command. This was very popular, especially with young children and peoples reactions meant that more people saw what was happening and came over to get involved. This is such a clever technique and something really unique that easily spreads the word and involvement in the film.

http://blog.hootsuite.com/film-industry-social-media/

Advertising

I looked further into advertising and ways we can spread the word of our film. I found https://www.tubemogul.com a very interesting sort of 'Pre Roll' advert website. It helps brand advertisers place their adverts on platforms that allow advertising. Such as YouTube, you can have your trailer or adverts placed on a Youtube video so that the audience, wherever they may be in the world will see your advert. It carefully uses demographics to make sure the adverts only reach people who would be interested in your film.

Although it's only for brands, I'm sure there is a way I can find to advertise our teaser/trailer onto a platform somehow, no matter how small it is, I will be reaching out to an audience of some sort who may spread the word.

The post below explains how using IMDB advertising can encourage viewers to see your teaser and film through looking for new and upcoming film. It also encourages us to get viewers to rate the film.

IMDB Listings & Advertising

They say that the hardest place to sell a book is in a bookstore, but with millions of people visiting IMDB on a daily basis in search of new films and TV shows to watch, it’d be ridiculous to ignore this site in your film or TV show’s digital marketing strategy.

There are some great posts explaining how to get your film listed on IMDB. My advice is to be as comprehensive as you possibly can when filling out the information required in the listing, and do whatever it takes to drive people to review the film. IMDB is a search engine, and much like Google or YouTube, their algorithm is driven largely by relevance and popularity, so you’ll want to make sure that your film page contains as much information as possible, and is well linked throughout the site.

IMDB also have an excellent range of advertising packages, which are worth looking into. Another tip is to leverage film lists. Try creating ‘top 10’ or ‘top 50’ lists for films of your genre, featuring your film or TV show somewhere in the list. It’s a bit sneaky, but providing your film is relevant and a valuable edition, no one’s getting hurt!

I think this is a great idea as IMDB is so popular around the world and it will allow us to further spread the word about our short film. I will definitely be looking further into this and hopefully will be able to get our film on there!

Source: https://www.ventureharbour.com/ultimate-guide-marketing-films-tv-shows-online/

Involve Your Audience:

In the months leading up to the launch of The Dark Knight , Warner Brothers launched the award-winning “Why so Serious?” campaign, an interactive campaign which allowed the audience to follow and receive an intense amount of messages from 'The Joker' in an exciting and viral campaign, which brought Gotham City to life. The video below shows how the campaign encouraged over 10 million fans around the World to visit landmarks around the World in full Joker make-up, creating a huge amount of buzz for the film.

it was said to be,

''One of the most interactive movie-marketing campaigns ever hatched by hollywood'' - The Los Angeles Times, March 2008.

The campaign looked so realistic that i'm sure people who didn't know about The Dark Knight was very confused, and by the end of it the whole world would know about the film. It is such a good idea to get people involved and create a viral campaign. Although our film is very low budget and obviously doesn't have fans right now, we could still try somehow get people involved that would at least spread the word around Facebook. 

Overall, looking at all these extensive marketing strategies really has made so many ideas begin to emerge in my head. I started out with thinking about a website and the basics: Twitter and Facebook. But now i'm thinking much more creatively, I know our film is small right now, but with all the creative marketing strategies it may get further out there.