First, I looked on Animation Career Revier. This particular article about promoting your short film was helpful to me as it discusses techniques which I can look into on how to promote our film. Here is some information on what I found, along with ways in which I will use the information for myself.
1. Create a website that best represents your short film.
To start promoting your film, there needs to be a “home base”. One place that you can send people that has all the information about your movie, including the premise, cast/crew info, where they can see it, etc.
Don’t feel like you have to go flashy. Keep it simple and succinct. A great resource is to check into local universities to see if there are any students who are willing to work for less to generate content for their portfolio. There are many people who ask students to work for nothing, if you have the heart to pay even a little, the results will be so much better.
Once you have the site up, submit it to sites like Digg and Del.icio.us to get a wider viewing audience and high search engine hits.
Creating a website is something I've already done and I am trying to constantly update it. However, I decided to look further into Digg and Del.icio.us to see what they are all about and how it could help me.
The site is really interesting and it has a lot of random posts that are either factual, entertainment, sports, science and more different topics. People submit their articles/short films and you can look on the website to see different things. This would be a great way to spread our short film. If I sign up and submit it once it's done, or just submit the website, it'd let people see our film and website and get more views and a variety of audience.
2. Keep a process journal about the making of the film.
Instead of only writing it on paper with pen, post it publicly online. People root for the underdog. People love being compelled by someone’s journey. There are many students and amateur filmmakers that want to create their own short film. When they see someone else making it happen, they feel empowered to do it themselves too. Not only that, they are more likely to share it via social network or word of mouth to their friends.
This has given me an idea which would of been great to do from the beginning. If I could go back I'd of gathered the team together and discussed the idea that we could of all done a weekly video on our Facebook page, discussing our films ideas and our roles. I think this would of been a great way to get people more interested in our films as they might of been excited to see what we would say each week and it's nice to see the producer and director talking about something they are passionate about. However, although it's too late to do this now since we've already done the majority of filming, we could still do a production diary in the form of a book with pictures and information on what we did which could also work out great too.
3. Create a HEAD SCRATCHING teaser
Essentially you want this reaction from the viewer: “What is this movie about?! I MUST KNOW!”
Obviously, they will sign up for updates because they are so bewildered and intrigued. This means that you better have your website clearly posted at the end of your teaser so your potential fan knows where to go for more information.
We have already created a teaser for our film, but this was done in the style of our film and only had one of our cast members in it. So it would be greatly beneficial to create another short 30 second television teaser which would quickly intrigue our viewing audience. I definitely think this is something extra we can begin to do and then move on to the official trailer.
4. Create a JAW DROPPING trailer
A few things on what not to do when creating your short film’s trailer include DO NOT make it longer than your film and DO NOT tell the whole story. Again, you want to intrigue your audience and catch their attention.
When creating the trailer for our film, I'm definitely going to do some extra research into how to create a great trailer and look at a lot of examples in how to do it. I want to make sure the trailer doesn't give anything away yet make sure it's enticing enough so the viewer wants to watch the film.
9. Submit to online film sites
Once you’ve hit the film festival circuit, do the same online. Some will have your short film posted in their archives infinitely and some are only for a limited time. Either way, this shows off your film to an even greater audience.
Here’s a short list of great film sites: ShortOfTheWeek.com, Undergroundfilm.com, iFilm.com, AtomFilms.com, BrownFish.com.
The more places you can get your film seen or written about, the better. Whether it is a amateur or professional movie blogger, or even something off radar like a fashion blogger writing about your movie, that increases your film’s visibility.
This is really helpful as I didn't know that you could submit to online sites as well, so I will definitely look into these other online film sites and see if I can submit our film to these to get more publicity and views on our films.
Reference: http://www.animationcareerreview.com/articles/10-ways-successfully-promote-your-short-film
I also looked onto Indie Wire, which is a website that shares thousands of articles around tips and techniques around movies, filmmaking and television. I found a particular article that was helpful when looking at tips on promoting our film with a campaign.
1) You shall engage an audience before you launch a campaign
Social media should be treated like a dialogue between friends - a two way street rather than a one-way road with no turns.
This is something that I've definitely been doing from the start. We began with setting up the pages and then I began posting constantly before posting anything about the website which I think was very helpful as it made our audiences wait and become excited to see what we was going to be releasing.
2. You shall give value with every update
You'll want to show your followers that you're worth the follow.
When posting, I want to make sure every post has something to offer, whether that be letting our audience know about any upcoming filming, or whether it tease about the trailer being released. I think this is important as it will let the audience know that when we are posting content, it's not just ramble about nothing, that every post has something to give to them.
3. You shall be active on no more than five social media sites.
Any more and your own level of engagement is bound to wane, thus you won't be able to interact as much.
Currently, we have a Twitter, Facebook and website, so we are balancing all the updates easily and being able to engage with the audience at all times.
4. You shall always use relevant hashtags.
On Twitter and even on Facebook,, be sure to hashtag words and phrases relevant to your film campaign.
This is something i've been doing a lot more of, as it establishes the hashtags that are relevant to our film and if for instant, some one was to search for us on Twitter, they would find our film immediately. It also encourages viewers to use the hashtags which means it will allow more people to see the hashtag and become interested in looking into the film.
5. You shall use images because they speak louder than words.
This is something i've been trying to do more especially on filming days, as I know they are extremely eye catching and if we post about filming with a picture, it's much more engaging and interesting than just posting without imagery. It's also really exciting as it brings our project to life in a way we've not seen before. We can finally post about our film with actors faces to our characters which is really nice and exciting for not only the viewers, but for ourself too.
6. You shall keep up your activity even after the campaign ends.
I definitely want to keep doing this as I think it will engage the audience more and make them excited to see the films development. It's also a great way to allow the viewers to catch up with stages of the edit and see sneak peaks!
I also looked onto Indie Wire, which is a website that shares thousands of articles around tips and techniques around movies, filmmaking and television. I found a particular article that was helpful when looking at tips on promoting our film with a campaign.
1) You shall engage an audience before you launch a campaign
Social media should be treated like a dialogue between friends - a two way street rather than a one-way road with no turns.
This is something that I've definitely been doing from the start. We began with setting up the pages and then I began posting constantly before posting anything about the website which I think was very helpful as it made our audiences wait and become excited to see what we was going to be releasing.
2. You shall give value with every update
You'll want to show your followers that you're worth the follow.
When posting, I want to make sure every post has something to offer, whether that be letting our audience know about any upcoming filming, or whether it tease about the trailer being released. I think this is important as it will let the audience know that when we are posting content, it's not just ramble about nothing, that every post has something to give to them.
3. You shall be active on no more than five social media sites.
Any more and your own level of engagement is bound to wane, thus you won't be able to interact as much.
Currently, we have a Twitter, Facebook and website, so we are balancing all the updates easily and being able to engage with the audience at all times.
4. You shall always use relevant hashtags.
On Twitter and even on Facebook,, be sure to hashtag words and phrases relevant to your film campaign.
This is something i've been doing a lot more of, as it establishes the hashtags that are relevant to our film and if for instant, some one was to search for us on Twitter, they would find our film immediately. It also encourages viewers to use the hashtags which means it will allow more people to see the hashtag and become interested in looking into the film.
5. You shall use images because they speak louder than words.
This is something i've been trying to do more especially on filming days, as I know they are extremely eye catching and if we post about filming with a picture, it's much more engaging and interesting than just posting without imagery. It's also really exciting as it brings our project to life in a way we've not seen before. We can finally post about our film with actors faces to our characters which is really nice and exciting for not only the viewers, but for ourself too.
6. You shall keep up your activity even after the campaign ends.
I definitely want to keep doing this as I think it will engage the audience more and make them excited to see the films development. It's also a great way to allow the viewers to catch up with stages of the edit and see sneak peaks!
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