tfc_blog

by Sheri Candler

Every year, I compile a presentation for the TFC all-staff meeting to inform the group on what the latest social media trends are, what changes have recently taken place and what may be to come on the major social media platforms. This post will share the insights I gathered with that might benefit filmmakers in the coming year.

General Social Media Trends
  • People’s attention spans are short and the way they like to consume content has also changed. Content formats like Stories have become popular. They are short, engaging, and addictive in a way that people can spend hours scrolling through one Story after another. Facebook forecasts that sharing to Stories will surpass sharing to Feeds at some point in the coming year. Consider creating a 15 seconds vertical video as one of your trailers.
  • 1 out of every 4 Facebook Pages now use paid advertising as part of their social media strategy and Facebook accounts for 23% of total U.S. digital ad spending. If you’re trying to grow an audience via Facebook and Instagram, budget will be needed for paid social media placement.
  • 4 in 10 consumers say they are unlikely to become emotionally attached to a brand unless they are interacting via social media, but those interactions need to be authentic and personalized. This means refrain from only posting about your projects and really try to relate, on a personal level, to your audience.
  • Most popular mobile social networking apps in the United States as of September 2019, by monthly users (in millions). Facebook is still tops when it comes to users.Statistic: Most popular mobile social networking apps in the United States as of September 2019, by monthly users (in millions) | Statista
  • Approximately 223 million Americans use social media in 2019. This is a slight increase over 2018, and a slight decrease compared to 2017. Overall, however, social media usage is essentially unchanged over the past four years. The ONLY social network growing among young Americans is Instagram, up from 64% to 66% in the past two years. Social networks in 2019 are now nearly as likely to be utilized by people 35-54 years old, than those younger, which is good news for theatrical campaigns and documentary makers.
    social_media_usage
    Social Media Usage: Total U.S. Population, from 2008 to 2019

Facebook
  • Facebook is actually less popular now than it was four years ago. But it is still at the top of the list for daily users.
    The only demographic group that is using Facebook more than in prior years are Americans 55+.
  • The average monthly change in page likes is just 0.13% Building your Facebook audience is definitely a slow and steady game.
    The average organic reach for a Facebook post is 5.5%. Take the number of fans on your page and multiply it by 5.5% to see if you are reaching the average per post. If you are not, then re-evaluate what you are posting.
  • 60% of Americans who watch digital video do so on Facebook and the average engagement rate for Facebook video posts is 6.13%
    Among U.S. adults who use Facebook, around three-quarters (74%) visit the site at least once a day.
  • Sources: https://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-research/social-media-usage-statistics
    https://blog.hootsuite.com/facebook-statistics/#business https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/16/facts-about-americans-and-facebook

    Recent changes that affect Facebook Pages
    • Facebook has eliminated Post Scheduling for pages on DESKTOP. To access this function, you need to use Creators Studio or third-party scheduling tools like Hootsuite.
    • Groups are booming on Facebook. They’re pretty much the platform’s most popular feature, and engagement in groups is skyrocketing.
    • A change in Reach calculations. More on that here.
    • New Creators Studio insights called Traffic Source. More on that here .

    Twitter
    • Twitter’s U.S. user base is predicted to grow 0.3% in 2020.
    • Only 20% of Twitter’s daily users are American.
    • Compared to other age groups, Gen Z is most likely to be using Twitter. (By comparison, only 26% of 30- to 49-year-olds use Twitter.) That said, Gen Z is still much more likely to be using YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook. 65% of Twitter’s top 10% of users (by tweet volume) identify as women. And 69% of this group say they tweet about politics, and identify as Democrats.
    • Tweets with hashtags get 100% more engagement, but only 1 or 2 hashtags.
    • 93% of video views on Twitter happen on mobile so be sure to use mobile-optimized video that has subtitles or captions for sound-off viewing.

    Source: https://blog.hootsuite.com/twitter-statistics

    Recent changes that affect Twitter
    • No political advertising. Political ads are defined as content that references a candidate, political party, elected or appointed government official, election, referendum, ballot measure, legislation, regulation, directive, or judicial outcome. Ads that contain references to political content, including appeals for votes, solicitations of financial support, and advocacy for or against any of the above-listed types of political content, are prohibited under this policy.
    • Redesign of the Twitter layout on desktop happened in summer 2019.
    • Twitter lets you add a photo, video or gif to a Retweet. Read more about this here.
    • 2 rumored changes that could be coming in 2020. The ability to prevent other users from mentioning you without your permission and ability to disable a retweet on your tweet.

    Instagram.
    • 1 billion people use Instagram every month, though only 110 million are located in the United States.
    • Instagram is the most popular traditional social network among U.S. teens 13-17yrs. Only YouTube is more popular with teens. 72% of U.S. teens say they use Instagram, compared to 69% for Snapchat and 51% for Facebook.
    • The gender mix on Instagram is pretty even: 52% female and 48% male.
    • In case you were thinking of hiring an influencer to help with an Instagram campaign, brands pay Instagram influencers between $100 and $2,085 per post. For videos, they pay between $114 and $3,138, and for Stories they pay between $43 and $721.
    • Brands post an average of 2.5 Stories per week.

    Source: https://blog.hootsuite.com/instagram-statistics

    Recent changes that affect Instagram
    • Instagram is now hiding Likes on mobile devices for US accounts after testing in several other countries. Facebook may soon start hiding likes, too. Likes can still be seen on desktop.
    • Donation stickers available on IG. Instagram launched donation stickers for Stories back in May, giving accounts the capacity to raise money for non-profit groups via the option. A non profit must be registered on Facebook first in order to have this capability.
    • IGTV now supports Landscape Videos, though it is up to the user to actually turn the phone to watch them. Most people watch their IG feed in vertical position so uploading a landscape video is asking to go against consumer habits.
    • It is recommended to use Facebook Creators Studio on desktop to manage a brand Instagram account because it gives access to scheduling posts and expanded metrics.

    Source: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/facebook-expands-access-to-brand-collabs-manager-adds-new-insights-to-crea/566765

    A word about TikTok

    For those who do not have teenagers in your life, TikTok is a video sharing platform where short updates, typically accompanied by music, are shared publicly. This is one of the fastest-growing social platforms and forecasted to continue to grow by leaps and bounds in 2020, but be cautious with any platform championed by teens. The very young are quite fickle and meteoric rise is frequently countered with equally quick crashes as the party moves to the next shiny thing. For a look at brands killing it on TikTok, read more here.

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February 21st, 2020

Posted In: Facebook, Instagram, Marketing, Social Network Marketing, technology, Twitter

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twitter

In the previous two posts, I wrote about changes I think most independent filmmakers should be aware of when it comes to using Facebook and Instagram for their marketing efforts. This post will talk about Twitter. Is having an account here still necessary?

Twitter

With 69 million monthly active users in the United States, 267 million worldwide, Twitter is one of the top social media sites that brands still actively use. We can’t go a day without hearing news of a certain someone ranting on the platform, and without a doubt, Twitter is the number one social media platform for breaking news. But is that helpful for the average indie filmmaker?

While it isn’t likely that filmmakers will post breaking news that is of interest to a broader public, one great reason to use Twitter is for video sharing. Over the last 12 months, tweets containing videos perform the best in terms of reach compared to posts with links, images, and GIFs. Filmmakers need to be able to produce a regular supply of short videos, ideally less than 1 minute long (Twitter mainly allows for videos of 2 minutes 20 seconds in total), with the first 3 seconds serving to capture thumb-stopping attention (thumb-stopping-causing someone on a mobile device to pause scrolling through their newsfeed). Give some thought to the kind of clips and trailers you will post to social versus what you would make for a theatrical experience (where the audience won’t be scrolling on their phones). Also, don’t forget to make these videos square (600 by 600 pixels) or vertical (600 by 750 pixels), instead of horizontal, to optimize for mobile viewing.

In 2018, Twitter has been grappling with slow user growth and has deleted thousands of fake and bott accounts, lowering follower numbers on most accounts. If you have seen a slight drop in followers, likely you had a few of these accounts following you.

A recent update to the Facebook Platform Policies ended the ability to automatically post Tweets to your Facebook profile or page. This was never a good idea as audiences on the two platforms are different and it was a lazy way of marketing. But for those who did connect their Twitter accounts and Facebook pages, a more manual process is now needed for posting to the different platforms.

As of September, Twitter has re-enabled the ability to see tweets in purely chronological order, if you change your settings. Two years after phasing out this ability in favor of top-ranked or “curated” tweets, Twitter gave back the functionality that most people loved about the platform. But you have to make a change in your settings, by unchecking the box that says Show the Best Tweets First. In a world where it seems your newsfeed is programmed by an algorithmic guess, finally having the ability to see news according to the time it was posted is refreshing.

Like Facebook and Instagram, Twitter has instituted its own political content policy on advertising. The platform considers ads that advocate for legislative issues of national importance to be governed by their new policy and in order to advertise, advertisers must go through Twitter’s certification process (https://business.twitter.com/en/help/ads-policies/restricted-content-policies/political-campaigning/US-political-content/how-to-get-certified-issue-ads.html). Most likely, if you are making a documentary with an issue of national significance at its core, such as abortion, civil rights, climate change, guns, healthcare, immigration, national security, social security, taxes, and trade, you will need to register your account in order to use Twitter advertising in the future.

Getting back to the question of whether indie filmmakers still should be using Twitter, it all depends on your ability to handle multiple social media accounts and what you want each account to do as far as your goals. If connecting with Twitter influencers, or perpetuating a campaign hashtag, or reaching a global audience outside of the U.S. are some of your main objectives, Twitter is still a great place to do that.

December 31st, 2018

Posted In: Marketing, Social Network Marketing, Twitter

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In the previous post, I wrote about changes I think most independent filmmakers should be aware of when it comes to using Facebook for their marketing efforts. This post will talk about Instagram, owned by Facebook, which has been growing exponentially since its debut in 2010.

Instagram

The preferred platform of choice for the millennial set and no longer just a space for image-sharing. In the past two years, the convergence of Instagram and Facebook has made them extremely similar in that they share an ad platform, both have Stories capabilities and increasingly product sales capabilities.

With over 500 million daily active users, Instagram skews more female and most of its users fall between the ages of 13-29 yrs old.  If this is an audience you need to reach, Instagram is a must have platform for your marketing efforts and you need to start thinking how to optimize for it.

Like Facebook, the platform is constantly evolving and this makes keeping up with the changes a challenge. Instagram also has instituted a political ads policy and now account administrators must register their accounts through their Facebook Business Manager’s Authorization section (find this section in Settings>Authorizations) in order to place advertising that has a political or issue of national interest  topic involved. As discussed in the previous Facebook blog, this is a wide range of topics which can be seen to advocate on legislative issues such as abortion, civil rights, climate change, guns, healthcare, immigration, national security, social security, taxes, trade etc. If you are a documentary filmmaker, this advertising policy is likely to be something with which you have to contend and if your page is not authorized, you will not be able to place any form of paid advertising on your posts (including boosts) unless you have gone through the verification process.

Algorithms on all social media platforms are constantly changing. Instagram is no exception. The news feed algorithms determine who actually sees the content you publish and who doesn’t. Instagram has shifted the feed from strictly chronological to showing users “prioritized” posts and takes signals like an account’s relationship to the consumer (if someone takes actions on your posts, they are more likely to see more of them in the future), a consumer’s past interaction with similar topics (this relates to the kind of content you share and the associated hashtags being used), and how recently a post was made from a specific account (accounts need to post on a regular basis in order to have their content seen). Continual engagement from your followers is now more important than ever for both Instagram and Facebook success, especially since it can earn you one of the top spots in their feeds.

Increasingly, paid promotion is needed on Instagram in order to reach a bigger audience and gain more of a following (only through paid promotion can you add an action button such as Watch More or Learn More with a URL to click, otherwise the only link that is clickable on Instagram is in the bio section). One great use of paid promotion on Instagram is to grow your following. You can promote a post that has done well in the past, target the kind of audience that should relate to your content, and select your CTA (call to action) as Your Profile. When consumers view the content, they can click through to follow your account. In my experience, Instagram does not drive off site traffic very well so if you are going to pay to get in front of an audience, you may as well build up your following within Instagram.

In May 2018, Instagram paired up with a number of booking sites (Atom Tickets, Fandango and Eventbrite) to enable ticket sales directly on those platforms through your Instagram profile which can be handy when your film starts its theatrical launch. In order to add these to your Instagram account, you must have a Business Account and have an account or URL to link your action button to. Learn more HERE.

You may have noticed that while the run time for videos on Instagram remains at 1 minute, a new service was launched in June that allows for longer run times. IGTV made its debut this summer, featuring vertical videos with run times between 10 minutes (for Instagram accounts with less than 10,000 followers) and 60 minutes. The jury is still out on whether consumers will flock to IGTV, but it is a great place to experiment with video.

Filmmakers may have a more difficult time adjusting as videos will need to be formatted for 9:16 rather than 16:9. Follow examples from Jimmy Fallon and NASA (who definitely has video originally meant for widescreen, yet somehow edits to optimize it for IGTV) to see how they are optimizing their videos and connecting with audiences on a platform that is too new to be competing with thousands of videos yet. Buzzfeed and Instagram have started an initiative called VerticalU to help video creators learn about making optimal videos in a vertical format. First round applications closed already, but click here to learn about the course and see if they will have a second round of applications.

The Stories format on Instagram originally started with Snapchat, but now Instagram’s Stories sees 400 million daily users as opposed to Snap with less than 200 million users in total. The Stories feature is meant to be ephemeral marketing in that a story only lasts 24 hours and then disappears. It is possible to archive a story, but consumers must come to your profile page to see the archive rather than having the story at the top of their news feed.

Think about using Stories to give a snapshot of an experience (like a festival or theatrical premiere) or to tell mini stories in the world of your film (things that are not in the actual film, but help set the stage for the story or extend the storyworld beyond your film). Instagram Stories can also be shared to your Facebook page to make a Facebook Story, but the functionality on Facebook is not the same. On an Instagram story, URL links can be added if the viewer swipes up on their mobile phone, but this function is not possible on Facebook. Things like polls or Spotify music links can also be added to Instagram Stories, but those functions do not travel over to Facebook if the same story is transferred.

Advertising can be placed within Instagram Stories as long as you are working through Facebook Business Manager. Short videos and images can be inserted to the Stories of other accounts in order to reach a wider audience. For more about using Instagram Stories advertising, click here.

Next time, I will take a look at Twitter, a site that has seen flat user growth in the last year and has been plagued by numerous spam accounts and bots. Is Twitter still worth your time? I’ll let you know.

November 15th, 2018

Posted In: Instagram, Marketing, Social Network Marketing, Uncategorized

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If there is one constant rule in social media marketing, it’s that things are always changing. What might have worked a year ago, six months ago, possibly even yesterday, is not working today. Each social platform is continually trying to stay relevant to followers and increasingly trying to improve profitability for shareholders and business users.

At a recent all-staff meeting for The Film Collaborative, I was asked to present recent changes to the main social platforms most relevant to marketing independent films and to advise on how to take advantage of these changes. Here are the trends and changes I think most independent filmmakers should be aware of when planning for their marketing efforts. This is a multi-part series with the first part focused on Facebook, the biggest social network (by FAR) in the world.

Facebook

Reports of Facebook’s demise have been circulating for many years, yet despite all the controversy and concerns over account hacking, user privacy and election rigging, Facebook as an enterprise has continued to grow in the past months. Worldwide, there are over 2.23 billion monthly active Facebook users as of Q2 2018, an 11% increase year over year. In fact, a recent study projects that “Facebook will command 24.5% of all video ad spending this year … and be the top social media platform with an estimated 87% share of U.S. social media video ad spending.”

In order to optimize their profitability and relevance to Facebook users, as well as implementing their commitment to better policing the content that is distributed on the social network, changes are constantly being made to the platform which affect business pages. Here are the recent ones:

  • Introduction of Admin Registration: If a Facebook page or Instagram account you administrate is going to pay to boost or advertise ANY content of a political or national legislative interest persuasion, you will not be able to place ads unless you are personally registered with Facebook. This entails a scan of your driver’s license or governmental photo ID and a letter which will come in the USPS with a code that you have to use in order to register.
  • Admins may register and carry all pages they administrate under their registration. Admins who do not register will be unable to place paid ads on content that is deemed “political” and this is a broad list. Topics like education, immigration, environment, abortion, civil rights, etc.are all deemed political and in need of permission and labeling. See the broad list here.  I would imagine that many documentaries will need to be aware of this rule. All “political” ads will be cataloged into a Political content database for anyone to search.
  • All active advertising is now publicly visible under the Ads and Info tab on any public Facebook page: From the Info and Ads tab, people will be able to view the active ads a Page is running across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Audience Network, even if they’re not in the target audience. Any clicks on the ads do not contribute to the click count and clicks are not charged against the advertising budget. For more info on this go here.
  • Yet another change to the newsfeed algorithm. The new algorithm puts more emphasis on data points that show active interaction. That means comments, shares and reactions (in this order) are crucial. Also, personal posts are more valuable than business posts so if you want to do well in the newsfeed, strongly encourage individuals to post for your film organically. In order to create meaningful interactions, pages need to share things that are meaningful to their followers, not just to themselves. Only if followers engage emotionally and personally will they feel the need to comment, share or interact with your content. However, Facebook will actively demote any posts that explicitly ask for actions such as “tag a friend” or “leave a comment below” so try wording your posts as questions or use words, images or videos that elicit reaction. You might also ask your followers to set your page to See First so that they will keep seeing your posts in their newsfeed, even after an algorithm change.Probably the most important advice filmmakers should be aware of, with Facebook and all other major social media platforms is embrace the power of PAID REACH!
  • Pay to play is not new on Facebook. It has been happening for at least three years and still filmmakers are putting so little into it. With Facebook further de-prioritizing content from pages and brands, its time to be educated and more prepared for paid advertising in order to reach targeted audiences in the newsfeed, among many other places. Education is especially needed for using Ad Manager rather than just boosting posts. Ad Manager gives much more precise control over where ads appear, who can be targeted, cost per click, links where traffic will go and creative to be used, but it does need practice…or working with someone who uses it. Ad Manager also is constantly evolving, so taking a crash course will only begin to cover the basics.
  • It is important to note that paid Facebook advertising DOES NOT just encompass Facebook. It stretches to include Instagram, banner ads on Instant Articles and Facebook Audience Network, Messenger, Instagram Stories, and Facebook Stories. Perhaps IGTV will be coming as an ad platform in the future. For those who think their target audience is not using Facebook, likely you will be reaching them through Facebook Ad Manager on one of the many other places they are visiting online, so do not discount Facebook as an ad platform.
  • Create mobile first content. This is especially true for videos being posted to Facebook, but also to Twitter and Instagram. Filmmakers need to stop creating only one trailer, in a 16:9 aspect ratio. Most likely your trailer is not going to be shown on TV, so start thinking about how to optimize it for mobile viewing. Mobile viewers now do not turn their phones, and often do not watch with the sound on so provide caption overlays.

Videos on Facebook perform exceptionally well, so lots of compelling video clips and stories should be created. The chart below shows all of the different formats possible and filmmaking teams should bear these in mind when editing for social media use.

As examples, reference these clips, featurettes and trailers:

Colette

Lizzie

Love, Gilda

As I hit Publish on these updates, doubtless something new will be cropping up that will either expand your ability to reach new audiences or curb that ability in some way. It is important to keep up with the the changes or work with someone who handles social media marketing on a constant basis so that the efforts you put in to reaching audiences aren’t a waste of time, labor and money. Social media is the most cost effective and measurably impactful way of putting your work in front of those who will love it, but as with all forms of marketing, it takes a budget and consistent testing to perfect the right messaging and content that will capture attention and cause an audience to seek out your full work.

My next post will cover one of the next biggest social media platforms, Instagram, and take a look at what is changing and how to optimize your efforts there.

Sheri Candler will be participating on a panel at the New Heights Arts Symposium called “Top Marketing Tips for Indie Filmmakers.” The FREE, full day symposium will be held in Santa Clarita, California on October 20. Details here.

October 16th, 2018

Posted In: Facebook, Marketing, Social Network Marketing, Uncategorized

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May 2, 2018 • Sheri Candler, TFC Social Media Advisor

Part 2 of a two-part series on blockchain technology. Please access the first part here.

Heralded as the “trust machine,” blockchain aims to tackle a big issue: lessening the intermediaries that could potentially interfere with data and information. Processes that rely on a high degree of trust (banking, property sales, insurance, etc.) usually rely on a multitude of third parties to add expertise and integrity to transactions, especially those involving agreements between unknown parties.

With blockchain, counterparties don’t need to have an established trust relationship.

The reason this can be an a game-changer for the business of film is it could eliminate many of the intermediaries (and fees!) involved in rights management, revenue disbursement, and content licensing. Currently, the film sales process depends on written agreements between sales agents and distributors within a variety of mediums (theatrical, educational, broadcast, VOD, EST, etc.), geographical territories and currencies. These agreements can take many months to finalize before allowing for consumer sales, and revenue collection is slow.

Moreover, the revenue disbursement is often murky when it comes to the repayment of expenses, the subtraction of fees, and the parceling out what remains to those who have invested in the project. In theory, blockchain technology could ease this process through the use of smart contracts, facilitating virtual currency transactions, and protecting intellectual property by authenticating ownership and allowing rights to be granted.

But how close are we really to seeing this as a reality?

Edward Klaris is an attorney and recognized expert on intellectual property, privacy, and media law. He has spent 25 years in the media and entertainment industry for powerhouse companies like Condé Nast and The New Yorker Magazine. I asked him about digital rights and intellectual property rights management, where blockchain might be beneficial.

Ed Klaris: “First of all, let’s define the blockchain a little bit. The way I look at it, there are three different types of blockchains. There is a private block chain where the users and the providers are limited and identified through a private entry point. It’s a limited universe of people on that private blockchain. On the other side of the spectrum, there’s a public blockchain where neither users nor providers are necessarily identified in any kind of a rigorous way. This is like with Bitcoin where it doesn’t really matter who you are, you can buy Bitcoin by just going in and registering as whomever, you can be anonymous. The third type is a hybrid, all of the users are open so anyone can use it, but the providers of the content, for example, are governed. You can only be a content provider if you’ve satisfied certain registration requirements. That kind of block chain is really the type that I foresee being the media ecosystem where somebody is governing that blockchain and making sure that those who are providing content are known and trustworthy.”

Regarding protection against piracy, Klaris doesn’t think blockchain will stop this, but the new technology isn’t really conducive to pirated content.

Klaris: “In the open blockchain model, you can just rip somebody else’s movie just like they do today and put it onto a blockchain and it’s kind of immutably there. There is a risk that some piracy will occur, but I’m on the side of a not being particularly worried about that. The internet that’s been around for over 20 years is a much better vehicle for pirated work. Why would anybody want to go through the trouble of using blockchain for piracy today when you can do it so much easier on the Internet?”

One aspect that Klaris does see blockchain being suited for, and it is already being set up to service, is registry of rights holders and payments to them.

Klaris: “That part of the equation has largely been focused in the music space today. There are a couple of entities that are focusing on it in particular. There is a company called Dot Blockchain, which is producing a registry of copyright holders in the music business.”

“As you probably know, a given song might be owned by 10 different people with different addresses each of whom share 100 percent in the royalties. You need to know who they are, and where they are, and blockchain could be an excellent place to create these registries because people are authenticated or registered. Who they are, where they live, and what percentage of ownership they have can be packaged in the blockchain and payments can be made to them.”

“In a place like the music streaming services, people will listen and there is a small royalty that needs to be paid to the musician. Often those individuals cannot be found, therefore money goes unsent. But in the blockchain scenario where you’ve got a big registry of people who have identified their tracks and identified themselves, you could be able to find them and pay them through their registration.”

“But everybody is trying to go at this in their own little silos, solving for the same problems because there is a bit of a gold rush going on. There’s not a lot of cross platform use. If you register in one place, that information will not be carried over to the next place and, right now, there’s just no standardization whatsoever and that’s causing trouble. But as a concept, definitely people will be registering themselves and their works so they can be paid.”

In the realm of independent film, there are a few companies planning to start employing blockchain technology for a variety of applications. One such company is Vevue, a peer-to-peer video network app running on the Qtum blockchain platform. Vevue currently offers an iOS app. Founder Thomas Olson says their platform is different than video social networks like YouTube, or streaming professional content from Netflix because Vevue is engineered to seamlessly integrate with blockchain.

Thomas Olson: “Vevue chose Qtum because it’s a mobile first platform. With mobile, we’re targeting the easiest path to consumer adoption and ultimately benefit from the mobile viewing experience easily transferring through to our web portal. Qtum, also seeing potential in Vevue, invested in our team early—making us the very first app to build on the Qtum blockchain. We actually spent the last 10 months incubating in their Shanghai office space, the first and only team to do so.”

“Distributing a film on the blockchain means filmmakers can reach a worldwide audience without having to go through centralized services like Netflix or YouTube. The process is quite simple for organized professionals:

  1. Visit CoMakery.com and create a Token representing ownership in your content, then distribute accordingly among your contributors. For the film industry, this is especially important as investors need to be paid back their initial investment plus a premium before those same investors can share in the profits with the producer pool. In short, more revenue and a transparent accounting of that revenue ensure all parties are paid in a timely and fair manner without the need for audits.
  2. Next, you upload your content to Vevue and put the blockchain paywall in place. For the film industry, as opposed to commercial and amateur Vevue users, there are a few additional steps regarding deliverables. To handle this, we’ve partnered with Two Roads Picture Co., the distributor of the film No Postage Necessary, to be our exclusive aggregator to service both studio and independent films wanting to distribute through Vevue.
  3. Finally, collect revenue. Anytime someone pays—revenue immediately flows back to contributors per the CoMakery Token.”
Indie film “No Postage Necessary” is teaming up with Vevue for distribution in June 2018

Olsen: “Domestically, we can support traditional theatrical distribution by dropping tokens into each theater playing the film. Audience members simply record a review, upload it, and collect token reward. Then our API organizes the reviews for sites like Rotten Tomatoes or IMDb to easily add next to written reviews. This incentivizes audiences and provides feedback and audience building for the distributor. On the streaming side, we’d enter the competition fold alongside traditional TVOD platforms such as iTunes, Google Play, and Amazon. We’d provide the same viewing experience with the benefit of copyright protection and transparent royalty payments for the filmmaker. And since there would be no middleman, the filmmaker would get to keep more of the revenue.”

“On the foreign side—distributing a film on blockchain means filmmakers can reach a worldwide audience without having to sell to traditional distributors in international territories. It also means we can reach more people. When you consider there are over 2 billion unbanked people in the world and many of them have smartphones, we’re now providing an entirely new group the ability to legally purchase entertainment content.”

“Other than the fact they’ll be using Vevue Tokens to interact with our functions/features, audiences should barely notice they’re using blockchain. When it comes to film, our aim is to provide the same viewing experience one would have if he or she were using a traditional centralized platform.”

Perhaps this is the best way to look at the technology. Blockchain will be the unseen backbone that powers virtual currency, content distribution, rights management and revenue payments, to name a few examples. Much like the Internet, it isn’t necessary to dive deeply into the mechanics of how this information is transferred in order to use it. In the near future, this technology will be used to power the functions that, for now, are opaque and unnecessarily complicated. An open and distributed ledger, or record book, will keep track of information and validate transactions without being centrally controlled by any one entity. This technology is only in the experimental stage now, but within 10-15 years will power many parts of the film business that we struggle with today.

May 1st, 2018

Posted In: Blockchain, blockchain, Digital Distribution, Distribution

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A recent online web series featured our founder, Orly Ravid, as well as some powerhouse guests in indie film producing and distribution, hosted by WestDocOnline. Here is what we learned from the 1 hour+ panel, primarily focused on documentaries.

  1. Music clearance is important. Surprisingly, many new filmmakers do not realize that any music used in a film must be licensed, both the publishing (the person who wrote the song) and the master (the entity that recorded the song) rights must be secured.  Distribution contracts cannot be signed if music clearance has not been secured on your film. This is especially crucial for anyone looking to make a music documentary. For a good primer on this, visit this article: A Filmmaker’s Guide to Music Licensing .
  2. A devoted core fanbase can make a film successful. Richard Abramowitz named several documentaries that his company has theatrically distributed that had an excited and motivated fanbase that could be tapped into with less marketing money than a wide audience film.
  3. There is value in having a global marketing campaign, rather than one territory at a time. Cristine Dewey of ro*co films champions the idea that if your domestic distributor is already launching a marketing campaign, much of which will be found by audiences outside of the U.S. because of online marketing, it makes sense to time theatrical releases in other countries to coincide.
  4. Revenues from documentary sales. Netflix will pay anywhere from low 5 figures to high 6 or even 7 figures for documentaries. It depends on the film’s pedigree. Also, Amazon Festival Stars program was offering $200,000 to filmmakers at the Toronto International Film Festival in exchange for  making Amazon Video Direct the exclusive SVOD home for the film. Filmmakers can wait up to 18 months to upload to the platform, allowing for further festival and theatrical revenue.
  5. Distribution is a business. While it is all great and good to produce a film using credit cards, an iPhone and the good will of your friends, distribution is an integral part of the process and needs a budget. “In what world would someone say I have a great idea for a pencil. I’m going to raise $100,000 to make pencils. Then you have a warehouse filled with pencils, and then think about how you will get these into Staples? That’s not a business plan, that’s lunacy. But every day, people do that because this is art. Hope is not a strategy. You have to have a plan and you have to have a budget,” says Richard Abramowitz. “What’s the point of making the film if no one sees it?Marketing and distribution budgeting is the only way to assure the film will get seen and make an impact, short of an excellent marketing commitment by an honest distributor, something so relatively few documentary films enjoy,” said Orly Ravid.

To watch the full panel, find it below.

January 10th, 2018

Posted In: Digital Distribution, Distribution, Distribution Platforms, Documentaries, International Sales, Marketing

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Updated January 25, 2018 to take into consideration changes announced for Facebook and Instagram. 

As 2017 winds to a close, I wanted to take some time to evaluate what I’ve learned in the social media space this year, both in my work with independent filmmakers and working for public media.

Between those two endeavors, I have helped to create, test and connect audiences to over 350 short videos made specifically for social media. The vast majority of those were less than one minute in length, included captions burned into each video, and used a paid social approach to ensure that the videos were seen by a highly targeted audience who would be most likely to share them.

Here are the main things I want to share with you as you contemplate your use of social media in 2018:

    • Cardinal rule on social: The content you post must be interesting and relevant to motivate a reaction from the viewer. Boring links, boring videos, boring images, boring calls to action that clearly only benefit you WILL BE IGNORED [and will be demoted in the newsfeed by Facebook algorithm]. The organic videos that performed the best for me were a story in themselves. They weren’t trailers, they weren’t promo videos, they didn’t often include a call to action on the video, and they weren’t random behind the scenes footage. The stories took one main idea and presented it first, then explained the idea, then sometimes ended with a question to encourage people to comment. The more shares and comments the videos received, the more views it got.  But why am I mainly talking about videos? Because…
    • By 2021, 82% of global internet traffic will be attributed to video. As more and more newsfeeds are filled with short video content, your account will need to compete. You’re a filmmaker so generating quality video content should be easy for you. But remember, 90% of the videos people see in their feeds are watched with the sound off. Better to make a video that is not audio driven, but rather driven by images that can tell a story on its own. Also, it is best to present these videos in a square format, rather than in a horizontal rectangle. As most people now access social media platforms via their mobile devices, a square video (1:1) fills the screen and gives a much richer experience. Widescreen videos are crunched and make captions difficult to read. See good examples here and here.

  • Facebook Live, Instagram Live, Live Story for Snapchat, Periscope for Twitter, Youtube Live. Live or near live experiences will continue to proliferate on social. Some of this may be ephemeral content, that lives for only 24 hours. If you have an exciting event happening or you have access to a person with a large following, you should be utilizing live sessions on social media. Facebook, in particular, will be highlighting videos that receive lengthy interaction in the comment section. If you want to see a comparison between Youtube Live and Facebook Live, CLICK HERE.
  • Influencer marketing is a thing, but it isn’t free. It is awesome to think that if you tag a celebrity, they will share your tweet, but the real impact comes from those who have an engaged following instead of a vague, large number. Look toward influencers that have a niche following and are more willing to get excited about your project than a tweet from a celeb who has little connection to your project. Another idea could be to utilize influencers as social media content creators for your project. Rather than hoping to access their network, perhaps you can pay them to create for yours. Be advised, the Federal Trade Commission is now cracking down on sponsored posts that do not publicly disclose a paid sponsorship arrangement. It is better to work with companies that specialize in bringing influencers and brands together, like MediaKix  Mostly Sunny  and Heartbeat as they are usually up to date on the regulations and how to negotiate deals. For an idea on pricing for working with influencers, see this Digiday report.
  • Facebook organic posting is nearly dead. If you are still posting links, photos and videos that do not regularly receive multiple comments, you can stop. The company has just announced that it will stop showing posts by brands and publishers if those posts are not inspiring conversation (comments) as their new focus is on bringing people together, not pushing traffic and views. Facebook is not interested in sending traffic to other websites or providing a passive viewing experience (such as video views with no comments). This change will really hit pages that have not been inspiring conversation in their comment sections. However, don’t ask for comments in your posts. Engagement bait will be demoted in the newsfeed. This change will not affect paid promotion.
  • Which means that you MUST invest in social advertising. Yes, you could boosts your organic posts, but you really should be set up on Facebook Business Manager and running campaigns through Ad Manager. You need a monthly budget to spend. Anyone who has tried to build up a following or reach their following on social will know the time of reliable, free, organic reach has passed, and it isn’t going to return since social media platforms have shareholders who want to see revenue. The good news is this allows for smarter advertising spend for a trackable return than publicity or more traditional methods of advertising (posters, postcards, flyers, TV/radio/outdoor/print). While a marketing mix is important and if you can spend to hire a publicist for earned media, and place media buys in as many outlets as possible, then by all means do it. But try tracking that write up in the New York Times or Variety to any kind of monetary return outside of an ego boost or calls from your friends to say they saw it. It is nearly impossible unless you run a survey at the theater or on a digital VOD service to prove that your publicity spend or traditional advertising spend resulted in any measurable return. There is so much proof of awareness and actual revenue tied to a digital advertising effort, even over the number of Likes/Retweets/Favorites and “Impressions.” Added bonus for Facebook advertising, you can create Custom Audiences to keep remarketing to those who have shown an interest in your posts rather than spending to hit the disinterested. You’ll just need to install the Facebook pixel on your website, store, Eventbrite etc in order to track properly and accumulate that audience for later targeting. Also, if you are going to be setting a monthly budget, you need to be setting monthly goals for growth. How do you know if what you are doing is working if you don’t measure against a goal? I wrote a piece on tracking social media earlier this year.
  • Twitter growth is the slowest of all the major social media platforms. If you are building up a big following on Twitter, you may want to quickly branch out. Twitter is great for breaking news stories, but rather sucks for self promotional tweets.
  • Instagram is also making changes, but they have been a little less forthcoming in this news. If you are using Instagram for business, such as having an account related to your film, you should make sure that it is set up as a business account, not a personal account. Just as years ago, Facebook stopped supporting personal profiles that were being used for business, Instagram is starting to do the same. Besides, it is great to access analytics that are offered on business accounts, so go ahead and set your account up like that or convert. Also, you should be taking advantage of Instagram Stories, rather than just posting photos and videos. Stories can now be archived on your account so they won’t disappear after 24 hours, as long as you choose to feature them on your account. For instructions, go HERE. One last bit of advice, start following hashtags that are relevant to your project. Accounts now have the ability to follow a hashtag, not just other accounts. See more on that HERE.
  • This year, Facebook introduced Watch and rumor has it that they will start prioritizing shows rather than only short content in their newsfeed. With this knowledge (and the vast audience that Facebook reaches), have you considered turning that feature script into a series instead? A series of content with an ongoing narrative between episodes provides many benefits: increased audience retention, strict production schedule and time management, sponsorship opportunities, and being able to create a loyal community over the long run instead of starting over with each new project. Social media is a great place to ensure distribution of said series. It is also a low cost place to test out plots, characters, flow, audience reactions etc. without having to gather heavy investment for a feature that is untested and has no clear path distribution.

For everyone here at The Film Collaborative, I wish you a happy, creative, industrious, and prosperous new year. Look for members of The Film Collaborative at Sundance 2018 and at many other film festivals and events in the coming year.

December 17th, 2017

Posted In: Facebook, Social Network Marketing, Uncategorized

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Last month, TFC invited a select group of Los Angeles-based filmmakers to share their knowledge and specific details about how they marketed and distributed their independent films. We learned a lot and we thank those who took part that day. Now, we want to open up this opportunity to all creators, whether you make features, short films, or web series, so that we all may learn from each other in an anonymous, but factual way.

We know, many other entities have tried to compile statistics and details and have invited independent creators to contribute, but we think a lot of that information has been less than forthcoming or distributed within only a small subsection of creators who participate in closed labs or mentoring sessions. We propose to do something different.

For the next month, we are asking any creator who has actually participated in the marketing and distribution of their project (this is a requirement) to come forward and fill out this 10 question survey in detail. No questions will be asked about the identity of the creator or of the project which should allow participants to be completely honest about their efforts and results. The results will be compiled into a whitepaper of best practices and charts showing budget levels and revenue levels that will benefit the creators operating in this turbulent and confusing period of plenty of consumer choice, but creator uncertainty about the financial viability of their work. The whitepaper will be published online, for all to download for free.

We sincerely hope you will agree to help us, all of us, by participating. Our aim is to have the whitepaper ready for distribution by the beginning of the new year. TFC mailing list members will be notified first, so if you want a first look, please join that list here. Everyone will have access via this blog once the document is published.

We’re really excited to learn what creators are doing and we know you will find their insight invaluable. Thanks for participating!

September 11th, 2017

Posted In: case studies, Distribution, Marketing

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Sheri Candler is a digital marketing strategist and TFC’s social media advisor.

social_media

The question I hear the most out of filmmakers and others in the film community has to do with social media success. What is the point of posting to social media? What is reasonable to expect out of these daily efforts?

Though much of the guesswork is disappearing from social media when it comes to marketing, most filmmaking teams are not collecting and analyzing their own social media data in order to evaluate what is making an impact, why it is working and what they can stop doing either for the immediate future or stop all together. Without data or feedback on what’s happening on your social channels, you’re in the dark about what is and isn’t working in the day to day and whether your business goals will be successful in the long term.

We’ve never had this much access to information about what your audience is interested in, how they are responding to your work and what other media they are consuming. This data can help you make your work more relevant and interesting to the audience you are trying to reach and to instill stronger loyalty and engagement for the long term—rather than short-term “awareness” building and pushing for sales. Unfortunately, most in the film industry ignore this and prefer to run short term, expensive campaigns meant to build up a large looking following that will be abandoned once the next project comes along. Often what they do on social media does not even accomplish the sales goal, the main reason they are even running an account. What a waste of money and effort!

But how do you know if your social media efforts are working? You won’t if you don’t have a set of goals you are working toward and aren’t measuring the data that indicates whether you are on target to that goal on a weekly and monthly basis. Making data-driven decisions doesn’t replace creativity, but it can provide a direction and a way to know if your creativity is of interest to anyone.

There are many stages that your social media efforts will go through when you are using it to build an audience for your work. I don’t really like to think of social media as a campaign effort because campaigns usually have a beginning and an end, but social media is 24-7-365 for years. It is really a business function that needs to be performed daily; just as sending email, making phone calls and having meetings are part of your daily, professional routine.

One of the first and ongoing goals is growth of your audience, or building a progressively bigger audience for your work. The purpose of setting this as a goal is to help you see how big of an audience you able to reach through social media. The follower number is usually public so it also lets sales agents, distributors, broadcasters and other potential audience know how much impact your film is making through social media.

Building up an authentic following is a slow process and requires patience, but it can be sped up by the use of a steady budget for paid promotion. On a weekly basis, you should be auditing each of your social media accounts to see how much your account has grown and match that to your efforts (how often you are posting, how much money has been spent to grow the audience, how many unfollows your account might experience). In Facebook, you will find this information under the INSIGHTS tab–>Likes. On Twitter, you will find this under the ANALYTICS tab–>Audiences. On Instagram, you will find this on your business profile page>symbol that looks like a bar graph.

To help you keep track, set up a Google Sheet or Excel sheet with columns that show New Followers, Old Followers, Change in Followers (use the Autosum function that subtracts new followers from the old ones), number of posts that week, amount of money spent on any follower growth campaign that you have conducted that week for each of your social media accounts. On another tab, enter in rows for each account (Facebook, Twitter, etc) and columns for each week in the year and fill in information on rate of growth and spend.

The next important goal to track is the Engagement on your accounts. These include Likes (or Reactions), Comments and Shares, and if applicable, video views, of the content you are posting. Twitter metrics would include favorites (hearts), @mentions and retweets. Instagram would include likes and comments. Pinterest will include repins and likes. Most of this information is available through the insights provided for free with your social media account. Some social media platforms have very limited insights, but this can change as more and more businesses demand analytics in order to continue using a platform for marketing. You should do a weekly report of the average number of likes, comments, shares per post your account is achieving and keep track of this on the same sheet as your follower numbers. Ideally, you want to see these numbers to slowly increase over time.

For a sample idea of what your spreadsheet could look like, see this link.

See this post about accessing analytics on the main social media platforms and what each metric means.

Since I post up to 20 times a day on the accounts I run, I do not compile and compute weekly and monthly reports manually because there is too much data to collect, calculate and analyze. I have been using this tool to keep track: https://www.truesocialmetrics.com/ In addition to telling me my Engagement metrics, it also helps guide when my best posting times are, which types of posts are my best and worst so I have guidance on what to continue to do and what needs to be changed, and who my most engaged followers are. For $30 per month, you can track up to 3 different accounts per platform so it is very affordable and this one tool brings in insights from all major social media platforms so I don’t have to visit each one individually in order to compile management reports.

Typically, a publicity firm or social media agency will present their metric reports by leading with impression numbers on social media posts and media hits (for example, on a news story in a publication). These numbers are usually very high and thus, impressive to their client. But be aware, these numbers mainly deal with possibility, not actual success. I think of them largely as “squishy” metrics because they do not show real impact like a comment, a share or a “like” which means that a person actually saw and engaged with your post in some way. An impression number denotes the number of times a post from your account was displayed in the newsfeed of the social media platform, whether it is actually seen by your audience at that time or not. It shows that your content had the possibility of being seen. Reach, on the other, hand speaks to the number of people who actually viewed your content. A reach number is typically smaller than an impression number. Both of these stats provide a sense of how wide your posting is spreading, they just don’t give feedback on whether anyone cares.

Eventually, your goal should be Traffic. Traffic deals with sending your follower to another place on the internet where they will find out how to buy something.

In my work now, one of the biggest goals is traffic to our website. If you are in the distribution phase of your production, you should be tracking traffic too. How do you know if your social media is leading to sales if you aren’t tracking traffic? For most of you, the only kind of traffic you can truly track leads back to your own website because you have access to the analytics on your own site (for example, through Google Analytics). You won’t have access to traffic stats on iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, or theater websites etc., only the sales reports and those will not show you what tactics are driving your sales. So, it is important to have a mechanism for sales from your website. While there are several cool configurations in Google Analytics that can be set up, those who are not proficient in coding and setting up different tags, triggers, variables may just want to stick with using utm codes. To track traffic back to your website, you will have to use a utm code (universal tag manager) on each link you post to social. It is useless for you to put utm tags on URLs that lead to other websites if you don’t have a way to access their analytics to see traffic stats.

An easy to use one can be found here. In the first field, paste in the URL link you are planning to post. In the next field (labeled Source), name the platform you are posting this link to (your Facebook page, your Twitter account, a link in an email you are sending out etc). In the next field (labeled Medium), name the medium (i.e., social, email, banner ad etc). In the final field (labeled Campaign), put in an identifier for WHO is posting this link. Is this link being posted by the production? Then put in a short name that denotes this (for example, I use tfc for links that lead back to The Film Collaborative website if I am posting these links to The Film Collaborative social media accounts. I use sheri as the campaign name if I am posting links that lead back to The Film Collaborative website on my own social media accounts). If the link is being posted by a third party, such as an organization that has agreed to help promote your film, or the stars of your film who are posting this link on their own accounts, put in an identifying name so that you can differentiate between the traffic generated by the production’s efforts and those by third parties. When looking at Google Analytics, under Acquisition>Campaign you will be able to see what traffic to your website was generated by your social media efforts and what traffic came from each third party (provided that they keep the utm coded link intact, so tell them not to change any link that you send for them to post).

If you are particularly interested in knowing more about the basic functions of Google Analytics for your website, this is a good post to read and mostly still accurate.

You can also glean information about the audience you are reaching through your social media insights. Through Facebook Ad Manager, you can see data based on interests, education levels, job titles and industries, other Facebook pages your audience follows, and the spending habits of your audience. This can help determine what kind of content you should be posting and what keyword parameters to use in paid promotion to help expand on the audience you have started to gather.

By now, all of you should be aware that running accounts on the big social media platforms requires promotional spend. On Facebook, organic (unpaid) reach has plummeted to a meager 6%, meaning that for every 100 followers you have, only 6 of them are going to see your content. Also there are more than 3 million links shared every hour on Facebook so the chances of your followers seeing most of your posts in their newsfeed are very low. To make sure you are both growing your targeted audience base and reaching that audience with your updates, it will be important to spend on promoted posts. Since Facebook also owns Instagram, the same advice holds. If you aren’t using the paid promotion tools on Twitter, chances are great that your tweets will be lost in the stream and your following will grow very slowly.

Does this mean you can’t get any organic lift on your posts? No, that is possible on occasion, especially if one of your post gets a lot of shares, but if you are seeking to make an impact on a continued basis, you will have to pay to make sure your posts are reaching your followers in their newsfeed.

In a future post, I will cover the latest developments on the major social media platforms over the last year and what changes are coming soon. I will also discuss what platforms are useful for reaching certain audiences and the kind of content that should be optimized for success on the major platforms.

January 12th, 2017

Posted In: Uncategorized


Selling Your Film Outside the U.S.Last May, TFC released the second book in our series called Selling Your Film Outside the US. As with everything in the digital space, we are trying to keep track of a moving target. Netflix has now launched in France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium and Luxembourg. iTunes continues its transactional VOD domination by partnering with Middle East film distributor Front Row Filmed Entertainment to give Arabic and Bollywood films a chance to have simultaneous releases in eight countries: UAE, Egypt, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Lebanon, Jordan and Kuwait. Amazon has just launched several new original series in the US and UK, including critical darling Transparent, to a line up that includes returning series Alpha House and Betas.

But what does DIY Distribution mean in the context of European territories? The following is an excerpt included in the book:

Here are a few tips for any filmmaker who is thinking about doing digital distribution in general, but especially in multiple territories:

-If your film is showing at an international film festival, ask if they are producing subtitles, and, if so, negotiate that the produced file be part of your festival fee. It may need to be proofed again or adjusted at a subtitling and transcription lab later on, but as a first pass it could prove very valuable down the road. See more about the kind of file you need in this post;

-When you are producing your master, create a textless version of your feature. Apple and probably other platforms will not allow external subtitles on any films that already have burn-ins. If your film, for example, has a few non-English lines of dialogue, instead of burning-in English subtitles into your film, a better method would be to create an external English-language subtitle file (separate from closed captioning) in a proper format and submit it with your master. Different aggregators may require different formats, and if you are going to a Captioning/Transcription/Translation Lab to do your closed captioning and subtitling work, be smart about which questions you ask and negotiate a price for everything, including transcoding from one format to another because you may not know exactly what you will need for all your deals right away.

Subtitles need to be timed to masters, so make sure your time code is consistent. When choosing a lab, ascertain whether they are capable of fulfilling all your current and future closed captioning and subtitling needs by verifying that they can output in the major formats, including (but not limited to) SubRip (.srt), SubViewer 1 & 2 (.sub), SubStation Alpha (.ssa/.ass), Spruce (.stl), Scenarist (.scc) and iTunes Timed Text (.itt);

-You may want to band together with films that are similar in theme or audience and shop your products around as bundled packages. Many digital services, including cable VOD, have thematic channels and your bundle of films may be more attractive as a package rather than just one film;

-Put the time in toward building your brand and your fanbase. Marketing still is the missing piece of the puzzle here. As it gets easier and easier to get onto platforms, so too does it get more difficult for audiences to find the films that are perfectly suited to their interests. This is especially true when talking about marketing one’s film outside one’s home territory. If you are accessing platforms for your film on your own, YOU are the distributor and the responsibility of marketing the film falls entirely to you.

To download a FREE copy of the entire book, complete with case studies of films distributed in Europe, visit sellingyourfilm.com.

October 15th, 2014

Posted In: Amazon VOD & CreateSpace, book, case studies, Digital Distribution, DIY, iTunes, Netflix

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