Pitching and Marketing in Independent Film
The following are notes from two panels I attended at SXSW: Financing in a Troubled Economy, and Finding an Audience for your Film.
What is your unique perspective and why does it work?
What is the story outside the story?
What’s the idea?
What are you selling? What does the poster look like?
Who are you trying to reach?
What will the website look like? Promo, network, etc…
You’re not just making a movie, but planning a campaign…
- it’s a business plan — executives are looking for a comprehensive plan
- be rigorous and critical – how much? how long will it take?
- how will you get the product to market?
- treat exhibitions like a client
- one option is to hire a publicist and pay for screenings (coupled with social media this could work)
Get ASSETS – during the shoot, get unit photography. Get a wealth of footage for promotional purposes (most common mistake with indies is lack of pre-production planning)
Website, logline, trailer, stills… you gotta think of everything
What executives are looking for (TOP ADVICE)
- what is the event? what’s the incentive? what will people get from it?
- get an attorney!!!
- It’s ART and COMMERCE
- anticipate how the film will get to the market place
- feed the crew!!!
- be teachable
KNOW YOUR ELEVATOR PITCH!
Where the Wild Things Are and Being Human
Picture if you will, every person in your neighborhood running down the street, screaming at the top of their lungs, knocking down mailboxes and breaking windows. Instead of calling the cops, you decide to join them. You have so much junk bottled up inside and you have to deal with it. You bust down your front door, tear into the yard, and let the wild rumpus start.
Maybe it will need to come to this. Ancient people use to mourn by tearing their clothes and groveling in the dirt. They would do this for days. King David once refused to eat or bathe for a week, and spent all his time lying on the ground. Today, we surf the internet and eat ice cream.
It’s time for a rumpus revolution. As the great theologian (Bono) sings, “I want to run, I want to hide, I want to tear down the walls that hold me inside…” We keep way too much to ourselves. We don’t know how to express, how to feel, how to love. Not like we should. Not like we need to.
That’s why Spike Jonze’ adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are is so important. It tells us something about what it means to be human.
Watching this film was therapeutic for me. An hour and a half of primal expression. Running, screaming, growling, climbing, destroying, building forts and throwing snowballs. Pure energy and imagination.
I was reminded of a time when I didn’t care. I was trick-or-treating and dressed like a bear. I would scratch with my paws at the neighbors door, hold out a bucket for the candy, and growl. And there wasn’t an inch of self-consciousness in me. I did it because I had to. There was something inside of me that I innately needed to express.
I forget how to express it now. I haven’t growled at anyone in a while actually.
Where the Wild Things Are is a simple story. Max, a lonely little boy from a broken home, runs away one night after a fight with his mom. Angry and confused, he spends an evening in the woods, conjuring up an imaginary world in which he takes a voyage to a distant land. He discovers a small tribe of creatures and proclaims himself king over them. Together they build a kingdom, implementing regimented diplomatic activity, such as running through the woods, howling at the moon, knocking over trees, building forts and then tearing them down. And fighting. Lot’s of fighting. Like Max’s own life, this family of creatures is extremely dysfunctional. They have no direction. They are angry and confused and don’t know why.
Each creature represents a part of his life. It’s his internal dialogue, dealing with the anger. While he wrestles with what he doesn’t understand, he is able to eventually channel his pain into a question (which is harder to come up with than an answer, really): How can I make everyone okay?
He puts a lot of pressure on himself. Like we all do at times. His sister is too cool for him. His dad is gone. And his mom has a boyfriend. He’s angry, and wants to fix things and make them right.
I can relate. I remember when I was eight years old being angry about my parents divorced. I remember thinking that I could fix it. Maybe I could confront them and set them straight, make them change their minds about the whole thing. But I couldn’t. I was only a little boy.
And so Max concludes the same thing. In the end, he realizes that he is not a king. He is only Max. He spent all this time running like a maniac through the woods, only to conclude what he already knew. And that is the most important thing. Sometimes we need to run wild and howl at the moon. I think this is a way of asking a question that we don’t know how to ask. We need to do it, not so much because we need an answer, but because we just need a good howl at the moon.
But for some reason we’ve forgotten how.
I wish I was more like King David, who once pretended to be insane in order to get out of pickle. I think I’m too self-conscious to pretend to be insane. I feel that there is a fundamental passion that is missing. We spend far too much time staring at computer screens with glazed expressions.
As for Max, we’ve probably seen him at Wal-mart yelling at his mom. Or heard him next door, declaring war on his back yard. We might have almost hit him with our car while he was riding his bike and not paying attention. His hyper-activity makes us uncomfortable. We find his behavior disturbing. We judge his parents. I think we need to stop and join him instead, grovel in the dirt a little and howl at the moon. There are walls to be torn down.
