Wednesday, July 13, 2016

What YOU can do to HELP! (Marketing an Indie Movie Part 2)

You can never have enough money. I mean...COME ON! This is America, after all. But this is especially true when making movies. As soon as you reach your budget, you will ALWAYS THINK OF ONE MORE good idea. It's just the way it works.

However, when you are shooting a FEATURE LENGTH MOVIE and doing it with a beginning budget of ZERO, the feeling resonates on a very deep level with every person involved in the production. The ONLY WAY we can really fund quality independent work today in 2016, is to TAKE CONTROL of the situation ourselves.

This means that EVERY PERSON working on a movie with me has to TAKE OWNERSHIP. I wrote this damned thing, I will shoot it, and star in it, but it QUIT BEING ONLY MINE during that very instant that I made the decision to turn in into a movie, which is a collaborative adventure by its very nature. Everyone who comes on board should be PASSIONATE and PROUD of the work they do with us, they should feel equally so about the work of their partners and family from the set every single day.

If every person at EVERY LEVEL goes after their job with that type of passion, with the committed idea that THIS MOVIE is something they can use to clearly show their next collaborators exactly what kind of work they produce, we will produce a quality piece of art. PERIOD.

And for me, that is the first step to any type of legitimate success in the arts. There are plenty of people who have flopped their way into success in one way or another in our "REALITY TV-OBSESSED" world, and some for the worst of reasons (Paris Hilton, anyone?). There are far too many shitheads running around Hollywood, the movie industry in general, as well as every other art who have zero interest in the art itself, and only seek fame and fortune.

WHY does anyone anywhere take her SERIOUSLY EVER? There were legitimate entertainment dollars paid to this piece of garbage that could have gone to making DOZENS of quality small movies, paying the salaries of hundreds of us "normal folks". Screw Paris Hilton (I humbly submit that as both an artist and a civilized human being...).


Would I, or anyone involved on "The END of FUN" reject some level of celebrity or increase in financial status as a result of our hard, focused efforts on this and other projects? HELL NO! We would Abso-motherfucking-lutely love it... BUT the people I work with are really only interested in that as a byproduct of their hard work and talent.

What we need is for every person involved on this production-- that means ME (OUR DIRECTOR AND WRITER), ALL of OUR CAST (from the LEADS to the BACKGROUND/EXTRAS), our PRODUCTION TEAM..it means the folks who work on MAKEUP and WARDROBE and CASTING... it means ALL our PRODUCERS... and? AND? It means we REALLY NEED YOU!

We will start our Kickstarter campaign next week after we have completed the casting for Jade Silver, Kari K, Scab, and VV. At that point, you can REALLY PUT THESE TECHNIQUES to WORK, but in the meantime you can practice  and REALLY HELP by spreading the links for our Twitter (@ENDofFUN), this blog (www.ENDofFUNmovie.com), and our FB Page https://www.facebook.com/The-END-of-FUN-605052902991983/.

We REALLY would like to see the FB page reach 1000 people in the next 30 days! All it takes is a few people to SHARE it AND ASK those others to share it too. Make sure that when they also share it for you, that they in turn ask the folks with whom they share it to also keep sharing it.  Confusing?

BULLET LIST OF HOW TO USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO SUPPORT "The END of FUN"!

  • Let your friends and family KNOW what you are doing (regardless of your role--EVEN FAN/SUPPORTER!!!) and how much its success means to you. If it doesn't mean A LOT to you--- it will mean NOTHING to them!
  • Tell them you are going to regularly be sharing posts and updates from the movie (and ESPECIALLY ONCE the KICKSTARTER BEGINS)
  • Explain to them that they would be HELPING YOU by helping us and that doing that is EASY! 
    • All they have to do is occasionally hit "LIKE" on the things you post related to the feature (see? this is why you gotta tell em about it in the first place... so their eyes and brains know to look for and respond when they see it show up from your feed)
    • SOMETIMES, if they REALLY want to help, they can ALSO SHARE the same link or update you shared (if they are older, please show them exactly how easy FB, Twitter, etc. makes it to repost/share, etc.)
    • And then, if they really really REALLY want to help, then just every rare once in a while, they ask one (or a few-- or a hundred---) of those folks they have been sharing with to do the same
      • BUT keep it low pressure on them too-- We pass along the desire to help, but also the desire to be mellow, low pressure, and friendly about it!
  • There are some other techniques that make this more refined, but are not as important as the basic steps above
    • OTHER TECHNIQUES (for the SM advanced)
      • Actually CLICK THROUGH occasionally and/or VISIT the FB Page instead of waiting for it to show up in your feed (FB algorithms are NOT YOUR FRIEND-- well, really they're NOT MINE-- once they see that people start visiting and noticing a page, they intentionally make it more obscure which encourages the page-owner to "BOOST" it and...SPEND MONEY!
      • Just go right to the FB MOVIE Page directly sometimes.
        • While there, click on stuff and leave a few comments-- even if "Sounds really cool" or something else very basic.
      • ALTERNATE HOW YOU SHARE LINKS
        • SOMETIMES just hit the "share" button on FB, Twitter, etc.
        • SOMETIMES go and grab the link yourself WITHOUT SEEING IT in your FB feed first, then post the link directly
        • Leave comments
        • Encourage others to click "LIKE" and to leave comments
      • Create and post memes related to the movie (use ours if you don't want to create your own!)
      • On Twitter and FB, use our hashtags
        • #TheENDofFUN
        • #TEOF1000
        • #TEOFCast
        • #TEOFMemes
    • JUST SHARE The URL for this blog: www.ENDofFUNmovie.com!
  • THAT's really it for the blog, twitter and FB for now, though; Most of this is good training for the Kickstarter, but Crowdfunding requires a bit more nuance and finesse. We will discuss that AND GIVE MORE TIPS in a separate post after it is kicked off!

No comments:

Post a Comment