2. Social media
There are many ways to promote a short film. Social media is one of the best
ways because it’s free and reaches a wide audience. Websites like
Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are the most common social media sites used.
Not only are they used by millions around the world, but they make publishing
easy through their functions and interactive working tools. We are able to get
immediate feedback and are able to respond to comments and questions.
3. We made an YouTube account to post all our video work on, for example behind the
scenes and tests or actual productions like trailers and demo reels. Through that we
were able to build an audience in advance for our short film.
As you can see on the
left, we always kept our
YouTube page up to date.
4. Our Facebook page has always been updated to our production, either if it was to just
share a video or to let our audience know if we were editing or filming.
This was an effective strategy to promote our film, because it grew the anticipation for
our short film.
5. Guerrilla marketing
Guerrilla marketing is an advertising strategy, which uses cheap and
unconventional techniques and strategies to convey or promote a product or an
idea.
The concept of guerrilla marketing relies on time, energy and imagination
rather than a big marketing budget.
This involves unusual approaches such as intercept encounters in public
places, street giveaways of products or PR stunts. Its all about getting maximum
results from minimal resources.
6. One way would be social media, but we didn’t just rely on that, we had a great idea
how hit two birds with one stone. Every film needs extras, either to make the
environment look natural or to just get a cinematic shot. We chose our extras carefully.
People who are studying drama or media were chosen, because they were more likely
to show around our work in the future, as a portfolio sort of thing. It’s a simple
strategy, which means that the more people are involved, the more people will see it.
Everybody involved will show it to friends and family, to show them that they helped
produce this film.
7. We also sent our film (via e-mail) to local acting schools, which we approached
last year to get actors. This made sure that our film would get known in the
local area, that’s why we also sent it to the national media museum.
To get a more global audience we sent our film to the YouTube channel Film
Riot (which we mentioned a lot during the last 7 months) and famous
filmmakers on YouTube, like Griffin Hammond and Russell from heykillerfilms.
We didn’t have any expectations of them, because we know they probably get
those kind of e-mails 20 times a day, but we didn’t have anything to lose, so we
thought we might as well do it.
8. Film Marketing and Promotion
Film promotion is the practice of promotion specifically in the film industry, which
generally includes press releases, advertising campaigns, merchandising and
media, and interviews with the key people involved with the making of the film, like
actors and directors.
As with all business it is an important part of any release and film studios will invest in
expensive marketing campaigns to maximize revenue early in the release cycle.
We did this through posters and our “making of” videos, which we published on
Facebook and YouTube.
We didn’t have a big budget to market our film so we relied on social media and word
of mouth.
