HaZ on marketing your film

When you are doing something for the love of it, publicising it or even marketing it is probably not an immediate priority, especially as it calls on a different bunch of skills.

Marketeers can have a bad name- cold calling you at home, or stopping you in the street. But how can we use marketing to get our film ‘out there’ without compromising it? It could be argued that film is all about audiences, and our work can only grow when we get feedback from an audience. We can put our work on YouTube, Vimeo or any video sharing site and expect the hordes to find us, or as HaZ suggests, we can pro-actively find an audience, and drive eyeballs to the piece of work we’ve spent so long creating. All guerrilla filmmakers know they can improve by having an interaction with their viewers.

HaZ reminds us that everyone is busy and attention is a commodity in short supply. It’s so easy to convert our own excitement for our film into a long winded press release or email recounting every detail, as if we are the only film being released that week, and our recipients don’t have anything else to do. To compete for attention we need a simple message, and maybe to pose a question that will intrigue the right people enough and turn their heads.

In the next section, we’ll hear from the point of view of a Film Festival and Event Producer about how to get your work seen.

What are your tips for getting your work seen? Are there particular sites that you’ve found more constructive or helpful in terms of feedback and enthusiasm? What kind of personal approaches work best, without annoying the people you hope to see your film? What do you think of HaZ’s approach?