Great information. I'm making a documentary and am building an audience via social media and building an email list. I plan to share it on places like Kinema. I've just started a presence on LinkedIn so I'm going to push this more. Thanks!
Hi! I'm only a week in so my numbers aren't big (yet!). Right now I'm experiencing quality over quantity. Establishing folks committed to helping with my project. I'm doing a documentary on activists, combination of interviews, archival footage and film verite. I was able to connect with someone I know to film protests in DC as well as someone for NYC Metro area. I've been using a combination of IG, Facebook page, building an email list initially from my contacts and now focusing also on LinkedIn in.
Ben Affleck just made a similar point re: business x creative, and with many of the same indie film references as Stephen shared in this interview.
Copying fun, slightly related, story below:
"When I got into this—and I wanted to be a director, and I had directed short films and was trying to write and obviously be an actor—it was a time when this sort of DIY thing was just starting. You had Cassavetes, you had independent filmmakers, but the ’90s is when you had Reservoir Dogs and Clerks and Slacker and [1989’s] Do the Right Thing, and there were these movies that were made by people outside of what they call the studio system. And they were interesting and they were ambitious. And what I learned about when I was coming up and had ambitions to start doing this was, “Oh look, if you get Harvey Keitel to do your movie, you can get a million dollars and you can make Reservoir Dogs.” So even writing Good Will Hunting, we always had to keep in mind all these commercial concerns. We thought, Well, it’s not going to be a very expensive movie, because no one’s going to invest in an expensive movie with us in it, so it’s going to be a small movie that takes place in rooms and streets of Boston and doesn’t have all those other high-production-value costs associated with it. And we need to have a movie star, otherwise no one’s going to make it. And so with the movie-star part, we have to make that a supporting part so they don’t have to work as many weeks, but give them all the great monologues and speeches. And so the corporate-mode thing, in terms of thinking about the relationship between what you’re creating and what it costs and how you’re going to get it out to people, has always been a part of the way I thought about it." https://www.gq.com/story/inside-ben-afflecks-plan-to-remake-hollywood
Great information. I'm making a documentary and am building an audience via social media and building an email list. I plan to share it on places like Kinema. I've just started a presence on LinkedIn so I'm going to push this more. Thanks!
Rad! What platform(s) are you focusing on? Any audience-building learnings or wins?
Hi! I'm only a week in so my numbers aren't big (yet!). Right now I'm experiencing quality over quantity. Establishing folks committed to helping with my project. I'm doing a documentary on activists, combination of interviews, archival footage and film verite. I was able to connect with someone I know to film protests in DC as well as someone for NYC Metro area. I've been using a combination of IG, Facebook page, building an email list initially from my contacts and now focusing also on LinkedIn in.
It's exciting to hear you're already starting to find collaborators! Quality over quantity for the win 💪🏽
Ben Affleck just made a similar point re: business x creative, and with many of the same indie film references as Stephen shared in this interview.
Copying fun, slightly related, story below:
"When I got into this—and I wanted to be a director, and I had directed short films and was trying to write and obviously be an actor—it was a time when this sort of DIY thing was just starting. You had Cassavetes, you had independent filmmakers, but the ’90s is when you had Reservoir Dogs and Clerks and Slacker and [1989’s] Do the Right Thing, and there were these movies that were made by people outside of what they call the studio system. And they were interesting and they were ambitious. And what I learned about when I was coming up and had ambitions to start doing this was, “Oh look, if you get Harvey Keitel to do your movie, you can get a million dollars and you can make Reservoir Dogs.” So even writing Good Will Hunting, we always had to keep in mind all these commercial concerns. We thought, Well, it’s not going to be a very expensive movie, because no one’s going to invest in an expensive movie with us in it, so it’s going to be a small movie that takes place in rooms and streets of Boston and doesn’t have all those other high-production-value costs associated with it. And we need to have a movie star, otherwise no one’s going to make it. And so with the movie-star part, we have to make that a supporting part so they don’t have to work as many weeks, but give them all the great monologues and speeches. And so the corporate-mode thing, in terms of thinking about the relationship between what you’re creating and what it costs and how you’re going to get it out to people, has always been a part of the way I thought about it." https://www.gq.com/story/inside-ben-afflecks-plan-to-remake-hollywood
I would look into what Hundreds of Beavers and The Occult and A Hard Place are doing by going directly to theaters to build their audiences.