Tag: documentary

The Gate – 2018 Case Study

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2018 – A Year in a Glimpse

This last year has been busy, busy, busy!    Hot off the presses – we are super excited that one of the projects we have been acting as consulting producer and distribution advisor on, Stuart Swezey’s film debut Desolation Center, just got selected for its US Premiere at Slamdance 2019 following a healthy 2018 international run including CPH:DOX, Sheffield International Doc Fest, Cork, Docx, Dokufest, Indie Lisboa, and more. The feature doc is about a series of Reagan-era guerrilla punk and industrial desert happenings in Southern California which are now recognized as the inspirations for Burning Man, Lollapalooza, and Coachella. Interviews and rare performance footage of Sonic Youth, Minutemen, Meat Puppets, Swans and more.

In addition we worked with our first non-film non-profit Next7.org created by one of the co-founders of Food Democracy Now.  We not only advised and helped with the launch of Next7.org but helped run their first campaign Protect Organic.

Not to mention running the marketing and distribution campaigns for a number of other films this year:

Father’s Kingdom, directed by Lenny Feinberg, about the little know civil rights leader Father Divine who declared himself god. 

Generation Zapped, directed by Sabine el Gemayel, on the dangers of cell phone and wifi radiation.

American Visionary, directed by Karen Everett, about the mother of conscious evolution Barbara Marx Hubbard.

The Gate: Dawn of the Baha’i Faith, directed by Bob Hercules, about the origins of the Baha’i faith.

A Case Study The Gate: Dawn of the Baha’i Faith

For the last 6 months, our company has been managing the global release for the film The Gate: Dawn of the Baha’i Faith, directed by Peabody Award winner Bob Hercules. The release premiered in LA and Chicago followed by broadcasts on ABC affiliates rolling through July.  It was a particularly intense release because we weren’t able to start marketing it until the first week of April and it wasn’t finished until the end of April.   Hybrid Cinema managed the entire campaign including all marketing, social media, outreach and screenings, advertising, creation of all marketing elements (website, key art, trailer and lots of extra video content), publicity.  We also handled all distribution: screenings, broadcast, digital and DVD.

I want to share the beginnings of our case study on this project:

Goals and Strategy – The Gate

I know I am a broken record on this – but you can’t release a film (or any project) without knowing your goal(s).   With this film, the most important goal was to spread awareness for the film and the Baha’i faith to both Baha’i and non-Baha’is. Additionally, this film had a unique secondary goal, to build an engaged core fanbase that could be carried to planned future projects, as the production company plans to produce and release three more films. These two goals included strategic moves that of course overlap. Over the next few sections, I will quickly breakdown our work overview.

Distribution – The Gate

The film started with large premieres in Chicago and Los Angeles, quickly followed by the launch of the ABC broadcasts in May, that eventually reached between 2-3 million people. Although having the public broadcast so front-loaded might narrow more traditional distribution avenues (festivals and films sales) – and create all kinds of windowing problems and other difficulties – it was a key component in achieving the main goal of audience reach.  It is hard to argue with the power of traditional broadcast.

Even though the film was available for free – we found that the audience still wanted to book the film for community screenings – which 6 months later still continue.  We have sold over 450 screening licenses in over 20 different countries. All of these sales not only funnelled into our database but we strongly encouraged the screenings organizers to use our Eventbrite account which gave us access to the email addresses of all who signed up for the screenings.    We were able to track the results of our Facebook advertising through the sales on Eventbrite so we could target ads to screenings that needed a bit of help. (I’m not saying I love Eventbrite – but it has tools that are helpful – I am looking for a better platform for ticket sales). Finally we were able to survey the hosts and attendees which gave us important information for our ROI.  

We eventually started selling the film off the proprietary website and eventually transactionally on iTunes, Amazon etc. (We have had a very good experience with Distribber but we are going direct to Amazon through Prime Direct).  There will be a blog post coming about why it is still important to sell from your own website even if you aren’t building an email list.

Marketing – The Gate

Our marketing was a blend of outreach, social, advertising,  publicity and content.

Outreach has had their hands full servicing the core audience’s screenings for the past number of months and we are just getting able now to expand into the wider interfaith community (hence the trip to the Parliament of World Religions – one of the largest interfaith gatherings in the world). We have also attended the largest Persian conference in the US as well as the Religious News Association conference.

We have had great success with the content/social media and social advertising part of the campaign.   Based on early test screenings, we knew that most audiences wanted to learn more about the Baha’i community today, as this film is primarily focused on the history of the Baha’i. With that new information in hand, we created a cross media campaign to broaden the scope of the project.   We shot additional material and brought on a content producer and editor creating over 40 new short pieces of content for social channels.

We quickly discovered that most of our audience was on Facebook and doubled down on that platform.  While our organic reach was very strong – Facebook is now a pay for play platform that does give you incredible targeting and measurement of your campaigns.  In our first six months we reached 14 million people through our Facebook page

Our 6 month social stats were off the charts: 12 million reached through organic and paid social an additional 6 million reached through advertising, 10,000 followers on Facebook, another 1500+ on Instagram, 300,000 100% views of our short form content and over 380,000 engagements (emojis/likes/comments/shares).   I’ll be diving deeper into this data – especially the ad component in further posts.

Short Wrap Up – The Gate:

Even at the midpoint of the release (we plan to expand SVOD in late 2018 or 2019 and we have a number of other broadcast opportunities in 2019), the film has reached a huge audience and continues to do so.  The film is coming out on Cable VOD (Comcast, Direct TV and Dish) and wide to to large retailers through Passion River on DVD in November. We are just starting the educational release through Outcast.

Artist, Filmmaker, & Renowned Disney Producer Don Hahn Comes to Cal Arts

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Hard to believe we are already halfway through the first month of 2017! So much has already happened this year. I just got back from Winnipeg where it was below -10 degrees. TALK ABOUT FREEZING. Luckily, I didn’t have to leave my hotel too much and I had a fantastic time at All Access 2017 hosted by On Screen Manitoba. I not only got to give a keynote address and take part in a fantastic panel discussion, but I also got to meet with some wonderful filmmakers. That is truly one of my favorite things. There is a lot going on in Winnipeg!

Look out for some informational blog posts coming up in the next few weeks where I will be talking about the importance of planning out the marketing of your films from inception and at various stages of the process which was the subject of my keynote.

In the meantime, I want to tell you about yesterday. As many of you know, outside of being a filmmaker and a marketing and distribution consultant, I have the pleasure of teaching some courses at Cal Arts. Yesterday, we had the fantastic Disney legend, Don Hahn, join us to give a presentation on unlocking one’s creative self. If you aren’t familiar with Don, he is best known for films like Beauty and the Beast and the Lion King. One of the things I truly like about Don is that he is also an avid fan of documentaries and has made some amazing ones himself. Those include Waking Sleeping Beauty, Earth, the incredible Tyrus (which he was the EP on) and many others.

I have to say that his presentation wasn’t only a learning experience for my students, but myself as well. (And I have to say this is always the case in our Guest Artist Workshop class).

Don touched on a lot of really interesting and important topics. He talked to the students about not letting fear hold them back, about the importance of creative collaboration, and about how many artists borrow and take from each other. But there was one message that really stood out to me and I think to my students as well.

That being, there is no such time in life when we are ready. He implored us to remember that it is a terrible thing to sit around and wait to be ready. Sometimes, you have to just get out and create. Don’t worry about the rest. Just get out and create.

What do you all think about that? How many times in life have we all let the fear of failure hold us back? How many times have we said, I’m not ready yet? Don’s message is one I think people from any industry can take heed from.

Thank you very much, Don, for coming and talking to the students at Cal Arts.

And of course, if you want to learn more about Don or check out his book Brain Storm: Unleashing Your Creative Self visit his site at http://www.donhahn.com/

Keep checking back regularly. I will be posting content from Sundance Film Festival coming up!

Distribution Transparency: Four Filmmakers Give Up the Gold Pt 2

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Blog post

 

Wednesday’s post looked at Neil Berkeley and Judy Chaikin as two filmmakers who wanted to create a theatrical release for their films to boost visibility, increase ancillary value and learn for themselves how to operate in the new hybrid model of distribution and marketing. Today we will look at Paco de Onís the company Skylight he runs with with creative director Pamela Yates and editorial director Peter Kinoy and their film/media project Granito

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Distribution Transparency: Four Filmmakers Reveal Their Distribution Numbers, Part One

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Alternative distribution models are no longer the experiment, but are now the norm for the vast majority of filmmakers. However because of a variety of reasons, including not least contract obligations and a fear that exposing numbers may not show the filmmaker in the best light, many filmmakers have been reticent to give out the real numbers from their film’s releases.

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Two New Documentary Film Funds

Here are two new cool opportunities for filmmakers.

The Bertha BRITDOC Documentary Journalism Fund – for filmmakers from around the world working at the intersection of film and investigative journalism — films that break the important stories of our time, exposing injustice, bringing attention to unreported issues and cameras into regions previously unseen. £250,000 a year for 3 years is available to filmmakers as a mixture of grants and investments. Soniya Kirpalani’s We The People, about a miscarriage of justice against migrant workers in Dubai, is announced as the first production grant. Jess Search said, “This fund is urgently needed. Documentary is becoming an increasingly important medium for breaking stories which require long term investigation and the commitment to gather evidence and amplify voices. ‘We The People’ is just such a film and we are proud to be supporting it.”

The Bertha BRITDOC Connect Fund – the first outreach and engagement fund in Europe, is open to filmmakers from around the world with smart, strategic outreach campaigns that have the ability to achieve real change on a local, regional or global level. £250,0000 a year for 3 years is available in grants. Steve James’s The Interrupters is the first grantee. Rebecca Lichtenfeld said, “‘The Interrupters’ represents the best of contemporary social justice filmmaking. We believe that this film can inform and improve the lives of individuals and communities and we want to help that happen.”

Call for Entries: 2nd Annual Film Festival for Social & Environmental Change

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fans of film

Fans Of Film 2nd annual film festival for change starting Nov/01/2010 ending Nov/01/2010. This is a festival to distribution event.
ORGANIZERS: Michael Palombo and Pattie Greer

Fans Of Film wants to see the best and get 8 winning films in “documentary/narrative social and environmental films for change” that filmmakers can dish out, and we wanna distribute them… (film contract with Fans Of Film is non exclusive with 70% gross profits to the filmmaker. Learn More)