Marketing Crash Courses

It seems like every day I'm stumbling upon another website offering to spill all the secrets of selling and marketing your film. These often come at a price, but many offer specials and discounts. Here is an ever-growing list of some resources available to help you market your film. I will try and update this periodically as I see fit.

http://www.lightsfilmschool.com/blog/ - Soup-to-nuts online film school for $299. Offers classes in marketing.

http://filmspecific.com/ - an indie site with lots of free and paid information, including an e-book called the Self-Distribution Starter kit for $29. Other pricing plans are available.

http://www.shericandler.com/ - a publicist with her own blog, specializing in indie films. Free information in the form of articles and blog posts, and Sheri also available for consultation.

http://www.cineticmedia.com/index.php - "Where Art and Commerce Meet" is their motto. They also offer something called Film Buff, which can help indie filmmakers with all sorts of marketing strategies. No prices listed on the site, which usually means this can be pricey.

http://moviemavericks.com/advertising-on-moviemavericks-com/ - this site offers free advertising to indie filmmakers and perhaps a chance for a review. Or so it says - an email sent to the address was not returned.

Indiplaya.com - They just made a big announcement about new content channels at SXSW this year, but their site looks pretty weak. Keep your eyes peeled for updates.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/23/1-best-ways-customize-facebook/ - Facebook has a lot of marketing possibilities but it's hard to convert Likes into $s. However, these customizing apps may help you do just that by making a more engaging Facebook Page. Be sure to check the comments for some other cool sites not listed in the main article.

http://thinkoutsidetheboxoffice.com/ - John Reis' site is often referred to as the grandaddy of all distribution/marketing sites. His book is often listed as "must read." Alas, with any print book nowadays, the information gets stale quickly. You can buy a digital version with updates at this site.

http://www.internetmarketingforfilmmakers.com/ - This guy has a very slick website and loves to show you videos. He offers a money back guarantee, so you could check out what he has to offer and decide for yourself if it is worth it.

Stephen Moramarco guest on Not Quite There Podcast

Steve was recently a guest on this LA comedy podcast - here's a link to the show.

Not Quite There

Places to Sell/Market Your Indie Film Online

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I will try and add to this as I come across resources and will comment when I have more info.

1. Createspace.com - created by Amazon, this is the granddaddy of on-demand. You can reach a huge marketplace through Amazon. However, they charge about $4 per disc - not terrible but not great (see below).  The on-demand feature may be cool, but you have to send them a DVD which they encode from on their end, meaning you will end up with an SD streaming version instead of HD.

2. Kunaki.com - This may be the coolest, greatest thing EVER for indie filmmakers! Kunaki is a bare bones print-on-demand company that only charges $1 per DVD - that's right $1! Customers can pay with credit card OR Paypal. You design a full-color DVD sleeve AND color printed face! Here's the catch: NO customer support, except via email. You have to upload your files via PC (not Mac) to their server. If you are a Mac person like me and have mostly friends that are Mac, this is a HUGE pain in the ass! The upload kept stopping and starting and I have to babysit this thing for SEVERAL DAYS to get it finally completely uploaded. That caveat aside (PC users should have no problems) this looks like it may be the best option, at least for sales directly from your website. They even send you a free DVD for your evaluation, how cool is that?

3. Film Baby - this looks like a companion/offshoot of CD Baby. They charge $40 to get you up and running and charge $4 per DVD and have other non-exclusive distribution options. If you use Kunaki (above) that eats up about $5 of profit per DVD - again not terrible especially if your DVD can retail over $10. (Most DVDs on the site are priced in the $15 range.)

4. Flixfling - This seems to be an indie film alternative to Netflix. You can contact them about carrying your movie and they will ask you to send them a DVD.

5. Casimero - this site offers to stream your film for a monthly fee to Facebook.

6. Film Club - Just stumbled on what could be a cool way to network your movie. I'm thinking you can search for film clubs that might be interested in screening your movie.

7. Meetup.com - here's another idea: type "indie film" and your zip code and find film groups that might be interested in screening your film.

8. Withoutabox.com - This is the the behemoth that controls most of the entry process into the various film festivals in the world. Sure, you can pay $50 a pop (and up) to enter your film in Sundance et. al. but I suggest using the search engine to find fests that don't charge anything to enter.

9. Don't forget your hometown newspaper! In addition, AOL has created Patch.com - which focuses on hyper-local news for each of its many "patches." The La Mesa Patch did a great article on The Great Intervention.

10. Tubemogul.com - this site has a free service that helps you distribute videos to the many different sharing sites across the web. This can help you place preview videos on sites you never knew existed. Using the site, however, has proved pointless and frustrating, as none of its stats seem to work for me.

11. Openfilm.com - This looks very enticing! For as little as $2.95 a month you can get your site on Boxee and other TV/Web hybrid systems. I use Boxee, and if you could get a video on their service they say you are now in 11 million homes. You can turn on and off your movie as well, in case you decide later to sell the rights or whatever. Upon further investigation, I could not find an Openfilm app within Boxee. I emailed them to find out what was up and they said that some of their films are located in the the user's Movies section and that the app is "coming soon." We shall see.

Fudge Zoloft - Make Indie Film

Originally Posted on Film Courage.com: http://filmcourage.com/content/fudge-zoloftmake-indie-film

#$%^$ Zoloft – Make Indie Film! 

By Stephen Moramarco

Life is stressful – I don’t need to tell you that. Being a self-proclaimed auteur is damn hard work and it just doesn’t get easier. But instead of spending gazillions on pills and therapy, do what I did and harness all that frustration, loneliness and despair into an indie movie!

In 2008, like most of us, I was depressed. The housing and stock market misery hit me in the pocketbook, and on the personal front, a long-term relationship had ended. Creatively, I was a mess - totally uninspired and unmotivated. I began a slow downward spiral into madness - disrupted sleep, anxiety attacks, negative thought patterns. The Demon Beast of Depression had grabbed me by the jugular and would not let go.

I was placed on every anti-depressant on the market, had cognitive therapy sessions, accupuncture and devoured a steady stream of self-help books. But you know what ended up saving me? My own creativity.

Taking advice from a friend, I enrolled in something called The Pro Series at ScreenwritingU.com. This is a great little website/program that attempts to take you from concept to finished screenplay and pitch in a mere six months. It's not cheap. But I found the structure of the email-based program rewarding and invigorating, forcing me to think about marketable screenplay concepts instead of my own miserable existence.

Or - as it turned out - turn said miserable existence into my first feature film! During the brainstorming process, several threads came together in my mind, which eventually became The Great Intervention: what if my parents had tried to get me on an intervention program, only to be turned away because I wasn't "extreme" enough?

The more I turned the idea over in my head, the more I realized this would make a great indie film that would be relatively easy for me to make. I wouldn't need any expensive sets - most of it could be filmed at my house or at friends' houses and I wouldn't need any bulky lighting equipment because I was shooting "documentary-style".

I wouldn't even need a script! Well, not a traditional script, anyway. At night as I dreamed away during those first few formative days, I envisioned the film almost completely in my head. Then I sat down and wrote a 48-point outline.

The whole film would be a riff on my own life. I would star as a slightly-more-loserish version of myself, and I would tap my real father to play my father. Friends would be able to fill out most of the roles, but for the female lead who would play my romantic counterpart, I knew I needed someone special.

So I set out my search - contacting actress friends that might be appropriate for the role, but nothing clicked. One day, however, I typed "indie film los angeles" into Google and, like a vision, the picture of Karen Zumsteg and her stunning blue eyes appeared before me.

Karen Zumsteg

Karen was part of a collective called We Make Movies and had been in a 5-million-viewed YouTube video of a supposed UFO crash landing caught on tape by a couple hiking in the wilderness. When we met in person a few days after I contacted her and sent the outline, I knew that I wouldn't even need her to do a proper audition - she was perfect.

I was able to round out the cast with professional SAG actors, thanks to the SAG Ultra Low Budget contract, designed for films made under $200,000. I would only have to pay them $100 a day - quite a bargain.

Speaking of budget, I had none. Well, I did some crude mental math, and imagined that $5000 would be enough to make it work. Hearing so much about "crowd funding," I turned to the Kickstarter website.

Kickstarter allows filmmakers and other artists with a clear goal/project to recruit patrons to help fund it. The catch is you have to make your goal, or you receive nothing. This is actually a good thing, as long as the amount you are raising is not too unrealistic, because it adds to the drama that can work in your favor in the final hours of your campaign. 

And so I began beating the fundraising drum so loudly and regularly on Facebook, I risked a rash of un-friending.

But it WORKED! One hundred and eight people came together and successfully funded my project. And while the majority of the people who donated were friends or friends-of-friends, Kickstarter was very useful in legitimizing my project and helping me collect the funds. Most of us hope our fundraising campaigns will go viral, but the reality is the majority of projects are funded by people you already know.

But that is not a bad thing at all! I was heartened and impressed by how many OLD friends came out of the woodwork to donate. Several people from my childhood days on Rainey St. in La Mesa who I had gotten reaquainted with through the miracle of Social Networking donated generous sums to make this project happen.

John Ciulik, Eric Brown, Johnny Angel, Stephen Moramarco on the set aka my backyard

With money in the bank, I immediately began filming. Over the course of about two weeks in July 2010, I shot the bulk of the film using several cameras: a professional Sony HD camera, a "prosumer" Panasonic HD camera and this great little Kodak Zi-8, which is their version of the Flip, a tiny HD camera  that retails for less than $200.

For my film crew, I focused on avail-ability rather than "ability". Cleverly, I worked in to the film's premise that the filmmakers my parents hired to document the intervention were found on Craigslist, so I could make it artfully bad.

For most of the filming, I just let the cameras run without doing a lot of stopping and starting or yelling "action" and "cut." This helped keep the vérité feel I was going for. If I wasn't getting what I wanted from my actors, I would merely chime in and redirect them, knowing I could chop out all my comments during the editing and jump cut through the sequence.

When I was finally done with principal photography, I had probably 20 hours of raw footage on my hard drive. But I was prepared. Years of editing wedding videos had trained me to work quickly and have a good eye for useable footage. Mentally, I broke down my film into Five Acts,  just like a classical play. Act One would be the shortest - the first five minutes of the movie - but the rest of the Acts would play about 21 minutes each.

Karen Tarleton did a "mother approved" job of playing my real mother Sheila

With guidance from friends, and after a screening for cast and crew, I was able to whittle it down to 90 minutes - the perfect length, I feel, for any comedy. I am very proud of it.

After years of banging my head against the wall, trying to come up with some crazy off-the-wall screenplay idea, I finally took the old advice "write what you know" to heart  - and it worked.

The Great Intervention is now making the festival rounds, but YOU can buy your very own copy of the film for just $5.99!

 Just follow this link: http://tinyurl.com/GreatInterventionDVD

Check out the trailer at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLfKOsSOND8

Want even more fun? Check out  greatintervention.info - the meme related to the film!

Stephen Moramarco is a writer/actor/director/musician and now a filmmaker. He lives in Lincoln Heights, CA.

Five Quick Steps to Greenlighting Your Own Indie Film

Hello everyone - I have decided to expand the scope of this blog beyond blatant promotion of my indie film The Great Intervention. I hope it also serves as inspiration/information for other aspiring filmmmakers to follow their dream and create an indie film with no budget.

That said, here is my first post for all you aspiring filmmakers, lovingly entitled "5 Quick Steps to Greenlighting Your Own Indie Film"

1. Come up with your idea. Okay, this is the only part of the step I cannot specifically help you with; however, I can help you get inspired. First of all, let me suggest: write what you know. Additionally, consider taking ScreenwritingU.com's Pro Series. True, the full series is upwards of $500, but this six-month online course takes you (at least in theory) from concept to pitch. The first part of the series is especially good, as it forces you to create literally hundreds of screenplay ideas using a simple formula. This is where I got the seed of the idea for The Great Intervention. If you can't afford the full course, keep an eye on their stand-alone courses that may inspire you and are considerably cheaper.

2. Register your idea/script with the Writer's Guild of America, or if you're East of the Mississippi, The Writer's Guild, East. For about $25, this will protect your idea from theft. In theory, if you are producing and shooting the movie yourself, the creation of the movie itself will be your copyright. However, if your shoot date is a ways off, this will establish a registration date for 5 years.

3. Go to SAGIndie and fill out the Ultra Low Budget Application. One of the most important things for any film, of course, is excellent acting. Thankfully, the Screeen Actor's Guild has made it easier than ever for professionals to work on your production. If your budget is under $200,000 (and if you're reading this blog, it surely is) you can hire SAG actors for $100 a day with this contract. There is a little bit of paperwork to fill out, so it's important you start this procedure at least THREE WEEKS before shooting begins. The SAGindie site contains a ton of information and you can also post your casting notice on it for free.

4. Get production insurance. For a long time, this was the biggest stumbling block to getting your shoot Guild compliant: finding short term insurance at an affordable price. When I did my first SAG film Left for Dead in Malaysia way back in 2004, this was a huge challenge. SAG couldn't even legally point me in the right direction. I ended up buying secondhand coverage through a producer whose credits included Nudist Colony of the Dead. It was stressful, as the guy waited until the last possible minute to fax SAG the correct paperwork. Thankfully, nowadays short-term insurance is easy to find, with links even on the SAGindie page. I ended up going with Supple-Merril & Driscoll who have a quick and easy online form and can return a quote quickly. My 10 day shoot cost me a mere $600. And not only will getting the proper insurance put you in the good graces of SAG but it may help you in securing any locations you might need. One indie production I worked on was able to secure a supermarket for free precisely because they had this insurance. NOTE: do NOT get Worker's Comp through them - see below.

5. Hire a payroll company. Finally, you're going to need a payroll company to make the whole package complete. For a very small fee, ABS Payroll in Burbank can not only handle all of your pay to your SAG actors, as well as doing all the pain-in-the-ass paperwork and contributions to Pension & Health, BUT it can also give you Worker's Comp coverage for a fraction of the stand-alone price, saving you thousands of dollars.

Follow these steps and you will be on your way to production of your Indie Film!

Ways to Help The Great Intervention

Hi Everyone -

I'm diligently working away trying to get the word out about my film The Great Intervention and thought I'd pass on a few ways you can easily help.

Visit the NEW meme! I've revamped http://greatintervention.info making it much more interactive and fun. Please take a look around and dive deep. Feel free to comment and interact!

"Like" The Great Intervention Facebook Page - this is a great way for me to build awareness.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Great-Intervention/127288170646153

Rate and review The Great Intervention on IMDB! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1795674/combined

I've been reading that this is a great way to build buzz and interest in the film. Those of you that  have seen the film, please give your review!

Most of my premium donors received a copy of the DVD and a t-shirt - please post a pic of you wearing your shirt in the forum!

http://the-great-forum.995294.n3.nabble.com/

I've also created dozens of fun gifts relating to the movie - visit my Zazzle store!
www.zazzle.com/smoramarco

In, addition, I am working on making a special "Festival Edition" DVD which will be for sale online soon. Details coming...

My $10 and-up backers, I have not forgotten about you - I will be sending you access to a private streaming version soon...!

Steve

La Mesa Patch Article on The Great Intervention!

TOWN PULSE

By Genevieve Suzuki | Email the author | January 21, 2011

THE NEIGHBORHOOD FILES

Next Great Filmmaker? Mockumentary Helps Helix Grad Kick Depression

Stephen Moramarco found himself—and inspiration—after hitting a lower point in his life. "Intervention" Movie being shopped around the festivals.

You heard it here first: The Great Intervention. 

OK, you didn’t really hear it here first. La Mesa-based writer David Moye dropped it on AOL News before us, but thanks to Moye’s savvy find, the name “Stephen Moramarco” no longer belongs to a stranger.

Moramarco is a filmmaker—a 1985 Helix High School graduate—who grew up in La Mesa before moving to Los Angeles to attend UCLA film school, where he made a lot of friends, such as classmate Jack Black. Those kinds of connections led him to work with Black on School of Rock as well as becoming an associate producer on Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny.

Since then, however, Moramarco's work and personal life took a downturn. Two years ago, auditions dried up, his mortgage was sinking him, and his girlfriend dug out. After struggling with depression, Moramarco decided to use the darkness for inspiration. His film,The Great Intervention, is a mockumentary that revolves around the unfortunate Steve Moramarco—yup, the film is a mockup of his life—and the intervention staged by friends and family who purportedly care.

In the film, even though Moramarco’s parents—his father is played by his real-life dad, Fred Moramarco—believe him to be the perfect candidate for a reality show-based intervention, they're told he isn't in bad enough shape for prime time. In an effort to show those producers the error of their rejection, his parents hire a film crew through Craigslist to follow and record their screw-up son.

In real life, Moramarco said it was even simpler than that when it came to filming; it came down to whoever was available to help him. “It was like, ‘Who’s free this afternoon? Will you just hold this camera and point it at me?’ ”

Moramarco used friends to help him stay within his very limited budget of $5,000. He jokes about how certain raw qualities of the footage play into the film. “It purposely looks bad,” he said. “I just went with the bad.”

The film's main character is best described as a man-child. “He still hasn’t grasped the reality that he’s not going to make it as a rock musician or actor,” Moramarco said. “It’s universal—he's someone we all know and love who still hasn’t grown up.”

The good news is the real Moramarco is a little more Zen than the rather clueless Steve in The Great Intervention. Reading Buddhist text The Truth of Suffering helped him realize most of his misery was internal. “It’s how you perceive it and how you let it affect you,” he said.

Although Moramarco is only beginning to shop the film around to festivals, Town Pulse can tell you the film is nothing short of hilarious. And his alma mater, Helix High, gets more than a little mention in it.

“The vibe from people who have seen it has been quite good—very supportive,” Moramarco said.

Stay tuned, La Mesa. We get the feeling this isn’t the last we’ve seen of a rather Great filmmaker.