Advertising your short

You've lost all touch with humanity due to being locked in the editing bay for 18 hours a day. You can't remember the difference between scene 2 and scene 22 anymore. This strange daylight phenomenon happening outside is confusing to you. Congratulations! You are now finished editing your short film! Sit back, relax, take a deep breath...deeper... a little more... Ok. Good. Now, let it out and GET STARTED PROMOTING YOUR MOVIE!

As many times as you may hear this, it's true. Finishing your short film is only half the work. Now comes the hard part. Convincing people to see your movie and yes, maybe even paying to do so. At last check there were about 10,000 short films made in 2006. How do I know that number? I don't. I made it up, but for the sake of this post, we will assume it's accurate. So, you have a 1/10,000th stake in the short film community . How do you let the masses know about your latest opus? Well, if you are age 27 and under like most short filmmakers seem to be, you are probably quite familiar with this inter-web-net thing. (Heck, you're already somewhat Internet savvy if you managed to find this blog.)

How can you make the Internet work for you? Easy! There's several ways of advertising on the Internet and some don't even cost you any money. We'll start off cheaply. Start a blog/myspace/chain-letter. (Maybe not the chain-letter). Blogging about your film serves many functions.

1. It generates awareness of not only your movie, but it also shows everyone that real people made the movie. It's not just some faceless product out there floating around on the Internet. Adding a human element to your project can make it that much more interesting.
2. You can update the blog about the film festivals your film has been accepted to. This can be useful in bringing more people to your festival screenings. (The Internet is worldwide after all.)
   
3. On your blog, you can post helpful articles and how-to's regarding filmmaking. If you do these on a weekly-ish basis, people will keep returning to the blog (and in the process they will be more interested in the progress of your movie).

Another free method of advertising is to find an online message board (preferably one that relates to movie making, or at least the topic of your movie) and tell their users about it. Now, this can be difficult to pull off without sounding like a spam post. The best way to do it is sign up about a month or two in advance of when you'd like to announce your movie. In that time, check on the board, post as you see fit, and try to fit in. Then, after you've been accepted into their tribe, casually mention your new movie. If the board is a supportive and nurturing type, the users will inquire further and you can start a dialog. If your post is deleted as spam, accept it and move on with your life.

The next Internet marketing technique is, duh, start a website. In this modern day, a short film without a website is like a... something without a something else. You don't need anything flashy (in fact, the less Flash, the better), a simple one page site is fine. Have your movie's main image on the site, along with a synopsis, some credits, and an email to contact the director. You can get as in depth with your website as you like, but I believe that simplicity is key. This website will at least make your presence known online and give people an opportunity to contact you about it.

Moving up in price, we reach banner ads. Now, I am presently paying for several banner ads on a variety of targeted websites. Having said that, I believe that most banner ads do almost NO GOOD in terms of getting people to purchase your DVD (if you are doing a self-distribution thing). My website's server tells me where the visitors were referred from and less than .5% came to the site as a result of the banner ads. That's not to say that online banner ads don't serve a purpose. They certianly do. They help generate awareness of your movie and can make people feel more comfortable with it down the line. Imagine if you had seen this ad on several sites over the course of a few months.


Then, you happen to find yourself at a film festival and you see that lo and behold, Flip is playing. You'll put two and two together and very likely go and see that movie you'd been "hearing about" for the last few months. In that situation, the user never even clicked the ad but it still served a purpose. And this is why I still buy banner ad space. I believe it can benefit the movie in the long run by getting people to become familiar with the title.

So, where do you buy your banner ad space? Well, consider your target demographic. For my movie, I listed all the possible people who could benefit from watching Flip. I narrowed it down to the following: Filmmakers, Men ages 17-30 and Women ages 25-40. Of course, the ages are somewhat arbitrary, but just listing "Men" or "Women" as demographics is a little... broad. Finding a place to post the banner ad to attract filmmakers was easy. My favorite message board, DVXuser was my first stop. Getting a banner ad there for a month cost me about $300, which I was happy to pay because it was not only a perfect demographic, but I felt good finally giving back to a site that had provided me with so much free information in the past. Another site I have ads running on is Filmthreat. Filmthreat fits all my demographics so it was a real no brainer. Best of all, they are very supportive of independent filmmakers and they will work with you to maximize your advertising budget.

Speaking of the Filmthreat ad campaign, I'd like to point out another form of advertising. Video! I know, it seems so obvious, but many filmmakers completely ignore this aspect of online advertising. If you already made a movie, you clearly posses the skills to cut a trailer for it. Go make a 30 second trailer and post a link to it anywhere you can. (Specifiably, your website/blog/myspace). This can be the most influential factor in terms of getting people interested in your movie, so take your time and make it a good trailer. And, while you're at it, go out shoot some original video content using the characters from the movie. You can use these to pique people's interest in the movie as well. For a better example of what I'm talking about, you can view a PSA (public service announcement) type clip we shot for Flip to be aired on Filmthreat in January.
Flip - Aldo's PSA (Give it a minute to load).

These ads are intended to familiarize people with the characters and hopefully get them to visit the website. As an added bonus, they were a chance to get together with the same cast and crew from the movie, which is always fun.

Well, those are just a few of the traditional ways of advertising online. If you really are a filmmaker, you should be creative enough to figure out some more original ways to get your name out there.