I think one of the most difficult things for indie filmmakers to do is to find their audience. Or is it that it’s difficult for their audience to find them? Either way it is not an easy situation. In going through the whole process, the first thing we have to do is figure out who the film we create is for. The second thing is to figure out where to find them, or to figure out a way for them to find us. And the third and final thing is to actually make the connection with the film from us to where we have found them. And in so doing that final step we communicate to them in a meaningful way that this film just might be for them. I stress ‘just might’ because I prefer the soft sell to the hard sell, since how can I or anyone be sure it is for that particular person?
Of course, hard core sales people don’t really seem to care about that, since they just want the sale. And that is not what I am about. I dream, I create, and then I send it out into the world. Being a salesperson is not high on my list, but oftentimes we indie filmmakers are required to do just that, if we want to continue to be filmmakers. And maybe even now more than ever. Yet it does seem somewhat distasteful and seedy, but I certainly understand the pragmatism and necessity of that world.
However, in the process of doing all this it seems messages can get easily miscommunicated, misconstrued or mishandled. And to add another level of this complicated process it seems these messages still need to travel through ‘the filters’ as I call it. Or as some people say, ‘the gatekeepers.’ For filmmakers those gatekeepers are of course the distributors. And yes, most of the larger industries have them. People whose job it is to decide if a product (or service) is good enough for the people they (the distributors) have to sell to. And there is certainly ample proven logic to the working efficiency of that paradigm
The problem becomes when the gatekeepers have too much control or power over an industry, resulting in decent, good, or even great products to never get to the people who may want or need them. Indie filmmaking is a prime example of this, as ‘the people’ are discovering these little gems all the time. And oftentimes it is the niche or affinity groups that relate to the thematic content of a film that help these types of indie films to get discovered. And there is something in that process that I have discovered in the journey our film is currently on. What happens when the affinity groups you thought your film could be most tied to just don’t accept you, or maybe don’t even quite ‘get’ you?
A different kind of revelation presents itself. What if the people running these affinity groups are actually acting as gatekeepers themselves? It was something I had never actually considered.
When I wrote the screenplay for ‘Dreams Awake’ I certainly wasn’t consciously thinking about what particular group of people I was writing this film for. I just told the story, and it came out how it came out. After we shot it, we had to take a hard look at who we thought this film was for, especially if we were going to be directly responsible for distributing it. And that’s when we realized there were some large general audiences to consider, as well as some small niche audiences.
The two largest audiences we came up with were people interested in family films and films involving women leads and/or issues. These were such large groups we didn’t feel we could begin to effectively market to them right off, so we honed it down to other audiences.
Other audience tiers involved people interested in alternative spirituality, new consciousness, or freethinker types. These could still be construed as fairly large groups but at least it was easier to find them within certain affinity groups online. Because our marketing efforts have for the most part involved using available online tools and resources.
Even so, if we honed our audience down even more we could say that people interested in meditation and inner child work could also be part of our niche groupings.
And finally, we figured if there was a fan base for any one of the major cast members in the film, or anyone with an affinity for Mt. Shasta, we should consider those also. Even though these niches were certainly smaller than any of the rest.
But let’s go back to these affinity gatekeepers I was harping about, because I do now have an issue with some of them. We began our marketing efforts by going after the alternative spirituality/new consciousness audience. Some of that was directly one-to-one, with social media, email marketing and such. Another part was contacting affinity groups that had followings of people, usually congregated in websites or other online spiritual communities. What we found out and experienced was fairly astounding. Most of them were not very positive about what we were doing, and actually seemed a bit afraid and intimidated by it. They were very protective of their communities. Which on one hand I understood, but on another seemed quite odd. They basically were preventing their members, their people, an opportunity to be exposed to a different kind of so-called ‘spiritual’, ‘mystical’ or ‘metaphysical’ themed film. They, in essence, had declared themselves the gatekeepers of their communities, but the locks they kept were very tight. We even usually offered to sweeten the deal for them, such as discounts or extra stuff, etc., but it didn’t matter. How curious this was. Supposedly open, spiritual communities so closed and cloistered. Wow, what a revelation.
Luckily, we found the one-to-one experiences much more positive. By going directly to the people with our marketing efforts we have received many more positive results. (See Previous Post #1 + Previous Post #2) Lots of these people do like our film. And in fact, we have discovered that some of them belong to the same types of affinity groups we tried to work with. Guess some of them really don’t know their own people. Makes me wonder who actually makes these decisions in these groups.
Well, no matter. We will continue to go down the most positive path finding ‘the people’ one by one who might be interested in our little film. More power to The People! And you gatekeepers, you just keep guarding those gates, keeping whatever you fear and don’t understand out.
Oh, and one more thing – Support Indie Filmmakers!
JAD
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