How Not to Promote Your Movie

Like any movie maker, it is important to me to have people see, and hopefully enjoy, my movies. How do I get people to watch my movies?

I find it very difficult to promote my movies. Partly it is because I don't feel comfortable promoting myself, and partly that I just don't know how. I've read many blogs and articles, but I still haven't found something that works for me.

They say that the best way to promote your work is to produce high quality and unique movies. Even if you do, it is still hard to get people to watch. Another twist to keep in mind is that, no matter how good your work, not everyone will like your work, so you need to reach the people who will like your work.

There are many "tricks" that people use to attract interest, and it is easy to be tempted to use them.

Search Engine Optimization

It seems like you find people who push SEO everywhere. This can be done in a positive way, since there will always be people who want to find what you have on offer. All too often though, it can be just a bunch of tricks to get people to visit your site.

Time and again I've visited sites that seem to promise something that interests me, only to find it isn't what I wanted. I get quite annoyed when that happens. I often see people in comment sections expressing their anger at this kind of thing. I must admit I used a similar approach with my movie Who Shot the President.

Another problem with this approach is that it is self defeating in the long run. For long term success as a movie maker you need to develop a fan base. When you turn people off you've lost them forever.

Get More Followers

Many people believe that you need to build up the number of people who follow you on Twitter and other websites. You can even buy followers. Even when they don't buy followers,  some people resort to various tricks to get others to follow them. One that particularly annoys me who follow me, then when I follow back, they thank me and then un-follow me.

It was my practice to follow people who followed me, but I now doubt that this is a wise approach. I follow far too many people to really follow what they post, so why follow them. On the other side, what is the value of followers who never see your posts? When I checked this morning I had 1,543 followers on Twitter. I doubt that even a tenth of them have ever noticed any of my posts.

One good follower who supports you is better than a 100 that never even see your posts.

Face Book Pages

Face Book pages are supposed to be a good way to keep in touch with follows. With recent changes to Face Book, that has become more difficult. Even before the changes, if someone didn't click on your posts on their feed, Face Book would not put them on their feed anymore.

Once you're no longer on people's feeds, it is very hard to get back on. Many people are angry at Face Book for this change. I wouldn't say I was angry, but I am disappointed that people who said they want to know what I'm up to are cut off so easily. On the other hand, is there anything I can do to get people to interact with my page more, so they continue to get my posts?

Rules to Follow

I have started to adopt some rules that I think will work for me.

Don't Annoy People - Do not do anything that would annoy me if someone did it to me.

Don't Look for Followers, Look for A Follower - Build up your followers one at a time. It is the quality of follower that you need to focus on, not the quantity.

Don't Lash Out at Criticism - A nasty response can drive people away. A more constructive response can draw people in. This has been a challenge for me.

I am sure that there are many more that will help me, and fit in with my approach to life.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

A Look Back at 2012

At the start of 2012, I did a post about My Goals for 2012. Before I do the same for 2013, I wanted to look at how I did last year.

Make Better Use of My Time

Well, I don’t think I did very well with this. I got some projects done, but I didn’t get as much done as I could have. I have an excuse for the first couple of months: I slipped on some ice and cracked a bone in my arm and a rib. That slowed me down for a while.

I said I would set deadlines, but didn’t. I did shift my focus from short quick projects to longer projects. I got several started, but some of them are not finished yet, so I look less productive than I was.

I read more this year. Forty-four books in total. That took up my time, but Pierre Berton’s advice is “read, read, read, write, write, write, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite”, so it wasn’t time wasted.

Contingency

I completed Contingency and got it into the Hundred Dollar Film Festival. It won the best of Alberta award. That was very gratifying.

Somedays . . .

I wasn’t happy with the version I finished earlier in the year, so I pulled it out of the Hundred Dollar Film Festival. I reshot it later in the year. The new version was much better, so, if it gets accepted, it will be ready for next years festival.

My Most Difficult Case

I set a deadline of April 1 for this project. I didn’t do anything on in 2012. Next year. For sure. Really. I mean it this time.

The Crying Lady

I planned to use Xtranormal to turn the short story into a film. I never started on it, but I did use Xtranormal to make Make ’ em Squirm: The Sharkbiter Way. I found that a valuable step toward a longer project.

Transportation Planning Story (Novelette)

I wanted to write a novelette based on one or another of my transportation stories. I made some more notes about ideas and developed the story a bit, but didn’t get to any actual writing.

I did start three stories I hope will develop into novelettes. I based Bright Freedom on one of the feature scripts I wrote in 2011. I got a first draft done, which was mostly a direct conversion of the script into prose form. I cut out some material and added some as well. I restructured it a bit. I left it for a while to work on other projects before I did a second draft. It is still on hold. The first draft came in at 17,400 words.

I worked on two other novelettes. Both were science fiction stories. Felix is about an expedition to Mars to search for a lost robot rover. The idea came from an H. P. Lovecraft story. I have about half of the first draft done. It looks like done the first draft will be less than 8,000 words.

Heat Wave is the story of a scientist who runs into resistance to his research. I met a researcher several years ago who told me about their experiences, which gave me the idea for the story. The story also incorporates some of my own experiences. It looks like it will end up about 10,000 words.

I did some research into the market for science fiction stories. It looks like there are quite a large number of magazines that publish science fiction. Some don’t pay very much.

One magazine has a long list of clichéd stories they won’t publish. Unfortunately, Heat Wave is similar to one they list. I could fix that with a different ending, but the ending was the point of the story. I plan to finish the story the way I planned, and then see how people react to it.

I wrote a shorter science fiction story, Pete’s Plan, which I submitted to a couple of the magazines. Both rejected it, but there are many more to try yet. I rewrote it after the first rejection, and I plan another rewrite before I resubmit it to another magazine.

The Unexpected

Several of my projects this year were not planned. That included Make ’ em Squirm: The Sharkbiter Way, as well as the short stories and novelettes I worked on.

Blog

My 2012 goal was to post at least one blog post a week. I did 58 posts. I did miss a couple weeks because of my accident. I didn’t had as many visits to my blog in 2012, but that may be partly due to changes in the way visits were counted.

My Goals for 2012

Next week, after New Years Day, I’ll do a new set of goals for 2013.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

A Look Back at 2011

At the start of 2011 I did a post about My Goals for 2011. Before I do the same for 2012, I wanted to look at how I did last year.

Feature Scripts

A year ago I decided that one goal in 2011 I would rewrite the three scripts I did in 2010 and write two new scripts. I didn’t do that. Early on I decided that I would write some “longer” short stories to practice writing for a longer format. I did start to convert a couple of my short stories, The Abattoir Project and The Crying Woman, into scripts.

My First Feature

I didn’t set a goal to start a feature this year and I didn’t make one.

Short Films

I set a goal to complete a short film in 2011. I did better with this goal. I completed two shorts for the $100 Film Festival. It is the 20th annual festival and the organizer asked me if I could do a film. I shot both on 16mm. I still need to do a little more work on them before they are ready to screen. The festival runs in early March, so need to get that done early in the year.

I wanted to finish My Most Difficult Case and submit it for distribution. At first I made progress, but then a person I hired to help took my money and didn’t do the work. I sued him in small claims court. I got some of the money back, but all distracted me from the film. Patrick Aull gave me some good advice that will help me get it done.

I did a sound track for Extra Special Care and put it on my website.

Short Stories

My goal for 2011 was to complete three short stories I had started in 2010, and if that turned out well, I would try to do enough to publish another book. I published five stories:

The Abattoir Project: A Ken Walker Adventure,

The Glencoe Project,

The Gladstone Barrier,

The Crying Woman and

Book Review: Sharkbiter - The Secret to Success.

The Glencoe Project and The Gladstone Barrier were part of a larger project idea to do a book or movie about transportation planning. I hoped that it would be easier because I had 30 years experience in the field. It proved to be more of a challenge than I expected. I’ve put it on hold for a short time so I could work on other projects.

I stopped posting my short stories on Triond and Wikinut. I decided that in the long run I would be better off with them on my own site.

Articles

I published 13 articles this year on Triond, 11 articles on Bukisa and 8 articles on Wikinut. That is more than I planned to do. Actually, I didn’t plan to write any. I didn’t make much money. I did better early in the year, but then views dropped off later.

Part way through the year I decided not to post to Wikinut anymore. I get a lot of people who read my posts there, but it doesn’t pay very well. I feel that posting there just undercuts views on my other pages. I haven’t posted much to Bukisa recently. I intended to report reworked versions of some of my blog posts, but never got around to it.

Blog

My 2011 goal was the same as 2010, to post at least one blog a week. This will be blog post number 78. I would like to have more people read my blog.

Writing Skills

Several people had suggested that I work on my characterisation and dialogue, so I made that a goal for 2011. I did some reading on the subject and did some exercises. I think I improved my dialog a bit.

Website and Promotion

I’ve done made some changes to my website. I enjoy the work on my website, but I don’t think it helps draw people to the site.

My Goals for 2012

Next week, after New Years Day, I’ll do a new set of goals for 2012. The results this year were mixed, but I still felt it was worthwhile to set the goals.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog