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Truly Free Film

Brand? Oh…

As the democratization of film has made it possible for just about anyone to make a film, it has conversely made it more difficult for the individual filmmaker and his or her films to stand out. Online content platforms now offer a hundred times more films in their catalogs then the films cataloged by IMDb from the inception of film (1,764,727 titles as of 14 Jan 2011). So despite assertions to the contrary, branding is more important than ever.

Brand IdentityFilmmakers Are Brands, Their Films Are Products Though difficult for some in a creative pursuit to accept, in the words of Moonstruck (1987): “Snap out of it!” The music world has brands Madonna Louise Ciccone and Joanne Angelina Germanotta, known by their much more memorable brand names, Madonna and Lady Gaga.

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Truly Free Film

The WASTELANDER PANDA Saga! Part 4. Production: Keeping our Audience Engaged

by Kirsty Stark (Producer), Ella Macintyre (PMD) and Victoria Cocks (Writer/Director)

Part 4. Production: Keeping our Audience Engaged

Once we had our project funded, we needed to find a way to keep our audience engaged over the year it took to write, produce and release our three Wastelander Panda films.

When we released our Prologue, it was nothing more than a three-minute film, so all of the traffic we gained was directed back to our production company, Epic Films, via our website and Facebook page.  This was far from ideal, especially considering that the company’s two other short films, L’Artiste! and Landscape Scene, were very different in tone and subject matter.  We needed to separate our Wastelander Panda branding in order to give it the best possible chance of succeeding online long-term, so our first step after funding the project was to create a new Wastelander Panda website (at this stage a WordPress blog), Facebook page and Twitter account.

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It turned out to be much more difficult than anticipated to migrate all of our fans over to the new pages.  This taught us a great lesson

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Truly Free Film

Is There A Possibility For Brand & Content Collaboration?

Can we move beyond product placement for a collaboration between those that fund the production and those that create stories?  Can it be done without compromising the integrity of the work.  Steve Wax and I wrote a blog discussion about this last year and I recently stumbled across this video of Steve and I.

 

 

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Truly Free Film

“Music, Film, and Branding”

guest post by Brian Godshall

I know how important music can be to your projects.I wanted to point out some new developments in the music business that may prove advantageous for any upcoming media you are producing. You may already be aware of some of these and some may be new to you. I hope this information is helpful. After you’ve taken a look at this, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

1. Putting brands together with music and indie films I have been working on some ideas and connections to put together a brand or brands with music and indie films. Specifically I am proposing that an advertiser can pay for some or all of the music rights in an indie film in exchange for co-promotional opportunities. If you have questions or are interested in this concept, please contact me directly.