Category Archives: Movieset

toiled as Director of Fan Communities for a “behind the scenes” type film production and promotion property – grew community and traffic exponentially with creative campaigns and vidcast series

Lists + Awards + Profiles, Movieset

Media: Fan-centric filming (MovieSet) / Vancouver Sun, June 10, 2009

Dave Olson, Director of Fan Communities
Dave Olson (me :)) holds section of Vancouver Sun newspaper with article by Gillian Shaw which he wrangled / interviewed about an erstwhile online movie promotion which community – Photo by Quinn Bender

Gillian Shaw of the Vancouver Sun newspaper shared the MovieSet story with her readers in an article called “Online and on the set” on June 9, 2009.

The article ran as a full page on the Entertainment section and you can explore two versions online in both the Technology and Entertainment sections. The print edition includes a screenshot of the Behind the Scenes vidcast show with Shaun and Eric, while the online version features a video with Director of Fan Communities Dave Olson giving a tour of MovieSet.com (including Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus).

The article kicks off by asking: Care to wander onto the set of a movie shoot, chat with the actors, see the inside story on the stunts?

Well, do you?

{snip}

The article quotes the erstwhile leader of the “social media renegades,” Dave Olson, who relates the focus on fan participation as the key to traffic growth and enthusiasm for the site, using our recent Death Warrior campaign as an example (links/snippets added):

“It empowers fans to go out and evangelize and start the conversation,” said Olson, who became director of fan communities for Movieset in January, after successful stints at a number of Vancouver digital companies including Raincity Studios where he curated an award-winning blog and helped launch Phones for Fearless, a campaign to support eastside artists and residents.

“The movie business has been slow to come to this style of marketing,” said Olson. “It is bubbling up from the grass roots.”

Movieset.com is a boon for indie films and it’s attracting attention from larger studios.

For small very specialized films, such as Death Warrior, a mixed martial arts film that included livestream video among its offerings for fans, Movieset allowed it to find a core audience that shared a passion for the action film.

“We found out where fans of that genre hang out, we communicated with them in their language and we invited them to take part,” said Olson. “We even gave away the bloody sweatshirt that Georges St-Pierre was killed in to a fan at the end of it.”

Finally, Ms. Shaw’s article outlines some of the other tactics we’ve used to bring movie fans behind the scenes and a call to action for movie makers of all kinds ~ from indies to majors ~ to hop aboard the MovieSet cluetrain:

“The site’s front page is refreshed daily and we’re outreaching to fans through Twitter, a Facebook trivia application and a behind-the-scenes vid cast,” said Olson.

While it still goes against the grain to loosen their grip on content, traditional studios are stepping aboard.

“Studios one by one are starting to realize there is some value here,” said Olson. “They see it is a conversation that is going on and it will go on without them.

“They are saying ‘we should start to participate whether we want to or not.’”

Related:

Dave Olson gives a tour of MovieSet.com

Riff:

Indeed, there are now excellent examples which demonstrate the power of MovieSet’s two-headed monster. Cast and Crew members are employing our tools to streamline their daily workflow, they deliver content directly to their movies page including still photos, videos, news, or blog posts.

Once uploaded, the rich content gives the social media conversationalists an opportunity to reach out to an engaged community of fans interested in the film. Fans then become active contributors by following, supporting and commenting throughout each phase of production. And so on, and so on …

Read the full article: Online and on the set [archived link] by Gillian Shaw (@gillianshaw on Twitter) in the Vancouver Sun, June 9, 2009 –

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Online and on the set Attached as .pdf

Note: Cross posted from: Vancouver Sun Article helps spread the fan-centric MovieSet Vision

See Also: Movieset in Vancouver Sun + Video interview

Media: Fan-centric filming (MovieSet) / Vancouver Sun, June 10, 2009 by Gillian Shaw

 

Movieset, Social / Startup / Cmty

Social Promotion for Movies guidebook – White paper for filmmakers

1 Comment

My final act for my MovieSet.com was writing and presenting a white-paper-like guide, laden with tips, tricks and best practices for filmmakers to build audience for their movie during production – especially tuned for those filmmakers working outside of the studio system producing movies in the 1-10 million budget range. I suppose the learning began when making documentary film HempenRoad on shoestring budget back in 1996-7 and continued helping films like The Irishman, Daydream Nation and many others spread the word while working as Director of Fan Communities.

This report lives on the Dailies blog but is designed to be shared and passed along. With this in mind, here is the Social Promotion for Movies guidebook (you can download the .pdf on Slideshare) plus the slides from the presentation (pardons for a few formatting anomalies – as such, not downloadable).

While some of the content is specific MovieSet’s production tools and movies marketing in general, most of the knowledge contained within can be applied to other products or projects you are promoting using social media and search marketing – plus all tools mentioned are free or cheap. So excuse the marketing sales stuff and you should gather a few juicy bits outta this guide. Happy to hear your comments however this is likely a final iteration as my time at the company is finished.

After the jump … Continue reading Social Promotion for Movies guidebook – White paper for filmmakers →

Movieset

Notes for Promoting Movies Online

Participation

Activities

  • Building the story
  • Inviting to engage

Tip: Really social media like hosting a party without the cleanup. To play a good host, you should provide a comfortable environment, interesting topics to discuss and make sure

Benefits

Conversations
Evangelists
Identified audience

A note about Google-juice

Results

Festivals, distributors
Buzz – bring your own audience

Planning

Like any successful endeavor, your promotional campaign will be more enjoyable to execute with more success with some planning.

Start with analyzing objectives – each project varies somewhat, but, in general your production promotional campaign is designed to:

  1. Create awareness with potential audience to build excitement about the film
  2. Generate interest from festivals and distributors by engaging audience
  3. Create archive of documentary material to tell the film’s back-story

Producing Promo Content

Tip: Look for shooting days with lots of action and visual interest, i.e.: choose stunt scenes, action sequences, or lots of extras rather than dialog-heavy scenes

Tip: Purchase a couple of FlipHD camera (less than $200) for casual video blogging by cast/crew – let them have fun with it

Outreach

Once the videos, photo, articles and news are live, it’s time to let people know and invite them to engage.

For starters:

  1. Twitter updates – Set up an account to provide micro-updates to captures your brand name and “back channel” info
  2. Build links – Add links to your MovieSet Sitelet from IMDB, Wikipedia, studio page, Facebook page etc.
  3. Submit socially – Contribute interesting articles or videos to Digg, Stumble Upon, Delicious for the public to review, rate, share

Here are a few more tactics:

  1. Invite friends to become “Fans” of the movie – and comment – on Sitelet
  2. Comment on blog posts discussing the movie
  3. Create video blogs answering fan questions
  4. Provide ways for audience to promote to friends
  5. Set up a Facebook page – Note: MovieSet integrates seamlessly with FB

Optimizing Content

Stills – Standard promotional stills are good but also candid behind-the-scenes shots of cast and crew at work and conceptual art are fantastic

Tip: Be sure to take the time to label with images with a specific title and a detailed description – this is nice to people and great for search engines

Video – Both casual, unedited video blogs and/or more polished featurettes are both highly desired for movie fans & archival use – find unusual stories and unlikely characters

Tip: Set up a space on set where cast/crew can sit down for a comfortable 5 minute conversation when they have time between shots – find unusual stories and unlikely characters.

Blog – Think of the blog as a production journal or scrapbook – blog articles use text narrative to
provide story context to stills and videos

Tips:

  • Break it up – Use block quotes for long quotations  and subheadings to organize long stories
  • Specific headlines – Write descriptive titles including people’s name – a spicy adjective helps too
  • Tags, you’re it – Include names of actors, including misspelling, plus film jargon like actor, director, adventure, love scene – whatever is applicable.

Links – Point fans to other resources about your movie like IMDB, Wikipedia, studio, production company, distributors, cast personal blogs … it’s up to you

Tip: Acknowledge bloggers who promote your movie with a link back from links or in a blog post – build enthusiasm to evangelize

Resources

Notes for Cinema Enthusiasts blog – Miscellania about using social media to promote movies and culture

IndieAGoGo – Raise money and find collaborators

Without a Box – Submit to festivals

MovieSet.com – Free promotional Sitelet (like indie, optimized EPK storage)

Toolbox

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • MySpace
  • YouTube
  • Flickr
  • IMDB
  • Wikipedia
  • Google Alerts
  • Tubemogul

Glossary

  • Google Juice
  • Web 2.0
  • Social media
  • Social networking
  • SEO/SEM
  • Blogs, Vlogs, Podcasts
  • Web apps
  • RSS
  • Blogs
  • Video-blogs
  • Podcasts
Movieset

Breaking the Trailer Park Boys – Step 1, bribe with liquor money

Social Media dude Jess Sloss breaks down a blogger outreach campaign launched to drum up attn for a Trailer Park Boys contest to promote a new movie and release of TV series on DVD.

Check the whole “mini case study” at: 3 Tips for Buying Social Media Attention by Jess Sloss on  June 26, 2009.

First, he outlines the gist of the outreach tactics, saying:

The long and short of it is this, they will give me $50, as long as I plop that banner you see in the side bar and send out a tweet.

There’s more too it though. Here’s how they outlined the offer:

The MovieSet gang lifted 4 bags full of Trailer Park Boys DVDs but we can’t hold onto the stash so are giving the booty away with a sweepstakes. We gotta let all of Sunnyvale know about the goods so we’re offering you a bribe to spread the rumors.

Whatcha get:

1. Bottle of Ray’s liquor – $20

2. Bag of Nova Scotia’s finest – $20

3. Kitty – free + $10 for shots

Then comes the money shot:

We’ve done enough law breaking to know we can’t just mail all this contraband so instead we’ll send you a cheque for $50. You gotta be in USA or Canada to get the payola and be invited by MovieSet.com specifically. No hanger-ons and groupies.

Then, he outlines the reasons he bought into the pitch:

1) Money isn’t the value proposition
2) The story is more than the sum of it’s parts
3) Humor goes a long way

And wraps up by distilling a few tips (which i heartily endorse):

a) Tell a Story
b) Answer the “why” Question
c) Be Real

Be sure to follow @thattallguy on Twitter – he doesn’t miss a thing!

Consider a Digg: 3 Tips for Buying Social Media Attention