Creating promotional material
Superb!! You have completed the editing process of your Indie movie. Now what? How can I attract people to watch it?
If you have started to think about how to promote your movie once you’ve finished editing it, you may find some unnecessary obstacles. Promotional material is planned during pre-production. This is when you allocate some funds to hire a stills photographer and/or someone who will be filming the behind-the-scenes material. Or at least someone working as a DIT, responsible for separating and labelling the rushes that will be part of your promotional material.
You can include some extra time of your cast and crew schedule in order to produce some on-set interviews. Make sure this is on your budget and on your schedule. These can be visual or textual.
Promotional material is planned in
pre-production
Usually journalists “love” to ask actors if there was something funny or memorable that occurred on set. The reality, though, is that the promotional period of your movie can be very far away from the time when it was filmed. And you cannot base your promo relying on memories. Keep it fresh!
Collect what you can on set. Be sure of documenting every single phase of pre-production and production:
Storyboards, bloopers and sustainability
1. Did you create any storyboard? Storyboards provide a foundation for the core
creative team’s visualization of the story. Some directors are famous designers of
their own scenes, like Ridley Scott. Scott has a vision for his creation, manifested in
the drawings he made himself, thinking through the scenes he wants to include to tell Napoleon’s story. Keep all you can.
2. Explore the bloopers. Nobody enjoyed your movie more than you did. Bring your
audience and the commissioners into your own filmmaking process. Unsurprisingly,
they may really want to be a part of your team. That’s the spirit.
3. Think of actions you took during pre-production that can help you sell your story: Did you think of sustainability on set? Track evidence of recycling measures your team implemented, e.g. food containers, water bottles, battery saving measures, reduced travel times, hiring local crew instead of bringing your team to a distant location. All this can be part of your promo material.
?CXCreating a Dynamic Pitch Deck
Did you know you can use Canva to create a Pitch Deck? Tribeca Film Festival is launching an online workshop called “Kickstart with Canva”.
On this course, you will be able to:
● Use Canva’s film and TV templates
● Build visual consistency with Canva’s Brand Kit
● Enhance your vision with visuals from ShotDeck and Magic Media
● Add movement and engagement with Magic Animate, video, GIFs, and audio
● Share decks with confidence using Canva’s analytics
?Add to your pitch what stands out as your style
?What is EPK?
An EPK is your press kit in an electronic form. It usually exists as a downloadable document (PDF), accompanied by your trailer and other video material.
It’s not just for press though. When set up in pre-production, your movie website can be a powerful tool for marketing, fundraising and pitching your film idea to possible collaborators.
An EPK will show:
– Teaser or trailer
– A film poster
– Synopsis (short and long)
– Format information
– Cast and crew bios
– Contact details
Be aware that much of the info created for an EPK will also be reused by your Post Production Coordinator to create metadata.
?Coordinator to create metadata.
?Designing film and marketing assets
Bring your property to life through marketing assets that authentically reflect the vision and story behind your work in a visually compelling way.
When pitching, you must be able to show visually how you will achieve what’s on paper. When producing your promo material, you must be able to show how you did it.
Share everything you’ve created seamlessly. Believe that what you’ve done reflects your best practice. And others will follow you.
Let us know what you think of those tips.
- Article written by Maysa Monção,
Film Locos Project Manager and Post Production Coordinator;
BAFTA member; Production Guild member
post.maysa@gmail.com
Read the other articles of our Film Locos Toolkit here.
