Distro and Promo Strategy Feedback

Posted by Jim Munroe – December 7, 2011

Anthony tweaks the sound at the Beehive screening room.

We had a great private screening last week with about a dozen folks, people who have worked with broadcasters or distributors or who have sold one of their movies at some point. I gave a presentation about our planned distribution and promotion strategies (you can check out a revised version here, but be warned: it’s pretty hype-laden and includes an unironic “Demographics” slide) and then got some great feedback from the assembled brains. Beyond those presented in the slides, the following additional ideas were generated.

Promotion

  • Run help wanted ads for futuristic shit jobs on LinkedIn or craigslist
  • Have a Job Fair in each city it screens in: could be run by fans who run their own booth with their idea of a futuristic shit job
  • Involve local businesses: have a panel after the screening on “new ways to make a living” featuring people who make new business models work
  • Incentify sharing the clips on Twitter: have Serina award people spam points or something
  • The name is cool — make some kind of merch, even a t-shirt, with the name
Distribution
  • digital portals: ithentic.com, mydamnchannel.com and heavy.com, Netflix and Rogers on Demand
  • Amazon might be more open than ITunes for digital download sales (ITunes requires an aggregator middleman, and costs about $1500-2000 to get content approved without going through an approved distributor)
  • Telefilm has an alternative distribution fund, and they look to fund traditional things (publicist, theatre rental) but it’s also gotta have a new twist to be appealing to them: perhaps something that allows the fan community to vote on which cities get screenings?
  • Having a “150% Canadian” CAVCO designation will make it appealing for broadcasters needing to fulfill CanCon laws.

Feel free to chime in over email or on the comments!

Also, screeners have been requested by a number of distributors/broadcasters intrigued by the trailer and one sheet (Mongrel, E1, Super Channel, TMN, Space, Itunes) and they’re going out tomorrow.

A (Robot) Baby is Born

Posted by Jim Munroe – November 30, 2011

The intro to the Baby Makers segment is up!

In other news, we are screening the FINAL FINAL cut tomorrow to a group of industry-savvy folks to get feedback on our distro and promo strategies. Regardless of where it goes from here I’m super proud of what we’ve made — it looks and sounds amazing. Congrats everyone!

First 5 Minutes

Posted by Jim Munroe – October 26, 2011

We just went live yesterday with a sneak preview clip of the first little bit of the movie. It shows the animated opening, the documentary intro and the introduction of the digital janitor. Please share!

It’s also a part of the Celtx Seeds program, where we’ve additionally posted a little quick-and-dirty interview with a couple of us (edited by Anthony). We focused on a tips/how-to approach rather than, y’know, our motivations and artistic aesthetic. Not that that’s irrelevant, but since Celtx is a scriptwriting app we figured most of the people watching would be fellow filmmakers.

Our plan, as you can see laid out at the newly refreshed ghostswithshitjobs.com (thanks Sean!), is to release short introductions each month of each of the main characters to keep the momentum from the trailer release rolling.

In November we are going to be screening it for a handful of industry-savvy people to give us some insight in packaging it for distro/broadcast/traditional sales. In January I’m being flown to Sundance (on videogame biz, not movie-related) and I’m hoping to maybe set up some meetings with distributors. Any feedback or ideas people have about this stuff is appreciated as it’s totally new territory for me!

Poster Art

Posted by Jim Munroe – October 17, 2011

Terry has mocked up a draft of the poster art for Ghosts. Of all the jobs, digital janitor seems to resonate the best, so we put that one front and centre. It will probably go through more iterations, so any feedback appreciated.

There seems to be a fair amount of international interest in the project, and to facilitate/encourage it we now have Chinese (thanks to Jen Chin’s mom) and Italian subtitles for the trailer. Do you know another language, or someone who does? Get in touch!

Also, our sound post-production supervisor is in need of work. She’s from France and due to some kind of immigration nonsense she can no longer work at her audio production job. I’ve worked with her for a year now on Ghosts, and I can say she is an extremely talented, accommodating, and always hits her deadlines. As well as doing wonders with our sound directly, with us she also managed a half-dozen or so other sound people in a respectful and effective way. Feel free to ask me for extra details or email her directly at founitchi@hotmail.fr.

Blurb Hunting

Posted by Jim Munroe – September 13, 2011

…is the worst. It’s the thing I hate most about promo — I tell myself that it’s an opportunity to contact people who’s work I admire and not just trolling for favours, but it still makes me queasy. But it’s a pretty essential part of “reading” as legit. A book or a movie without a blurb looks naked, and our little movie needs all the armour plating it can get out there. But so far as a result we’ve got some good quotes and a tweet from William Gibson.

Happily, it’s getting out there enough (75K views on YouTube) that there’s been a few media outlets who’ve already written about it. I love being able to just find quotable stuff without having to ask for it.

“Ingenious — a gripping science fictional movie that uses cleverness, not CGI, to paint a vivid and satirical future” –Cory Doctorow

“The Future of Employment Is Bleak in Ghosts with Shit Jobs” —The Atlantic

“Excellent… science fiction is not dead. It’s just moved from the cinema to the internet.” —Wired

Thanks for the feedback on our promo plan, we’re tweaking it. We’re also looking for a good screening location, somewhere central for about 10 distributor and industry types, if you have any leads.

Talking about promo, if you are in any upcoming shows or whatnot let me know and I will pass on the news when I can. For instance Jonah, who played Anton in the movie, is in a play this week — we’re going Saturday night!

50,000 People Can’t Be Wrong

Posted by Jim Munroe – September 3, 2011

So, since the last email we’ve had a ton of people check out the trailer, thanks to a post on BoingBoing and pretty active sharing on Facebook/Twitter/G+. So that’s exciting.

What’s next?

  • Mocking up a movie poster to shop around the film to distributors and broadcast markets. For this, a blurb by a famous person would help a lot: know any famous people who’d like to check out an advance copy of a smart indie sci-fi movie? Any leads appreciated!
  • Keeping on with our online presence with @humanspam2040 , +Oscar Beaumont, and figuring out offline protuberances (like the one above that Jonah designed — anyone wanna go postering?)
  • Continuing our festival submissions. Beyond the ones we’ve already submitted to (TIFF [rejected], Fantastic Fest, Toronto After Dark) we have a short list based on recommendations from fest-savvy folk: Slamdance, Tribeca, San Francisco Intl Film fest, SXSW, Cinequest Film Festival, Seattle International Film Fest, Maryland Film Festival, Rooftop Films, Sci-Fi-London, Fantasia, Sarasota Film Festival, Raindance, Vancouver Film Fest, Miami Film Festival. If you know of any great fests we’re missing let us know.
  • In October we are going to be putting the first 15 minutes or so online as a part of the Celtx Seeds thing we won. We’re considering continuing releasing 5-7 minute segments on a weekly or bi-weekly basis after that until 2/3rds of the movie is online, as there’s a logical break at the point before they all meet up and go on in-world adventures. At the end of each of these segments would be a push to a Kickstarter page where people could support our promotional campaign, and if they paid more than $15/20 they could get an advance digital download copy of the complete movie as a thank-you. However, what we’re concerned about is that festivals will disqualify us for putting so much of our movie online (even though the 1/3 finale is not) or that distributors would consider our Kickstarter campaign selling the movie (even though we’re giving it to our supporters rather than selling it). If you have an informed opinion, or know someone who does, we’d love to hear it! We’re trying to leverage the new media possibilities without entirely burning our bridges with the old media, so we realize it’s a tricky line to walk.
  • But what about the Toronto screening? I know that many of you are dying to see the movie — we’re dying to show you the movie! However, what the response to the trailer shows me is that there is a sizable audience for this movie and I’m interested in exploring the various distro and screening partner options before we do the totally independent thing. That’s going to take time, but my best estimate is that it’ll be at least another six or seven months before we do a Toronto release of it. Thanks for your patience!

Let the Promotional Onslaught Begin!

Posted by Jim Munroe – August 22, 2011

Remember when we’ve asked you to hold off on spreading the trailer around? No more! The brand new trailer is in full effect over at the new Ghosts website, complete with the seeds of social media prankery. Please point any and all of your ravenous hordes in that direction.

I did a post about it today on my site as well, which breaks the news that we got a little $2K funding bump from Celtx, the same open source screenwriting program I wrote Ghosts on. This will make the festival entry fees sting less, as well as pay for some of our hard costs as our promotional schemes roll out.

Schemes? Yes, they are many-tentacled and near-to-coalescing thanks to a lot of great conversations I’ve been having with our industry advisors and other smart cookies, and I’ll be sharing them here on our blog in the coming weeks. However, there’s still time for loopy ideas and savvy tips — comment away or just email me.

Also, perhaps of interest: the imdb page has been updated. Please let me know of any omissions or errors!

Promotional Skillshare

Posted by Jim Munroe – July 6, 2011


Big news first: post-production on Ghosts is done, minus a few audio tweaks, and we’ve already submitted it to TIFF and Fantastic Fest. Hooray!

Now begins the promotional phase, and we hope to get you involved. Similar to the skillshares in the beginning, we’re opening up the process to everyone involved.

A week today, Wed the 13th at 7pm, we’ll be meeting with Darryl Shaw — the director of another lo-fi sci-fi movie shot in Toronto called Android Re-Enactment (trailer). We’ll be brainstorming promotional ideas and distribution possibilities for both our movies, and everyone on this list is welcome to sit in and contribute.

RSVP if you’re coming and I’ll let you know the location.

Animated Opener

Posted by Jim Munroe – December 4, 2010

babymakersinaction


Terry and Dean at Beehive have been working on the opening sequence for the movie, thought I’d let you all have a sneak peak over here at the work-in-progress. Any feedback appreciated!

Post is coming along with most of the music in place, ADR sessions in progress and visual effects moving along too. (Having more VFX people involved would be a big help, though, if you know anyone.) Remember that ol’ saying about the last 10% taking 90% of the time? Some truth to that.

Trailer and Update

Posted by Jim Munroe – September 14, 2010

mooooooooooo
Amazing to think it’s been a year since the shoot!

We’ve done several test screenings with people unconnected with the film and we’re at the point where we’re really happy with the story and the reception to it. Here’s a three minute taste. Please don’t spread it around yet. Please do email me with your feedback on it, as we’re doing a revision this week.

I’m being flown out to Austin for Fantastic Fest later this month (in my alternate identity as a videogame expert) and I plan to do some advance promo for the movie. I’ve had some cards printed up (see above) and hopefully it’ll plant a few seeds for when we’re ready to launch this thing in 2011.

The real bottleneck at the moment is SFX and post audio. If you know people who’re good with After Effects and Pro Tools, feel free to send them the link to the trailer or introduce me over email. It’s deferred payment but would be good experience and exposure for the right people. Any leads on good places to recruit would be appreciated too!