Hey guys, it's been a few months since my last post. But I thought I'd update y'all as I've just wrapped up my 2nd Festival Screening. Last week we nearly sold out a 320-plus seat theater on a Wednesday night screening for a micro-budget regional indie film nobody had heard of.
Not Sundance. Not SXSW. Not a celebrity premiere.
Just a scrappy self-funded indie film I made called PARTY USA playing at the Atlanta Film Festival. Admittedly about 1/3 of those were friends/family, but the rest were people I had never met. So… Here’s everything I learned trying to convince strangers to leave their homes and buy a ticket to an unknown movie at a regional film festival.
Film festivals are overflowing with movies. Hundreds of titles, dozens of screenings, all competing for the same audience. So how does an unknown independent film actually get people to notice it?
Because we’ve all seen it happen: an exciting film premieres at a festival, gets a few strong reactions, then quietly lands on Amazon two years later with little-to-no fanfare.
Maybe it only has fifty Letterboxd logs, it’s not on rotten tomatoes, and MAYBE it’s got an IMDB score? Oh and the title of it was “John” so good luck finding the film on streaming in the first place.
Filmmakers are not inherently marketing specialists, but in the current age of DIY multi-hyphenates it seems to be the last thing MANY of them think about when it comes time to do the most important part of the filmmaking process…. Find an audience for the film.
After all if you’re not making a film with the intention of finding an audience for it then it’s basically just a personal diary entry.
Now I’m not going to claim to be a marketing guru but I have seen many colleagues of mine (including myself when I was younger and a bit even now) just completely drop the ball when it comes time to get the film out there. They think that the festival will market their film and that the distributor will put the movie out there. The filmmakers have already done the hard part of making the darn thing.
Wrong. On many counts. There are simply too many movies nowadays, what makes yours any different?
To be transparent we did not get accepted to any A-tier fests. In fairness to some of them, I have no real track record as a filmmaker (despite doing this for over a decade) and the only known quantity in my film is my lead actress. Whilst immensely talented and perfect for the role, a network television regular does not move the needle when they are rejecting big budget films with major A-List talent.
Cast & Crew of Party USA at the Plaza for our Premiere
Festivals like SXSW & Sundance almost sell out their premieres just by their reputation. Atlanta & Cinequest are great but they don’t have industry professionals frothing at the mouth to get a ticket for a film they know nothing about. Which means it’s up to the filmmaker to get it out there.
Here are the most important factors to getting it out there.
Timeslot. Timeslot. Timeslot. Unfortunately it’s almost out of your control, they are balancing so many factors that go into picking a screening time & location. Festivals will often have multiple films screening at the same time, so you are competing for attention with your peers (or often those who have a much bigger reputation as yourself). For Cinequest they had us premiere on a Sunday midday and a local filmmaker had their premier at the same time. Not quite the ideal perfect slot, but beggars cannot be choosers. Still my film is edgy, rambunctious, and satirical, definitely a young night-time crowd would be best. I spent the days before talking with other filmmakers who made up a large part of that audience. Atlanta, on the other hand, had us screen on Wednesday night, but at their premier theater. Opposite us was a Sundance film & a Legacy Screening, still tough opposition, but films with completely different audiences. I was hoping we would have a weekend premiere but looking at their schedule they had several premiere screenings with celebrities who I’m sure were difficult to book (though we sold more tickets than the celeb one I went to… so take that for what it’s worth lol).
Visibility. THIS you can control. 100%. I hung 200 flyers all over the greater Atlanta area in key spots so that if you went to the Atlanta Film Festival this year you SAW my posters. Additionally I printed out 1000 Postcards for my film, dispersing them in key festival locations and handing them out to EVERYONE I spoke to about the film. This helped me attract people to the screening who were already planning on attending who weren’t sure what they were seeing yet. At the very least people knew about the screening. On the postcard there is a QR code, time, date, location. I also paid to print out a large posterboard for the film so the cast & crew could get pictures with it at the premiere (I can also use it at future showings of the film). These pictures have been posted and shared online with so many people that the cost of printing was well worth it. Which was around $400 in total.
Branding. Admittedly this is something that you have to almost figure out in the script stage. Some films are tough to do this for, (can you imagine trying to do this for the Whale for instance?), but Marty Supreme was brilliant about this with Timothee’s branding of the film. On the indie side Hundreds of Beavers is the gold-standard of marketing on a budget. Dressing up as ridiculous beavers and making an event out of it! Thankfully with a film like Party USA, the branding was blatantly obvious. I found a ridiculous American Flag suit online and got it tailored and was all set (about a hundred bucks). There is so much silly Americana stuff that is cheap to buy and wear. I would walk into a room and EVERYONE would look at me, it’s a conversation starter and such an easy segue into talking about the film. After the 2nd or 3rd day of the festival with wearing this thing I don’t even have to show my badge to get into things. Additionally I printed out a few dozen t-shirts, hats, and pins giving quite a bit away to just get the film out there (another $500). (You can buy some on my website here if you’d like to support the film).. The main weird downside was being mistaken for a conservative in public, my film is laced with political satire and edgy social commentary about race, sex, labor & economics within our country, so many (progressive and artsy) people were a little unsure of how to receive my ridiculous patriotic flare. Thankfully most quickly realized that I was lampooning nationalism within our country… but it was a road bump. Soon enough my problem started to become that I had met so many people that all knew who I was it was tough to keep track of everyone I had just met
Me! (Jared Sprouse) at the ATLFF Premiere of Party USA
Online Marketing & Local Outreach I also cut clips, teasers & trailers from the film to help get online visibility to the project within the ATL & San Jose area. The Atlanta film Festival & Cinequest were great in sharing most of what I created to help get word out there, but those can become echo chambers. Some filmmakers are nervous to do this as distributors sometimes prefer to do that and don’t want too much of the film out there. But if you don’t premiere at an A-tier fest the likelihood of landing a distributor who would care about that is almost 0%. So post away (as long as you don’t spoil the plot). Additionally I posted on multiple different platforms like reddit, instagram, substack, and Facebook about the various premieres of the film. Usually targeting film pages local to those communities, that’s what they exist for after all! I also reached out to a local film organization called “Kick The Ladder” that one of my producers has participated with to sponsor them for a few weeks in the lead up to the festival. This helped a lot. We also created a Partiful event for the screening in order to have specific text-reminders for the screening and send out direct invitations to anyone who may be potentially interested in the screening. When we secured an encore screening we also sent messages to everyone on there who responded “maybe/can’t go” as well. Me at my mini-merch booth.
Press Here is a tricky one. Some people have recommended hiring a publicist. But for Cinequest one of my actors knew the ins & outs of that fest and essentially acted as a publicist for us. Securing us 3 podcast interviews and letting us know how to best take advantage of Cinequest’s built-in marketing. Additionally I reached out to quite a few local Atlanta & San Jose (Cinequest) Publications about press. The cold outreaches were all busts for San Jose, but for Atlanta I did get an article written by doing that. As well as several publications that wrote back who would be interested in a story when it has a wide release (which I will take as a win). I also had a local publication do a lovely write up of the film as they were quite smitten with it from their own outreach. We did also hire a photographer/videographer to cover our premiere. A cost that is HIGHLY worth it. I still need to cut the video as many applauses and laughs are on there. Thankfully all of these pop-up now when you google search the film which brings me to my final talking point.
SEO Visibility & Online Marketing Going Forward
So as a filmmaker, festivals are a big cost, if you’re keeping track of it I spent well over $1000 just to promote my film for the ATLFF, that’s not including all the hours I worked for free. I spent more with Cinequest due to the travel involved. Let’s say I spent about $5000 between the two fests after paying for various travel, lodging, food and marketing expenses (which is more than some features spent on their whole budget at the fest I was just at). But I was able to get the film out in front of live-audience that would not have come in the same force if I just booked a theater. So far approximately 500 people have seen the film between the 2 festivals.
Festivals don’t offer screening fees, but they do offer a chance to celebrate the film with your collaborators, test it with a crowd, and for better or worse…. your fellow film peers REALLY care about fests. I’ve known filmmakers whose projects got into A-tier festivals and were treated completely differently by their peers in the industry afterward. It’s just the way it is. In their eyes it’s validating your ability as a filmmaker… though you likely won’t get into one of those A-tier fests with a feature unless you have a connection and/or your micro budget film just hits a programmer the right way.
Ainsley Seiger & Sharahya Carter
So how do I translate the fests into publicity for the film so when it inevitably releases and I can start to MAKE MONEY from it? I cannot overstate the importance of letterboxd enough. Google will literally pull quotes from your reviews in their AI searches now. We explicitly asked people to review us on it during Q&A’s at the festivals which has so far accumulated approximately 125+ logs and 50+ written reviews from just those 2 regional fests. A modest start that I hope to continue for the rest of the year during our run. I’m proud too as those aren’t just friends telling us how much they love us - those are honest reviews from folks I’ve never spoken to. I know filmmakers who’ve had year long festival runs at 10+ fests that don’t have that much notoriety on the site. Admittedly letterboxd skews young (35 and under), so it’s easier for a film like mine which has a younger & edgier target demo to hit those numbers than a drama aimed at senior citizens.
Us on set… Yes I did shave my head… unrelated…
Some of this you have to do yourself. I put the film on TMDB before I was even sending it to festivals (which is how Letterboxd receives their info). Some films programmed at Cinequest/Atlanta weren’t even on letterboxd when they premiered, which is a HUGE missed opportunity. Additionally I’ve marked the film as “Released” so all the reviews are accessible and public. People don’t want to take risks on a complete unknown, so the more you can help online visibility you can get to a project the more re-assuring it is to audiences that they may like the project.
My other goal is to have the film be easily findable by a simple google search. But, I do have a marketing issue here… it’s Miley Cyrus. Party in the USA will always be a more well known IP than my film, duh. But thankfully my title is a “little” different, but I’m working in a different industry and nobody has made a film titled “Party USA” (though there is Dance Party, USA by fellow pickle Aaron Katz). If my film was a common one-word title like “Guilt” or “Death” I’d be dead-in-the-water. Please fellow filmmakers, pick a title with a simple google search in mind. I’ve seen films at festivals that I can’t find online at all because of their titles. If I have to search more than “Party USA Movie” then your film is going to STRUGGLE. Michael can get away with it… but are you a studio film about the biggest pop-star in the world?
Additionally Rotten Tomatoes is key, I produced a film several years ago when it was only 5 reviews to get a rating that was a struggle but we got there. Now it’s 10-minimum, admittedly I have been a tad slack here and need to start reaching out during the rest of my festival run to critics who are on that site in order to get a rating.
Ainsley Seiger hitting Ben Weinswig for being “Keegz”.
So… What next?
My film is a perfect holiday film, duh. 4th of July. But I don’t want to end my festival run to rush the film out for a release in 8 weeks. It would likely just be uploaded to amazon & apple and die in their catalogs if I went through an aggregator tomorrow (which is what many films do). I’ve spent 4.5 years to get to this point and had so many other talented artists put their time & energy into the project to not let that happen. So I will take the next 7-10 Months to play other regional fests to build word-of-mouth and test the movie with different crowds (I already have one lined up that I can’t announce with another likely this summer). I also want to take time to network with other filmmakers like myself as that has been extremely valuable. You never know who you may want to work with in the future as this is such a collaborative medium.
If one of the 5-10 worthwhile boutique distributors that would realistically be interested in a micro-budget film become interested great. But I don’t want to hold my breath for the cavalry… they usually don’t come. So I’m planning on doing my own release with a July 4th 2027 Release in mind after the festival run. Many lower tier distributors that have approached me would simply take the first dollar I would make on the film, rather than bring anything to the table to help get it out there. I would just be another film in their catalog.
I'd love to hear other takes on what has worked for other filmmakers (and most importantly what HASN'T).
Because I think In today’s entertainment landscape, making a good movie is rarely enough.
You have to give folks a reason to notice it, remember it, and discuss it.
So don’t just release your film.
Eventize it.