IFH 231: How to Engage an Audience Before & After You Make Your Indie Film with Kia Kiso

Welcome to the indie film hustle  podcast episode number 231. Don’t worry about failures worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try. Jack Canfield broadcasting from the back alley in Hollywood. It’s the indie film hustle podcast where we show you how to survive and thrive as an indie filmmaker in the jungles of the film.

And here’s your host Alex Ferrari welcome my indie film Hustler’s to another episode of the podcast. I am yeah, I’m host. Alex. Today’s episode is brought to you by Black Box black box is a new platform and community. That is all about Financial Freedom for filmmakers like you. If you join block box, you will be transformed from being a worker to being a maker of your own content and you’ll be making steady passive income from the global market Black Box currently allows you to upload your stock footage once get it too many Global agencies and then allows you to share that passive income stream with your collaborators, whether you want to submit old footage that’s been sitting around in your hard drives or create brand new content black box is for you.

It’s really quite revolutionary with black box filmmakers can concentrate on making great content. While Black Box takes care of all the business BS just visit w-w-w.blackbox.global.  Today’s Show is also sponsored by Studio unknown Studio known as a crack team of audio post professionals known for Quality sound on any Indie budget whether you need a lush surround sound mix or a quick Festival submission pass Studio known can help you with all of your posts.

Needs from sound design and mix to fully and even a custom score contact Studio known and mention the indie film also podcast and you’ll get 50% off one day of eight or ten percent off your complete post sound package. Just go to Studio unknown. So before we get started today, I wanted to let you know that today is the day we have released the indie film producing master class with Suzanne lines.

Now bunch of you got Early Access and the reviews are. People are loving it. It is close to six hours of how to produce a feature film for a million-dollar budget and Below, but you can use all of these techniques and skills on bigger budget films as well. So if you guys want to check out what everyone’s talkin about just head over to producing master class, and I’m going to be honest with you.

It’s probably the best course that I’ve ever produced for the tribe it is. A must take so if you guys love what I do and and really appreciate all the work that I do on the podcast and all the free content. I give you please support and go to take this course, and I promise you you will not. Be disappointed and there’s a 30 day money back guarantee, of course.

So just head over to producing master class. Now today’s guest is Kia Kiso she is a producer of a wildly successful documentary called. A mile mile and half and what I found so amazing about her success is how she was able to use crowdsourcing to be able to generate uh, not only Revenue but interest and sponsorships and money coming in from all over the place attention coming from all over the place.

So. Her and the team behind the movie really did an amazing job in the more and more. I studied about it the more and more impressed. I was so I wanted to bring Kia onto the show to just give us all of her secrets on how she was able to engage and identify this audience and if you listen to last week’s episode with our be Botto about the crowdsourcing for filmmakers, this is a perfect.

Companion episode and if you’ve not heard that episode definitely go check that out. That one’s an epic episode RB and I go at it as we usually do but so much great information, but that’s a perfect companion to this episode. So get ready to take some notes and get inspired. Enjoy my conversation with Kia.

I like to welcome to the show. How you doing, my dear? I’m doing great Alex. Thanks for having me. Oh, thank you for doing the show I uh, we bumped into each other at AFM and uh, I heard your story of all the amazing things you’re doing on the world and I thought you would be an amazing guest to have on the show.

So I I really appreciate you taking the time out to talk of the tribe. I appreciate it. I’m a huge fan of the show. So I’m glad to uh, share what I’ve learned. Hopefully people can take it and run with it and improve on it and. Then we can hear their stories. Absolutely. So how first of all how did you get into the business?

I actually took a gifted and talented summer course when I was 12 years old at a local community college and it was a three camera TV production class. I hate you. I hate you already. I love and um, I you know the bug I got bit by the bug and I immediately realized I cast like, oh my gosh, I can tell stories.

I can help, you know entertain the world. I never really realized it was a job before then. So that was the. Went to uh, a really cool film school and Santa Fe New Mexico. Where is actually where I met Rick Sorrento from mile mile and half and because we were good college buddies and then I moved out here after graduation.

Well after a brief stint on a on a movie in Colorado and uh been out in La ever since and um, interesting career trajectory. I have changed jobs a couple times and everything. You’ve done everything you were you’ve been. I’ll train you. You’re like – a lot of hyphens in your biography. Uh, so you were colors that one point as well, right?

I was colorist. I was also a camera assistant in the loader for 12 years as well. I think called film. I know I know it’s actually funny. I was pulled out of retirement maybe seven years ago because a friend of mine called and he was like, I know you don’t do this anymore, but I can’t find anybody to load film for this Carl jr.

Commercial. And will you please come load film and I was like, okay, I don’t mind and actually that’s where I met my husband. So it was a good well then. Yeah. Um, so let’s talk about mile mile and a half. It’s an amazing documentary that you did and. The the story and how it came to be how you funded it.

How you Market it how you sold it how you got it on different platforms. It’s a fascinating story and it’s actually a case study in our mutual friend RBS, uh book, uh crowds crowdsourcing. What’s the exact title of this book? I forgot how sourcing power the people I’m not it’s a long title. It’s amazing.

It is a very amazing book and we’re gonna have him on the show. Talk about have it, right. Richard crowd sourcing for filmmakers indie film and the power of the crowd. There you go. So and you are in that book as well. So tell me a little bit about mile-and-a-half. How did you start from the beginning to you know, how did you get this crowd?

How did you get them funding for it in the first place? Exactly. So it was never funded in the beginning because you know the film itself to explain for people that haven’t seen it before to feature documentary. It’s about a group of filmmaker friends that decided to hike the John Muir Trail in California and Trail short Trill over 200.

What like 219 miles I’m like 211. Yeah, and um, they decided to take their film. Gear with them along the way there, you know, even Rick carried a slider with him for God. So, um, they had originally asked if I wanted to be on the trail I said, oh hell no and um, I actually went diving in the Great Barrier Reef instead.

They had a great time and I dropped them off on the trail and how long how long was the actual trip? Twenty-something days for them. She’s had sure and then and then I say I dropped them off at the trail and I pick them up during distribution. So after they came back then they realized that they had um some fun footage and they put together a short music video.

Uh, the filmmakers were Rick’s Arena gents Arena Jason Fitzpatrick trench. Those were the main hikers. Sometimes people would drop in. Hike with them for a little bit and the musicians for example would also went into so what they did is they said let’s take some of this footage put it together with a one of the songs from uh, PB Paul Beck at best and Bakr and um, And let’s make a video.

So they made a video put it up on Facebook share it with friends and family and I kind of had this viral moment people really love the especially the hiking Community. Um, it was a fun song and while they of course everybody was surprised how much interest there was the filmmakers were surprised how much interest there was in the music video and.

Very smartly. They took note of all the bloggers and the individuals and the companies that were sharing it and we used that information. Later. And so they sent out the music video really smart way to do it and to talk about funding briefly. They just paid for the hike out of their own pockets and they had their own gear anyway, and uh, they were like if something can come out of this great and they look at the footage and they realize that there’s a cool story almost the story of them doing the hike was the fun story and they decided to do the future doc, but they said, If and we put together a budget, uh, 78154 like okay if we don’t raise the money in that, uh, With a crowdfunding campaign that we don’t do the film.

So it was it was a very compelling call to action to uh, put out in a crowd funding campaign saying if you loved the music video, then you want to see a film of this support and make it happen because if you don’t support it, it’s not going to happen. That’s like a pretty good pretty good call to action.

Like if you if you like the appetizer and you want the meal then you better pay for it. Got it, right. And support it and really be behind it. Um, so they spent the team spent a lot of time putting together a really detailed. Crowdfunding campaign. I liken it to almost being in pre-production and um, they scheduled out this is what we you know, the campaign’s going to be x amount of days long based on statistics of winning campaigns.

You need to do a new post a new video every three days. You need to have regular posts and whatever and they built the content ahead of time. Because once a campaign is going you’re going to be nonstop just running managing the campaign. You don’t have time to create new content make a new blog make a new video.

So do it all head of time and they divided up they divided up all the tasks amongst them. It’s easy to do if you have a team sure hard to do just you so then they launch the campaign and that’s when our crowdsourcing really began and now can you define crowd sourcing for everybody listening?

Everybody knows the word crowdfunding right that’s sort of in something from a crowd and people think the word crowdsourcing is synonymous and it’s not it’s leveraging your crowd leveraging your fan base in order to create more success behind whatever your Endeavor is our be used for stage 32. He crowd-sourced age 32 we used it from my mama and half so and that’s where I really jumped.

And um, we we first of all identified who are crowd was because you have to know you can’t serve everybody and I think we came up with a list of over 30 people that could potentially be interested in this film as an audience and then we selected. Three maybe you can’t do more than three. You know, we didn’t go for like the the active senior, right?

Okay. So let’s uh, let’s take back for a second the 30 people that you said you like basically creating 30 avatars of people. That would be the profiles got you. That’s so everybody in the audience understands what that means and out of those 30 people that like these people could. Possibly like the movie but these are the three that we’re going to focus all our energy on.

Yeah, exactly. Like, you know the cubicle rat somebody that’s you know stuck in a desk job the majority of time. They just mean Escape or like I said the active senior they could potentially be interested and we have found that they are but we went over sort of what we thought was the largest market and one that we understood the most right so we went for people that like documentaries people that like Arts people that love hiking.

Pretty pretty straightforward exactly. And therefore in the hiking Community is is an itch but it’s a fairly large and lucrative Niche. Yes, exactly. And that’s what I really love about this kind of filmmaking and marketing distribution is instead of going wide for Quadrant go down drill deep right narrow and and deep is could also be extremely lucrative.

I wonder if the future of the film business is just going to be like. I make content for women that love chocolate and have poodles right and they pay me specifically YouTube at this point like you’ve got people opening up toys and they’ve got 10 million followers. Like right. That’s right. That’s right.

They’re not doing the toys for all four quadrants right there doing people that like this particular any toys and exact and Pokemon and My Little Pony and she’s sitting there going when I saw that I was like, Is the world coming to an end are we the world? No, it’s people identifying Their audience and really leveraging and them and serving exactly.

And so that’s what we wanted to do. And that’s part of what crowdsourcing is right you find where the Apex is the combination of what you’re creating and the people that want to serve it because you only need a certain sort of number of evangelists. So to speak that are then going to open you up to their worlds as well.

You know, uh, people were hungry. For hiking documentary, right? So you’re providing that need you’re not you know, some salesman out there same buy my stuff, you know, you’re providing something that people want and they just need to know where to find it and then boom you show up. So. And I and I do think by the way, I do think the future of independent film is going to be much more compartment on apartment analyzed and more Niche and the riches will be in the niches because we can’t as independent filmmakers just go broad.

We can’t afford it. We can’t we can’t I think it is going to be the future of but I think in many ways it’s already here. I mean look, All those were 450 500 scripted shows sure now and before there was like we know 40. Well, maybe that’s the answer to Peak TV to is you don’t create a TV show for everybody.

You create a TV show for your Niche, right? You know, I hear it and it’s and it’s an urban legend and I heard bits and pieces of it being true. But I love to continue to support like and spread the myth is that there’s a filmmaker and he makes films for firefighters. He goes around the content is about firefighting.

They’re usually dramatic narrative feature films, excuse me, and he goes around he travels around and he shows them at firehouses. Like, you know, he because these firemen are just sitting around anyway, right on their long shifts sells tickets for them and he nuts a million a year. I want somebody to just prove it prove it but but what I love is that ideas like you can be very lucrative with going match and mile my own half, you know, we’re gonna hit profits early in our projection, which is insane which is insane.

But by the way, I’m now going to uh to spread that myth as well. Perfect. I’m just kind of writer filmmaker firefighter filmmaker such right? It’s such an amazing idea and he but it’s at work. But this is full-time job. He just goes well. Yeah, and you know we can bet in our miss that this guy loves.

Firefighting I would imagine or it was a firefighter or something. Right? Exactly. Just with my my hat. These are hikers. We love hikers. That’s why we picked the psychographic of hikers is because there are people we know where they shop we know what or what social media platform. They ought there on we know how much money they spend.

We know what they like. You know, what SWAG do they like like we understand them because you have to know all of that when you come up with these are my this is my target. You have to imagine who are these people where they shopping? Who do I want to align with? What blogs are they reading write all this matters?

So then how did you so how did the kickstarter campaign go off when you when you actually how much did you raise all that story? Sorry, yeah, so it was it was a longer campaign. I believe it was 60 days because we want to give ourselves a lot of time to go and reach out and we had created a list we had an intern come up with a list of the top bloggers for hiking and then we reached out created those relationships with those bloggers and continued to serve that relationship over time.

We would give them maybe exclusives. Hey, do you want to have an exclusive interview with one of our hikers or do you want some of this content? We will create a. We’ve created a special, you know, second version of the trailer and we are going to only release it with this particular blogger, right so smart so trying to be super smart because we were just trying to build the audience trying to build that and um, we ended up raising 85,500.

Right, so we definitely got over or goal and it felt touch go and you know, I could talk just about crowdfunding and I know that we don’t want to a lot on there but you know, we had a strategy based on. These are the numbers we hit need to hit on this particular day and we knew that we needed to show movement.

So we had people standing by that said I want to donate but I want to donate at the right time. And so we’d say okay. Can you wait till day 15 if there’s not movement then you can jump in there, but then if there was movement then we’d say okay. We want to push you to day 20. So we all smart. I’m sorry.

It’s just so rare to hear smart. Yeah, I’m sorry. It’s not you don’t just put it up there and cross your fingers. It’s it’s marketing. Its you’ve got to think as a filmmaker you’ve got to think of what is my audience want another thing that’s important too that I want to mention is that. In our social media campaign, we did uh what I call I don’t know if the team would call it deposit deposit deposit withdrawal.

So we would do three posts that were for the fans right? Like what’s your favorite meal on the trail? Send us your favorite photo of your last hike here’s an article about the latest hiking boot that’s out there and then the fourth post would be like. Hey something about the film something about the campaign.

So our social media feeds felt like they were sponsored by the movie so to speak but really we wanted to be sort of the Hub of conversation about hiking so people felt like it was a place to go. They kept wanting to return and every once in a while. I would say hey, don’t forget about the campaign.

Okay or would say hey, can you do something? Right can do something. So we started that conversation really early. So the way I was able to snowball getting my lion half on Netflix because of our crowd started then after the crowdfunding campaign because yes, so because my goal was to get Us distribution right start to get us some money back and.

I was able then to say look we’ve raised over our goal and we had 800 backers. We’re something for you to pay attention to so I began sending out the trailer and just some stats about our fans to potential sales agents and Distributors, so we started getting interest. In at that way people like show me the trailer.

I would be interested in knowing more or simply say hey, we’re still in the editing phase. What would you recommend here? I love to bring in my Distributors and my marketers even in pre-production if I can because they know what the market wants and so. We had a distributor say we see you have something in here just a little bit about a Japanese hiker.

Can you make that bigger because we’ll probably be able to engage in Asian audience then so we buffed up that role a little bit in the film. So I was able then to take this interest from Distributors and reach out to other sales agents and Distributors and say hey look at the people that are looking at the phone plus look at how many fans we have and look we now have four thousand people on Facebook.

Are you interested in watching the trailer are you interested on coming aboard? So before we even did our Premiere we already had people sniffing around we had distributors in sales agent sniffing around and um, then we had to think of the Premier. I’m just giving you the snowball right? I’m doing came Netflix and eventually became profits.

So then. We knew we wanted to do a Premiere. We had started a relationship with the American hiking Society. They were our fiscal sponsor and also they had like a million members so they were starting to put information about the film in their newsletter. And we knew that we wanted to premiere on June first because that’s National hiking day.

And it would also give the American hiking Society, you know a fun way to also engage with the film and you know, just instead of saying hey watch this film say hey on American hiking day, uh National hiking day go on a hike then watch the movie and we. Because we knew we wanted to Premiere that day and we were going to keep it like a tight-knit screening that wouldn’t impact our ability to go to film festivals.

We just started looking at where can we for Wallace pace? Uh to just do our own Premiere and we were looking at Golden Road Brewery here in LA and because they were part sponsor as well. Um, but because I had reached out to a couple film festivals in La uh, we had submitted their early. I got back to them.

I said, look, it was dances with films that I really personally yeah contact mean they’re like that was brilliant. We really loved it. Will you teach this to other people? So, uh, I said look, We’re going to premiere on June 1st. What love it to do it with you guys. And as a matter fact, we’ve had a Kickstarter campaign that we did a year ago.

It had been pretty much a year took us a year to get through all of the posts for the film and we were continuing to engage with our fan base. So they were eager to see the movie and I told dance look we know we have X amount of fans in La they’re going to come to our Premier. We know we’re going to have full room.

We’d love to Premiere with you, but we’re happy to do a for wallet golden root Brewery. And they were like, but we don’t make decisions until you know later on a date I was like, but I need to know now and so they were able to squeeze things a little bit and let us know that they approved us being in the film festival.

I was able to sort of tip their hand in my favor because I already had a audience that I could prove right? So the minute tickets went on sale we sold out in four days. Right our screen and dances with films was like what’s going on? I can’t believe it. You were not joking. I was like no I wasn’t joking because our poor fans they were so eager to see the film and they added a second screening an exact.

I said, can we add a second theater at the exact same time? So audiences are watching simultaneously and we can bring more people because the land a lot of people didn’t get tickets they agreed. So now all of a sudden we have a venue and we have a film festival. So we have some levels we have the screening at the film festival, of course because our audience was so big.

Guess what we got the audience Award of course and and also as a side note people loved the film so much they were willing to wait for 45 minutes in the lobby to buy the DVDs that we had made. So then we were able to actually generate that and just and swag right we had Buffs. We had t-shirts. We had stickers and stuff like that.

So but at the at the award show where we got the audience award guess who’s in the audience gravitas, of course. Boopie of Acquisitions was there. Hey, I love to film. Oh my God. You just got this award. I’m like, yeah, all of our fans are going to be so excited. We have so many fans and they were like, we want to see the movie she did so they sent the movie and guess what they sent over proposal.

They wanted to work with us. So you got distribution through them. We did and I did my due diligence. I asked around I talk to other filmmakers would work with them too. And I heard that they weren’t like the sweaty guy with the gold chains that was going to hit a hard. Really. Hey, baby, I’m gone.

So hard Harvey got it. Oh my God. Yeah him and his lat. So um, so then we were able to get distribution and the because I was able to get they want to domestic VOD. And then I was able to use that as leverage to then get International VOD with somebody else and who did you go with International video day with we had a sales agent?

Um, oh my god, of course the name just like she’s going to kill me. But yeah, oh film option, okay. Um, and so she handled all the international rights and then we bar by for cated our rights. We didn’t give everything to one person. So we did DVD through passion River and we gave them sort of a special edition DVD, but we kept more, uh, we gave them the bare-bones DVD.

We keep the special edition one so we could sell in person as week. We began to for wall around the country. And as we begin to do our theatrical, uh on demand through tug, okay, so let’s so let’s take it back a little bit because there’s a lot of stuff going on. So you guys you had your Dances with Wolves, uh dances.

Well, if that’s the film’s premiere, uh, you’re selling T-shirts and DVDs in the in the lobby. Yes, uh after that you got a distribution deal through gravitas, so you did not do any self distribution at all. We did we fought hard to keep the right to sell the film from our website just fine, which is fine.

So that’s a and that was a hard hard to do and I don’t know if they would do it anymore. So we used VHX to put it on our website. How was it? How was your experience? I love them. I’ve used them for also use them for inspired to ride and their gems. They actually we’re able to rewrite. Some code for us.

So it was able to do what we needed it to do with with v HX is what I found is there a great platform. Um, I have been talkin about them since I hope I started the podcast. Um, the problem with the HX I find is that if you don’t have an audience, uh, it’s it’s useless because they don’t have a weapon No One’s Gonna find you on VHX unless you drive the traffic to them.

Is that fair statement quite honestly, and I’m going to be a hard ass about it. It’s your job to drive audience to or it’s like it’s like you build you build your business and you put it out near Lancaster like okay, you might have a great business, but nobody’s going to know it’s there. You have to let people know they have to drive out to Lancaster to see you know to come buy something there right now.

Nobody nobody is going to drive traffic. Even if it’s on gravitas, even if it’s on Netflix, even if it’s in the movie theater down the road. Nobody’s going to give a. Nobody’s going to Care driving traffic to you and and we can talk about that when I talk about the release on iTunes and how I was able to leverage the audience to be on iTunes like.

It’s gravitas was like so surprised that we actually had as big of a launch as we did. They didn’t bring anything to the table. So I think filmmakers just be super clear nobody’s doing anything for you. And so then again I’m gonna ask and I’m going to be the devil’s advocate here. Why go with a gravitas when you could have easily self distributed gun on the social platforms yourself or something like that like a distributor or get go through it you because you have the audience.

So basically your. You could have made more money because you’re driving all the traffic. So to these platforms unless they’re not really bringing anyting table. What was the benefit of using a traditional distributor? What I’m saying is you should have the mindset that you’re supposed to do everything you’re supposed to do.

Sure. The reason we went with gravitas is because they have a good relationship with iTunes and Netflix and they will make calls on your behalf. So we would as we continue to get Awards or have some great successes. We would call up our rabbit gravitas. We always answered on the second ring. I love it and we would say look we’ve had this wonderful thing happen and they would call iTunes.

They would say Hey, you know, This has happened. Can we get a better placement? Can we get into the cover flow? Can we you know, it’s the New Year’s can we maybe do a New Year’s resolution package and have mile mile and a half being that like and they were also willing to give us, you know, some Diagnostics and some you know, sort of dashboard stuff that you won’t get you wouldn’t get anywhere else.

Yeah, I mean, I don’t know where things are things change every day, but at that time no, so then they basically had a little bit more inside help than you would get with just putting it on the platform. Yes, I felt so, okay, and that’s also sometimes for and to be fair a lot of times with Distributors.

They’ll do that with certain films that they feel that they’re going to be able to make more money with and they won’t do that for all of them because they can’t they can’t call iTunes with 20 films go. Okay. Today’s film I need you to do this. So they are kind of picky and choosy so it is kind of a almost.

You know, they have to feel that they’re going to be able to get a good Roi for pulling that favor that make sense. Sure. But also it’s a relationship for Ali, you know, if I am building a relationship I’m keeping in touch. How are things going just saw you released the latest film. I really loved it.

I just saw non Netflix. It was really amazing. By the way. This is what we’re up to. How are things go, you know, like it’s a relationship I get them invested right? You have to have a huge why like why is this important? And I share that why with everybody, you know. This is a really great movie.

It’s serving a community that’s hungry for hiking documentaries. Look they’re out there because we’re proving we have thousands and thousands of fans, you know, so got them excited. So, can you talk a bit about sponsors? You said you had a couple sponsors? How did you reach out to those sponsors and how to do leverage that audience again, once I get late sponsors wasn’t totally my world.

That was much more. Unlike Rick and Jen and those guys. Um, but. I think you know Golden Road. They must have seen the docket. I can’t really answer that what I can say is so when we released when we release the the video for Kickstarter the kickstarter campaign, I think somebody knew it was her first day at REI and she is she was doing social media and um actually put it on the Facebook page.

She said if we can get 5000 likes 24 hours will donate $5,000 to this campaign. I don’t think she ever thought she’d reach the gold. Well, they got 5,000 likes and six. I’m like sorry guys on board. Um, and uh, Then then later on they let us have some sort of uh screenings and we have the band play at local REI locations here in La where we would show the trailer and then we would ask for money and support usually we would do it in like their parking lot or something or by the front door is fun.

So what I’m hearing again, a lot of it I want to reiterate this to the audience is that you’re building relationships the through the entire process every day every week you’re reaching out to people and that just reaching out and asking for. Thing you’re building giving something. Yes, giving your giving and you know even to think of like.

Bloggers, right they need content, right? You’re the podcaster. You’re like what I gotta feed the hungry monster the Beast. Yes, exactly. So we’re providing them. Like Hey will write an article for you will write if you want to write a blog for us. We’ll put it on ours vice versa, you know, here’s an exclusive for you or gravitas.

They need good films and they need good films that’s easy for them to sell. So I just show them it’s going to be easy for you to sell this or REI. They always do no need to be part of something. How about us? It’s just thank you make yourself shiny shiny object. Exactly. And that’s how the snowball continue to go as I wanted to get to the point where like I wanted to make herself.

So attractive that people would not say no that would be there would be no reason for anybody to say no to get behind it. Right because I could say look first of all the films beautiful. The film is fun. Also, we have a huge audience plus we have all this like we have this press kit anything you possibly need.

It’s right here for you like we made it as easy as. All scible for people to get on board. So yeah, so so you so, um, you got sponsors you’re building up relationships. And then you said you did a theatrical run your own theatrical kind of tour. How did you. We did. So uh, we were able to identify where our fans were based on zip code.

I think even when people signed up for a newsletter we asked for their zip code and um, so that was extremely important one. You need to know where people are so we were able to identify locations, you know, sort of hot spots in the country where people would want to see the film. So one we helped people, uh do tug if they.

Does sort of sponsor a screening and their area plus we also four-walled we did a um. For Walt or where we just rented out the theater. And as long as we knew we would be able to cover our costs by selling merch we would do it and if we had the time, you know, it had to be break, even if it wasn’t going to be Breakeven.

It was going to cost us we wouldn’t do it. So well, so on a business standpoint and again being Devil’s Advocate, what’s the point of breaking even on on a on a theatrical experience? Um, other than just kind of. Feeding that fan base, but if you’re breaking even what’s the point on a business down?

Okay, so, you know something that I didn’t talk about and that I talked with Team very early on when I first came on the project. I’m like, what is the goal of this movie is it money is prestige or is it exposure? It’s like pretty much feel like those are the you know, the main reasons we decided it was exposure because they wanted to make other movies like this and they have so it wasn’t necessarily they didn’t want to go out of pocket because they were already out of pocket for the height and the work that they were putting in.

And it wasn’t necessarily the procedure we weren’t going to go for like, you know an Oscar or anything like that, you know, so it was it was it was really just so people got to know us as filmmakers them as filmmakers really supporting that Vision. So it was just continuing to engage get exposure.

So as long as it was break, even then it was fine. That’s a very great question that filmmakers need to ask themselves is what do you want out of this movie? Right? What’s your. End goal and that’s a question that they don’t ask because if you know that answer you can plot and market and set up and blueprint your way to that goal as opposed to just like I’m just gonna put it out like well well and also we would find that once we would once we would go to a town or a city and do a screening then people would buy DVDs for their friends or then they would go on the website and they would you know, they would get it again there or they would be on iTunes what?

And um the theatrical to I’d love to get to the point where how we I want to share. The iTunes. Yeah, that was going next question was I so how did you and father we’re in there were there were connected. So then at a certain point gravitas said here’s your release date for iTunes, right? The subscription VOD is always first, right?

If the people that pay per view versus a Netflix which is and not the subscription. I’m calling transactional transactional and so that was first and they said here’s your date. We’re going to you always. Let that time. I haven’t looked at it recently, but at that time you got to be on iTunes in a pre-sale mode for several weeks before you went into sale most.

Yeah. Sure. Okay. So once we knew we were on the platform we asked everybody this is when we released no bald it we asked everybody that had ever come to a screening bought a DVD like the music video donated to the campaign. Go on iTunes and we’re not telling you what to say, but will you just give us a star rating and a review?

So by the time the movie launched we had over 100 5 Star reviews from the gate, right? So the minute it went live we immediately shot up to I think our high water mark was number four, but did you had a lot of pre-sales as well? Um, I’m sure there were some pre-sales there as well. But what it’s not sales that shoots you up the ranking.

It’s the reviews. It’s the star reviews at that time. It was okay. So from day one its people’s love of the film that made it more popular got it makes sense and gravitas called me up immediately. They’re like. You’ve got to tell us what you did prestigious marketing and PR firm you’ve hired to do this campaign because it’s brilliant and I laughed I’m like it’s just.

There’s five of us. There’s six of us doing this. Like we just leveraged our fan base and they couldn’t get their head around it. Like I don’t think just traditional Distributors don’t they’re just they just don’t understand it. No, no. No, so then of course they were very excited to get us on Netflix.

Right and they were very excited to you know, they call them Netflix. Look at how great this film is doing make sure you definitely give us, you know, really good placement. When it goes live there and you know, and what we had to do to is filmmakers for our fans were like look there’s many places you can get this film if you get it on our website great that helps us, but we also want to offer it on iTunes as well for you too.

Okay, so we tried to give people access to the film how and whatever way worked for them. And then also you have other revenue streams that you created from the film like merch uh and other areas, so it’s not just one Revenue stream like I’m. Going to do this. You’ve really branched out to a bunch of different things coming in for the film.

Exactly. Exactly. So March, you know, of course from our distribution through gravitas film option Um passion River who we used for DVD. We got a little bit from them sort of the bricks and mortars and the educational content. How you how much did you do? Was it a good? Was it worth doing the DVD sales?

The brick-and-mortar a general DVD sales as far as in the pie of all the revenue coming in and asking specifics, but just like it was it was it worth it? For us to sell our DVDs. Yes. Yes to sign with a distributor. You know, there are people that are still going out there to the person water places and getting DVDs you’d be surprised.

They’re still our sales but it’s hard to find a DVD distributor that’s willing to do DVD only they want all rights, everybody’s so eager about all right, right and I get it because they want to minimize their risk and um, but yet not everybody’s good at. Thing so you can’t do that is a filmmaker.

No, I’m not going to put all my eggs in one basket unless there’s a nice big fat check up front. Yeah, but then you know what, they might just put it on a shelf and do nothing and you don’t have any control over that right? So there’s there’s yeah, there’s a lot of pluses and minuses. Yeah. I mean I I have a hard time with sort of the distribution sales agents model, especially for filmmakers that are just like I’m done.

I’m tired. I bored I want to move on to my next project, you know, because. Nobody’s going to love your baby. Like your baby. Nobody’s going to be able to speak to your audience the way you can you know, and while they might have good intentions as never going to match up to what your vision is.

That’s what you have to say engaged filmmaking is all the way. Through just tribution. I wish they would teach that and film schools. I wish they would just stop at post-production the marketing the social media the crowdfunding the crowdsourcing, um, everything all of itself distribution, uh, Facebook social media.

All of that is as important as the lenses that you’re using and you’ve got to be thinking about all that day one and pre-production you really do. Yeah, if you absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, and I think some filmmakers they’re just in for the Arts right or they don’t know or they feel like sellings kind of dirty.

Well, the thing is if you’re in it for the art, then go make your $500 movies or make $1000 movies or make a movie that you can personally afford for the for the the paint brushes to make your exact thing, but when you’re playing with. 50 100 200 thousand dollars that’s an expensive paint brush and you have you have to have some responsibilities to recoup that money.

Unless you’re independently wealthy and you can do that of course, which we’ve met these people. But even then you’re doing a disservice because you’re not working your damnedest to try and get it out to the people that love to know about it. Right exactly. You’re expecting people to drive the Lancaster and just stumble across something that they love and especially when they’re so it’s not 1985 anymore.

So it’s so much content and so many options out there. I mean, I remember working in the video store in high school, uh, and I literally watched everything that came out because everybody there was like. Three to five movies that would come out every week. That was it and I would just watch those.

Are you kidding me? How many are coming out daily? There’s yeah, you’re not enough time and I and I watched all the TV shows and you know, it’s like and that it’s you just can’t keep up now. Oh heard poor Hugh Laurie. TV show on Hugh who just got canceled because nobody knew it was there. I know I saw some posters for around La.

I was like that looks interesting. But I’m like I just don’t have the time. There’s just the too much other stuff to do. Um, it’s it’s it’s absolutely crazy. Um, so can you tell me what the biggest mistake you see documentarians and filmmakers make when they when they do their first film. From a crowdsourcing perspective from any perspective.

Oh, don’t get me on that soapbox. Um, that’s what content perspective is. I think we really need to get out of the talking hair Talking Heads model, you know, uh, I think talking head documentaries or just to we need to come up with something new. I’m getting tired of seeing it. I’m sure. I’m not the only one we just need Al Gore up.

There was a PowerPoint we’re good. Well, at least we have our point. I know at least we have Al Gore who is easily one of the most charismatic people on the Earth. I know so, you know, of course, you’re always going to have somebody sitting in a chair and talkin about something but we really have to get sort of a better about that.

Um, And I think you know we’ve had on a lot of them right now is like you have to think of your game the end game at the very beginning. You have to be thinking long-term. You have to think of it as a business. What I suggest for most filmmakers to do is do a crowdfunding campaign, even if you don’t need the money for two reasons one.

Most filmmakers don’t do business plans. So doing a crowdfunding campaign makes you think of your project in a business plan mode. Who is my audience. Where do I find them? What do they want? How can I prove to them? I’m serving them what they want. How is my content? You know the quality that they’re looking for whatever so the crowdfunding campaign forces filmmakers to think that way.

And secondly, I think it’s great marketing. It’s really great marketing because you have a call to action. You have a ticking clock and you have something fun to talk about versus my movies out now versus my movie is going to be out if you you know, give me 20 bucks. Exactly and that’s really what we use for inspired arrived.

I don’t know if you want to talk about that at all, but we use crowdfunding in a. Unique way to talk a little bit about inspired. Right which is kind of like taking the model from mile mile and half a little bit and put it into a similar kind of story but different because it’s a different, you know, you’re riding bikes as opposed to hiking but you could I could see where the the parallels are.

Sure. Yeah, of course the inspired to ride feature documentary. Uh, it’s still on Netflix. I believe you can check it out. It’s the third in a Trilogy of uh films about bike packing which is a sport. Uh, it’s a crazy sport. It’s kind of like a Tour de France, but without doctors without nutritionists without hotel rooms without you know chefs and these Riders ride across the country inspired to write it was across the United States from Oregon to Virginia.

They don’t they’re by themselves. And they are basically they have a tent on their bike and they’re stopping at 7-Eleven and McDonald’s on the way and the whole idea is like how fast can you get there completely unsupported? There’s no prize money. There’s just like on it. Thank God, they’re psychotic to say like we are crazy were badass and is for the bragging rights.

So I want to go off topic for a second. I’ll talk about did you ever see a series of television series called the long way around? No, the long way around is follows at the documentary series. It was a limited series following Ewan McGregor. Oh and his best friend. Around uh, they get on motorbikes drive just the two of them and the d p which is a third camera, you know documenting this insane trip from Europe all the way to Los Angeles drove.

Oh fun through and it’s so amazing. I’ll leave a link for it in the description for everyone want to watch it. I saw it and I just sat there watching it in. Awe because these guys were they just got a couple bikes from BMW. They got a sponsor, of course because you ones in it and they just drove and then stuff got stolen there in like Mongolia.

They ran out of Road. Once you get magma, uh Mongolia, there’s no roads. Like you’d like a little bit of paved road. Then you’re out like the country so like and they’re going through Russia and they go all the way up to the top. They fly over to Alaska and then they drive down so they’re dealing with snow and it was out saying but just reminded me of that right away awesome very cool.

So you doing so now with inspired right? You’re doing the same thing with VHS? Yes, exactly. So what’s interesting is? To come up with a game plan for Mama and a half. I actually copied the prior campaign for Ride The Divide which is Mike Dion’s first movie of this Trilogy and you know while I was doing Mama and half I called him up.

I’m like, would you talk to me and we did we chatted I basically took what he did for Ride The Divide because I had found out about him and a book called selling your phone without selling your soul by John Reese and Sherry Handler and I was like Mike I’m gonna put steroids and what you did he was like go.

And they kept contacting me is like I’m really impressed. I’m really impressed. Do you want to jump on inspired to ride which I did and he’s just he’s a he’s a documentary filmmaker he but he’s also got this marketing brain that’s genius and I think he’s actually coming up with a service right now to help filmmakers, which is amazing.

Yeah, you should probably talk to him as a matter fact, but. He came up with this really great plan. He was like he goes my projects are TurnKey. Now. I have my audience. I know all their email addresses by the way, you want email addresses for everything? That’s why you go through tug and not gather.

Sorry. I love gather. They’re really great people there. But email addresses are gold and their your audience you need to keep them. Yes. We’re side rant over so might be on he was like I know what my audience is, but let’s come up with a fun way to sell tickets for the premiere because I just don’t want to sell tickets.

Let’s make it look like it’s a crowdfunding campaign. So we did a Kickstarter campaign. We knew we only wanted to raise $10,000. But if you have a ticking clock in a call to action people get a lot more engaged. So that’s what he did. It was super slant so intimate he the movies done already. The movie was done the movie had been finished and it was ready to be released.

So then he opened up a Kickstarter campaign to sell the movie to sell the tickets to the premiere. That’s ridiculous. Right, that’s ridiculous. I know that’s why I love him. He’s like a god. Um, so but but what made it fun is a we it was kind of the called action was like we have an idea to do a fun Premiere wouldn’t it be great if it looked like this and if you like that idea then support this and the idea was like.

We are going to do panel discussions all day long about bike packing. We’re going to show you the bikes. We’re going to show you the gear we’re going to do interviews with all of the bike Packers the guys that actually did the race guys and gals that did the race we are going to strain it live or you can come in person if you get a ticket, Buy your ticket now.

Do you just want to take it you want to take it in a t-shirt? You want to take it a t-shirt a DVD. Do you want to take it into t-shirt and post your you want to take it into your T-shirt and poster and all the prior movies help make us make this the coolest Premiere, you know of all time, but if you don’t believe in this kind of Premiere, don’t worry, we’ll just offer it eventually.

Do you ever say people like so fucking bad ass? And so we actually I think we raised over 10 grand for sure. Sure. And that’s actually brilliant. Now the one thing I’ve noticed and I’ve spoken to a lot of filmmakers about this is documentaries are a little bit of an easier sell because their audience is so specific.

So to identify it’s so easy to identify while narrative is a lot more difficult a couple of guys that have done it right was um, I don’t know if you ever heard of that that short. No, it was that like the most imagine the most ridiculous 80s. Uh action all the 80 stuff thrown into one movie like the most ridiculous stuff in the 80s and they threw it all with some Swedish filmmaker.

They raised 125,000 dollars or something like that. Wow, because they had dinosaurs and four and and you know, they were trying to kill Hitler and they went back in time and it was it was just brilliant. It was a short film 30 minutes 30 minutes. They sold in the kitchen sink and they sold albums like old-school albums, you know.

He’s they sold VHS. Um, especially Edition versions like because it was so like licking cool. They’ve got like but I mean, aren’t you still you’re able to identify who the audience is? That’s what you can go. I know the people that would watch that. I know where to find them. I know what they like.

I know what blogs they’re listening to or reading. I know where they are. I know who they are. So that’s first like if you did a feature about like Thanksgiving dinner with your family. Who is your nonprofit you’re partnering with? That’s going to put you in their newsletter. Who’s the sponsors wet?

Like that’s go. That’s my butterball. Yeah, exactly. So that’s my that’s my point. Where as is a case study makes perfect sense because that’s a very small niche. Um and they can identify him. But when when filmmakers go out and like I’m gonna make a movie about you know, you know friends getting together at college.

Like how do you identify an audience for that? So difficult, so then that’s when you get into more analytics with Facebook and you can go after similar movies and people who like those similar movies, but not nearly as powerful. It’s not the same. It’s icy. And I make my Dion and I have conversations about this.

We’re like, how can we translate this to narrative? How can we. This really great system and make it work to the narrative story structure and we haven’t cracked the code. I’d love for somebody to figure it out. But once again, I think it’s that. It’s what content are you creating for your niche market?

Like are you going to do your narrative feature about a woman a woman that loves poodles and chocolate right like and then you just go after those people and also a lot of times if the product is not a feature maybe is a series maybe is a YouTube channel that you can monetize some cow and there’s many different ways to hit that market, but you never know what the audience wants.

Right, maybe put the story inside a rapper of chocolate. They have to keep buying more chocolate to get more story. That’s a genius idea and you see but I don’t know or maybe it’s an augmented reality and when you take your dog for a walk, you get like just like you figure out what is your where’s your audience?

What are they liking? How do I serve them there and how to like to engage, you know, what are their stories? So no. Do you have any new projects coming up? I do have some fun projects coming up one big one is uh, it’s actually an event that’s focused around the entertainment industry and it’s the conscious media Think Tank.

I I believe that as filmmakers. We have a responsibility to make the world a better place while entertaining it and to me that’s conscious media, which is entertainment and media that creates awareness but also has a positive impact and there’s a whole bunch of media psychology around why it’s important.

Our bodies and minds and emotions are affected by what we watch. And so I’m bringing together 64 of the top thinkers in the industry for a three-day Summit to figure out how do we increase the quality quantity and accessibility of conscious media. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. I get I can’t wait.

I’ll put any information about that on uh in the post as well. When is the way when is it? Uh, it’s slated, uh for March 2018 funding raised dependent in our fundraising, uh mode. I have no doubt that you’ll do I’ll be you’ll be fine. Thank you. AFM because I was actually selling a Sci-Fi project either Trilogy for a TV show depending on what iris want were still figuring that out now so really excited about that.

Awesome. I have a TV show about the frontier. So you’re just a busy busy gal many plates spinning gotta hustle. You gotta hustle. Um, so I’m gonna ask you a few questions asked all of my um my guest. Uh, can you tell can you tell me what book had the biggest impact on your life or career? Fuck. Oh my gosh.

It doesn’t have to be a filmmaking. But of course not any book. Oh my gosh, the power of decision by Raymond Charles Barker it is it was about getting your brain and the right place to put your to empower yourself. Very cool. All right, it’s more on the spiritual bent for you know, I we don’t we’re not doing video here, but I have a huge library of every kind of, you know book about film management or negotiating or.

You know law so I I encourage people to continue to educate themselves, but I guess people who listen I already know that now what is the lesson that took you the longest to learn whether in the film business or in life? Oh, I’m probably still learning it. It’s probably the fly. It blinds my eyes just it’s where to focus your energy because there’s a million great things to be interested in and you have to figure out what your thing almost like, what is your Niche right and and just make sure that you’re putting a little bit towards that every day, you know.

Yeah now what are three of your favorite films of all time? Oh, did you know by Jean? Okay, what am I favorites, uh feel Magnolias when you need a good ugly cry. Oh my God is an ugly crowd with that movie. I haven’t seen that movie since I was in the video still but I remember it that and that impeaches came out the same time.

Oh sure, you know, I have so many favorites. Um, I think always sort of a go to be like maybe. Rouge I love Moulin Rouge I’m a big fan of Moulin Rouge and and uh Romeo and Juliet. Oh, I meant to say inspired to ride mile mile and a half deliberations are my favorite. Of course. I should have said besides your own obvious.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and then where can people find you online. Oh my gosh. Well, uh, my production company website is Productions the conscious media Visionaries about the think tank. Excuse me is conscious media Visionaries and I’m mainly in Facebook and Twitter sometimes I’m too busy. How do we how do we do all these social media platforms?

I don’t even know so it’s not easy. Trust me it every day. It’s a job. It’s a job like everything else. It’s like you got you. Oh now with the Clone. Can you take over the world if it’s like three or four of me my God what I would do. Thank you so much for this very inspiring uh conversation and I hope it inspires filmmakers, uh listening to it because it’s uh, it’s proof.

It’s a blueprint to say look, it’s been done. It’s been done multiple times and uh, you took somebody else’s blueprint and just. On it and that’s what art is and honestly what you do in the marketing and distribution of a film and creating a film is an art as much as the film is itself. Really is don’t reinvent the wheel use somebody else’s wheel and make it better.

So and and like you invention to and I just want to let people know that the case study for my line has all the details of what we did is an Arby’s book. Yes. Absolutely. I’ll put a link to all that in the show notes. Thanks. Again. I appreciate it. Thanks Alex. I had a best time I want to thank you for coming on and just literally giving us the secret sauce on how she was able to be.

So successful with her film mile mile and half I learned a ton as I always do by doing these episodes. You know, I do These Guys these the show so much for you guys and get the information out for you. But I learned a ton from these episodes interviewing these amazing people that come on the show.

So I’m very humbled and blessed that I have that opportunity and also that I can share all of this knowledge with you guys. If you want to go to the show notes and get all the links to everything we discussed in the episode head over to any films / 2 3 and by the way guys, if any of you are going to be out of NAB tomorrow or the next day, I will be there.

I’m going to be there from the 10th to 11th, and I’m going to be speaking at 11:45 on Wednesday at the black magic Booth. We’re going to be discussing. All the things, uh that I’ve done with black magic with the DaVinci shooting with the Ursa mini and also to talk a little bit about on the corner of ego and desire and how I shot that with the uh, the pocket camera as well.

So if you guys are out there, please come out. I love to talk to Trevor always like, you know, actually talkin to the tribe in real life and not a virtual conversation, so it’s always great to meet you guys. So and if you see me walking around just stop me because I love to talk to you guys. Now I got to get ready for my flight tomorrow.

So as always keep that hustle going keep that dream alive, and I’ll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to the indie film hustle podcast at indie film hustle.