What Festival Director Director's Really Think

In the last instalment of my Film Festival Survey, I offer the thoughts of film festival directors from around the world. My previous posts looked at how many festivals there are and theeconomics of running a festival.  They were largely presented as charts and graphs of statistics.

In total, 523 film festival directors shared their thoughts, providing 14,862 words of commentary.  Below is a selection of their thoughts.

The key messages are:

• Film festival directors are just like filmmakers
• A great story is the most important factor in picking films
• Cinematography is the next biggest factor, along with good sound
• Every festival wants your film to be shorter
• The smaller festivals are crying out for better films
• Festivals expect the filmmakers to market their own screenings
• Press kits and fancy packaging won’t help your chances of being selected
• Better subtitling and sound will
• Festival Directors really don’t like Withoutabox

About one in four of all the comments included the phrase “labour of love” and the overwhelming feeling I got was that of hard work in the pursuit of great art. This passion was indistinguishable from conversations I’ve had with filmmakers over the years.

We rely a lot on volunteers, individual contributions, and arts funding. We are obviously not in this for the money, and work hard at supporting filmmakers as best we can.

It’s harder to run a festival than make a film. Both are thrill rides with backbreaking work involved

You really don’t need much money or time or any clue about business or marketing to run a small film festival- the audience will find you. But you do need to love film and be able to take chances and tell stories that mean something to you. i guess running a film festival is like making a film.

Most festivals really care about filmmakers and make extreme efforts to honor them. It is their creativity, imagination and hard work that enables a festival to be top notch. Storyline , storytelling, pacing, editing and a RESOLUTION are keys that make films worthy.

When the glitz and glam are stripped away, it comes down to this: Have filmmakers shared a compelling, well-crafted story with us? Is the audience going to leave our festival theatre changed in some way?

It’s not easy to do this! Our fest is mainly fueled by passion until we can get more support via grants, sponsors and donors. I’ve personally sacrificed more than most people would even think about to pull this off every year, yet when we have filmmakers come in to our city, and really enjoy themselves, grateful for the honors we’ve bestowed, and move on to bigger and better things because of their experience with us, it makes it all worth it.

Our average selection rate for films is 5%. This isn’t much different from most festivals.

The programmers and directors make almost all the decisions during the judging process. Even in the so-called juried festivals/competitions the programmers and directors guide the selection process. Juries are social and often very unfocused and the real work and selections are made by staff. It’s really the only way the process can function.

Some categories go unentered and if they would have submitted they could have placed by default. The categories we’ve had the least amount of entries in are student films, foreign films, and animation.

Press kits are never looked at

The numbers of people drawn to the festival as an audience is always disappointing.

Film festivals book shorter films in so as to get a higher total of films in their festival overall, and therefore more people overall.

If you submit to the big, big festivals and you’re not already ‘connected’ or on the inside with someone at the festival, your film won’t be screened. The top tier festivals have a small network of friends and associates that program their films first, based on the names of those in the film.

The shorter your movie and the closer your footage was captured to the proximity of the festival, the better chance you have of getting into the festival.

Submitting a “Work in Progress” is not in a filmmakers best interest as whatever is view is judged as a finished product. The evaluators cannot envision what the final product will look like the way the filmmaker can.

The earlier you send your film in, the better chance you have of selection

Always label the DVDs with name,address, phone number and if they submitted via without a box the number they get when doing so. I can’t tell you how often we get films in DVD form with nothing on them where the envelope it arrived in gets separated from the DVD and we are left trying to figure out how to get in touch with the filmmaker

If you have an online screener, you should write to the festival directly after submitting and ask if they’ll accept it in lieu of sending a DVD. Most will accept it.

All of your packaging, dvd cases, postcards, marketing materials, is thrown away immediately after pulling the DVD out.

Sending an email solicitation about your film to Film Festival programmers is not an effective way of getting your film on their radar.

Good written synopsises are helpful

Please send your films in the best quality you have. Too many are sending low res or not-well-encoded video files).

Cover letters accomplish nothing.

We love to have representatives from the films in attendance!

English-speaking filmmakers should know that most international film festival programmers abroad are not all native speakers of English. Subtitling your film in English (even if English spoken) might be a good idea when sending your film abroad, especially if film relies on dialogue.

The overwhelming feeling was positive, although there were some comments that seemed to come from years of frustration with filmmakers. I’ve added a selection of both kinds below:

The sense of entitlement seems to correspond with shittiness of movie.

Filmmakers need to be more proactive about promoting their films after they have been selected. We as the festival can only do so much as we need to promote the festival as a whole. Filmmakers can promote via social media or hands on by putting up posters themselves if they can attend the fest. Another way is they can reach out to media sources themselves, radio is usually looking for content and local news love to do interviews with a community arts slant. We as festival directors sometimes don’t have time to set that all up when the festival is in full swing.

Festivals like premieres so stop bragging about other festivals you’ve gotten into. It’s not a positive for us.

Festival organizers have an entire festival to promote. Unless your film is the opening night or closing night film, then expect to do the vast majority of the work yourself to generate an audience for your screening. If you do not engage in audience building for your screening, then you are very likely to be disappointed in the attendance for your film.

Once accepted in a festival, filmmakers must make sure one of their screenings (if you have more than one screening) sells out. You have to promote your screening(s) like a mad person. Use the screening itself as a reason to promote your film to anyone who’ll listen.

We are on your side, but follow the rules.

One of the things that irritates me the most is a film maker asking for a fee waver, and listing 20-30 film festivals they paid to enter before they considered our festival.

Out of the all the features we show, only one or two ever come from submissions.

People forgive bad picture, but they don’t forgive bad sound.

Bear in mind that smaller festivals are likely to be under-resourced/overworked and cut us some slack!

Read the guidelines properly. If a filmmakers film does not meet the criteria it will not be watched.

Stop asking for fee waivers. Seriously, please stop. More so, stop asking for waivers and then send us an angry response after we politely declined the opportunity to consider marketing your movie for free

Keep end of film credits short and be easy to contact

Use a large font for subtitles

Most entries could do with another edit

Making a movie with practically no money and resources today is an expectation rather than the exception. Absolutey no one is impressed anymore by anyone who made a movie on a shoe string budget in a limited amount of time.

About half of all the advice to filmmakers was about the length of their films. And the results are in….

• 0% = “Please can you make longer films”
• 100% = “Please, please, please make shorter films”

Filmmakers are long winded about their subject matter and shoot themselves in the foot, so to speak. Knowing how to tackle and get to the heart of the subject matter is the key to brilliant filmmaking.

Festivals only program movies which entertain and enthuse their audience. Ultimately, it is a cardinal sin to bore them.

Filmmakers often think that 10 minutes isn’t long enough for their film. Audiences often know that 10 minutes is too long for a first film.

Make your film shorter– 5 minutes or under and it will increase its likelihood of being selected.

If you’re thinking of starting your own film festival here are a few pointers from the guys already doing it:

Have a large contingency fee, have a bigger volunteer base than you think you are going to need.

Very hard to interest official bodies unless you’ve been doing it a while.

Running a Film festival is a huge work with lots if volunteers and a financial struggle but its worth it cause films get a wonderful audience in very crowded cinemas

It is MUCH harder than it looks (or would seem that it could possibly be), but can be really interesting and rewarding to make it worth the effort. Also, the first year is the hardest.

1. Know your audience 2. Publicity is everything 3. Partnerships are KEY

Go in managing your festival as a hobby, have a regular full-time job, and work like hell, and you will have a successful event.

Vital for success: Organizational Skills Funding other than tickets or entry fees. Stability in terms of graphic arts, web site, PR, volunteer support. Financial and entry selection integrity. Clear dileniation of roles and responsibilities. Minimal sponsor control Make it enjoyable for Everyone

You need a good five year plan and you must see it through. It takes time for events to get on people’s radar. So keep plugging your event and use social media!

Its a highly competitive space, with film festivals on very often in our city. Arts funders are not often interested in supporting us, because of the amount of film festivals in our city, and the local council and larger sponsors find us too small. Difficult to capture the market sometimes

It’s better to do a small festival really well than a large one poorly.

Sponsorship pays the bills 1) Treat them well 2) Don’t let them dictate the rules of sponsorship 3) Have a solid, reasonable sponsorship program 4) Ensure they get their monies worth 5) Follow up with them afterwards You have to be consistent in organization – you must be polished, even if you’re a casual festival

You can run a good festival on the cheap as long as you put a lot of effort into it. You need to build good partnerships and treat all the filmmakers and distributors with respect. It is a lot of work but very fulfilling

The public loves a Q&A with the director / crew – they really like to get involved!

Sponsorships for a film festival are very hard to get, and once you get them everyone wants a say in what they think would make the event great.

Set up a good supporting group before starting a film festival.

It takes a certain combination of passion for cinema and championing filmmakers, and a suicidal death-wish to create and run a film festival, particularly in the current global economy.

The movie theatre business has been turned on its head, with local, independant theatres being devoured by big corporate chains. This makes finding affordable, available venues more difficult.

Raising sponsorship is the hardest aspect of all. To find someone who will sponsor the event, even though its profitable, is virtually impossible.

Screening films rarely make money, it’s the add-ons such as Festival Lounges where audiences can purchase sponsor supplied alcohol, food, etc, that help our festival break even.

It’s a long, stressful and complicated process, but totally worth it.

Test the equipment, test the films to make sure everything runs well, make sure the lighting and microphones are operating well and the cues are worked out with the technicians.

In a previous post I showed how very few film festivals are making money, with many struggling to survive year on year. A number of respondents mentioned that they didn’t want to charge submission fees but felt compelled to by the economic realties of running a festival.

We know people don’t like paying submission fees, but without them our festival (and I assume many others) would not be able to make ends meet.

There seems to be a huge chasm between the prominent and monied festivals (Sundance/SXSW) and the majority of festivals that struggle with small budgets. There seems not be be a large “middle class.”

Don’t think you will make any money running a film festival.

Many festival directors commented on Withoutbox. Here a few of their thoughts:

The WAB software interface used by festivals/competitions is difficult and often doesn’t work well.

If there were one piece of advice I would give a beginning film festival promoter, it’s avoid Withoutabox like the plague.

Film makers often don’t realize that WAB deducts a very big percentage of the entry fees paid by the filmmaker before passing on the remaining entry fees to the festivals/competitions. Festivals and competitions often absorb the costs of WAB mistakes to keep the good will of filmmakers rather than try to recover the costs from WAB.

We stopped using WAB this year after 8 years because we felt that for the number of entries, it wasn’t worth what we were losing to them. including our package fee and the 18% cut per entry, we only took home about 57% of our fees, to get about 350 entries.

We would like to accept online submissions but we can’t afford Without a Box.

This year is our first year using WAB and we decided to do so simply because we thought it would increase the number of submissions. It hasn’t worked out that way. We couldn’t afford to set up the account as ‘no fee submission’ so we set a nominal fee. The fee has discouraged submissions (I think) but our film festival is now publicized more within the filmmaker community.

Withoutabox is the ugliest monopoly in the festival scene, and they keep your entry fees artificially high. Before a festival has even received a single submission, they’ve already spent thousands on Withoutabox for basically an entry system that hasn’t significantly improved in years.

Each festival director will have had different experiences and consequently their opinions will vary greatly. This article includes many quotations from film festival directors; some are contradictory and I’m sure that every festival director who reads this will find at least one comment they vehemently disagree with.

I have done my best to pick quotations that reflect common themes in the responses and I have favoured thoughts which are helpful to the most people (i.e. leaving out ones that are specific to a particular city, etc). I’ve not edited the text, save for things which improve readability.

From: http://stephenfollows.com/what-festival-directors-really-think/

Testing your film with an audience, top five editorial mistakes you CAN FIX

by Chris on JUNE 3, 2012 in EDITING

From: http://www.chrisjonesblog.com/2012/06/testing-your-film-with-an-audience-top-five-editorial-mistakes-you-can-fix.html

I recently attended a test screening of a feature film at BAFTA and I thought I would share my thoughts on common editorial mistakes when close to locking picture.

Common mistake number one… It doesn’t make sense (the elephant in the room that the film makers cannot see).
Everyone who read the script, then saw the actors perform it, and finally viewed the edit, will have no problem understanding the story. But they know the story, unlike the audience who get to experience it for the first time when they see the movie. Subtleties of performance or lines of dialogue that mean one thing to the filmmakers can mean something almost diametrically opposed to the audience. During your discussion after the film it’s a good idea to check that all your plot mechanics are working, that all your character inter-relationships are understood correctly. Otherwise, you could end up with one audience member thinking Bob and Jane are brother and sister, whilst another audience member may think they are husband and wife. Clearly, this presents two very different stories. Confusion will mean your story breaks down and audiences will be left frustrated.

Common mistake number two…
All those times in the cutting room when the director was saying ‘no, no, no, it’s a beautiful shot, let it breathe…’ will now haunt you. You will sit through this screening wishing every single edit came just fraction faster. In your head, you will be screaming ‘no, no, no stay awake because the next scene is really good…oh dear god, hurry up, hurry, hurry, hurry’. If the director is present at this screening, it maybe a wake up call but beware, it may lead to further denial – ‘they just don’t understand my art…’

Common mistake number three… Too Heavy handed
Being expert consumers, audiences are extraordinarily adept at extracting information from subtlety. Usually, this comes from an actor’s performance, where lines in the script can often be dropped because the actor is saying so much more with their being. For instance, an actor filling up with tears may not need to say ‘I love you’, their performance says it with greater profundity and subtlety, the words end up telling the audience how to feel instead of allowing them to find out for themselves. In the same ballpark, you may find that you can drop large chunks of dialogue that seemed to be important in the script, but somehow have become repetitious or overstated in the final movie. In all instances, these are very tough edits to make and ultimately, the only way to be sure that the choices you have made are right is to put it in front of an audience.

Common mistake number four…Bad, bad film making
There is no magic formula here, aside from a re-write or re-shoot (which still may not fix it), but if your movie has a moment that is truly awful, cut it out. If you can’t, reduce it to the very least it can be: it’s barest essence. Don’t ever linger when you know the scene is sooooo bad that you are going to shatter the suspension of disbelief in your audience. Fight hard for additional shooting days, it’s NEVER over until you say it is.

Common mistake number five… Fake mistakes
Ironically, much of the stuff you thought of as a problem, such as dodgy edits, shaky camera work, soft shots, poorly executed scenes, slightly unconvincing sets or locations etc., just aren’t a problem. The same is true of continuity. Whilst you were in the cutting room you would say ‘no, no we can’t do that, we’ll never get away with it…will we?’ It turns out that very often these things will go completely unnoticed by the audience. They won’t notice slightly poor technical filmmaking, nor will they be impressed by what you think of as great moments and flashy sequences. They just want a good story told well. They simply want to connect with the story and characters and be taken on a story journey. They only notice small problems when they have disengaged with the story.

If only we could turn back time
During cutting, alarm bells will occasionally begin to ring and you will remember all those times in script development when someone would say… ‘You know you have a problem here…’ and you’d reply, ‘oh we will get away with it…’, ‘no-one will notice that’ or ‘we don’t have time to improve the script, we have a movie to shoot!’ All the problems with your screenplay will now stand out ten feet tall. You’ll spend a large amount of time working your way out of corners that you could have avoided with more script and story development. But it’s a double edged sword, sometimes you just have to go shoot your movie, even if the script isn’t ready, or momentum may be lost. But as a rule, the old saying is sooooo true… ‘If it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage…’

Finally, listen to feedback. No-one is EVER wrong. EVERYONE is an expert in their experience. Some people won’t like it, some people will love it, but it MUST make sense, and be as tight as two coats of paint.

What's your starting salary?

Posted by Scott Harris on January 06, 2014 · Flag

From: http://blog.scottishdocinstitute.com/whats_your_starting_salary

Four months ago, Scott Harris released his first feature documentary, Being Ginger. He skipped the film festival circuit and premiered it at the two largest redhead festivals in the world while simultaneously making it available for download through his web site. He wrote a blog post for us about why he decided to take that route. Four months later we’ve asked him back to fill us in on how things have gone. Below he gives the graphic details.

Before I decided to become a filmmaker I was actually an Engineering student at The University of Texas.  One of the great things about the Engineering program at UT was that they kept detailed records of the job offers graduating students received.  It meant that when I was a sophomore I could go down to the employment office and I could see that if I maintained my current GPA I could expect a starting annual salary of around $45,000.

Then I became a filmmaker.

Filmmakers don’t talk about how much money they make – ever

I’ve always found it disheartening when I’ve gone to festivals and heard filmmakers talk about how they had to invest $100,000 of their own money into their film. I’ve always wondered if they ever made it back, either when the film aired on BBC Storyville, or later when it showed up on iTunes and Netflix.

But no one ever talks about money (except to say that no one goes into documentary filmmaking to get rich.)

Well, in honour of my time at Texas, and in the hope that it will help someone else, I’m going to lay out exactly how things have gone for me thus far.

I last posted here four months ago when I launched Being Ginger on my website through the online distributor VHX. I talked about how it was premiering that weekend at the Irish Redhead Convention which expected 2,000 people. There were only 80 seats at the screening, and I wondered how many of the remaining 1,920 people would go home and download the film. Well, it turned out there were closer to 2,500 people in town for the convention, and while they were turning people away at the door because the screening was so full, less than five people went home and bought the film. I did three ten-minute radio interviews to help promote the convention, one was nationwide, the film was mentioned in every major Irish newspaper (but not reviewed), and I appeared on one of the top Irish Morning TV shows which broadcast the trailer to the entire country. Four months on, exactly nine people in Ireland have purchased the film.

Despite lots of red hair, numbers are also red

I feel strange giving such a harsh figure because traditionally we use box office numbers to indicate if a film was good or not. The Oldboy remake did poorly, so it must not have been very good. But I don’t believe that is the case with my film. The audience absolutely loved it, and I’ve honestly not had a single negative reaction from anyone who has seen it. It’s just hard to get people to actually buy a download.

The week after the Irish Redhead Convention I went to the Netherlands to attend the Redhead Days, which is the world’s largest gathering of redheads. Being Ginger had two theatrical screenings there. The festival was kind enough to say they didn’t want any of the box office money. The cinema offered me 40% of the ticket sales (after taking off €96 for something called a Virtual Print Fee, or VPF). I said I thought that was a little low, and got them to agree to split it with me 50/50 if I could sell out the two screenings. They both sold out, with about 180 people at each screening.

I made this short video to show what that experience was like. Every filmmaker will relate to it:

The money I made from the screening paid for my travel costs to both festivals, but there was no profit.  I made a mistake not taking DVDs with me, but technically speaking the film still wasn’t finished.  I had some sound problems to work out and didn’t finish it until a week after the festival. I did take t-shirts and sold 15 after the two screenings. (My profit margin on the shirts was about $10.)

In that first week, I sold 121 copies of the film online. On the day of my launch I had 2,300 likes on Facebook, and I believe that most of the sales came from long-time fans who had been waiting for me to release the film.

Kickstarter backers not claiming rewards?

The most perplexing thing happened with my Kickstarter backers. Being Ginger had 311 total backers, and I was shocked by how many of them didn’t download the film. 41 people donated $5 in order to be given access to a private Vimeo link. In all, that link has been watched 31 times. 187 people donated $10 in order to get the HD download. In four months, only 124 have actually downloaded it. You might laugh and say that’s $680 I made for free, but that isn’t how I look at it. I want those people to see the film, not only because they paid for it, and not only because I love the film, but that’s 73 people who should be sharing the link on Facebook with their friends saying, “Hey everyone, you have to checkout this film that I helped get made.” I’ve emailed all of them multiple times, but I get no response.

So the next step was trying to get the film on iTunes and Netflix.  I have a friend who released a feature doc last year; it played at festivals, picking up an award here and there. It had a modest theatrical release.  When it was released on iTunes, it was the number one documentary for about two weeks. That meant sales of between 500 and 1,000 per day. My film has been out on my website for four months, and I’ve sold less than 500 copies in total.  Part of that is the power of iTunes, and part of it is the power of having screened at festivals and being written up in blogs and reviewed in newspapers. That film then went to Netflix, with whom the distributor signed an 18-month contract for $45,000. (Of course with all of these figures it’s important to point out that the money must be split up between quite a few people. iTunes takes 30%, the aggregator takes their cut, and the distributor takes 50% of what’s left. In my case, VHX takes just $0.50 +15%, or $2, for each transaction, and I get the other $8.)

Aggregation and aggravation

I wanted to place Being Ginger with both iTunes and Netflix so I approached two aggregators. The first ignored me completely. The second asked to see the film. They got back to me quickly to tell me that they loved it, but that they didn’t think it was right for them. They didn’t give an explanation. No aggregator means no iTunes and no Netflix.

After my first blog post here, someone from Seed & Spark got in touch with me. They thought that my film was an SDI production because I had blogged here. (It wasn’t, they are just good friends of mine who’ve been very supportive but were too busy to add my film to their packed program.) For those who don’t know, Seed & Spark is a new crowdfunding platform that only caters to films. There are a few things that make them unique compared to Kickstarter and IndieGoGo which I quite like. That’s the Seed part of their name. The Spark part has to do with the fact that they are also an online distributor. They curate their selection and sell films as a 3-day rental for $2.99. They took a look at Being Ginger and asked to include it. I was very impressed with them and I plan to place my film with them eventually. I am also planning to crowdfund my next film, and I believe I will go with them over Kickstarter.

My other grand scheme has been to take Being Ginger on tour around the US. I’m working with Tuggand have plans to screen the film in 30 cities around the country. I’m starting with a 10 city tour starting next week. Then I will take a month off, partly to regroup, and partly because I want to go to South by Southwest (SXSW). I will pick up with the remaining 20 cities starting in mid-March, hoping to finish the tour in time to attend Hot Docs. (Tugg doesn’t work with Canadian cinemas, but I am going to try to rent out one on my own in Toronto for the Tuesday after Hot Docs.)  After that I plan to head back to the UK. I’m hoping Tugg will be working with British cinemas by then (and it will allow me catch up with friends at Sheffield Doc/Fest.)

On tour and on-line

Planning the tour has been an incredible learning experience.  I’ll come back in a few months and do a full write up on the process. So far I can tell you that it is already far more work than the crowdfunding campaign, and going into it, I don’t expect to make any money off of it; mainly because I have to travel with the film which means that I’ll be very lucky to just break even. I’m holding out hope that I can generate enough interest from the tour that I can get an aggregator who will find a way to get me on Netflix. But even if I can’t, the tour will still be worth it because this is the only way to get the word out.

And really that is the problem I’ve had. I need people on blogs to write about Being Ginger. I need reviews. In four months, I’ve managed to get one real review from a professional critic. I had met him once at a film festival over five years ago, but he remembered me when I got in touch (mostly because of my hair) and he agreed to look at it. He wrote back and said he was relieved that he loved it, and gave it a positive review.

Feeding the buzz

By late November my sales had started to dry up. I was averaging less than two a day. Then, as if a gift from heaven, my film was mentioned on BuzzFeed.  It was a small mention, the trailer wasnumber 31 on a list of 34 reasons why this was a great year for redheads. That article was viewed over 200,000 times, had over 18,000 Facebook Likes, and led directly to 3,000 views of my trailer. In 48 hours 40 people downloaded the film. The numbers aren’t insane, but it was the best two days I’d had since the weekend I released the film. Only 1-1.5% of the people who watched the trailer paid the $10 for the film, and that has been consistent throughout my launch. I added the first four minutes of the film as a free taste, but it hasn’t made much of a difference. The thing is, my goal has only ever been to sell 10,000 downloads. If the math holds out that means I need to get around 1,000,000 people to watch the trailer. For that, I need to drive way more people to my site. Interestingly, one of the BuzzFeed co-founders is a funder behind VHX.  BuzzFeed is such a popular site that if it’s done right they have the ability to drive 1,000,000 eyeballs to my trailer, but so far I haven’t had any luck making that happen.

For the sake of context, I should reveal exactly how much money I spent making the film. Not counting any of the deferred labour, mine or of my friends who worked for free, but the actual real money spent, Being Ginger cost $37,500. (That figure does not include my student loan debt, part of which should probably be included because I was a student the first year I worked on the film. Also that figure continues to grow because of expenses related to the tour.) As of today, counting the Kickstarter, the sales from my VHX release, and ticket sales at the Redhead Days (plus T-shirts), I have made $17,500.

A few other things I’ve learned

With Internet memes, it is shocking to me how much better pictures do on Facebook than videos. I asked a friend to make 15 illustrationsfor me for 50 pounds. Those illustrations more than anything else got my Facebook page from 700 Likes to 2,500 (I’m at 3,300 now). The most popular ones would get 150 likes and 600 shares, and brought 100 new likes to the page. I hired another friend to create six short animations. In all they cost me 450 pounds. To me, the animations are significantly funnier than the e-cards. But when I post them to Facebook I’m lucky to get 25 likes and five shares. I assume it’s because most people check Facebook on their phones when they are on the move, and it’s easier to look at a picture than it is to watch even a 30-second video. Still, I love the animations, and I’m glad that I had them made. 

I suspect now that one of the biggest mistakes I made was not doing more to get a larger following on Facebook. I recently took part in an interesting Twitter chat that Seed & Spark did about social media. (They do them every other Tuesday at 2pm EST with the hastag #filmcurious.) The special guest was Kristin McCracken and she talked about the power of Facebook ads to drive up Likes. One filmmaker spoke up that he had used them to generate over 200,000 Facebook Likes for his new film, which hasn’t started shooting yet. The key seems to be having good extra content, which I think I have, but I never used Facebook ads. I should have taken a month or two and played around with it. Think what you will of Facebook, if I’d had 200,000 likes I believe I would have had a very different response from the aggregators. I’ll try to play with it now, and since I have been unable to find any kind of decent case study online, I’ll try to post about my results here in a few months.

I have a few other tricks up my sleeve. For one thing, I am now creating my own lists as a community member of BuzzFeed, and I’m hoping one of them might catch on.

I wanted to give a serious talk about bullying at a TEDx event, but I didn’t get a response from the organizers so I recorded the talk in my own bedroom and plan to share it on YouTube sometime in the next couple of months. It’s a pipe dream, but I’m going to try to get it on Upworthy.

My plan now is simply to reach enough people with the film that I can get people interested in my work. 16 months ago, I raised just shy of $13,000 through a Kickstarter campaign. When it launched I had 27 people on my mailing list. I now have over 1,000. I hope to have 5,000 by the time I launch my next crowdfunding campaign, for the (sort of) sequel to Being Ginger.

Check back again in about four months and I’ll try to post a detailed report on my Tugg tour, including a list of dos and don’ts.

You can follow Scott's adventures as he tours the US at his own blog.