5 Ways You Can Promote Your Independent Film Production

Creating an independent film is no easy task and launching a film without the support of a big banner production company is a feat all passionate filmmakers hope to achieve. However, despite the amount of hard work you put into the write-up, direction, and production of your indie film, you wouldn’t be able to taste success if you don’t make a successful attempt at promoting it. This is because without your masterpiece receiving a good promotion, people wouldn’t even get to know about it and hence you’d be receiving zero reception no matter how good your film may be.

Hence, in addition to focusing on the screenplay and cinematography, you should also attempt to focus on your film’s promotional activities. Without a good promotion strategy, you would be setting up your film for failure and given below are six ways you can promote your indie film production:

1) Create teasers and a trailer

Creating teasers and a trailer for your indie film should essentially be a no-brainer. While teasers are essentially short clips with little to no context shot and released during production, trailers are edited post-production and feature a premise, the beginning, mid, and ending of a film. If you want to create a buzz about your film early on, you must invest time into creating attention-grabbing teasers that are followed by a trailer that further hooks your potential audience. You can share these on YouTube and other video-sharing websites for increased reach.

2) Set up a website and social media presence

Any venture one embarks on these days has to have a social and digital presence for it to seem like the real deal to its potential audience, and films are no different. Since your indie film isn’t under the banner of a big production, you need to cover all your bases and maintain a presence on all social media platforms and create a website. You can use all these platforms to make important announcements about your film, its releases, and regular updates. You may also choose to run your blog on the said website and update content throughout the production process.

3) Run a dedicated blog 

Whether this blog is dedicated to your production or whether this is a blog created especially for your movie and its release, you should run and update a blog nonetheless. The blog should function as a stage where you can promote your movie, and ideally feature related content such as the process of what went into the indie movie’s creation, the inspiration, behind-the-scenes action, and the thoughts of the cast and crew. By conveying what went into the film and its production, you would be able to portray your work seriously as a producer and hence increase the chances of your movie’s success.

4) Focus on traditional marketing

In addition to the digital realm, you should also focus on traditional marketing media for your film’s promotion. Outdoor signs, posters, newspaper and magazine ads, press releases, and features in local newspapers are some of the common ways to conduct traditional marketing and promotion for your indie film. If you are releasing your film in the United States, know that outdoor signs can be costly, yet incredibly effective. Make sure to get the most bang for your buck by advertising in various locations, such as  billboards in phoenix, Chicago, New York, and other populous cities around the country. Try to land interviews and spots in local news and radio stations to promote your film locally as well as nationally.

5) Land a spot at a film festival

For most indie films, the path to success begins with them featuring in a film festival, and you should too look to get featured in one. Film festivals open movies to additional avenues and audiences that wouldn’t otherwise be possible for them as an indie feature. Since film festivals bring together big names from the film fraternity, your film being featured could help bring recognition to you as a producer and help you gain attention from A-listers in the industry. You could also garner reviews and ratings for your film, and may even end up bagging an award or two. Getting featured in a film festival is essentially coveted by many filmmakers and look for a festival that features a theme close to that of your movie to increase your chances of landing a spot.

Conclusion 

While promoting your indie feature may feel like a daunting task at first, once you get the hang of it you will find it growing on you. Movie promotion can be a fun task to engage in, and getting the chance to promote your hard work would bring you more joy than you can imagine. By putting at work the above tips in your film promotion strategy, you would be able to get the word out about your film in no time, and hopefully see success as an indie film producer.