Lesson Info
6. Do You Need a Celebrity In Your Film?
Lessons
What Will You Learn in This Course?
03:21 2What is the Film Industry?
03:52 3What is Your Movie's Goal?
07:20 4Think About Distribution in Development
09:03 5How to Find Your Audience
15:54 6Do You Need a Celebrity In Your Film?
05:08 7Midway Student Roundtable Discussion
18:20 8How to Maximize Online Distribution
24:55What is Theatrical Distribution?
05:45 10Effective Use of Press & Public Relations
03:57 11Getting Your Story Out w/ Sarah Moga
19:51 12Create Your Film Festival Strategy
14:06 13Final Thoughts
05:14 14Sit Down with Robert Milazzo
09:48 15Sit Down with Robert Milazzo Pt 2
13:10 16Sit Down with Robert Milazzo Pt 3
22:16Lesson Info
Do You Need a Celebrity In Your Film?
I get asked this a lot about whether it's important to have a celebrity in our in our projects, and there was a time in filmmaking that it was you needed to have a celebrity or you the money we're gonna look at you and but the world has dramatically changed and you don't need to have a celebrity. I meet people all the time who were saying, I've gotta have a lot more money, even though it's a tiny little movie that all takes place in one room, but I have to have a million dollars because or five million dollars because I want to get a big actor in there. The problem is that that big actor isn't going toe unless the content is amazing, they're not going to be in it, and if the content were amazing, they would be in it for one hundred thousand. There were one hundred thousand dollars budget and they'll work under an ultra low sag budget agreement, and they'll do it because it's an amazing role, so the story is the most important part. Distribution and social networking and building audien...
ces is hugely important, but having a great story is the number one most important thing, and I like to use celebrity in a way beyond having a celebrity in your film, which is you can have it and it's equally as powerful is the have a celebrity endorse you and validate you and there's a wonderful little cheap that you khun dio which is you can say you know for instance I could say the empowerment project I can do at empowerment document it's called empowerment doc you you know at diane sawyer at gina davis at amy wrote I mean I can add their handles into my tweet and I can make it make it more it goes out there and people just assume that they're involved with the project in some way or validated and even their people will look at it and say, oh, I didn't even know about this it's a way of calling them out getting their attention because I've done my homework I know they support this kind of thing so I'm actually putting them into my tweet to say hey, they will often times retweeted or they actually in many cases have reached out to us directly to say what is this? It looks really interesting so I don't do it in a in an irresponsible way but you could do that and it gets their attention so if you perfect example living on one dollar we did a tiny little who run for two weeks just to raise awareness because we were going out in booking screenings for this film to play in schools around the around the country to talk about extreme poverty and we ended up creating a whole bunch of tweets and posts for all of these different foundations we were working with, and we asked them to please tweet on our behalf and what could we also did a tweet on their behalf, so it was a nice exchange and they were thrilled that we did all the heavy lifting for them, and so they treated it out and the director of the hunger games, who is very passionate about helping people get out of extreme poverty, he actually watch the movie and tweeted all about it, and that brought even more people in so you can use celebrities, they're online there, you don't have to go through a manager or an agent to get to them online, and you just have to do the research, find out what their hashtag is, call him out on it and and associate with them so that actually can bring you some great return as well. So celebrities are still hot commodity, but you could be really creative and used them in other ways. You don't have to have them be the star of your movie or even in the background. Um, so yeah, they do help in distribution in many ways, but mostly used him for endorsements. They like to align, they are brands themselves, so they want to align with good stories, how do you get the celebrities? Include them in the tweets reach out to their team that's the other thing is if you really do your homework and you find out like if gina davis she has an institute, she has other things she supports and shows people who work for her final who they are to add them in into the mix be inclusive at everyone in it gets them people like to be acknowledged especially people who work for the big people they love knowing that and they will actually become a fan and bring your project to that that person's attention as well. So be creative about how you go about reaching out to them so that's another thing that's fun to do is to sit down and make a list I'm a big fan of lists sit down and make a list of all the celebrities that might find and they don't have to be celebrities in the industry they could be celebrities and other fields if you know wayne gretzky was you had a great hockey movie and you sent it to him or you included him in some way him validating your hunky film is great if you're film all the political people excellent, you know there's our foundations and institutions people in the news people who report on these kinds of things it's it's great to mention people outside of the film industry because they are as equally as important
Ratings and Reviews
a Creativelive Student
This course is only an introduction to online distribution for films. It doesn't go deeper in any aspect nor gives you concrete steps depending on your film project. So if you've never heard or thought about distribution is a good place to start in a few hours, but if you are looking for a deeper analysis or information to reinforce the online distribution of your film, it isn't there in my opinion.
user-5e0444
Was this an instructional video, or a plug for a commercial enterprise. Light in detail, this series does offer a few gems for those searching for answers. It did put into perspective the odds of finding distribution in a marketplace crowded by competition where everyone is looking for ways to maximize a return on investment and offers alternatives to those wishing to tackle the job of online distribution themselves. Because "once a film is completed, the real work begins." it is important to know what these alternatives are. David W. King, Michigan Movie Media 2.0