1 day left to help make a movie

There is one day left for you to help our indie film team finish and release a feature film. Read this for how you can help! I would love it if you help by following that link and clicking 'follow' on the Seed&Spark campaign page. If we get 500 likes, we unlock a lot of great services to help us distribute the new film.

So how do you create an audience for an indie feature film? How do you create commercial success for a film without sacrificing the creative power of the project?

If I knew the answers to those questions, I probably wouldn't be writing this story, now would I? 

I do have some ideas, and I'm busy developing and testing them. I am very curious of your thoughts on how to proceed.

There are traditional ways of achieving commercial success:

1. Have a bit name attached to the film. Angelina Jolie sells tickets.
2. Have some crazy special effects. Aliens sell tickets. (Did you see what I did there? Checking if you read the other articles!)
3. Throw massive marketing budget to create a one off hype.
4. De-risk and grow an audience by making sequels, like Star Wars 15 coming soon.
5. Make the movie based on something which already has an audience, like a book or personality.
6. Have taxes pay for it and get subsidised so you don't have to worry about sales.
7. Go horror and chop up kids in a cabin in the forest.

We aren't doing any of the above, at least not yet, so we're having to get more creative and entrepreneurial.

The incredible assets we have nearby and within us are knowledge on business models and marketing strategies.  On the business model side, I'm looking at the concept of Exponential Organisations, which is covered wonderfully in the book of the same name by Salim Ismael. I met Salim back in 2011 while attending the Singularity University, and have been loosely attached to the movement ever since.  The basic premise of ExO's achieve more than 10x the results of traditional organisations by organising themselves differently. Think Uber and Airbnb. Yes, I would love to be the Airbnb of indie films! Watch this video from Salim about the concept. Any organisation can benefit from this thinking (hint, hint, give me a call!)

Marketing strategy in the start-up space has everything to do with user creation. Think about mobile games and how they are designed to be addictive, or the last time you signed up for an online service and actually stuck with it - such as Dropbox. These services use concepts which have been rolled together into a movement called Growth Hacking, and it's freakin' awesome. It covers everything from initial product design, customer experience design, marketing channels and other concepts like viral referral schemes. Watch this video from the Growth Tribe in Amsterdam (explains the Dropbox story and a few others). I highly recommend attending their courses or events.

The concept I am working on is in start-up mode, which means it is flawed and hasn't found a value proposition or customer base yet. It's a journey of discovery at the moment.   The parameters are also based on not wanting to be the new Netflix or other VOD platforms, there are enough of those out there. 

The brand of the audience creation service is different than Longship Films by choice. We want to keep the creative and commercial energies separate, as they each have a different purpose.

What we've created is called FreshFlix. A place to find fresh new indie movies, and for these movies to find you. It's a portal where you can discover movies, and make a quick decision on whether you would like to watch, and you can jump from this site to all the places the film is available.

Yes, I now there are sites that do a lot of this at the moment, and do it better.

What I believe is if we can create a database of users, reward them with free or discounted movies as they share their preferences with us, then we can get more great content to become available to them. If they like watching a movie, they can get a free next movie if they make a referral to a friend. Why not?

I've heard at festivals that every year there are between 10 and 50 thousand feature films made every year. It depends on your definition of feature film, but let's assume there are 20 thousand movies made which are watchable and entertaining around the world.  If only a small percentage of these are actually picked up the traditional ways, then there is an ENDLESS supply of nice content for people enjoy. What's missing is the match maker in between, so they can find each other.

It should become the Tinder for films.

Yes, on my brainstorm list there a bunch of creative ideas to achieve more success here, but those are still under wraps until I have a bit more time to set them up on the website.  

I have been running some social ad campaigns to specific target groups, and although it is on a low level, we are basically at break even on the ad cost versus the film sales. After a few more sprints, I'm expecting this to improve as well. Plus, we are making more movies to fill up the database.

So, how can you help?

• Support the next movie by clicking this link and pressing the blue follow button. It's free, just do it already!
• Check out FreshFlix here and let me know what you think - how could we make this more interesting and useful?
• If you know other filmmakers who are struggling with finding an audience, get them in touch with me and maybe they can already benefit from FreshFlix.
• And obviously, if you know CIO/CDO gigs at the moment, call me! I need to make some money to finance this expensive film habit of mine!

We are almost to the end of the story, and the end of the crowd campaign..

You can start at the beginning of the story here.