Film Industry Notes http://filmindustrynotes.posterous.com Some thoughts on Film Development, Marketing, Production & Distribution posterous.com Thu, 05 Jul 2012 07:02:00 -0700 (Almost 20) Ideas towards Audience Development http://filmindustrynotes.posterous.com/audience-development-in-europe http://filmindustrynotes.posterous.com/audience-development-in-europe

Audienciesandcontent

A report on Audience building and the future Creative Europe Programme has been published by the European Expert Network on Culture (EENC). The aim of this report is to explore the role of audience building, presenting relevant trends and examples in different cultural sectors and provide recommendations to European Institutions for the next Creative Europe Programme.

Regardless of the political and government recommendations, what is made clear is that the next Creative Europe Programme will have the audience development as a main priority in its schemes. So what can we do, from the film industry, to be prepared to meet these requirements as well as to increase and develop our audiences? I will use some of the strategies and recommendations stated in the report to try to briefly brainstorm some ideas, from the point of view of the film industry:

  • Education in audience development:

- National and regional institutions dedicated to the statistics could offer trimestral workshops to unveil the state of the art of the audience behaviour for each industry.

- Some audience development courses could be added to the Media Studies and Film Schools curricula.

- Specific departments in close contact with audiences should share their knowledge with all the company, so for instance, a screenwriter could be aware of young people's trends when going to the cinema.

- Extract results and data from previous projects and analyse what went wrong and what worked out well.

  • Outreach and accessibility

- Consider, when ellaborating the distribution plan, how the outreach could be wider and how this film or audiovisual production could be more accesible to other target groups.

- Use mobile technologies to help with the call to action (nearest cinemas screening your movie, showtimes, ticket discounts on FourSquare,...)

- Make the most of your online campaign, to get the attention of those who cannot be reached by traditional media.

  • Partnerships, mostly with other sectors

- Explore more partnership opportunities from development, beign not just for product placement, but also for the distribution and exhibition phases.

- Consider how a partnership could help to broaden the outreach to other target groups.

- Consider how a partnership could help both increasing the funding and/or reducing the final fee the audience has to pay to enjoy the movie.

- Consider the tourism sector as a viable and long term ally.

- Consider partnerships as a way to "virtually" increase your marketing and promotion budget (synergies)

  • User engagements

- It seems that the most engaged people are with a production, the most they will consume, recommend and collaborate for the success of the project. So, maybe we could consider from development how will we make our future audiences engaged with the project along the production, and how this could benefit the movie itself and its awareness. Some tips from the report are related to user generated content (mainly with the use of digital technologies) and volunteering/consultation.

- Consider how user engagement (via user generated content, social media or volunteering) could help use with the search for funging (via crowdfunding or just by demonstrating to a financer how many people is already engaged in the production), raising awareness in different cities/territories (so we could cut direct promotion costs and get some in-site feedback), calling to action (organising "events" to watch the movie, for instance), maintaining the movie in the spotlight weeks after the theatrical release...

  • Audience segmentation (specially children, young people, people with disabilities and minorities):

- If our target group is very specific, consider how we could create sub-projects to get to these other population segments. Educational screenings? Screenings outside cinemas? Creating crossmedia/transmedia projects?

  • Pricing (incentives)

- I really think this could be a big audience booster. As flat rates are becoming the standard on every online VOD service, shouldn't theaters do the same? Some multiplexes in the UK have already stablished affordable flat monthly rates (for the price of 1.5 or 2 movies, watch all the movies you want) which ensure a monthly income for the theater whilst dragging more people to the cinemas.

  • Geography

- Consider ways to make the production available (preferably at the same time) everywhere? Different ways of distribution depending on the location needs and audience behaviours.

 

And to end with, I would like to add another category:

  • Content creation towards an audience

- Design appealing and interesting contents capable of engaging an audience. Without good contents, no audience will be developed nor engaged. An exercise of humility has to be done, in order to determinate the appropiate quality of the production we are pushing to the market. 

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