Day 24: Devil in the Details
Funding is going really well and I cannot thank everyone enough for donating! The clock is ticking, but I am confident we can pull this off. Today I am not talking about a specific film I have made, but more of a concept. I wanna talk about everything beyond the film like premiere promotion, marketing, packaging, and branding.
I have always had a fairly good idea about branding and how much more there is to your final product than what most people would think. What I mean is most people would think after you make the film you are done. That is not true at all. You are about 50% done. The other amount of time is spent promoting the film and creating a brand. Now this is not something I created. Branding and marketing for films has been around for as long as films have been around. Its the idea and concept of going the extra mile with little to no money at all that kills most low or no budget films. I have never let money rule what I can and cannot do.
Promotion and branding have always been strong points for me. I am able to take a film I have made and create so much more out of it. Check out the tickets for the Mousetrap 2 Premiere.
I could easily have just gotten cheap little tickets with no clever marketing or branding behind them, but I decided to go big and it paid off. People ended up treating the tickets like souvenirs. At the end of the film the entire crew was signing a lot of peoples tickets. Also since I made 4 different tickets people wanted one of each. It is all about making something creative when it is extremely simple. Check out some of the premiere posters for Mousetrap 2 below.
Taking ideas and concepts from the film and implementing them into everything we put out for the film. Getting people excited about the film while promoting the project is the best advertising. We put these posters up all over town and I'm sure people stopped to look at them because they catch your eye. Pushing the creativity all the way past the premiere is huge. Check out the DVD cases and packaging for Mousetrap 2 below.
I did not have to go out of my way and create all of this special artwork for the film, but to me when I open up a DVD and it has really cool artwork, I feel like time and effort was put in. People who care about the details are the true artists. There is so much more to films than just the actual film itself. Going above and beyond to promote the film as a brand pushes the film to a new level.
What I learned: Go above and beyond. It'll make you stand out from the rest.
