Marketing Short Films to Mainstream Audiences

T

thefilmcrews

Member
My company and I are conducting an experiment as part of our move into original content. Recently we've been releasing a new short film every month with each film being targeted at a more mainstream YouTube audience.

A few rules of thumb we follow:
- No Opening Credits (Gets to the point, reduces dropped views)
- No standard contemporary dramas (We're not trying to win Oscars, faster pace holds attention better)
- Target length is between 8 and 12 minutes long (roughly the length of a bathroom break)
- Emphasis on visuals and production value (Strong Art Dept, Cinematography, etc)
- No copyrighted content. We either make content based on public domain entities or from scratch. (Harder to share, but for obvious reasons)

I'll post a few examples of what we're doing below, but you can see our full portfolio at Gearmark.TV. After about 8 months we've had moderate success getting ~30k subscribers, definitely a smaller-than-desired ROI for the amount of effort these take, but we're hoping that it's just our marketing game that has been weak.

So a few questions for you guys:

1) Do you guys think mainstream audiences would appreciate short films in today's online environment?

2) Do you see online distribution as a viable alternative to the festival circuit?

3) Do you know of any reasonably popular supporting blogs / forums where content like this can be shared effectively?

4) Do you know of any others that have been successful / unsuccessful in a similar venture?

Very curious to get your guys perspective on this and hear if you've had any similar experience in trying to cut through the noise. If you guys have any suggestions concerning marketing, the type of content we make or anything else I'd love to hear it!

Here's a few examples of our work:

Comrade Crunch - Action Dramedy [15:36]

Harbinger - POV Lovecraft-Based Thriller [8:59]

A Hunger for Justice - Noir Comedy [11:19]

Hope you're all kickin' ass and takin' names. :thumbsup:
 
Nothing now, but...

Nothing now, but...

The work is strong enough to sell if there were a paid channel in place known for good short films. But there is no such channel. Two other ways might work:
1 - create a body of work at least as long as a feature film, and four-wall it in person. Anything presented in person by the creator is premium content, and people will pay for it. The problem, of course, is that this is a retail solution. You can only do so much.

2 - Along with your own body of work, become an on-line distributor of other people's work, then set up a heavily-marketed pay site with a low subscription price, say $25/year, or VOD per title for say, $1. This has two major issues - it requires a major financial investment with no proven return, and there is simply not enough good product. The second issue could be dealt with by financing production from known good filmmakers. This whole line of thinking requires thinking and acting big, really big.

In the whole history of film, shorts have never made money, except for the Twilight Zone. Because of today's shortened attention spans, this may be the time.
 
i am curious too. i made a slew of short films, am "under distribution" on several platforms, have made zero moneys. also people just seem generally apathetic unless youre already famous (e.g. if kevin smith did what you guys were doing he'd make a killing). the advice i see given to those trying to "make it" on youtube (not exactly what youre doing but similar enough for comparison purposes) is that new content has to be created frequently...REALLY frequently, like once a week at LEAST. thats how you build a following/subscribers, and show up in more search results (not just youtube, I believe web crawlers also like frequently updated content).

the one thing i might question is aiming high with visual production values. sound? absolutely. lighting etc. ? whats the specific content? comedy can look fairly crappy and work...drama/fantasy/period etc. becomes laughable under the same circumstances. but if you were doing more comedy, maybe sacrificing visuals when possible to crank out stuff quicker is a worthwhile exchange?

ive been out of this world for a while now but had an idea to do a series of very short "webisodes" using available light with good sound. it will make it less of a chore to shoot with no crew, and i want to see how far color correction/grading can take me as far compensating for that.
 
Curtis Mack said:
The work is strong enough to sell if there were a paid channel in place known for good short films. But there is no such channel. Two other ways might work:
1 - create a body of work at least as long as a feature film, and four-wall it in person. Anything presented in person by the creator is premium content, and people will pay for it. The problem, of course, is that this is a retail solution. You can only do so much.

2 - Along with your own body of work, become an on-line distributor of other people's work, then set up a heavily-marketed pay site with a low subscription price, say $25/year, or VOD per title for say, $1. This has two major issues - it requires a major financial investment with no proven return, and there is simply not enough good product. The second issue could be dealt with by financing production from known good filmmakers. This whole line of thinking requires thinking and acting big, really big.

In the whole history of film, shorts have never made money, except for the Twilight Zone. Because of today's shortened attention spans, this may be the time.
Click to expand...

First, thanks for taking the time to dive into this and share your ideas. I do think that going the retail route would be fairly limiting as far a exposure, we're not so much wanting a ROI in the way of money, it's more so that we see the shorts themselves as an investment to build a relationship with a potential audience where can then expand into larger scale 'premium' type content.

Becoming a distributer of other peoples work is a good idea, it would allow us to release content a lot more regularly and has some proven success (such as with the CG Bros channel). The biggest problem we'd face of course is that once you get into the licensing game it becomes hard to keep potential future costs down (the primary reason why Netflix and Hulu have comparatively expensive subscriptions). In the short term, doing these projects is definitely a vastly more expensive option, but I think in the long term making our content from scratch is what will allow us to compete with these already established entities.

Perhaps it would be best to focus on expanding our community and to bring in other creators on the ground floor to help build the platform to secure a place for them on it in the future. It's not a promise founded in stone (as there's no guarantee the model will work), but I think in today's market having a potential long term partnership with agreeable distribution you can influence is an attractive idea. Could be the best of both worlds.

Josh Bass said:
i am curious too. i made a slew of short films, am "under distribution" on several platforms, have made zero moneys. also people just seem generally apathetic unless youre already famous (e.g. if kevin smith did what you guys were doing he'd make a killing). the advice i see given to those trying to "make it" on youtube (not exactly what youre doing but similar enough for comparison purposes) is that new content has to be created frequently...REALLY frequently, like once a week at LEAST. thats how you build a following/subscribers, and show up in more search results (not just youtube, I believe web crawlers also like frequently updated content).

the one thing i might question is aiming high with visual production values. sound? absolutely. lighting etc. ? whats the specific content? comedy can look fairly crappy and work...drama/fantasy/period etc. becomes laughable under the same circumstances. but if you were doing more comedy, maybe sacrificing visuals when possible to crank out stuff quicker is a worthwhile exchange?

ive been out of this world for a while now but had an idea to do a series of very short "webisodes" using available light with good sound. it will make it less of a chore to shoot with no crew, and i want to see how far color correction/grading can take me as far compensating for that.
Click to expand...

Thank you as well for taking the time to leave a thought out response! Frequency is definitely our primary issue, I think it may tie into what I was talking about above.

Achieving the higher production quality is ironically the easier part for us, we're a fairly tight group of 6 with different specializations and we've worked probably over 100 projects together which allows us to be pretty streamlined in terms of getting things done. The harder part is definitely project development and writing, which are fairly new avenues for us and take a fairly long time.

Even if it weren't the case though, I feel the general quality might be the thing that can really separate us from a lot of the other YouTube options. Low budget comedy has more track record as far as being successful, but the market is also incredibly saturated with it already. We'll probably put more energy into exploring genres less accessible to other content creators such as fantasy, sci fi and period pieces.

Thanks for continuing the conversation and putting in your thoughts! Always great to get other perspectives.
 
if you guys can knock good looking stuff out quickly than more power to you and keep it going. as far as separating you from other creators, that may well be true but the question is does the online audience notice/appreciate that stuff? I have a pretty low opinion of the the typical online viewer (just look at any comments section), and i think they notice acting/story/content more than visuals, EXCEPT where those production values, again keep the content from being laughable (selling the world in a fantasy/period/drama, gunshot/blood FX, etc.).

please understand i used to take a ton of time and agonize and slave over lighting and stuff but for some genres i just dont think people notice or care (again mostly comedy). if youre gonna do drama/horror/sci fi etc. then yes please make it look as good as you can cause that adds "polish" and even internet troglodytes will subconsciously perceive that your stuff looks more "professional"
 
I have never seen any evidence anywhere whatsoever that anyone PAYS to see short films ever.
With the exception of at film festivals. But I feel it has always been more than clear that people attend film festivals very much for the feel and the atmosphere and the experience of a GOOD film festival. And that certainly seems to by why I have never ever witnessed anyone paying to see short films in any other environment.

I see an enormous amount of evidence that short films are strictly something one does for the sake of doing it, or to advance their experience in film making.
I have never known of any short films making any money on their own.

Just my experience living in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Phoenix.
 
i dont think thats strictly true, its just VERY hard. as i said there are a number of short film distributors and i licensed my very first one to a film festival for a few hundred dollars many years ago (who know if they still do that). theres always itunes, amazon createspace (or whatever its called), etc. probably the best piece of advice i ever got regarding this stuff is that its much easier to sell a COLLECTION of shorts than a single 8-12 minute (what you guys specified) piece...make a collection approaching the length of a feature film and its more appealing (an hour+). plus some of the tv channels do that kind of stuff, I THINK.
 
Josh Bass said:
internet troglodytes
Click to expand...

This phrase made my evening.

In reference to the rest of what you said, it's true that probably a lot of the audience doesn't notice a huge difference. I think at the end of the day it's really just a matter of pride and making sure we're living up to our own standards. Additionally I think that the 1% who CAN tell will probably be all the more attached to your content just for that reason alone.

Story and character are of course everything, no doubts on that. That's the aspect I feel we need to work on most, it's also the aspect that's most new to us.

Keeping the quality of our pieces also helps us in maintaining our community as well, people tend to appreciate working on things they feel they can show to people.
 
DPStewart said:
I have never seen any evidence anywhere whatsoever that anyone PAYS to see short films ever.
With the exception of at film festivals. But I feel it has always been more than clear that people attend film festivals very much for the feel and the atmosphere and the experience of a GOOD film festival. And that certainly seems to by why I have never ever witnessed anyone paying to see short films in any other environment.

I see an enormous amount of evidence that short films are strictly something one does for the sake of doing it, or to advance their experience in film making.
I have never known of any short films making any money on their own.

Just my experience living in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Phoenix.
Click to expand...

I'm inclined to agree. People will barely pay for feature films anymore I can't imagine a short film being successful in any kind of retail. The closest you can probably get is packaging the short films for distribution on odd platforms such as Shorts TV or other niche networks / platforms. I probably wouldn't count on that doing any better than breaking even though, and even then.

My original question was more geared towards the idea that short films can be created for a mainstream audience, do you think they could be received well and work as a viable medium in today's online media environment?
 
There's no market for short films, but if you can find a different way to package them, you might be able to make some money.

Case in point: the short films we've made for our instructional DVDs made their money back and then quite a bit more. But that's because we didn't market them as films. We marketed them as part of a package, and the films were an integral part. They also help SELL, because we let people watch them and then they want to know how they were made, which is the point.

And yeah, that was the purpose of them; their budgets were part of the overall budget for the instructional DVDs. But they're still actual short films that we got to make, and we profited on them.

So, don't think of it as selling the films themselves. Find a way to use them as part of something which WILL sell.
 
My suggestion is use the short films to create a fan base and a following which you then leverage to fund and sell your feature films.

As individually, there is no commercial market for the 10 minute short films.
 
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