Building a fan base for your indie movie: Crowdsourcing the movie’s name during pre-production

Or how to build a following with crowdsourcing during the pre-production phase of a surf documentary — a little case study

When we started with our first movie project — The Old, the Young & the Sea — we kicked off with a fan base within the surfing community of almost zero. ZERO. Almost no high profile contacts and no network within the surfing community. The only thing on hand: a modest following on our travel blog www.nomadearth.com. But this was not exactly a very surf centric community.

So if you don’t have a fan base within your niche, how do you build one from scratch? How can you infect people with your idea and make them talk about your project? Maybe with crowdsourcing the movie’s name.

We didn’t have much of a fan base but we could rely on some other strong assets:

1. We had a sticky project we where totally convinced of the be relevant within our (if you are not undoubtedly sure that your movie project will matter to people then don’t do it! But that’s just my personal opinion.)

2. Our team was substantially supported by Austrian professional photographer Stefan Leitner.

3. We had a couple of years of experience in brand building and the online marketing business.

4. We did research and found out that nobody before crowdsourced the movie title for a surf movie. So we had found a world’s first.

Leveraging the power of Facebook with a Facebook App

What we needed was a way to interact with people on Facebook and motivate them to submit movie names. The solution was to build a nice Facebook app (you can easily do that nowadays with services like ShortStack) in which people learned about the project and got inspired to submit their ideas for a good movie name.

So we setup this app, included a slideshow to present the idea and the plot of the movie with a couple of beautiful shots from the internationally reckoned photographer Stefan Leitner who took some beautiful images from a surfing holiday trip we did a couple of months before. We implemented a submission mechanic so that people could enter their ideas and we could collect them.

Nicely crafted and written we started to pitch a couple of surf related brands and asked them for some goodies to give away for the campaign. Some agreed to give us stuff. E voilà! The campaign was ready.

The crowdfunding campaign app on Facebook

Promoting your indie movie means actively reaching out to people

In the next step we published the app on Facebook, invited all our followers of Nomad Earth and our whole private Facebook community, friends and family. Inviting people to your campaign is key to success. It’s not enough jsut to publish something on Facebook. Be sure to really activate all your contacts. But be aware: Don’t spam people. People like to help but they don’t want to be spammed. Be humble, concise, tell your contacts why they should care and ask them for their help. People like to help if they understand your cause.

Promoting your indie movie means reaching out to even more people

Reaching out to your friends and family is not enough — it’s just the beginning. Be sure to do your homework and research the web for interesting blogs, magazines, forums etc. which write about your niche and which might be interested in your idea. Once again: don’t spam, be humble and concise. Explain your cause!

So we tried to attract as much people as possible to the campaign. The outcome was overwhelming to us: Some 130 movie names were submitted of which 5 made it into a final voting round. To prevent movie names like Bud Spencer or Winnetou we decided to collect all submissions and do a jury session with the whole film crew to select the best out of 5 finalists. We asked the community again to vote for their favorite. And the community spoke, the winning movie name was: The Old, the Young & the Sea. A title that perfectly embodied the idea of the documentary: To shoot a movie about the people who inhabit, protect and surf the European shores. Nice side effect of having a nice movie name: We built a very strong following from the beginning.

Building a community for your indie documentary movie with a crowdsourcing campaign. Take-Aways from this article in a nutshell:

- Think of using the right tool (e.g. Facebook App) to get easy access to people who might be interested in your project. What social media platforms are you already using? Which one is used by your potential audience? Do you have a basic following on Twitter or Instagram? Are you blogging?

- Build up a solid project presentation for your campaign. People have to learn about your project and your cause. Make it nice and understandable! Think of the mechanics behind the interaction with your community. How can they interact with you and submit ideas? Now build your campaign!

• Try to get incentives (people love fancy stuff to win) to give something back to your helping hands.
• Start reaching out to your friends, family, business contacts and people who might support your indie movie endeavor in the first place and invite them to participate.
• Don’t forget to reach out to unknown people who might be interested in your idea: blogs, magazines and other influencers
• Think of blogs: Can you find somebody who could feature your project in their blog?
• Have stamina, be humble and ask for help. You’ll be surprised.
• Nurture your campaign and see the whole campaign as a sequence of phases: start inviting your close friends and relatives. Ask your business community, partners and broader network. Then start contacting the right media etc.

If you would like to learn more about our approach to indie movie marketing and distribution feel free to get in touch with us: office@nomadearth.com.

Thanks for reading!