Scott Kirsner blogs about the intersection of film and technology (a topic near and dear to our hearts at B-Side, naturally) at Cinematech. So the recent publication of his new book (Fans, Friends, and Followers) caught our attention, especially since it showcases our favorite kinds of filmmakers (and other artists): those who take responsibility for their success by forging direct links to their fans — usually harnessing the power of the internet to do so. We conducted a good old-fashioned e-mail conversation with Scott to get his thoughts on how these trends affect individual filmmakers.

B-Side: It seems like filmmakers have to do so much more marketing now, in terms of being on all these social networks and reaching out to blogs and posting clips on YouTube. Every month it seems like there’s a new outreach medium that you “must” keep up with, and if you’re a filmmaker who just wants to make movies, that’s not a very attractive prospect. Will these services just keep multiplying, or will some of the internet busy-work fall away over time?

Scott Kirsner: I think the pendulum is swinging right now, and filmmakers are going to have to get used to doing more marketing, more connecting with prospective audiences. In the old days, if your film was picked up by a distributor, maybe you spent 90 percent of your time actually working on the film and 10 percent promoting it. Where are we today? I think that if you’re not spending at least 30 percent of your time on building an audience for your film, there’s a good chance that it’ll just vanish — and the pendulum may be swinging toward something like a 60/40 filmmaking/marketing split. But you have to think about the marketing as part of your film, part of your art, part of what you do.

Your question about juggling lots of different sites and social networks is really good, because I think filmmakers can be overwhelmed by everything that’s out there. What I suggest is:

• Start with something simple and non-intimidating… like a Facebook fan page for your film, or a blog with a really simple, free service like Posterous.
• Pay attention to new places online where people are spending time. It may be worth your while, for instance, to join something like Twitter and give it a whirl when you hear everyone is talking about it. When your audience gravitates toward something new, it’s a good idea for you to be there.
• But while experimentation is important, if you don’t feel like you’re connecting with a significant audience through any of these channels — whether it’s your blog, a Facebook page, Twitter, or something new — drop it and spend your time on something that you think will have a better pay-off.

One of the people I profile in the book, a Bay Area comedian named Mark Day, posted his comedic rants on every new video site that cropped up. “Sometimes, a lot of people would see them,” he told me. “And sometimes, you’d go back and no one would have seen them.” Eventually, he focused his time on posting to YouTube, and driving viewership there. When that site started a “partners program” where it offered to share advertising revenue with content creators, Day was one of the first people invited to participate.

B-Side: This “filmmaker as marketer” model suggests a pretty significant shift from earlier days of independent film. While there were some gregarious “beat the bushes to find the audiences” practitioners of the craft, few filmmakers in decades previous even thought about marketing, much less planned for it strategically. Is there some danger that the overall quality of indie film will decline as filmmakers think increasingly about marketing potential and decreasingly about artistic merit?

SK: I don’t tend to worry about that. Clearly, more films are being made as the medium is getting democratized, and to me, that increases the odds that something will get made that is interesting to me — that has artistic merit to my eye. I know some critics may argue that in the era when fewer films got made, you had to be incredibly good to attract the resources to make a film, but maybe I’m a populist — I think that anyone with enough motivation should be able to make a film. People will get better over time, both as artists and as marketers. I think you need both skill sets today.

B-Side: In your book you suggest that filmmakers who can’t handle the technological or business aspects of marketing their films themselves should partner with people who can. If you’re not a social media whiz, how do you know when you’ve entered into a good partnership? What are the hallmarks of success for an online/social media marketing campaign?

SK: The hallmark for a good partnership, first, is whether you like working with the person and you think they understand what you’re trying to achieve. In terms of looking at the success of an online campaign, it’s a few things: how “findable” is your film on Google and other search engines … are people buzzing about it on Twitter … does it have people participating on its blog or Web site or Facebook fan page … is the trailer spreading to other sites, assuming it is “embeddable”….and are people rating it and giving it reviews. I think any filmmaker can easily get a sense for whether the film has momentum or not — whether people are talking about it or whether it is sinking without a trace. Then there are some basic things, like can people easily find out where to see the film or how to buy it?

B-Side: How can filmmakers use real-world events like festival screenings to further their online marketing agendas?

SK: I think so many filmmakers are racing to get their movie finished before the first wave of festival screenings that a lot of times they neglect online. Maybe they have a simple Web site set up, but that’s it. To me, the festival circuit is often where films get their most attention — and their first reviews. On your site, you want to have a way to capture peoples’ e-mail addresses (and possibly their ZIP codes, too) so that you can let them know when your movie plays their city, or when it’s available on DVD or as a download. Some filmmakers will also want to sell the film while it’s playing festivals — I think we’re going to see more of that. One other thing to mention, which comes up a few times in the book, is a tool called Eventful Demand, which lets people tell you where they are, and that they’re interested in seeing your film. So you might plan additional screenings based on the audience demand.