The Story of How it Happened for Us
We know exactly how the book deal came about…but first, let’s back up a step…
Karen Everett Knows How To Improve Your Documentary
Karen Everett keeps a fascinating site called New Doc Editing. At first glance you might think it’s just a promotional site to sell her (highly rated) services, but that would be a huge mistake.
Tons of Free Tips
Karen has dedicated herself to the study of story-telling in documentaries, and puts out tons of great, free, useful information week after week in her newsletter (I read every issue) much of which is also on Karen’s blog. Recent topics include:
- How to Conduct Documentary Interviews
- Cut Your Documentary Until it Bleeds
- Leveraging the ‘Big Bash’ Climax
While she does offer many interesting paid courses on documentary structure — both live classes and downloadable videos — Karen Everett does what any great teacher should: she gives away valuable information to those who are just discovering New Doc Editing.
Terrific Resource
When brainstorming for every new show and project we undertake, we have our “go to” list of references to help us consider our potential story structure from every possible angle. Karen’s work has become a valuable reference right up there with that of Robert McKee, Christopher Vogler, and Blake Edwards.
Thinking of making a documentary?
Be sure to check out Karen’s site, New Doc Editing.
Easily Promote Your Kickstarter Project in the Real World with Redirects
By now, you’ve all heard about our Kickstarter for an Oscar® campaign, and if you haven’t, you can learn more here.
Our Campaign to Give Back to You
Let’s face it…we all know that sometimes Kickstarter campaigns can tire everyone out.
Since we don’t believe in asking without giving, we’re working to provide something of real value every day we bug you to join our effort to fund our Academy Award® campaign.
So far we’ve given back some free motion graphics a tip on getting more FB likes for your own Kickstarter projects, and this post with the best blog posts we found, helping us earn $20,000 in just 48 hours, a benefit screening for Team Lucy, some behind the scenes drama as we decided to change our Kickstarter video, and our piece Facebook Ads for Filmmakers.
Today, we want to give back a super-secret tip to help you campaign in “the real world” and not just cyberspace.
Ugly Links!
When you’re tweeting or Facebooking your kickstarter link, it’s easy to copy this strange-looking code from Kickstarter and share it:
Try telling your friends to go there.
“Yeah, you want to hit HTTP colon forward slash forward slash K-C-K dot S-T forward slash R-7-R-D-Z-P. Did you get that?”
Time to Re-Direct!
Much easier to say:
“Just go to DyingToDoLetterman.com forward slash FUND.”
Try it, see what happens:
http://www.dyingtodoletterman.com/fund
How’d We Do That?
You can google and find all kinds of ways to set up simple re-directs of web pages. Since we’re on wordpress, we used the Quick Page/Post Redirect Plugin.
Couldn’t be simpler:
- Create your page called “fund”
- Check “Make re-direct active”
- Check “Add rel=\”nofollow\”
- Enter your FULL Kickstarter link (not the short link) in the box the plugin adds.
Select 302 Temporary for Type of Redirect. Done!
Promote It Everywhere!
Now we’ll be handing out flyers at all of our screenings that say:
Visit http://www.DyingToDoLetterman.com/fund Easy real world promotion of your Kickstarter Campaign!
Added Bonus…
It’s a redirect. You can change the link it points to at any time. So by promoting this link everywhere, when your campagin is over, you can just point the page to a new funding page. IndieGoGo, GoFundMe, PayPal, whatever. If people try the link long after your campaign is over, they can still fund you. Cool, right?
Hope your found this helpful…
Please help us by pledging to our Indie Oscar® Campaign, and sharing this link with all your friends:
http://www.DyingToDoLetterman.com/fund
Thanks!
Joke and Biagio
Today’s Adopted Kickstarter Project: Down and Dangerous from Zak Forsman
By now, you’ve all heard about our Kickstarter for an Oscar® campaign, and if you haven’t, you can learn more here.
Our Campaign to Give Back to You
Let’s face it…we all know that sometimes Kickstarter campaigns can tire everyone out.
Since we don’t believe in asking without giving, we’re working to provide something of real value every day we bug you to join our effort to fund our Academy Award® campaign.
So far we’ve given back some free motion graphics a tip on getting more FB likes for your own Kickstarter projects, and this post with the best blog posts we found, helping us earn $20,000 in just 48 hours, a benefit screening for Team Lucy, some behind the scenes drama as we decided to change our Kickstarter video, and our piece Facebook Ads for Filmmakers.
Today, we want to give back with some specific support for another Kickstarter project the community should know about.
Down and Dangerous
“A smuggler bleeds like anyone else. He just gets more chances to prove it.”
–awesome line from Down and Dangerous kickstarter video.
Zak Forsman is making a very personal movie about his dad–who was a COCAINE SMUGGLER! Seriously. That’s one way to get our attention!
Kudos, Zak, for being honest about the subject matter and embracing it instead of hiding from it.
A fellow Raiders of the Lost Ark fan, Zak explains that his dad…
“…explained to me at a young age what a director was. He sat me down in front of classics like Casablanca and Beau Geste and shortly thereafter he and my mother put a videocamera in my hands. Flash forward many years later, my father has since passed, but his influence is as strong as ever. Maybe stronger.”
As for his dad’s line of work, Zak says…
“My dad had a brief career in the cocaine trade as an independent smuggler. And what made him unique were the creative methods he used to pull off a dozen scams from South America that were so ingenious that the person carrying the load always had an out – they could walk away free and clear if the cocaine was discovered at Customs. He was uniquely principled for this line of work and always put people first. While Down and Dangerous is not an adaptation, it’s his adventures and life lessons that serve as the spirit and creative spark behind this new movie.”
Zak Used Our Free Graphics
Zak also took advantage of the free graphics we gave away from our kickstarter campaign (still active — please pledge if you haven’t.)
You can see them used in the video below for Zak’s Kickstarter campaign:
You can watch a whole tutorial and download the free graphics files Zak uses in the video here.
Are We Crazy?
Some people have said it’s just plain dumb to spotlight another Kickstarter campaign while we’re in the middle of our own.
But the fact of the matter is, when it comes to indie production, we’re all in this together.
When Zak succeeds (and we believe he will) it’s a win for indies everywhere.
So have a look at the campaign for Down and Dangerous, and support Zak Forsman — a true indie.
Facebook Ads For Filmmakers
By now, you’ve all heard about our Kickstarter for an Oscar® campaign, and if you haven’t, you can learn more here.
Our Campaign to Give Back to You
Let’s face it…we all know that sometimes Kickstarter campaigns can tire everyone out.
Since we don’t believe in asking without giving, we’re working to provide something of real value every day we bug you to join our effort to fund our Academy Award® campaign.
So far we’ve given back some free motion graphics a tip on getting more FB likes for your own Kickstarter projects, and this post with the best blog posts we found, helping us earn $20,000 in just 48 hours, a benefit screening for Team Lucy, and some behind the scenes drama as we decided to change our Kickstarter video.
Facebook Ads For Filmmakers
Today, we wanted to share an experiment we tried using Facebook ads to help promote our Kickstarter campaign.
How’s it working? Will we use it again? Should you consider Facebook Ads?
Why Facebook Ads?
We decided to try Facebook Ads because it was so easy to reach out to our target audience.
Also, with Facebook Ads you can pay per click, not just per impression.
So we figured that even if many people never clicked on the ad, Steve’s face would be burning a hole somewhere in their subconscious.
Using this targeting criteria:
Facebook users who…
- live in the United States
- are age 25 and older
- like documentaries, documentary, independent films or indie films
This ad targets 196,900 potential Facebook users.
Bidding for Clicks
Facebook gives you a suggested amount you should bid for clicks (they also state that you’ll likely pay less than what you bid, which turned out to be true for us.)
We went with the lowest suggested bid, which we presume means that if we’re competing with someone for ad space in a similar category, they’ll get the space instead of us if they’ve bid more.
We ended up bidding $1.42 per click, but the average we’ve been charged per click is $1.27.
Daily Budget
You set a budget for how much you’d like to spend so you don’t suddenly owe Facebook thousands of dollars.
We chose $10 per day beginning the first week of our Kickstarter campaign.
Results?
Here’s where we’re at after 26 days of running the ad:
- Unique Individuals Reached: 32,835
- Number of impressions: 370,397
- Number of Clicks: 60
- Amount Spent: $76.05
We don’t have a way to know if those who’ve clicked have actually contributed to the campaign (if we were sending them to our website we could use Google analytics to figure out how many clicks turned into sales.)
That said, popping up Steve’s face over 370,000 times to over 30,000 people for around $75 seems pretty reasonable to us.
Granted, not everyone sees those ads (Joke keeps her browser small so she doesn’t have to look at Facebook ads, for instance.)
But as indie marketing goes, we’ve spent more on flyers that are hitting less targeted audiences than these Facebook ads.
Will We Use Facebook Ads Again?
Yes.
We’re looking at targeting specific cities and geographic locations through Facebook ads to sell tickets when we start touring Dying to do Letterman theatrically.
We’ll also try ads again when we start selling DVDs of the movie from our site, and can track how many clicks lead to actual sales.
(Shameless Plug: you can get your special collector’s edition of Dying to do Letterman with tons of extras when you pledge $50 or more to our Kickstarter Campaign.)
Should You Try Facebook Ads?
We’d recommend giving it a shot, especially if you have a very niche audience.
We could certainly target our ad to an even tighter group of people (say, folks who are fans of documentaries about comedy, or to people who like movies about inspirational cancer survivors) and will likely experiment with more targeted ads over time.
What’s Your Experience?
Experimented with Facebook ads or some other targeted platform? What’s your experience been?
Let us know in the comments below!
And…if you haven’t already, please pledge to our indie Oscar® campaign.
As little as one dollar will get you a comedy mp3, and $50 and above includes a personalized I’M DYING TO button hand-written by Steve, plus a copy of the special edition DVD with tons of extras.
Best,
Joke and Biagio
Double Trouble…
We're Joke and Biagio, a husband and wife team making our way in the world of film & TV. Together we run Joke Productions, Inc.
