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[Note: In part one of this series I talked about the six basic motivators that filmmakers can uses to get people excited about their films.  The next few parts will look at each motivator in depth.]

Part 2: Make Them Laugh

We filmmakers need to get people excited about our films.  Rather than hoping to stumble across a successful marketing approach for a film, it’s better to plan one from the very start–ideally before you commit to making the film–and tweak it based on what really gets people to pay to watch movies.  “6 Ways” is about those things that motivate someone to say, “I’ve got to see that!”

So how do movies like Napoleon Dynamite or The Hangover rocket from obscurity to national reknown in the blink of an eye.  Is it the big stars?  The special effects?  The action scenes?   Actually, it turns out these movies are really, really funny.

People like funny.

Humor is a primal motivator.  No one needs to read an important review to decide if a movie is funny.  They know it.  Funny works coming from a big star or a total unknown.  And funny comes in delicious bite-sized morsels:  You can fit funny into four seconds of a trailer or even into a single image on a poster.  (Think about the image of  Jon Heder with his blond ‘fro and cordouroy suit on the Napoleon Dynamite poster.)   But the power of funny goes far beyond just comedies.  Almost any genre can benefit from some funny.

Comedy

If your film is a comedy, then promising to make people laugh is the big gun in your arsenal.  Lucky you!  Marketing your comedy should be as easy as cutting together the 20 funniest moment of from your film into a trailer, right?  Maybe.  But let’s look closer at Napoleon Dynamite and The Hangover.

It turns out these film aren’t just really, really funny.  Each has its own brand of humor–awkard outsider teen or over-the-top Vegas-style raunchiness, the films show that they’re funny in a particular way.  Each film has a unique comedy vibe.  If the promise to make people laugh is your main motivator for getting them to see your film, it’s important to stake out some territory for your brand of humor.  This sets your film apart from other comedies and suddenly, your film isn’t just funny, it’s funny in a way that isn’t like the other funny movie the person just watched.  (“Groundbreaking comedy,” you hope the reviews will say.)

This is important because, for a comedy, funny is not only the biggest motivator, it’s often the only one.  Your film doesn’t need big car crashes, scary monsters, or big stars, so the odds are, you don’t have them.  So when you’re throwing all your eggs in the “funny” basket, it helps to make that basket seem pretty special.  There may be hundreds of funny moments in your film (lets hope so) but you’ll want to be careful to select those that all build on the unique brand of comedy you’re really selling the audience on.  For films that are still in development, it pays to take a critical look at the script and see if your humor is all over the map or a unique brand that you can really push to separate yourself from all the other comedies out there.

Dramedy

Ahhh, the Indie “Dramedy.”  At their best, they make us laugh about the tough realities of life.

Something I’ve noticed about dramedies that get the studio marketing treatment is this: I usually walk in expecting the movie to be funnier.  To me that means that in the process of selling the film, the marketing department put funny moments into the trailer out of balance with how they actually play out in the film.  It’s misleading and can leave the audience kind of pissed-off.  And you should probably do it, too!

Why would you want to risk pissing off your audience with a totally misleading trailer?  Well, it’s an audience!  These are people who paid to watch the film.  Over and over, film marketeers (those who stay in the business, anyway) decide that it’s better to mislead the audience in the trailer than not to have an audience at all.  And did I mention they were only mildly pissed-off?

I’m not suggesting that filmmakers totally mislead their audiences.  My point is, funny moments create better audiences for your film than moody, weepy, bittersweet moments do.  If you’re trying to market a “dramedy” that has some real comedic moments in it, you might want to put a lot of those in your trailer.  And if you’re still developing your dramedy, maybe bear in mind that audiences really do like the funny stuff.  If you can find a way to put a little more of that in your film, it could be a good thing.

Finding the funny in other genres

Humor is such a powerful audience motivator, that studios have been working it into their non-comedy films for decades.  Whenever Arnold quipped some lame one-liner after blowing away the baddie, that moment always got thrown into the trailer.  Studios are desperate to show that their action films, horror films, or bodice-rippers are also funny.

Humor is a great tension-breaker which cleans the emotional palette for another round of action, scares, whatever.  It works in scripts and in trailers.  If your film has some funny moments, try working a couple into your trailer.  It may just give it a lot more life.  And for projects in development, look for ways to work some into the film…so you can put them in your trailer later.  Even people saving the world or hiding from zombies crack wise about their messed-up situation.

As a filmmaker searching for an audience, funny is almost always your friend.  Whether it’s the whole reason people should watch your film, or just one more reason, laughs are almost always welcome.  Promise your audience that your film will deliver some and they may just want to see it.

Next:  Scaring up an audience

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Douglas Horn is a writer, director, and producer of independent films. His films include Entry Level, The No-Sit List, and Full Disclosure. http://www.douglashorn.com

Tags: comedy, Douglas Horn, Film, filmmakers, Genre, Indie, marketing, movie, trailers

This entry was posted on Friday, January 29th, 2010 at 3:52 pm and is filed under IndieBlog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.