IndieFlix

6 Ways to Sell Tickets

Independent filmmakers operating on the “Fade in to cash out” philosophy have to face a very simple truth:  A film can only be financially sustainable if people watch it.  Of course, getting people to watch your film doesn’t guarantee fiscal success, but not doing so guarantees failure.

So from the very start, we need to think about why people would watch our movies.  Well, why do people watch any movies?  If you look at films that have found audiences, it looks like there are about six basic motivators that are effective to get people to watch your film.  Studio films are well aware of them and use them constantly and usually in combination.  Indie filmmakers need to think about them just as much—maybe more, since we don’t have huge advertising budgets to cram our movies down people’s throats.  And indies should be aware that while the basic motivators for generating audience interest are the same whatever the movie, how we take advantage of these methods could be very different.

Six Motivators

The six ways to make people watch your movie:

1.  Promise to make them laugh.

This is pretty simple but amazingly powerful.  People love to laugh.  If people think they’ll laugh their asses off at a movie, they’ll watch it.  This helps explain why so many movies that are actually downers get a trailer cut to make them look like sublime comedies.  I’m not a fan of lying to the audience—I think breaking this promise comes back to get you.  But I can see where the lure of this powerful tool often results in misleading trailers.  I’ll talk more about this and all the motivators later, but the simple takeaway is, if your film is legitimately funny—a comedy or dramedy—make those funny moments shine.

2.  Promise to make them scared.

This one isn’t complicated either.  Fear and laughter are two primal emotions.  Tapping into either can be a great way to get people to go see a movie.  Paranormal Activity is currently enjoying a huge run of success based on about three scary moments.  Is that misleading the audience or just brilliant marketing?  Decide for yourself, but the lesson is pretty clear: screams = money.

3.  Promise great special effects and action sequences.

Why is the acting often terrible in action films?  Because nobody’s watching for the acting.  Action and effects films tap into another primal emotion—the adrenaline rush.  There’s always an audience for big explosions, stunts, or special effects.  Half of it is just the thrill of the ride and the other half is the experience of seeing something on screen that’s never been shown before.  A bigger stunt, a cooler fight.  And these films are highly re-watchable.  People got right back in line to buy another ticket to see the bullet-time effects in The Matrix or the hammer fight in Old Boy.

4.   Sell the film on people the audience already likes.

The first three methods all build audiences by tapping into primal emotions.  In my mind they’re the most powerful since they don’t rely on anything outside themselves.  That may seem odd to say because none of them involve the #1 trick from the studio playbook:  Casting big names.

Casting name actors falls under selling the film on people the audience already likes.  It’s tapping into the known brand.  Personally, I’d argue that it’s a less powerful motivator than the methods above (maybe even the least powerful of the methods) on it’s own.  It has the benefit of allowing a lot of publicity about the film based on the star, but publicity on its own doesn’t make people want to go to a film.  There are tons of films out there that I keep hearing about and the more I hear, the less I want to see them.  No, publicity just creates the opportunity to show the audience motivators a film does have (laughs, screams, thrill-rides, etc.)

Selling a film on the people the audience already likes can be for more than just big stars.  Often an indie film can make a great casting choice with actors audiences like yet don’t rise to the ‘star’ level.  Other films may have no stars or even known actors but still succeed on the name of the director.  People who go to a David Gordon Green film are going for the auteur.  Gus Van Sant’s Elephant was cast with non-actors and sold on his name.  This motivator often seems (or is) out of reach for independents making their first films, but as you build an audience of people who follow your work, you can become your own brand.

5.  Have seven people tell them the film is great.

This is where quality comes in.  Make a great film and eventually the word of mouth gets around.  Unfortunately, it takes a long time for that to happen.  I heard of one study that found people had to be told a product was good by an average of seven different sources before they chose to buy it.  (No I don’t recall the study and I’m not looking it up.  Statistics are all worse than damn lies anyway!  It’s got to be some number and seven feels right to me.)

When audiences see films based on quality, it’s really based on people telling them it’s good.  These can be trusted reviewers or friends who’ve seen the film.  Two problems with this are the time it takes to build real grassroots word-of-mouth, and being at the mercy of reviewers to mention the film, let alone like it!

Word-of-mouth is possibly the most powerful of all the motivators.  If all your friends tell you a movie is great, don’t you want to see it?  Word-of-mouth also has the tremendous advantage of being very inexpensive to promote.  It even taps into all the things we independent filmmakers hope for when we make our films—a film so good that everyone tells their friends and it sells itself.  Unfortunately, relying on word-of-mouth alone is a tough way to sell a movie.  Sadly I think the majority of independent filmmakers expect to sell their films on this basis and have little else to turn to if it doesn’t work immediately.  Everyone hopes for good reviews and word-of-mouth.  But when people say a film is “review dependent” it often means that the filmmakers didn’t build in any other motivators to get the audiences to the show.

6.  Make them feel involved.

Ever go to a screening of a film you or a friend worked on?  Maybe even if you don’t think it was going to be a great film?  I’ve watched a bunch of films for that reason.  And not just for the networking opportunities, or the after-party, or the morbid curiosity.  I went because I felt involved.  I’d been a part of that movie’s genesis somehow and I wanted to see how it turned out and support it however I could.

That’s the power of involvement.  If people feel involved in the creation of a film it’s hard to keep them away from the theater.  You can count on them seeing the film and telling their friends.

Involvement doesn’t have to mean being part of the cast or crew.  Many shrewd film marketers have found ways to make an ethnic group or subculture feel involved in a film and therefore become its initial core market.  The social networking that many independent filmmakers are currently using is all about making people feel involved.  To go back to the recent phenom, Paranormal Activity, the marketers used the “Demand it” campaign to get people to request the film be released and brought to their town.  All these people (supposedly a million…which is probably about as accurate as the statistic I mentioned above) felt involved in the film—a sense of ownership for their role in bringing it to their theater.  Make the audience feel involved, and there’s a good chance they’ll come to your movie with a carload of friends.

Making Promises

You’ll notice that most of these are promises.  You promise the audience that they’ll laugh, be scared, dig the big explosions.  The marketing campaign for a film is usually about making these “promises” in the form of trailer moments, poster design, and the like.

Let me be clear, these motivators are the ways to get people interested in going to a film.  They are the psychological locks that you have to fit your key into.  Trailers, commercials, merchandising tie-ins—all those things are ways of promoting a film, getting the word out, creating awareness.  But they don’t make anyone actually want to go to the movie unless they exploit one or more of these methods.

These motivators rarely work alone.  Studios like to cram as many motivators as possible into one film.  What’s a Die Hard movie marketing campaign but the promise of a film with lots of action and explosions, funny moments, a few good scares, and Bruce Willis in the lead?

Independents can also get in on this act but combining their motivators.  The marketing team from My Big Fat Greek Wedding had little in the way of big cast, scares, or explosions to sell on, but masterfully combined the promise of a funny movie with an involved audience (it initially opened in Greek ethnic communities, playing to the Greek family elements of the film) and then opened up when word-of-mouth to become the most successful independent release of its time.

Studio films have a lot of resources that indies don’t have, but whatever their budgets, they’re still trying to fit keys into people’s psychological keyholes.  Indies can do this just as well—usually with less expensive methods.  But one of the tricks is to think about it from the very beginning.

In the coming weeks I plan to write more about this and how independents can use these motivators (and are using them) to get people to watch their films.  For now, though, think about the film or script you’re trying to sell.  Which of these effective motivators do you have or could you add to make people want to watch your film?  Because getting people to watch is one key to getting to make films and keep making them.