How We Promoted Our New Self-Released Short Film!
A few quick ideas on how to spread the word about your new short film if you're going it on your own.
In September, we released “No Weenies Allowed” - the first short film from our Lil Thrashers cartoon universe. We’ve been world-building the project for two years via social media, original music, and a few other longer form YouTube videos, but our goal was for this short film to help us establish a bit more of an “official” presence.
Despite how expansive the Lil Thrashers project is, we are a VERY small team with virtually no budget. As a result, the idea of an “official” presence felt very much like an uphill battle. Still, we decided to bootstrap it and do the best we can. I’d say, for a first effort at this, we had some really good success!
I wanted to share some of the ways that we spread the word about the short in case any other filmmakers, in particular those who busted their butts to make their first short film but have no real way to get it out there, might stumble upon it. Hope if you fit in that category, you find this article helpful!
Social Media Assets/Support
Because it’s important for Lil Thrashers to post to social media as regularly as we can and our team is so small, we came up with an idea called “Beat-To-Short” to help us do both simultaneously. We wrote our script in a way where each scene broke down into a ‘sub-6o second’ beat that we could post to social media as it was completed. This way we were able to keep building on socials for over a month with regular postings without distracting from completing the short. Obviously, this isn’t possible for all scripts. But that doesn’t mean you can’t comb your short film for as many social media clips as you can pull from it. Remember posting about it consistently with fresh content is about as valuable of a tool as you have and posting in accordance with algorithmic best practices will give you the most out of each post. Also, don’t forget things like getting accepted into festivals or having a press win are worth posting as well!
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Submit to Festivals via Film Freeway!
This was perhaps the most “official” part of our efforts. Getting into film festivals definitely adds the a bit of prestige to your project. Luckily, there is an amazing tool at FilmFreeway.com that allows you to submit to a a bunch for free! Here are a few things I learned from the process:
Be as thorough as possible when building your project page out on the site. These festivals are getting a ton of submissions so make yours stand out and give them reasons to select yours. Here’s our project page for reference.
Submit regularly! Once per week, I spend about half an hour looking for new festivals to submit to. Here’s how I filter my searches, but edit according to what works best for your project. The results come back chronologically in terms of submission due date, so just make a note of what date you left off on for when you come back to it.
Update your project page whenever you can! The more press and other wins you get, the better your project will look to judges.
We’ve already gotten into four festivals just from the free ones, so it’s definitely worth the effort even if you don’t have a budget. That being said, there are a lot of bigger, more prestigious festivals that you can submit to if you have a small budget. You can also sign up for the “Gold” package that gives you even more promotion and opportunities.
Do Some Light Press Outreach
My background is in music publicity, so I had a little bit of head start in this arena, but you don’t need experience to make press part of your plan. Here are the steps that I would suggest:
Research sites and podcasts that you think could be interested in covering your film and find the email contact for the writers you think would respond to it the best.
Write a short press release. Here’s our “No Weenies Allowed” one for reference.
Reach out to the writers with a personal message about why they might be into the film and some highlights. In that personal message, include a link to check out your film as well as a link to the press release. Follow up about a week later, and again a week after that.
Continue to research new writers, podcasts and sites that may be willing to cover your film!
Do a Small YouTube Advertising Campaign
This is the only thing on this list that would require some spend, but it’s minimal. We did $250 but I’ve had worthwhile success for as little as $50. Just go to ads.google.com, set up your account and run a “video ad”. There are plenty of tools on YouTube (and the internet overall) that can help you run an efficient ad and the increase in view numbers can make your video more appealing when submitting for festivals and press.
Personal Outreach
Never underestimate sharing your video via email or text to friends, family, and colleagues. Every view counts, and maybe they’ll even share it with more people or subscribe to your channel. It’s also a good idea to potentially share in any Discords or Reddit threads that you frequent or that are dedicated to short films and, of course, put it up on your personal socials!