7 Mistakes Filmmakers Make in Online Promotion – Video Extras

Image courtesy of imagerymajestic / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Last updated on March 24th, 2017 at 02:27 am

Image courtesy of imagerymajestic / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Image courtesy of imagerymajestic / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

All filmmakers want to get their shows seen, right?

Uploading additional, extra and behind the scenes footage of your movie is a good opportunity to promote your project, aggregate an audience and create a moment of connection with fans and followers.

However many filmmakers make these beginner mistakes

Newbie Mistake #1: Upload to proprietary, obscure, restricted or unreliable video hosting services

New audience may checkout your video once. Don?t make them register, signup, click-thru or share your video before they see your clip. Don?t use a service that crashes regularly.

Don?t self -host your video unless you are in the video hosting business. If you are a filmmaker, make films don?t work on becoming a hosting expert. What if you already are a hosting expert breaking into films? Go make more movies.

Do use YouTube, Vimeo, Kaltura, iTunes and/or other reliable, popular service to share your content in each market.

If any of your URL?s get popular and the server dies, you?ll never get all those eyeballs again. Make sure your video player works like all the other players out there.

People like to pause, restart, skip (forward?and back), view later, and see how long the video is. Obscure services miss some features and often make it harder for people to share the videos they like.

Newbie Mistake?#2: Fail to include ?Share? or ?Like? tools

YouTube and the popular video hosting services already have these tools built in ? never disable them.

If you embed your video somewhere else allow fans to share or otherwise promote it to their group of friends.

Do you want to limit your audience to only those you personally invite? Unless you?re already famous, this is the age of abundance. Stand out from the crowd.

Allow embedding of your extra content on other sites. Let the damn thing go viral.

Newbie Mistake?#3: Upload with no description

How many YouTube/Vimeo videos have no description? Too many! If you?re uploading extra material to build an audience take a moment to write something about the clip and more importantly, about your movie.

Put your title and log-line in. Include actors and key crew names.

Describe the footage as a pitch to your audience to watch it. Search engines also index the description.

Make it compelling. You are in the creative business. It doesn?t have to be brilliant, but it needs some work. Why should I watch your clip of bloopers?

Newbie Mistake?#4: Try too hard to be funny, sarcastic or clever in the description

This is the opposite of #3, but essentially the same. If I can?t tell why I should watch your video, it?s a #fail. ?Ted takes one for the film? is not a meaningful?description?to anyone but the 8-10 people there at the time. And they already?saw it live. Try this

Angie Someday?(who plays ?Friday?) slaps?Ted?Hasbeen?(?Famous?) in this out-take from our new 8-minute web series ?Famous on Friday?. Ted was so shocked, he tripped over a lighting rig. Luckily the rig and Ted avoided serious injury.

?Famous on Friday? is a 6-part dramedy web series due in January 2013. Follow Jeff Famous, bipolar publicist, as he struggles to stop Erica Friday, his first love and rock ?n? roll client, from retiring to a convent to repent her sinful life.

Wouldn?t you like to see 30 seconds of that?

Newbie Mistake?#5: Disable comments

I know, right??This shouldn?t even be in the list. But too often I see ?Comments are disabled for this video?.

What are you afraid of? Don?t you want questions, encouragement or accolades? It?s user generated content!

Newbie Mistake?#6: Pick a dumb, boring or obscure title

Titling your clip ?Ted takes one for the film.mov? screams amateur. Yes it?s the default setting on YouTube but look around, most popular clips don?t use the filename + .mov

Find a compelling or descriptive title for your clip. Put the show/movie name in it. People want to find others in the series.

Newbie Mistake?#7: Forget a vanity card, production logo or URL in the footage.

You know people will download your video and hopefully share it around.

Do you think it will always be linked to your cleverly planned YouTube account name? If it?s a promo for ?Famous on Friday? put the title, prodco and URL in the footage.

Let me know of any other newbie promotion mistakes you see in the comments below.


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