5 Ways to Start Your Films Outreach Plan

This week host, Sue Collins discusses outreach and why it's important when it comes to  making an impact with your film. She dives into five strategies you can use to start an outreach plan.  These are strategies Sue uses when she produces her own impact films that reach their intended audience and support real-world change. 

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Welcome back. If you are looking to make an impact film, then outreach has got to be on your mind. How do you get your film in front of the right audience and what are the strategies you can use to create outreach for your film? Well, last episode I dove into why understanding your ideal audience is so important. And if you missed it, you can just jump back one episode after listening here because understanding who your core audience is is essential for figuring out your outreach. This week I'm digging in five ways to get an outreach plan started. Welcome to the Moonshine Moonshot Podcast. I'm your host, Sue Collins, and if you've landed here, it means you're wanting to find out more about how to make filmmaking a sustainable career. And you're also curious about how to make meaningful work that fills your cup. You're ready to learn how to make movies that matter, build a sustainable career, and have a positive impact on your audiences so you are in the right place. Filmmaking has so many parts, and I'm sharing what I've learned over the past 15 years producing impact films that reach their intended audience and support real-world change. So let's get started. Who you're helping and who your project's audience is are not necessarily the same thing. So outreach requires some deep thinking on your behalf and also some conversations with people who work in the field your film is trying to impact. I gave some background last week on one of my impact films, Take Heart, and I mentioned that we're now about to set off to film new stories for a version of the film designed specifically for a far north Queensland audience where rheumatic heart disease is a significant health issue for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. So if you missed last week's EP, then to recap, rheumat heart disease or RHD causes permanent damage to the heart. It results from a throat or skin infection caused by strep A bacteria, and if it's not managed properly, it can lead to heart failure, disability, and premature death. It is also entirely preventable. And our impact film, Take Heart, has grown, and there are now many outputs, including a sequel and also this new film, which is in production that I mentioned with a focus on Far North Queensland. And I'm really looking forward to this filming trip, and I'm going to be sharing a lot more of how it goes with you over the coming episodes because it might really help you to understand the process of creating an impact film. Oh, I was just looking for a place where I could learn everything I need to know to make an amazing film that changes the world. It's such a shame that that place doesn't exist. Oh what? Hang on. It does. Oh, if you're looking for inspiration, ideas, tools, and ways to learn how to make movies that matter, head to Moonshine Communications Academy over at Instagram and all your problems will be solved. Warning, results may vary depending on the questions, and success is not guaranteed. Always read the label. Let me share some of the outreach strategies that we've employed for Take Heart and for a number of our other projects over the past few years. I think the most significant and the most impactful type of outreach you can do with films is events. So number one is events. There's something so powerful about putting a group of people together in a room, preferably a theater, to watch a film. The lights dim, people are engaged, they have no distractions, and they watch the film and take it all on board. And afterwards, you can have a QA session where the audience can ask questions, and this really deepens the engagement. You can also make a call to action to the group watching the film. Perhaps you could do something like ask them to host a screening of the film for their own community or to make a donation. The event could be a fundraiser. Perhaps you need them to write to a local politician to advocate for the issue or to share news of the film on social media to build awareness. There are so many options, and it's just really a matter of who your project partners are and what you need people to do. And we always have some form of events as part of our outreach strategy because they're just so effective. And events can be held in cinemas, lecture theaters, places of worship, schools, universities, hospitals, anywhere that there is a screen and appropriate AV facilities. They can be ticketed events or they can be free to attend. Again, how you put your event together is going to depend on your project partners and what it is that your film is trying to achieve. The second form of outreach that we have tried and done successfully in the past is virtual events. This is a bit more involved from a technical point of view, but arranging an online day and date screening for an audience is a really great way to reach people who may not be able to get to an event in person. You can invite people from anywhere on the globe. Location is just not an issue, and time zones might play into it, but it's still a really accessible way to screen your film. And you can have a QA panel at the end as well. The technology for doing these kinds of screenings is getting better and better, and there are lots of platforms that can handle this type of screening. Zoom can even do it to a certain extent. And you can do things like it can be a ticketed event or it can be free. All of those sort of decisions are really up to you. And often having one or a few screenings for key audiences can be really beneficial as they'll see the film and really understand its possibilities and then be engaged to go and host screenings of their own for their own community. So it's a great way to build up audiences for your film. The third thing, the third strategy is to tour the film. Now, this is something we have done very successfully with a number of our films, and by tour the film, what I mean is you could arrange for some or one of the people featured in your film to go around with the film and attend screenings and speak at events. It's kind of like a book tour. We did this for our film Hippocratic, and it toured Australia, the USA, Canada, the UK, and the person in the film that was featured was a man named Dr. Raj Kapel, and he went with the film to all these locations, and it was really successful. The strategy helped to raise significant donations for Dr. Raj Gapel's organisation back in India. It's a fair bit of work to organise a tour. You know, it's it's not for the faint-hearted, but it can be hugely successful. Number four for strategizing around outreach is definitely education. Education distribution is very important for impact films, and there are a number of different ways you can use this type of educational distribution. For example, you could attach a traditional education distributor, and they can make your film available to universities, public libraries, and schools. You could create a study guide to go with your film, and you could do all the legwork yourself and reach out to appropriate organizations and connect the education strategy in that way. So a number of our films with medical themes, such as Take Heart, which I mentioned before on rheumatic heart disease, they've also screened at grand rounds in hospitals. So there are a lot of different opportunities for educational and for impact films, they're often very, very important. So step four, um, strategy four, should I say, is education and definitely consider how you could do that for your film. Number five, now this one's often overlooked, but very, very effective, and that's conferences and industry events. They are a great way to engage relevant audiences who might be hard to reach through social media and traditional advertising. If you can get your film screened as part of a conference schedule on site, then you have a huge opportunity for impact. We've had our film screen at many different conferences over the years, and depending on the conference, you might have really high-level decision makers, policy makers, and high-level people in attendance who hold the ability to really shift the needle on the issue that your film presents. So make sure you maximize on any conference opportunities by being there in person if at all possible and talk to people about your film and the calls to action within it. Have flyers and information ready with QR codes to how people can take up your call to action or contact you, or potentially then take your film onto their communities and host screenings as well. So try and get all that info into the conference program or in the socials that are around the conference. Perhaps they'll even let you introduce the film or be part of a QA after the session. That is an excellent way to get your film in front of the people who really need to see it. There's five ways for you to move the needle on your next film. Build these ideas into your outreach plan, and you will be well on the way to making a really big, meaningful impact. There are many strategies you can use with outreach. These are just five, but they are a great start and they're accessible to filmmakers anywhere. So the next step once you have your outreach plan in place is figuring out your marketing and your distribution plans. So there is more on those two things in the coming weeks. Next week I'll be back to talk to you about marketing your film because the independent films, you do not want to leave this to a distributor. If you want your impact film to do well, you have to have a marketing and PR strategy in place. It is critical. You've got to do this work yourself. If you've been listening to this in the car or at the gym, then I absolutely recommend you play it back and take down notes to turn this into the beginning of an outreach plan for your film. Look, you can't just put your sneakers on. You have to also run the race if you want to succeed. So just listening to how to do it isn't going to get you there. You have to take the next step. You have to get your plan on paper. So get home, get out your notepad, and start your outreach plan with these five points that I've listed. And next week, as I said, I'm going to dig into some strategies around marketing for your film. And I'm really looking forward to sharing that with you. So I will speak to you then. Thank you for joining me today and every week here on the Moonshine Moonshot Podcast. If you're wanting a deeper dive into the topics being discussed on the show, then I would encourage you to head over to Moonshine Communications Academy.com and sign up for the weekly drop of moonshine via your email. Being on our newsletter community means we can support your filmmaking journey in a more tailored way as well as keeping you up to date with the resources we share on how to make movies that matter and so much more that we deliver inside your inbox every single week. So head over to Moonshine CommunicationsAcademy.com and at the bottom of the homepage you'll see a little box to add your email address, and as a thank you for signing up, we'll also send you a bonus ebook to support your messaging. So voila, you'll be on the way to receive all the best content weekly.