PMD-For-Hire
PMD-For-Hire’s Facebook Fan Page

This is my second post in a row about DIY filmmaking trends for the new decade and elaborates upon yesterday’s post about the newly-minted crew position of the PMD, or the Producer of Marketing and Distribution.

The premise behind the PMD’s position is that with social media gobbling up increasingly large chunks of the average indie filmmaker’s promotional budget and time — given how Web 2.0 has revolutionized how people consume their media — indie filmmaking crews must appoint a crewmember to exclusively address these social networking needs and those of the various online communities.

We’re talking, of course, about Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, and many other similar places. Sites where people like to congregate, commiserate, and/or share their various online finds. Your new PMD must be your outfit’s identifiable point person who earns their daily bread from dwelling in the echo chamber and, never before, admits Bomb It!’s Jon Reiss, has there been a need for the PMD.

He goes on further to describe that it could be a seasonal position with a bit of turnover, though, Reiss notes, what separates the successful PMDs and films from the amateurs are the relationships your PMD will cultivate online in combination with the sorts of conversations s/he will engender via their participation at these various social media hotspots.

So I present the bullet list of what you might expect from your humble PMD…

Before your film’s world premiere or official release (either theatrical, DIY, hybrid theatrical [a DIY/theatrical combo], live event, etc. – read more about the various types here):

• to moderate, filter, and respond to any of your film’s blog comments in a timely manner. Don’t let comments get stale by lingering, Reiss warns, otherwise your audience will feel slighted and in a media-saturated landscape this can never be a good thing.
• to crosspost relevant blog entries about your film written by either its director, producer, and/or cast/crew members on all Facebook groups, Facebook fan pages, FB user profiles, and in other relevant Facebook groups and fan pages as needed.
• to safeguard sole access to your film’s Twitter account by keeping your film’s tweets and general tweeting activity “on message” at all times. To respond to all “@” messages in a timely manner and to retweet any relevant references to your film as they emerge or are revealed through relevant Twitter Searches or otherwise.
• to maintain and manage a diverse list of Google Alerts seeded with relevant keywords or cast/crew names and titles from your film. Carrying on with Reiss’ and producer Tracy Wares’ Bomb It! example, a PMD might want to be on the online prowl for the following Bomb It! tags: “tagging,” “street art”, “graffiti,” “bombing,” and to see what comes up daily, and to thank these people accordingly.
• to have your DVD’s Special/Bonus Features and your film’s EPK (Electronic Press Kit) materials in mind well in advance by hanging around on set grabbing behind-the-scenes documentary footage, or by conducting cast/crew Q&As, or perhaps even compiling these into a rough assembly for your film’s Special Features editor, using time efficiently and building in that all-critical buffer in advance of your film’s release.
• to answer phonecalls, leave voicemails, and respond to all voice- and emails from relevant stakeholders connected with your indie film.
• to keep the production office’s email inbox in pristine condition (read: organized and filtered with email tags if you’re using Gmail), with all emails responded to within a period of 24-hours or less.

The thing to remember about the PMD is that s/he doesn’t get involved whatsoever with your film’s on-set production.

In fact, this is by design to guarantee that the majority of the above tasks are attended to in a timely manner and get done, and so that there’s enough lead time before the eminently more difficult distribution phase kicks in below…

After your film’s world premiere or official release (either theatrical, DIY, hybrid theatrical [a DIY/theatrical combo], live event, etc. Read more about it here):

• during the critical distribution phase as you’re seeking to sell your film, have the PMD attend all film festival screenings to ensure all attendees and audience members sign up to your film’s mailing list, including zip codes (!!!) for future geopositioning campaigns (i.e. when you’re in a particular city, so you know who to invite out to all of your live events and such).
• to share favorable publicity, such as prominent film reviews from the festival written up in the mainstream press, with smaller media outlets around the country/world to coax out more favorable writeups in advance of your film’s screening within larger, marquee markets like New York or Los Angeles.
• to ensure that your film’s collateral materials are always on offer at each any every screening, especially in those smaller-tier, more niche, markets.
• to always have spare copies on hand of your film’s EPK for any and all visiting press.
• to followup all networking events with emails thanking your film’s attendees or to journalists for their time and participation.

Naturally, the PMD’s duties will scale considerably as your indie picture gains even more traction in the marketplace. Things might become so successful to the extent that your crew will be obligated to hire a second PMD!

In Conclusion:

Social media is definitely here to stay and it’s radically revolutionized the manner in which the marketplace consumes all sorts of relevant media product: anything from films, to music, to short vidclips, to movie trailers. By looking upon social media as being “too time consuming” or wasteful or somehow otherwise detracting you from the creative process of making your film, filmmakers risk overlooking an enormous part of their overall arsenal for combined evangelizing and marketing efforts and quite possibly a potentially huge channel for driving more audience share and views to their art.

The key (for the PMD) in all of these efforts is to be on top of things and plan, plan, plan (which I shall get into in a future post) from the very beginning, allowing for plenty of lead time before your film screens publicly, and for your designated PMD to be positively relentless in their promotional efforts.

And, remember, most of all as Jeremy Gutsche says to always enjoy the hunt!

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