You made a movie! Congratulations. Your baby is ready to get on its feet and wander out into the big world of festivals. But where do we start?! If you’ve done even a basic search on “best film festivals," you’ll find the results are endless. With all the avenues available, it can be totally overwhelming to decide where to submit. Through trial-and-error with my two short films "Daisy" and "In Touch", I’ve come up with a few tips that can help you sift through your options, and give your baby the best chance at success. 

It shouldn’t be easy to promote a film about CANCER.  We didn’t have a movie with a built-in audience; no zombies or Zach Braff. What we had was a project our entire team believed in, passionately. We are making a comedy about cancer but we didn't want to belittle/patronize anyone else's experience.  There are five of us spearheading this campaign and we wanted to enter the crowd funding arena prepared… like Gladiators, only super poor ones. Before we became filmmakers, most of us started in the theatre and we already knew how to beg, borrow and scrape. It is part of our theatrical psyche.

It’s been too long! This installment of "Six Tech Tools" is devoted to interesting audience building tools you may not have considered or may not have even heard of…yet. We’re always collecting what we think are exciting new tools for engaging your fans and where we’re seeing a lot of success may surprise you: Just because you’re in movies doesn’t mean 100% of the way you engage your audience has to be about movies. Building a brand—the world of inspiration and storytelling that is your unique optic on the world— extends far beyond moving pictures. So, we’ve put together what we hope is a not-entirely-obvious list of tools you can consider. Most of them are super easy and all of them are really fun to use. But we also want to hear from you! So, leave us your favorites and why in the comments.