Film festivals:

Going Digital

Looking into the strategies and practices of film festival digital engagement

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About

This whitepaper was created to examine the digital and social media practices by film festivals as they attempt to more actively engage and involve their festival attendants. This paper will then look more at specifically online film festivals that generate programming, audiences, and even panel discussions via the Internet.

The author

Megan Roy is currently a master’s candidate of integrated global communication at Kennesaw state university. Her interests include looking at the relationships between transnational cinema, film festivals, globalization, and communication theory. She received her bachelor’s degree in history from auburn university.

Festivals in this paper

Tribeca Film Festival | New York, NY Sundance Film Festival | Park City, Utah Portable Film Festival | Melbourne, Australia New Hollywood Film Festival | online PBS Online Film Festival | Online Unofficial Google+ Film Festival | Online

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Let’s take a second to think…

Companies, events, and organizations use digital and social media platforms as a storytelling tool- to share with its audiences, create a personality online, and more importantly market your brand. Digital media is digital storytelling.

Film festivals are story-telling companies with a simple mission to screen and program films for audiences. Films enlighten, educate, entertain, and enliven. But film is a medium that necessitates an audience. Without one, it would not amount to much. But how do you increase, maintain, and encourage new film audiences to attend the festival? What if the festival has capacity but still can’t reach everyone? How do you engage more with the audiences to expand the festival beyond the films and involve more discussion and exposition?

With such a traditional platform to film exhibition, festivals that do utilize digital engagement, and therefore digital storytelling, succeed. The possibilities are endless in this digital age: online programming, Twitter panels, YouTube and Vine competitions, Facebook conversations, etc. Whether the audience can physically attend the festival or not, the experience, education, and entertainment that derives from the selected films can still be accomplished. The combination of all these a larger, more diverse, more engaged audience, which, in turn, create bigger and better conversations about the films, the programming, the panels, and ultimately the festival as an entity.

Digital engagement. Digital media. Social media.

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So what’s the Bottom Line??

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Familiarity

Popularity

Interest

The following festivals exemplify practices to successful utilization of digital media to market, engage, and empower their audiences. From social media to wholly online festivals,

these particular festivals have created a conversation.

By producing digital content, familiarity is also produced. People become aware of the festival and starting generating buzz. Recognition and reputation are developed from this buzz.

With familiarity comes popularity and prevalence as people talk about the festival. It becomes known. Word has spread of the films, the actors, the directors, etc.

As word spreads, audience’s interest has piqued. People become curious and want to engage or attend the festival. This means more active involvement and better recognition.

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A festival now for online storytellers, Tribeca Film Festival has expanded its film competition online, serving as a facilitator of new ways to tell a story. Powered using the social media platform of Vine, the #6SECFILMS competition challenges filmmakers to tell an innovative story in only six seconds. Also, Interlude and Genero.tv sponsor the Music Film Challenge, further bringing in storytelling to the digital age. Lastly, the Film Festival Online Competition allow audiences to virtually screen selected films and vote on their favorite, allowing the festival to reach those that necessarily can’t reach the festival. These three combined form a unique interaction and connection.

Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah has taken a bit more of a standard approach to digitally engaging its audiences. With accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube, this festival has different strategies for each platform, targeting specific audiences with each social media outlet. What is best about their digital presence is the Sundance App for iPhone, iPad, and Android. It allows festivalgoers near and far, who can and cannot attend, be involved with the film program and past festivals, access articles and blogs, and connect with other Sundance fans.

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What if the festival was completely digital, completely online? The PBS Online Film Festival debuted as a festival with its selected and curated films available on all PBS digital platforms, YouTube, and PBS social media channels.

Audiences are encouraged to watch all the films (ie attend the festival) and vote. It is totally digital. Furthermore, PBS provides a personal and intimate perspective by having digital hosts, two guys who share videos and talk about the festival, its films, and film festivals in general.

The New Hollywood Online Film Festival prides itself on being a place where the theatrical event meets the digital age. They set out to create a new system for films and filmmakers to experience distribution and exhibition, and this festival allows filmmakers and audience to connect.

After watching the film, audiences can directly contact the filmmaker with questions or discussion. It also lets the filmmaker see some revenue from their film being selected by implementing a revenue sharing program for selected films.

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Completely Up to the audience…

But what if social and digital media converged?

Started in 2006, the Portable Film Festival from Melbourne, Australia had a mission to make its entire curated film program accessible for free to anyone on any device. With audiences downloading the selected films, its portability represented a change in the tide to film exhibition and distribution, allowing people view the films in their own preferable format. In 2009, the festival became so popular that it became a subscribed channel with thousands of registered users.

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Celebrating Cinema with the World. An online, interactive, international, live,

short film festival.

The Unofficial Google+ Film Festival, celebrating its fourth year, has a completely new way to present film programming that extends beyond festival parameters, engaging both digital media technologies and a social media platform. It creates better connection between thousands of filmmakers and film buffs alike as panels are experienced via Google Hangout and films screened on the Google+ page. Everyone also experiences the film at the same time, forming a sort of community. But it still tips its hat to the traditional format of film festivals by broadcasting live in front of audiences in several cities around the country.

1. To support the Google+ Film Community

2. Discover new talent

3. Promote interaction

4. Encourage discussion

5. Connect audiences

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Each of these festivals, in one way or another, engage and encourage audience interaction, connection, and community. From basic but

abundant social media usage to purely online digital and social media presence, these film festivals represent the union between traditional film exhibition and theatrical experience and the opportunities of the digital

era.

Could this be the future of film festivals? To wholly program films digitally? Tradition exists for a reason, so the established system of film festivals will last

for many more years to come. However, the digital age does present so many prospects for creating new audiences, making more aware festival goers, and launching better and wider presence and prominence in the business. As technologies become more available and more affordable,

many more digital film festivals may appear, but only time will tell.

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Additional Resources

Tribeca Online | tribecafilm.com/online Sundance Social Media | sundance.org/updates/social-media New Hollywood Online Film festival | nuhofilmfest.com PBS Online Film Festival | pbs.org/filmfestival/home/ Unofficial Google+ Film Festival | indiewire.com/article/3rd-annual-unofficial-google-film-festival mashable.com/2011/03/21/tribeca-online-film-festival-2011/ forbes.com/sites/katherynthayer/2014/01/21/sundance-tunes-into-online-audiences/