The Cart Before the Horse Distribution and Outreach Strategy

I'm at the University Film and Video Conference for the next few days, and I'm looking forward to learning a ton from the talented teacher/filmmakers who attend this extravaganza.
Along with two colleagues I met last year, Casey Hayward and Claire Darby, I'll be presenting on my developing strategy to distribute my film. I call this "The Cart Before the Horse Distribution and Outreach Strategy" but it seems there is no longer a horse or a cart when it comes to building momentum for independent films these days. Let me explain.

With previous films I completed, my "strategy," if you want to call it that, to get my films seen was to write checks to festivals, fill out the paperwork and create a sweatshop in my office comprised of mailers, festival paperwork, return labels and DVDs (or VHS tapes in the early years). Then I would hope to get in a festival. And wait. There was a lot of waiting involved.

But that was so 10 years ago. Now I'm working on a real strategy, one that has me thinking now, in preproduction, about my target and secondary audiences. Has me thinking about my goals in preproduction regarding how I might reach those audiences and pull them into the film, build interest in the story, the subjects and the process. I'm closely examining things like Working Film's ELEMENTS OF AN AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT CAMPAIGN. (As a side note, this is one of the most valuable websites I've found for Indie filmmakers like myself.) I'm also considering how the concept and practice of TransMedia is useful to me as a documentary filmmaker. Check out this video featuring Henry Jenkins one of the seminal voices on TransMedia strategy from Youtube. Basically, TransMedia is, according to Jeff Gomez of www.starlightrunner.com "the art of conveying messages themes or storylines to mass audiences through the artful and well planned use of multiple media platforms.”

So, how am I using these things to assemble my strategy? Stay tuned...I'll be working on this at the conference and will report back next week as I do my own thinking about this and pick the brains of the brilliant minds around me here in Vermont.