Cinematical

If you're an indie filmmaker, please listen up. I've written about this topic before, elsewhere, but I don't think the message can be overstressed.

So your low-budget-and-fabulous independent film has been accepted into Sundance, or SXSW, or another film festival taking place in the next few months. You should be proud! You should be excited!

You should have a website going live, immediately. Where is it?

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the first films announced for SXSW. First, I checked IMDb to see if these movies were listed. Most of them were, but a few were not. For the films that were not, I ran a quick Google search on the titles. None of those films could be found. That's a wasted opportunity right there, for me to link to your film's website and for potential viewers to find out more about your film.

On that same article, you might notice that the accompanying graphic is from the SXSW site. That gets boring after awhile. For future announcements, I'll probably look for images from the films that are selected. The SXSW office may have some images available upon request, but requesting them takes time. First, I'll check the films' websites for those films ... if the websites exist and are easy to find.

Our own James Rocchi just wrote a preview of seven films he wants to see at Sundance. The image is from a relatively big-name film, Black Snake Moan, possibly because it was the easiest to find. Cinematical editors are about to travel to Park City to cover a number of films at Sundance. They'll be looking for info about and photos from those films -- each one of our reviews is supposed to be accompanied by a large photo. We'll also post a lot of news and roundups ... again, more opportunities for someone's movie to get more attention, and yours probably needs it more than Craig Brewer's.

The minute you start submitting your film to festivals, you should have a website in the works. If you can afford it, buy a domain name that reflects your film's title, pay for a webhost, and find someone to design your site. If you can't afford it, use a cheap or free weblogging service, like Blogspot or Typepad. Ask your friends with blogs and websites to link to your movie's website so you can increase the chance it will be found on search engines. Your site should include visible and searchable text -- if you use an website creation tool that uses only images to create each page, search engines won't be able to find you.

A MySpace page is fine, but MySpace pages don't always seem to show up in search engine results. Also, most MySpace page layouts look awful. I recommend creating a MySpace page in addition to your film's website. Use the MySpace page to send bulletins with screening information and other news about your film that your "friends" will want to know, but make sure the critical information is also available on your main website.

As I mentioned earlier, your film's website should include photos in various sizes and resolutions, for online and print publications. If I'm writing about three films I saw in a single day, don't you want the image on the top of the article to be from your movie? While some people worry about images from their website being "stolen" and used elsewhere, that's actually what you want in this case, so make sure it's easy for visitors to copy and save your production stills. Putting them in a PDF makes it more difficult for us writers, although admittedly it's better than no photos at all.

Your site also should include a short (one-paragraph) summary about the movie's storyline that a writer can easily paraphrase for a preview article about the film. These summaries are also useful when I'm trying to figure out which films I want to see and review. If you want to be especially helpful to writers, include a cast list, preferably with photos. After I've seen three films in a day about twentysomething relationships, I have a tendency to get the characters' names mixed up. It helps if you let me know that the bald guy with the skull earring who said "dude" a lot was named Xandy, as well as the name of the actor who played him.

It's critical that your website include contact information, too. What if I see your film, love it, can't find you after the screening, but want to set up an interview? Last year, I met a filmmaker I wanted to interview at a film festival, but she was in a hurry and told me to check her website for her email address and contact information. However, that info wasn't available on her film's site. I never did get to interview her.

If you have time, including a blog on your website can be very useful. You can post interesting info about your film as well as helpful news about upcoming screenings, awards, and press releases. If the blog tracks the production of your film or includes links to other interesting blogs about filmmaking, you stand a very good chance of getting more traffic through other bloggers. (Doug Block's Doc Blog is a great example.) Also, a blog is an easy way of keeping your site up-to-date if you don't want to have to edit a lot of HTML code.

Keeping your site up-to-date is important, once it's been established. If your film is still seeking distribution, holding screenings, or about to be available on DVD, make sure the information is current. A site that was obviously last updated a year ago may still contain useful information, but it gives a poor impression to visitors.

When you are accepted into a film festival, make sure that the festival coordinators are aware that you have a website for the site, and encourage them to include the URL in any materials they distribute about the film. If you're distributing postcards or sending emails to a press mailing list, always include the URL. I don't find postcards to be useful in influencing my decision to see a film, but if the website URL is on the postcard, I'll keep it so I can find the site later.

Speaking of mailing lists, however, it is possible for online film promotion to go too far. Please don't spam press and attendees with too many email messages about your film. I can think of one feature at a festival last year where the filmmakers not only sent me multiple emails about the film, but also sent the same quantity to local non-film bloggers and non-film-related sites. At that point, you become a spammer. I never did see that film, but my husband (an avid anti-spam activist who received several emails about the film) and I mocked it among ourselves because of the spam. That's not the kind of publicity you want to have.

In addition, sites that resize my browser without my permission, play music automatically, require plug-in applications, or crash my browser are a very bad idea. I've seen some gorgeous Flash-based sites, but a plain and readable site, with easy navigation to the materials I need, is a clear winner.

Some examples of indie-film websites I like:

• Hannah Takes the Stairs -- A great example of a plain and simple but useful site. Joe Swanberg includes a good synopsis and a helpful cast page for his upcoming film, as well as a link to the site's MySpace page. I like his production blog and keep it in my RSS feed reader. However ... Joe, please add some more still photos on the page before the movie premieres at SXSW.
• Chalk -- A very cute site, in which your cursor becomes a piece of chalk and you navigate around a site that looks like a chalkboard. The press-kit PDF includes cast and crew info, full credits and some nice stills. The site also includes a trailer. However, the site seems not to have been updated in a while, because I can't find the news about the film's Indie Spirit award nomination, nor about its distribution deal with Morgan Spurlock's company.
  
• Mutual Appreciation -- Not only are there hi-res stills and a cast/crew list directly accessible from the site, but I love the little hand-drawn icons in the sidebar. This website for Andrew Bujalski's latest film also includes a trailer, a link to the film's MySpace page and most importantly, a list of upcoming screenings and dates. This site makes both my inner film critic and my inner graphic/web designer happy.