You may be thinking:
“I really like your teaser for CENTS, but why should I sign up for your mailing list?”
Okay, maybe we made up the first part of your thought – we sincerely hope you liked the teaser, though! Regardless, you probably are wondering why we want you to sign up for our mailing list (and we really, really do).
You are our audience and the mailing list is the best way for us to keep in touch with our audience.
“You haven’t made CENTS yet, so why is it so important to build your audience now?”
Building a passionate audience for CENTS now will actually help us make the movie. Here’s how:
1. A growing, passionate audience supporting CENTS and excited to see the final film will help us find financing.
Potential investors will see that CENTS already has a core group of people waiting to watch the film and spreading the word to their friends to see the film, too. One of the questions potential investors always ask is, “Who is your target audience?” We can point to the growing number of people on our mailing list and tell them, “This is our target audience.” (Don’t worry – we won’t share your contact info with anyone. We respect your privacy).
2. Building an audience now will help us run a successful Kickstarter campaign in the near future.
For those who don’t know, Kickstarter is a crowdfunding web platform where people can launch campaigns to raise money for creative projects like feature films. Contributions come from many individuals, usually in small dollar amounts ($25-$50 on average), and in exchange for these contributions, the people behind the projects offer rewards like digital downloads and DVDs of their finished films. Rewards increase as the level of contribution goes up (e.g. invitations to wrap parties, tickets to the premiere) in the hopes of encouraging people to give more to a project.
For our Kickstarter campaign to succeed, we need a passionate group of people from the very beginning of the campaign to help spread the word to friends and family not only to support the project but also to convince their friends and family to support the project, and so on. A strong audience now means a successful Kickstarter campaign in the near future AND an even stronger audience after the Kickstarter campaign.
3. Our dedicated and growing audience before production will help us get a grant for the production of CENTS.
Last year, we were a strong contender for a grant from the Tribeca Film Institute Sloan Filmmaker Fund. Supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, The TFI Sloan Filmmaker Fund “provides grants and professional guidance in support of innovative and compelling narrative features that offer a fresh take on scientific, mathematic and technological themes.” CENTS not only features a young female protagonist with a gift for mathematics, but also uses a geometric series as the plot device that drives the story forward.
The Tribeca Film Institute encouraged us to reapply for the grant after we made significant progress. Our teaser is progress. Putting together financing is progress. A successful Kickstarter campaign will certainly be progress. And building our audience through our mailing list will show TFI significant progress in our project.
4. We want to engage with our audience as soon as possible.
We want to share with our audience the entire journey of making CENTS, not just the final film. We are learning so much about what it takes to make a small, independent feature film with a great story and unique, flawed characters. We want to share that journey with you, our audience, as it unfolds. The story behind the story can be just as fascinating a tale, and we all love a good story.
5. We need our audience to help us find more people to join our audience.
The best way for us to reach our audience is through word-of-mouth, and word-of-mouth starts with our initial audience. You play such an important role in helping us find people who want to see a film with:
- a young, strong yet flawed female protagonist portrayed realistically
- a passion for mathematics
- an engaging exploration of relational aggression among girls
- a challenging mother-daughter relationship
- a no-nonsense teacher-student relationship
- a film comprised almost entirely of female characters
- a coming-of-age story with universal themes
We’re passionate about making CENTS. We hope you are, too.
Please join our mailing list. Spread the word. Help us make CENTS.