On Naming Your Film

Movie titles are fascinating – and sometimes the most artistically fulfilling or narrative-appropriate title for your film isn’t the right choice.  It’s important to find the sweet spot between what makes sense for your movie and what will make people actually want to see it.

When trying to elaborate on this principle, I often go back to the title “Minority Report.” Literarily, it’s a solid title:  this elaborate sci-fi mystery hinges on the fact that every now and then a pre-crime prophecy is known to be reported inaccurately from a minority of prediction sources. So, yeah, the title makes technical sense, sounds like a sci-fi short story, and the moment in-film when the viewer comes to realize the title’s importance is effective because of the “ah-ha!” factor.

But outside the context of this being a Philip K. Dick story being retold by Stephen Spielberg starring Tom Cruise, it’s actually a crap title! I mean, what the hell is a “Minority Report” and why should I care!? If I do decide to see the film, I’m going to expect some sort of exposé on prejudice, or underage student essay. This is a movie about a police force that can see the future… Sure, titles like “Prophet Cops” or “Future Crime” don’t have quite the same ring of profundity to them, but you can bet they’d get more butts in seats than “Minority Report” if the film didn’t have well-respected names already attached. Note how Cruise's name is as prominent as the title on the poster to the right.

So if you’re an independent filmmaker trying to establish a presence, hooking an audience with your title alone can be an important step in the right marketing direction. To this day, we still scratch our heads over what would have been the best title for our first film, Flashback. It’s a crazy time-travel comedy about a movie studio of the future… The in-film studio is named “Flashback Films,” so the title Flashback worked well with both that brand and the time travel aspects in the story – but on its own, Flashback is an entirely too-vague title. To us – while writing, shooting, and editing the movie – this was never clear. The title made good sense for the story and that was enough. 

In retrospect, we may have attracted the curiosity of far more potential viewers with a title that better conveyed the unique aspects of the story. Some of our outside marketers clearly agreed. In the UK, Flashback was released on DVD under the name Timelord – a clear Dr. Who cash-in attempt, but a title that has zero connection to the film’s plot. In Hungary, Flashback aired on Cinemax under the title The Future of Cinema – a rather clunky title, but one that shouts out the film’s content far better than our own title. 

Our experience thus far in marketing our second film, Bubba the Redneck Werewolf, has put the ambiguity of Flashback’s title in even clearer perspective. For Bubba, we partnered with author Mitch Hyman (executive producer) who writes the comic book series on which the film is based. So this time we inherited the title – and its simple brilliance is a large part of what attracted us to the project.  Whereas a movie titled Flashback could literally be about anything – you know exactly what you’re getting into when you decide to watch Bubba the Redneck Werewolf: a goofy southern-infused monster flick that makes you laugh. It’s ALL there in the title. Perfect. Any tagline or plot description is gravy.

Now, moving into pre-production on our third feature film, we’ve experienced both extremes of title-marketing. So what do we name our new movie about a group of friends who go on a crusade to end Daylight Saving Time only to end up in a heap of supernatural trouble? We considered Saving Daylight – still perhaps the most literary title – but it could also indicate a movie about most anything (and also this happened in the midst of our brainstorming). We still like titles such as Daylight Slayers or Daylight Slaying Time – but the former could easily belong to something vampire-based and doesn’t indicate DST, and the latter lacks a sense of immediacy or mission-based imperative – and neither says comedy quite as much as our working title: Daylight Savings Must Die. With this title, you know the movie’s about DST; you know someone’s on a mission to stop DST; you know the film has a sense of humor; and just maybe the word ‘die’ has foreshadowed that some carnage is on its way. Here’s hoping we’ve chosen wisely!

For fun, try re-titling some aptly titled movies Minority Report-style!

Examples:
Star Wars into Station Plans
Jurassic Park into Fences Out
Ghostbusters into The Advent of Gozer

Or The Other Way ‘Round:
The Bourne Identity into Amnesia Spy
The Hunger Games into Teen Death Competition
Independence Day into White House Go Boom

On Finding An Audience

'And You Films'  promoting and screening Flashback at
Magic City Comic Con in Miami, FL (January, 2016)

So you've made a movie! Or you've made ten! Or you're sitting around thinking about writing the catchy tagline to a rough-draft outline that may one day become a screenplay that may sometime eventually be turned into a movie!

Any which way, possibly the most important thing you're going to need (in addition to everything else that's of immense importance) is an audience. See, here's the thing: you could have made the best movie of all time, but if no one knows (or worse: if no one cares) then it simply won't matter. It won't win you applause or accolades; it won't gain you attention or fame; it won't make you money, and it might not even bring you satisfaction - because, like most things in this world, what's the damn point if you don't have anyone to share it with?

So how do you find an audience? There's no simple answer - but there are some frames of reference to help get you on the right track.

The Built-In Audience
Ever wonder why Robert Downey Jr. and Johnny Depp make like a bazillion dollars* for each film they do? (*totally accurate data) It's because if one of them is in your movie, then you instantly have a built-in audience. A star of that magnitude is so in demand that you could literally film them sitting in a lawn chair watching grass grow, name it The Lawnening, give it the tagline "Look Who's Watching Now," and it will make money. And to a proportional degree, this is true of any A or B-list star. The upside of this for audiences is that Hollywood gives them more of what they've been proven to love. The downside of this for audiences is that Hollywood is frightened to give them anything else.

If you don't have and/or can't afford a star, another way to build an audience right into the very foundation of your film is to work within the parameters of a simple, popular genre. This is why there are so many low budget, independent horror films. It's an easily-defined genre with an avid fanbase. Does your movie have a psycho running around slashing people? Good news! There's somebody out there RIGHT NOW who wants to watch it! And the more bad-ass and/or hot your psycho is, the more of an audience you already have! We probably don't need to elaborate too much on other popular tropes and genres, but suffice to say researching what sells is an important factor in determining if the audience for your film is already out there waiting for it. You'll just have to walk the balance of doing a project you want to do that lets you flex your artistic muscles... while staying within some proven, safe parameters.

The Hard-Fought Audience
So even if you have some degree of audience built into your film, you'll still have to let people know it exists. Now if you have Robert or Johnny, chances are the media will find out about your project and latch on to it no matter what. But you'll have a lot more work on your hands if you have less of a built-in audience, or *shudder* no built-in audience (I'm looking at you, R-rated drama with no names and a generic single-word title).

Getting the word out about your film will involve seeking media attention (good artwork and a solid press kit is key here), setting up screenings (whether through film festivals, conventions, schools, theatrical distribution, etc.), and exploiting the heck out of social media (pretty much every social media outlet possible).

You will figuratively be trying to pull people out of their daily lives and into your film. It's not always pretty, and it's rarely easy, but depending on how well-built into your film your audience already is, and how willing you are to put yourself and your film 'out there,' success can and will be found. It's only (a very important) matter of degree. And whether you're after exposure or profit, the more of an audience you can wrangle the better.

'And You Films' seeking distribution for Flashback at the
Cannes Film Festival's Marche Du Film (May, 2012)

For our first film, Flashback, finding an audience has been a many-year struggle that's still on-going. Flashback has no names and a generic single-word title -- but it was made over the course of seven years by three guys in their garage, just out of college... so what do you expect? You expect a better title? Fair enough -- our bad. We just hadn't learned our lesson about balancing artistic integrity with marketability yet. But, that said, what Flashback does have going for it is decent genre appeal (sci-fi time travel adventure) and an overload of surprisingly effective special effects for just how low budget it is. Those boons were enough to get us a distribution deal that's worked out decently on the exposure side of things (Flashback is available on DVD and many streaming services, both in the U.S. and abroad, and has even aired on HBO across Eastern Europe), even if it hasn't topped the box office.

But distribution doesn't equal an audience, no matter how much you'd like to hope it would. Whether you're looking to earn back the film's budget, jumpstart your career, or fund your way to the next project -- chances are your film has to perform much better in order to meet your own goals than it does to meet your distributor's needs. Even once distributed, audience-wrangling is of the utmost importance -- as is prepping the audience for what kind of experience your film will be. Flashback has played well consistently for audiences at film festivals and conventions (garnering 'audience favorite' and 'best comedy feature awards') -- but without that indie circuit context, you're side-by-side with the best Hollywood has to offer, and the very 'sci-fi time travel adventure' label that won you distribution may color expectations.

So if you can't expect help with marketing or shaping audience expectations from your distributor -- well then it's up to you! For Flashback, we've dabbled extensively in viral marketing, started touring the convention circuit to engage our audience on a personal level, and have honestly only begun opening the Pandora's box that is social media to the necessary extent. All of this in an effort to give Flashback its due while -- much more importantly -- paving the way for media/fan attention for our second film Bubba the Redneck Werewolf (title-marketability lesson learned via Bubba comic-creator and executive producer Mitch Hyman) -- and even more importantly laying the super-early groundwork for a whole new kind of audience for our third film, Daylight Savings Must Die, currently in pre-production.

The Actively Engaged Audience
That whole new kind of audience, is an audience not only waiting for your movie -- and aware they're doing so -- but an audience following your progress, enjoying content you provide along the filmmaking journey, and interacting with you as you provide it. This audience may even be so engaged that (dare you dream!?) they could be willing to contribute funds to your efforts via a crowd-funding program like Kickstarter or Indiegogo! But rather than just assume that the
audience is there simply because your movie's got some built-in appeal or because you're awesome (you know you are!) -- now you're firing on all cylinders to reach out and shape the audience your film needs.

This actively engaged audience is not an entirely different breed of audience than the previous two, but rather the next-level hybrid, forged from the combination of built-in appeal and hard-fought attention. It may not even be possible to garner such an audience on your first film -- it may take more practice than such a feat would allow or it might even require a multi-film pedigree moving forward. Or maybe it just takes the right amount of prep-work, media smarts, and active social media engagement. None of this would hurt.

So, confession time: as you may have deduced, we're only just now dipping our toe into the waters of creating an actively engaged audience. Sometimes we wish we could go back and re-release Flashback knowing what we know now, but then we've always been a bit too focused on the work of the moment -- heads buried in cameras and editing software -- to see the audience of the future. Fortunately, that's changed. As we gear up for the distribution of Bubba the Redneck Werewolf and production of Daylight Savings Must Die, we're attempting to put our work and its process in public view as we never have before. We're working the convention circuit; we're documenting our progress; and our fingers are more actively on the pulse of social media. We even finally figured out what the dickens Instragram is! (But, seriously, what is it?)

Some Flashback filmmaking you didn't read about when it
happened because this blog didn't exist yet (July, 2007)

And, yes, we've started this blog. Could this post get any more meta? This blog and this introductory post are literally an example of an early step in crafting an actively engaged audience. It's something we should have started a decade ago when we began filming Flashback. It could have documented epic-scale filmmaking on no budget in real-time. It could have told the story of a group of young artists who transitioned their craft into functional day jobs. It could have followed their journey into filming their second feature while holding down said day jobs. It could have been inspirational. It might have been educational. It may have even been entertaining. It wasn't any of this -- because it simply wasn't at all -- but hopefully it will be! And it's about damn time.

Thank you for joining us.