Introduce Yourself : Hi all. I'm Chase. Just joined yesterday. by Chase Friedman

Hey Chase Friedman great to hear from you! What are some of the key tips for filmmakers who want to understand release strategy and getting an audience to show up?

Warm welcome to the Stage32 community Chase Friedman! Wishing you all the best for future connections here.

That festival story really says a lot, Chase. A great audience reaction can feel like success, but without a plan for what happens next, the momentum can disappear incredibly fast. Curious to hear more of your perspective on that side of distribution.

Wow, talk about timing... https://www.stage32.com/education/products/the-producers-guide-to-ai-dis...

Welcome Chase Friedman ! I hope you'll join us at our upcoming webcasts in the Writers' Room. Our Wednesday webcasts are available to Writers' Room members on demand after the event. Sign up for a Free Month of the Writers’ Room: https://www.stage32.com/writers-room/plans-vip

Laura Hammer Thanks Laura, appreciate the welcome. I'll take a look at the Writers' Room webcasts. The Writers' Room is probably not my lane since I am not a writer, but I appreciate the invite. I run a film marketing agency and teach the release and audience side, so if Stage 32 ever has a gap in that part of the education library I would be glad to talk about it. Either way, good to be here.

Zoltán Varga Happy to. The short version is that a festival reaction tells you the film works in a room. It does not tell you anyone will go looking for it later. Those are different problems and the second one is the one that pays.

What I look for after a strong premiere is whether anyone captured the people who were in that room. Names, emails, anything. Most of the time nobody did, and the momentum everyone felt has nowhere to go. The teams that do capture it have something to work with for the next year.

Robert Zwerneman Thanks Robert, will take a look.

That moves me Chase Friedman. I have watched so many excellent independent films reach far too few people and disappear post festivals.

I often wondered what happened to them because so many films deserved a much larger audience.

That is the part nobody talks about, Catherine Lynne Saykaly. Those films do not fail loudly. They just go quiet, and unless you were watching for it you would never know it happened.

What gets me is that in most cases the audience existed. People who would have loved that film never found out it was made. That is not a taste problem or a quality problem. It is a distance problem, and it is fixable, which is somehow what makes it worse.

The disappearing is not inevitable. It just looks that way from the outside.

Glad you're with us Chase Friedman - just breaks my heart to hear of good quality indie films that fade away. I recently wrote a short that's currently in development and my hope is that it garners some attention. We shall see.

Thanks Leonardo Ramirez . And that hope is not misplaced, but I would push you on one thing while it is still in development. Do not leave attention to chance.

A short in development is actually the easiest time to start, because you have runway and no pressure. Figure out who the people are that would care about this specific story, and start talking to them now. Not promoting. Just being where they are and letting them see the thing being made.

The shorts that get noticed are almost never the ones that were better than everything else. They are the ones that had a few hundred people already paying attention when they arrived.

What's it about?

That's exactly what our director is doing Chase Friedman - still great advice! Here's the logline: "A gifted tango dancer who sacrifices her career to care for her father with dementia is pushed to the margins of her world — until an unexpected invitation to a high-profile diplomatic gala offers her one last chance to reclaim her future."

Funny thing is that I normally write sci-fi. I connected with an actor and director here on Stage 32 and they asked me to write something along these lines and they loved it. We're hoping to film in November. It's been a joy to work with these folks. But yes, your advice is spot on - our director is in touch with the world of tango in the northeast and the plan is to get them involved in the film.

Leonardo Ramirez That logline is strong. And your director is doing the exact right thing with the tango community, that is not a marketing channel, that is the audience. People who dance tango will care about a film about a tango dancer in a way no ad buy can manufacture.

One thing worth doing while you shoot in November. Get names. Whatever tango people show up, come to the set, help with the dancing, hear about it through their networks, capture them somewhere you own. Not for the short necessarily, but because a room full of people who already care is the thing that makes the next project possible.

The sci fi to tango pivot is a good story on its own. Hope the shoot goes well.

Thanks so much Chase Friedman. I’ll send your profile to our director. Love it that you’re in Spain, btw. Have always wanted to visit.

With the film being "done" that takes some of the RISK out of the project, but it is still a risk as a completed film that is so bad no one wants to watch it is worthless. Or I am still old enough to remember the HEAVEN'S GATE FIASCO. This was a multi million dollar project and the film itself was over three hours, that was part of the problem, that totally bombed in the box office. The problem was not the story, it was an interesting story about the fights between the cattle barons who wanted their cattle to be able to travel and eat on any land, even if it belonged to other people, and the settlers who wanted to homestead and put fences on their property, for obvious reasons. Eventually the settlers won, but in the meantime there were bloody fights between the settlers and the cattlemen, one such fight was the subject of "heaven's gate" with Chris Kristopherson on the settler's side and believe it or not Christopher Walken on the cattleman's side, whose manic performance in a latter film with Robert Dinero as fighting buddies in Vietnam. The Deer Hunter won great praise. The Deer Hunter is a very Dark film not for everyone and it is does not end well for the Christopher Walken character, yet I loved the film.

Welcome Chase! It's so great to have you in the community. Distribution always seems to feel like trying to catch a ghost when you're an emerging or indie filmmaker. I love that you're here to share your wisdom. Any tips for first time filmmakers who are running the festival circuit with their film and/or looking to find it a home for audiences?

Hi, @Chase. Hope you're having a great week! What's something a filmmaker must have when submitting a movie to a film festival?

Thanks Delenn Kerkhof and "catching a ghost" is the best description of it I have heard.

For a first timer on the circuit, the most useful thing is to stop treating the festival as the goal and start treating it as a room full of people you will never have access to again. Capture them. A QR code in the program, a sign in sheet at the Q and A, anything. Most filmmakers walk out of a great screening with applause and no names.

The other one is to figure out who your film is for in a way you can say in one sentence, and make sure it is a group of people that actually exists somewhere. A community, an organization, a subreddit, a conference. If you cannot name where those people gather, that is the work to do before you worry about finding a home for it.

Home comes easier when you can show a distributor an audience instead of describing one.

Maurice Vaughan A short, honest answer to the question of who this film is for. Not the logline, the audience.

Programmers watch a lot of films and they are partly asking whether anyone will show up for it. A film that clearly belongs to a specific group of people is easier to program than a good film with no obvious audience.

Fair point Elena Schumann Finished removes one risk and leaves another. What I would add is that quality and audience are separate problems. Plenty of good films disappear and some bad ones find people. The films that do well usually knew who they were for before anyone shot anything.

thanks Leonardo Ramirez please do. And yes, Spain is worth the trip.

Thanks for the answer, Chase Friedman. I didn't know a filmmaker needed. That's something writers could figure out when outlining scripts too. I put it in the outline. It might help when I pitch the script.

Thanks so much for your advice, Chase Friedman! It's very nice to hear this angle being talked about more when it comes to treating the festival as a room full of people you will never have access to again instead of the end goal. I think that's something I've come to understand in the last couple of years, once I did, suddenly I realized how valuable festivals are, even some of the small ones.

Maurice Vaughan That’s exactly it. If a writer can identify the audience early, it can influence how the project is positioned long before release. It also makes the pitch much stronger because you’re not just saying what the film is, you’re showing who it’s for.

Delenn Kerkhof Absolutely. Smaller festivals can be incredibly valuable because the relationships are often more accessible and more genuine. Sometimes one conversation after a screening ends up being more useful than the screening itself.