Annelise Larson | Storytelling and Creating an Audience For Film

Annelise Larson: Digital Strategist and Mentor

“Annelise is on a mission to help stories find their audiences and storytellers a business model, all through the digital opportunity.”

Show Notes

Websites:

https://veria.ca/ 

https://www.storypreneursunite.com/

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/Veria.ca/

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/annelisedlarson/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/veria.ca/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/veriatweet 

Narrator: The Publishing for Profit Podcast is brought to you by Ghostwritersandco.com. Earn more money by publishing better content and learn how to increase your thought leadership so you can build your brand.  Head over to Ghostwritersandco.com. For more information, that’s: GhostwritersEncode.com.

And now your host, Joel Mark Harris.

Joel Mark Harris: Our guest today is Annelise Larson who comes from a background as an independent film producer with training at such prestigious institutions as a Canadian Film Center and Banff Centre for the Arts. Since 1995, she’s been working in the field of online digital marketing. She works extensively with government organization and production companies in the film, television and interactive media in all across North America. Our focus is on helping content creators and storytellers, use the power of online media and data to define, find, attract, and engage their audience and work towards a strategic and sustainable business model. 

She sat on the interactive fund jury for BC film and media, the experimental stream jury for Canadian media fund, and has taught across the country on behalf of such organizations as Telefilm Canada, the Canadian Film Center at Women in Film at the National Screen Institute. She is also a highly sought after speaker for media festivals and conferences. And Elise is a great wealth of knowledge. We talk about how to have an audience-first approach to filmmaking.

We talk about how to fund your films through crowdfunding and distribution. It’s a great conversation for anyone who is looking at how to use marketing better. 

So without further ado here is Annelise.

Annelise, thank you so much for being on the show. How are you?

Annelise: I’m great. Thanks for having me. 

Joel: Okay. So you described yourself as a digital marketer who has a niche of media, and that seems very unique to me because I don’t actually know anyone who does quite what you do. So can you just explain. What that is, and what you do?

Annelise: Sure. Well, I come from a filmmaking background myself. That’s sort of where I started a million lifetimes ago. And at the very beginning of the commercial internet I was using it to do research for documentary projects. And then had a friend who worked at a web development company and said, “Hey, we need someone to do market research for us. Do you know of anyone?” And I said, “Oh, I can totally do that.” So that’s kind of how I tripped and fell into sort of the digital marketing stuff. And, Completely self-taught because when I started, it was like 94, 95, there were no courses or classes or anything that you could take, you just had to learn by doing and reading and researching.

So, that sort of started my journey, and I was doing both, trying to be a filmmaker, an independent filmmaker and producer, as well as, basically using my income from digital marketing to feed my film habit and then became a mom and stopped working in the film world and was just doing digital marketing.

And then probably about 13 – 15 years ago all of a sudden I had all these filmmaker friends who were going like, “What the heck is YouTube?” And do I need to be there and, you know, help? So that’s sort of the beginning of all my world’s coming back together and now I work almost exclusively with people in the media; I do other work in sort of other different culture sectors now as well. But my goal was really to, to lean all in and, and work exclusively as much as possible, I guess, in culture, but, specifically in media. Just because I feel that there’s such an opportunity for, well, any kind of storyteller, not just filmmakers to connect with the audience through these digital mechanisms, and I believe strongly in the power of the audience and how it can help creatives, and do all kinds of amazing, wonderful things. And before we always had to go through gatekeepers and now you don’t have to. 

So I guess that’s sort of, you know, for me, it really is about just basically helping people understand who their audience is and really challenging, perhaps, conventional definitions of audience, which lean on gender and age ranges, which is actually completely useless when you’re trying to craft a strategy. It’s based so much on an old media model that sold television advertising or print advertising. And now we can know so much more about our audiences for good and for evil that you really can look at your work and try to figure out what is it about these stories or, you know, the work that I’m doing that people are going to be interested in, or what are they going to care about the most? And if I can tap into those things, which hopefully you do, hopefully there’s an emotional connection between your work and your audience, that I can go to the places where they’re congregating around these things that they love and basically have very audience-led strategies. 

So that’s kind of my approach in a nutshell and why I get excited about it for film and all different kinds of media stories. 

Joel: Yes. That’s cool. I mean, you’ve been like in film for a long time and you’ve stuck with it, unlike myself who is kind of dabbled in and out, and have gone, I quote, like “an easier path,” but what is it about film that keeps you that’s not, I know for a fact, it’s not an easy medium to be in, but obviously there’s something about it that keeps you in the field. So what is it about the film that you love so much?

Annelise: Well, I think film is, you know, uniquely able to transport you away in sort of digestible pieces; one and a half hours, two hours; what is this actually? I went for three or four hours. It’s still a short thing. So I think, you know, there’s power in all different kinds of stories, whether it’s in a book or if it’s through audio or if it is sort of has episodes that rollout over time, or, but if there is something I think really special about, a contained story in one film that gives you a glimpse into a world or an experience or a point of view that is quite immersive. And I think it allows people to connect very deeply often in ways that some other storytelling mediums don’t necessarily do. 

And I think there’s something unique about that sort of one and a half, two hour story that really allows a certain, it’s a very specific kind of storytelling that takes you on a very specific kind of journey, and I think it triggers a unique emotional response.

Joel: So you’ve been a proponent of using technology for storytelling, whether it’s like, you know, even before web series were a thing, I know that you were a big fan of them and YouTube, as you mentioned, and now we are, you know, even like the big film companies, they’re forced to use technology, they’re forced to use streaming and I know you’ve been talking about streaming and all of these technologies long before they were cool, but before they were, you know, really big, I suppose; so, you know, where do you see, do you see that we’re going to go more towards using different mediums, different technologies, or are we going to, or I guess the big companies, are they going to go back to, you know, big theater releases or as, you know, streaming here to stay?

Annelise: Well, it’s definitely here to stay, I think there’s no denying that. I did this big research project this year as well. that was financed by Telefilm Canada. It’s called, “Thanks. COVID: 15 lessons for film distribution from the first wave.” And, so I did quite an interesting deep dive, and actually just put together a proposal for a follow-up for this year just to figure out what does the future look like? What do we see people going to? 

And I think, the reason why people have been, or organizations, production companies, broadcasters, film companies have been sort of forced to, You know, adopt a streaming as a way to get their movies and stuff out there is because that’s where the audience is. So it’s a big surprise.For me, it always is going to come back to the audience. 

And I think one of the really interesting things about this past year is that we have all like it takes like 30 days to make new habits where we’ve had a year of having to be online. And I know that there’s also, you know, a hunger to get back into the real world, to be able to connect with people to hug. I want to hug; I miss hugs so much. 

Joel Harris: Yes. And me too.

Annelise: There’s definitely that kind of drive. So I think, you know, once we’re all vaccinated, and we have some kind of normal, I believe, when we get back to, there’s definitely, I think will be a spike in real world things, whether it’s going to the movie theater or the sea a band play in a pub or whatever it is like we’re going to want to be in physical spaces together.

But I think we have sort of irrevocably changed our brains and, have learned for all the people that were resisting, you know, like, “Oh, this is too hard or this isn’t going to be the same,” and, and all of a sudden realize that it actually isn’t very hard and. So the adaptation of streaming has just been massive and the time and attention of the audience has definitely been put on, you know, is online a lot.

And I think, I live now, I used to live in Vancouver, but I live in a smaller center now. So now, you know, I can get access to movies anywhere. Right? I can attend film festivals in Berlin or in Banff and still be in Saskatoon, you know? So I think. we’re going to come to, there’ll be some kind of hybrid.

And I think one of the things that’s been interesting is a lot of the bigger theater chains have really struggled during COVID because they’re so tied into the Hollywood model and a lot of those big Hollywood tent-pole movies. Not all of them, but many of them had pushed their release dates and pushed their release dates.

And it was like there was a, what, Banff Theater? There were two theater chains in the UK that basically shut down because James Bond wasn’t going to come to the theaters; they were putting it off until 2022. So they shut down all these theaters for, I don’t know if they’ve reopened now, but they certainly were shut down for a good six to eight months.

And, but it’s the little independent theaters that have actually been able to be more nimble and there’s been more opportunities for smaller films now; smaller films are under $10 million budget, which still seems like a hell of a lot of money to me. I think the micro-budget in the states is like under 25 million, I mean, that’s almost our entire national budget for funding for films here in Canada every year. 

So, our micro budgets are really micro, but I think if you’re, you know, with a lower costs and with the theaters being able to like they were showing sort of old catalog like classic movies and the new films from, you know, independent filmmakers were able to stay in the theaters longer, so they got more word of mouth. So it almost goes back to like an older model where films used to stay in the theater longer. And there were even drive-ins right? Because drive-ins were safe. So it’s like this weird sort of fifties flashback in terms of a true theatrical, but then there’s all these things called virtual cinema where there was partnership with these smaller theaters.

It was technically online, but it was exclusive to ease to your local, you know, your local movie house and you would, there would still be a revenue share with the theater. It was trying to help these theaters survive the pandemic. I think, you know, we don’t really know yet what the true cost has been in terms of that exhibition space.

I suspect that there are going to be a number that have gone out of business, and will come back. So I think it’s going to take us a while to find that new equilibrium. I think the more, you know, we just have no patience, like if it’s too hard to seed something or get what we want, when we learn about it, then we just, you know, we have so many choices as people in an audience, we just go on to the next great thing.

So I think in this new age, the audience is the most powerful; the only thing that’s in scarcity is the time and attention that we each individually have, our free time, that we spend each day. But how do we spend it? Are we going to watch TV? Are we going to play a video game? Are we going to read a book? And are we going to watch a movie? And, that’s the only thing in scarcity. So it’s the audience that are the true gatekeepers, and we are really powerful. And I think COVID has, you know, laid a lot of truth spared and that’s one of them. 

So I think that, yes, streaming is not going to go away at all. And I think I could expect there will be more momentum actually around it, just trying to meet people where they are and try and make it as easy as possible because they truly, you know, do have, you know, the most power and probably like especially in the big theater chains. We’re probably going to see it’s going to be mostly sort of big, special event Hollywood, big tent pole pictures that get put in the theaters for the most part, because they’re the ones that will come out to see, you know. Hopefully it’s more than just, I love superhero movies, but hopefully it’s more than just superhero and sci-fi, but I know that’s a lot of what it is.

Joel: It seems to me that the – as it stands now with the streaming model, It’s not sustainable for the big Hollywood movies that spend a hundred million dollars on a film, right? Like James Bond or superheroes. So does that leave an opportunity for smaller Canadian films? People who don’t have Hollywood backing to actually reach audiences through streaming?

Annelise: A hundred percent. And I think it doesn’t actually matter. When you’re talking about a smaller film, whatever that means, you know, I think there’s a lot of opportunity because in some ways it doesn’t matter. Like a lot of those platforms are actually going to do a lot of marketing, like Netflix, totally clawed back its marketing budget. It doesn’t really do outside marketing, beyond its platform. Except for a few rare cases, and those are usually the bigger budget ones, and maybe they’re even going to drop them into a few theaters so that they could qualify for, you know, Oscars. Play that stupid game because thanks, Steven Spielberg; I love his movies, but he’s really become this old man yelling at the clouds. It was just like, “Buddy, that’s just the reality. You gotta move. You gotta move on.” So yeah, I think it doesn’t necessarily matter where your film lives. It’s still, to some extent, up to the filmmaker to bring that audience to wherever that film is.

And hopefully it’s in an accessible place, you know, for most people. But you know, there’s so many different streaming services now that we’re getting kind of siloed. By the ones that I subscribed to, you know which ones I subscribe to. I may subscribe to the ones that are very different from the ones that you’re subscribing to.

So I think, you know, we’re really moving away from that kind of mono culture that we have. A mass culture of the past. All of these are very specialized sort of boutique cultures, again, for good and for evil. So I think, you know, there’s a chance for filmmakers who, especially, can have a big picture view of their work, that it’s not just about the current movie, but like how does this fit into my body of work. What do I need to do with this film that I’m working on so that I can make things easier for myself with the next film that I want to make? And I think the more people that can adapt that bigger picture approach and really get strategic about it with, you know, with using that understanding and an understanding of what are the audiences that you need to attract to your work this time, so that hopefully they’ll follow you next time. And it becomes an asset, right? It becomes something that is of value to, you know, like you can, I mean, that’s what a lot of casting decisions are made. I mean, the heck, that’s what our star system, the Hollywood star system, is based on is that people, you cast these actors that come with a built-in audience. And even on small things, there’s lots of wonderful, talented actors out there, and usually, you know, you’ve got a choice of like two or three people and you can see that someone is really active online and has a really engaged following. Well, it would make sense to cast that person, because they’re going to bring an audience to your work. So it’s the same thing. Like I think filmmakers writers, people that maybe aren’t as comfortable being visible in and around their work have to kind of bite the bullet and find ways to get comfortable because the more you can develop that audience and the more comfortable you can get, and it doesn’t have to be in a sleazy sort of used car salesman kind of way.

Some filmmakers say, “Well, I’m an artist. I just want to make my art,” and sure you can do that, but then you’re probably going to make one movie and never make another one. If you can say, like, “I’m like, I have something of value. Here are these amazing stories that I want to tell you. I make opportunities for my creative community. Because it’s a collaborative art. I’m making, meting value to people’s lives because I’m telling these kinds of stories that haven’t been told before.” Like embrace the value that you bring as a storyteller and hopefully, you know, frame it in a way that the audience is going to be happy that you showed up. And the trick is to just try to find those ways, and how do you extend that value beyond the linear story of your film. 

Like I love trans media storytelling. I love it. And it brings me no end of joy. If I stumble across something or if, you know, someone puts a URL or a social media account in a film or in a television show, and then you go, and it’s real. And they’re using it and it just delights me. I just love that stuff. And I think there’s, you know, not every story, that’s not the way to go, but, you know, there are a whole bunch of ways that you can extend the story, the story world that you’re creating beyond just the linear world of your film, your story, your film. And, you know, good marketing is just another kind of storytelling, really.

So, I mean, that’s a super power. Lots of people can learn marketing. Like it’s not rocket science; it’s work. But it’s a lot harder if you don’t have the creativity, if you don’t have an instinct for narrative and characters, you know, it’s a lot harder to learn those skills and maybe impossible for some people.

So I always say if you’re already a good storyteller, you’re so far ahead of every marketer trying to learn how to tell the story of a brand right now. So do it for yourself. 

Joel: You’ve spoken a lot about the audience and obviously are very passionate about it. When should a filmmaker start thinking about who their target audience is and should they niche down as far as they can go to reach that audience?

Annelise: I always answered that question today. There’s always stuff that you can do. I’ve gone away from talking about niche because people seem to be allergic to the word niche. They figure that that means that I am this specialized small filmmaker with small stories. So I think I talk about specificity a lot. I think the more specific that you can get with your audience, and sometimes that does involve segmenting it down, like going through this process of audience segmentation. When, sort of fictional example, I use in my teaching work a lot is say like a dark Victorian retelling of snow-white. I was trying to find three kinds of basic audiences to start when I’m building a strategy. Obviously because of the Victorian setting, steampunk fans, cos-players are a natural fit for that. And you would start out sort of speculative fiction. You cut that down to people that love steampunk and you would, and then like, who are the most eager in those what the copy cos-players, the people that, you know, spend a bunch of money and invest their time and creativity and create costuming that is of the steampunk world.

And then, you know, like even like who are, where in, where those communities are? Who are the people? Who are the influencers within those communities? You almost want to get it down to like specific people. 

And through the power of that specificity, you create an emotional connection between your work and those individuals who then get so excited because then they could just see that this is like, this is me, this is my jam.

And I’m going to add value to my audience, my community, by sharing this with them. I won’t be able to stop myself because I’m going to be so excited about it. And then you start to just work your way back out, and up that funnel again, right? Because you share and share and share and share and you go out, but you have to start with it as specific as you possibly can get so that you can sort of start that, you know, that domino effect of reaching a wider.

Wider range. And I think if you can get that specific, it just makes the strategies kind of right themselves, you know, because you’re talking to a person. I figured out that Joel is really going to love this story. And I’m going to sort of basically pitch it to you where I’m going to invite you into a really cool experience. All of this stuff, in terms of like starting today, doesn’t mean that you’re, you’re showing up today and going, “Hey, I’m I make movies and I’m awesome. And I got this crowdfunding campaign and you should watch my trailer.” That’s not how you start. You start with what I call lurking and learning. 

So once you sort of identify these audiences, then you go figure out where are they?

Maybe it’s. On a subreddit or there’s like a steampunk forum@brassgoggles.co.uk. Or there’s, you know, you go and you spend time. You spend time and you shut up. You don’t say anything for a while. You get a sense of what that community is like. How active it is. What gets them excited. And when you start to contribute, if you’re adding value that isn’t necessarily about your work. So it is like a long game. That’s why you can start today. 

And then eventually, and I think with films too, that maybe not necessarily doing like a whole bunch of social media profiles for one movie, you need to do it for yourself or your production company, because that is the thing that’s going to have longevity through your work, not one film. Because there’s so many abandoned social media accounts for films, you know, that happened three years ago. And if I’ve got to start all of that over again for my next project, that’s a lot of work. 

It’s different from a series because you’ve got seasons, hopefully, and episodes that are rolling out over time. So then I think in that instance, it often makes sense to start up, you know, like a social media ecosystem for that project. But for a single movie, I really sort of encourage people, especially if you’re not backed by Disney; I mean, even Disney doesn’t do that really. Even if they’ve got for their publicity campaign, you know, inevitably that redirects to the Disney website. Like if you, you know, Google things, that is usually where it ends up later. And even they understand the value of having that bigger, bigger brand. They don’t want to take care of all these little orphans of social media accounts. We don’t either. We don’t have time to do that.

Joel: But it sounds like it’s more of you need to focus more on your personal brand rather than a brand of a moot like one, particular property?

Annelise: Yeah. Well, I often tell people, like I said, “I don’t actually care about your movie,” but I care so much about you and I care about your voice and I care about helping support that and getting it out to the world. That movie is just one part of that, right? Like it’s just one part of your creative brand or whatever it is.

And, I think, it’s different if you are getting into television because it’s just, it’s bigger, it’s longer, it’s more long term. I’ve worked working on this one show for almost 10 years and it’s, you know, we’ve got lots of stuff to keep on sharing and keeping the conversation going because we’ve got like, six seasons of the show and all the additional stuff that we did to extend the story into the digital world.

So it makes sense. That show is bigger than all the individuals, but I think especially if you’re just starting out or you’re early in your career for sure. It’s worthwhile to invest in yourself and figure out what are the kinds of stories that you want to do. What are the through lines?

Usually writers have a whole bunch of scripts they’ve worked on and there’s way more scripts out there then go into actual production; the percentage is shockingly small. So what is it about those stories? What about, “What are you attracted to in those stories? What are the things that other people are going to care about?”

And it isn’t something like, “Well, I really love women driven stories, or I love coming of age stories.” If you think about it, “Are there online communities that are about coming of age stories?” Not really. Not really, you know, but if you have a character that ‘s looking at it through a particular cultural lens, there certainly are communities around specific cultures, there’s a ton of steam punk communities. 

I always say, “Look for three things: Influencers. Communities. And conversations,” online. And if you can find those three things in this potential audience, and you probably are onto something. And hopefully people that you want to spend some time with because you do your job, right. You’re going to spend time with them for a long time. 

Joel: And hopefully your interest in that subject as well as not just the marketing gimmick.

Annelise: Yes.

Joel: So if, if you want to focus on personal branding, but you don’t want to, let’s take the steampunk example, but like, if your movie is your first movie is about steampunk, how do you, but you want to do, let’s say like a historical anime genre, of some sort, can you easily make that jump between steampunk and historical fiction with your brand? 

Annelise: I don’t think anything is easy. It always takes work. But I think you need to think really strategically about how you can be creative and write about a whole bunch of different things. 

So maybe, say your goal is a zombie movie. You actually used to start in something, but you want to do a zombie movie. You love zombie movies. You watch and read everything you can get about zombies. Zombies are your jam. But you’ve got the steampunk thing that got funded. So how do you get there? So you need to sort of think like incremental things along the way so that you can bring people with you. Historical fiction is probably pretty close. Because a lot of the thing about the steampunk stuff is sort of the Victorian aesthetic, right?

Joel: Yes.

Annelise: So you can just lean in on that, and emphasize on those kinds of things, and get people really excited. Maybe, you’re a real history nerd. And so right now you’re focusing on this Victorian setting and time. And so you can really geek out. And in terms of the way that you extend the story online would be providing all this, you know, geeky wonderful information that you came across as you were doing your research for your writing.

And so then the next time period is, like, I don’t know, Edwardian England or maybe it is San Francisco in the 1800s. Whatever it is, but at least – I think there’s enough – you just have to think about what are the throw lines that you can emphasize on this film, this story that will make it easier for people to understand why they’re going to want to follow you for the next project? Because they go, “Oh yeah, I like this guy, he’s a history nerd,” and I got all,” I’m a history nerd.” And yes, it looked like a little bit of steampunk. But I also really love, you know, sort of all the little minutiae about history and alternative technology or whatever it is. So I think there’s ways, and if the next one was like a sci-fi thing then you would maybe emphasize more the sci-fi elements, right? Because steampunk is actually like sci-fi. It’s like, you know, HG Wells kind of technology, but it is that scifi. So you would lean into that if you knew that, you know, a sci-fi film was a thing that you were doing next.

So I think you just have to, and if it is like that removed, if it’s zombies, then maybe you want to find other projects to do first to help people get there. 

Joel: Connecting the dots, at that stake. So, if you decide to do a crowdfunding, is it basically the same sort of strategy of finding the audience, connecting with them and more of like a long-term strategy of bringing them along for the ride?

Annelise: Yes, I think definitely. I think, you know, crowdfunding is really more about the crowd than the funding and the people that already know and love you, it gives them something that they can do for you. Even if it’s not contributing money, it could be just sharing your campaign out right to their audiences. Because they love and support you. But it also gives you a narrative to a crowdfunding campaign. Again, it becomes a bit of a story. It is a bit of a creative exercise. How can you find something new basically everyday to ask people for money? How can you do it in a way that doesn’t, that you don’t just get exhausted thinking about doing that?

But if you can find a narrative and a story and some like little special events, you can pepper it with something that allows you to bring a new audience to you. I think, like Arthur Slade, who is a YA writer here in Saskatoon.

Joel: Max should know that about him. I know Arthur quite well.

Annelise: Yes. He’s a lovely guy. And he did a crowdfunding campaign cause he wanted to do these graphic novels of, I think it was his hunchback series. Because he was making these beautiful, really high quality, beautiful books of the graphic novels that were bound and all that kind of stuff.

So people like, even on the platform, I think he did it on Kickstarter, you know, it just triggered the people that love that kind of stuff, like love graphic novels, even if they weren’t necessarily familiar with his work. And so that was an introduction. It was a way to introduce his work to new audiences that then would follow, “Oh. Well, he’s also done all these other things.”

And so I think it is an audience development tactic more than it is a fundraising strategy. Because it’s a hell of a lot of work to do it right. It’s a lot of work. And, I think for films specifically, one of the best platforms to use is Seeds and Sparks out of the States because it is it, I mean, they’ve, they’ve broadened sort of what kind of projects are allowed to crowdfund, but it was a platform that was designed for filmmakers by filmmakers. And they have a wildly high success rate, like it’s between 85 and 90% of people that are that raise the money that they set out to raise and they often will do it repeatedly. So I might do it for development, production post-production and then film festivals or distribution. 

So some people go back over and over again, and they really do a good job of supporting their community and with educational resources and all that kind of stuff.

Joel: I was going to ask if crowdfunding was still a good tactic to raise funds, but obviously it is. So what are like, how should people think about crowdfunding? Is it just, you know, obviously you need to post on social media, but what else can people do to have a successful crowdfunding campaign?

Annelise: I have ever heard anyone say, “Oh, I planned too much. Darn it.” You need a plan. Sort of I’ve I’ve echoed and taken and riffed a bit on the structure that Seeds and Sparks do, but they basically six months of planning where you plan out every single week, like all the things that you need to do, the assets that you need to create so that when you launch a four-week campaign and you’ve planned out what you’re doing every single day and you have to be responsive.

So every time someone. contributes money. You need to thank them on social media. Like I said, there needs to be a narrative to that because it becomes really painful to ask for money every day. And, there are these two filmmakers that, they’re documentarians that do these crazy travel shows, the first one was floating down the Ganges river on a inflatable raft, and –

Joel:That sounds like a bad idea.

Annelise: – they lost a lot of weight. And then their second one was – they, you know the tuk-tuks, the little taxis, like in Thailand and Asia?

Joel: Oh, yes.

Annelise: They got their own tuk-tuk, and they drove it down south America. From the tippy top, all the way down to the bottom and, you know, hilarity ensued.

And because they were in a tuk-tuk they figured that they were structuring it so that they would pick up people, they would work it like a taxi. They would take, you know, basically hitchhikers and things. So they had many colorful characters along the way, but they had a real – I mean, obviously they had a good sense of humour and so like their, rewards for their campaign all resonated with sort of the story that they were telling in the project. 

So for instance, they, but one of the things you could contribute for at a higher level was, you know, part halfway along the way you could basically, well for it was zoom, so it would have been Skype in and give them a couples therapy, not they’re are a couple, but they figured that at that point, they really need some outside perspective and help.

Joel: That’s really hilarious. Yes.

Annelise: So their tone, like the tone and the pitch video is really important, right? Especially if you’re making, trying to raise money for a film. Your pitch video is basically your audition to demonstrate that you can tell that kind of story, that you’re good at that kind of storytelling. And so many people just talk and have crappy audio. So to have it visually be very interesting and convey what you need to convey. And it should only be like 90 seconds, two minutes tops because people really stop watching after 90 seconds. You have to convey all the important things like why is this project important? Why is this the team to do it? And then to create a sense of urgency, like why now? Otherwise people aren’t going to contribute money. You need to be able to convey that to them like it’s going to happen. Why often? I think like the all or nothing is a better way to go because that inherently gives you a sense of urgency. Basically if we don’t raise this money, it’s not happening. Whereas if it’s, “We’ll take what we can get and see what we can do often,” I think that’s when people run into trouble. Because then they don’t have enough money to do the thing that they promise people they’re going to do. And then it takes them years and their backers get really mad.

So I think there’s a lot of good things too. But I think really just treat it as another creative exercise with an understanding of the audience that you’re trying to engage. 

Joel: What advice would you give to somebody who’s just starting out in film and one wants to be a filmmaker?

Annelise: Volunteer on other people’s sets like just try it. And there’s always other emerging filmmakers that are trying, you know, to do their own thing too. And they’re looking for people who will work for free. So I think more than going to film school, it’s good to just really roll up your sleeves and work on other people’s projects as much as possible.

It could be in the production office, could be on set, could be, you know, logging footage for the editor, whatever, whatever it is I think that that’s the place that everyone really starts. That’s where I started. and I learn best by doing and it’s my whole digital marketing career.

I am completely self-taught and I continue to learn every day. I went on to Google, had a client, I needed to set up Google analytics for the first time. Apparently the old way of doing Google analytics is no longer an option if you have something brand new. So I’ve had to learn a whole new thing. And be humble. Be humble. Just be willing to take, be a sponge and take it all in and obviously you don’t want to be abused. Hopefully they’re treating you well, but be helpful and, and learn; what am I doing? And very least, I mean, God, that’s the thing I find too. I’m teaching more and more young people. People have grown up being makers, like I don’t know of a teenager or, you know, person in their twenties, early twenties that hasn’t had a YouTube channel. They have at least tried it. They have at least, I mean, maybe they were terrible, but you know, you can do a lot with your camera or with your phone and some editing software, and just sort of play around. So I think that’s another thing that you can do. And sometimes you’ll finally have an affinity for a certain kind of thing. Obviously on YouTube it’s a different kind of storytelling. It’s a sort of cinema verite kind of thing that happens on YouTube or Twitch, or Tik-Tok. I’m really enjoying watching some little interesting storytellers on Tik-Tok. So who knows?

Joel: Is Tik-Tok a useful channel for filmmakers? 

Annelise: I think it can be. I think it can be useful for anyone. I think especially there’s some point there for everyone and what’s been amazing to me with Tik-Tok is how scarily smart the algorithm is. So I resisted it for the first few years and I looked at my 19-year-olds, you know, going through ticktok and oh my God, that just looks like hellscape. I would not want to be there. This is painful to watch. And then I had an older friend who said he’d used it for an augmented reality game and  had really great success on tech documents. “Okay, Steve, I’ll give it a try.” So I went on and I tried it and it. So my Tik-Tok is not my daughter’s Tik-Tok. My Tik-Tok is filled for some reason, with all things Celtic; I grew up in Nova Scotia. So I have that affinity I seem to birds, which is another thing I love. Woodworking, which I did love, but I didn’t know that I would love seeing, you know, the perfect dove joint being put together. Native Tik TOK is huge.

And, there’s a certain indigenous sense of humour that I really love, that I think comes from the adversity and the oppression of the last several hundred years. So, I think there’s something there for everyone, and you just sort of would have to find your way, because I think that there’s – look, where the whole sea shanty thing that happened right before Chris really took them?

Joel: And what is that?

Annelise: Well,  sea shanties really took, took off. Right? Because it really started as a music and dance kind of platform, right?

Joel: Yes.

Annelise: And there’s this whole sort of culture on Tik-Tok that someone would sing a song, from a minute of a song, and then people will layer stuff on top of it, they’ll duet with that person. And sometimes there can be multiple, multiple layers of sound and singing and sea shanties really took off last year on Tik-Tok. 

Stephen Colbert mentioned them on his show. That got it. It even blew it all up. And there is really this one song the Wellerman that really took off on Tik-Tok and everyone’s doing a bloody version of it.

But the young Scottish guy who started it was like a postman. He was a postal worker. But he was a musician, but he was delivering mail to feed his music habit. And now he’s got like this big record deal and they did all these remixes and it’s just amazing. Amazing. 

So I think it may not be for everyone, but I think there’s a lot of, a lot of opportunity. Definitely would be worth an exploration. 

Joel: Yes. I mean, filmmakers may not like the word niche, but this just comes to my mind, is that with you’re describing like woodworking and Sea Shanties, like there’s a lot of opportunity to just to niche down to what you particularly love and to explore that with people who have similar tastes.

Annelise: A hundred percent. 

Joel: Yes. Have you tried clubhouse? 

Annelise: I’ve been resisting. I have it on my phone now and I have an invitation. I have not ventured in. It’s like I get this feeling of exhaustion; it’s another thing. So Snapchat, I managed to avoid, even though I know it’s still around. But it’s not as vital as it was before.

I suppose if I got a project that it was vital for, I would go on a Snapchat. Tik-Tok I resisted for a very long time. So clubhouse, I’m just at the tipping point because I’ve got the app, I’ve got the invite, I just have to jump on in.

Joel: Just jump on him. 

Annelise: Yes, but just the thought of it exhausts me.

Joel: Somehow I think that brings up a good point of how do you manage all these different accounts, and how do you know where to go and what to post.

Annelise: Guess what? It has to do with what audience you’re trying to engage. Depends what it is. I also sit on a lot of funding juries. So my least favorite thing is when you’re inevitably asked: “What is your marketing strategy? What’s your digital strategy for this project? Who’s your audience?” And if someone says: “My project is for everyone, 18 to 34, and my strategy is a website, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.” Like 80% of funding applications. That is the extent of what their strategy is. They may flesh it out a little bit, but there’s no real justification for what that is.

And as I’ve already told you, you know, I think that gender and age ranges are an absolutely terrible place to start when defining your audience. You may find that a certain audience does skew to a certain age or skew to a certain gender once you sort of done that segmentation process, but you don’t start there.

I think you just really have to understand that maybe for this project, like there was a rom-com that had a pro like pro wrestling was a part of it, the female character, the love interest was a professional wrestler, and they had all these retired wrestlers from the WWE who were in the cast. And when I started doing research for them to try and figure out like: “Where are the platforms that you use?” Reddit was huge, like it blew everything else out of the water. And, so I said to them, “I think what you have here is this is a Reddit Twitter strategy because people like to live tweet the matches.” So, at that point that’s so you need, you should be, there should be they’re part of the conversation. And there were all these really passionate conversations at that time happening on Reddit, specifically around women of the WWE, who weren’t getting as much prime time, screen time as their male counterparts.

And so they were like these really emotional conversations that were happening. That they would like anytime people are getting emotional, you need to pay attention to that. And so for them, then it would be a Reddit, Twitter strategy. It would have been my recommendation for someone else. It might be a Pinterest Tik-Tok strategy, it just depends. It just depends. Really depends on where the audience is. 

Joel: So you have your own podcast called, “Story and Audience.” Can you tell us a little bit about that? 

Annelise: Yes, it’s story plus audience, and it’s on all the major podcasting platforms. It is, with my friend, Jill Gollick, who is a screenwriter and who used to be the president of the writers Guild for a number of years.

And, whenever we got together, she lives in Toronto, and whenever we got together, we’d have these fantastic conversations and her approach to writing, in some ways, and I think it’s quite a common approach, you’re doing all this research, you’re trying to figure out who your characters are and you’re doing all this stuff, and she’d had some success with a web series called Ruby Sky, which is basically kind of like a young girl detective, solving, PG mysteries. And we should really, we should capture these conversations, somehow. So we came up with this idea for the podcast before COVID and we planned it all out.

So, the first season, which came out last spring, was a series of conversations between the two of us. Basically walking through both of our processes and the approach to our work. The same kind and the lovely thing that we realized was the same kind of research that she was doing as a writer was actually very similar to the kind of research that I was doing as a digital strategist. Because often a real key to understanding what audiences you should be trying to target initially are who was in it, right? Because we’re humans, we like to connect with other humans. And whether it’s a documentary or a scripted thing, the characters represent potential audiences who would be interested in it.

So a lot of the research that she would do for her characters was very, very, very similar to the kinds of things that I would do. So as we walked in through her process as a writer, it was definitely targeted more at writers and why it was really important to kind of start packaging your story with the audience and bake that in right from the beginning.

It allows you as a writer to better protect your work because you can demonstrate that this is an audience, there’s an audience for this story. You understand them. You know what they’re going to like. Therefore you can’t hammer this story, this, say Gothic horror story into some kind of pulpy banal thing that no one’s really going to like, it’s gonna end up being a terrible movie.

The horror fans won’t like it. The general public won’t like it. Because it’s not like it’s just not interesting enough. So I think really having that approach and as a writer, bringing an understanding of the audience, not writing to a market, because some people also get really uncomfortable doing that; “I’m just doing this.” Like, “I’m just doing this horror movie because I know that it’s really cheap and easy to meet and get money for it.” You should not be writing that story; I don’t. I just don’t. But if you love horror, like Karen Lamb is a brilliant example; filmmaker from Vancouver who specializes in horror, and she’s like a horror Goth fan.

And, so she is her audience. But the story plus audience podcast is really about walking through sort of my process and Jill’s writer’s process and understanding how they can really help support each other and make this chance of success much, much, much, much greater for your project for attracting money, for all kinds of things.

Joel: Cool. I’m gonna – I think that’s a great place to leave off, but I’m going to ask you one more question and this is something I ask all my guests and that is, do you have a favorite book or one that you like to give a lot? 

Annelise: It’s a terrible question.

Joel: I know, it is.

Annelise: I think about a million books and at different times of my life. I’ve had different favorite books. So, Winnie the Pooh, the Narnia series, Byron Katie’s: Loving What Is, which is a great book about a sort of Buddhist light; just some kind of letting-stuff-go sometimes. I also love this – I just read last fall, I started Eden Robinson’s Trickster series, which the first book had been turned into a show on CBC, and then all hell broke loose and it’s not going to be finished, but the books are really, really good.

She’s an amazing indigenous woman author here in Canada. Yes. Like I just love books. I read all the time. So it’s hard to know right now I’ve been reading a whole bunch of mysteries set in France because I did this virtual France thing for my birthday. And I was just reading a lot of books that’s in the French countryside. It’s lovely.

Joel: What about what’s a book that a filmmaker could read to help with their career? 

Annelise: It’s an older book, but it’s a really good one and you can actually get access to it. I believe it’s still for free. It’s done by the film cooperative out in the US and it’s called: Selling Your Film Without Selling Your Soul.

Joel: I love it.

Annelise: Basically there’s echoes of the kinds of things that I’ve found that really resonate and where people have found success, and people could only contribute to this book if they shared all of their information about what their challenges have been and what the results were, what deals they were able to make.

Sometimes they couldn’t share all the details because the distributor wouldn’t want people to know. There’s another, sort of, little more recent example, it’s not a book, it’s a web series. It was based on basically, obviously, before COVID, this filmmaker from the States had done a – was a romantic comedy about a woman who was running a church and she was a vampire, but like a real, a real vampire, not a sparkly one because there are people who identify as vampires, and her church was getting audited by the IRS. And it’s a love story between the IRS auditor, and I guess the vampire priestess. So, it’s a romantic comedy. So she and her partner ended up renting a motorhome and doing this thing what they call: the Joyful Vampire Tour, where they basically did these special events, screenings all over the US. They did a web series that went with this.

So you go to YouTube and you search for: Joyful Vampire Tour. There’s a web series where she shares all of the numbers in their self-distribution. As they went along and people were going, “Oh, this is really painful to watch. Could you just go get a distributor, please?”

And then all these other filmmakers were going, “No, no, no, don’t do that. It’s much worse.”  And so then they started sharing their experience. So in terms of an understanding of how the life of an independent film could be, I think both of those. sources of information can be quite interesting.

Joel: I know what I’m going to do right after this interview. I’m going to Google that and that sounds super cool. 

Annelise: Excellent. Excellent. Yes. She’s amazing. 

Joel: Annelise, thank you so much for your time for sharing your expertise today. For people who want to reach out to you, where’s the best place they can find you? 

Annelise: Well, I have two websites. One is a: veria.ca – V-E-R-I-A-dot-C-A, which is sort of my consulting business. And then I do a lot of teaching and mentorship. So that website is storyprintersunite.com. And there, there’s a bunch of resources and a very inexpensive course that I also launched in the last six months that basically walks you through all the steps to create your own digital strategy.

Joel: Awesome. And we’ll put that in the show notes as well. If people want to check that out. 

Annelise: Good. Thank you. Well, thank you, Joel. 

Joel: Thank you so much. Have a good one. 

Annelise: Okay.

Narrator: Thank you for listening to Publishing for Profit. Please like and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast.