Waiting Until Post-Production To Hire A Film Publicist Will Cost You

Stage 32 is a networking platform dedicated to providing a productive and educational environment for film, TV, and theater creatives—or as we around here say—Facebook that’s exclusively for entertainment professionals. Because of her background in film PR, marketing, and branding, Tamaryn is able to provide Stage 32 and its members with helpful information into the benefits of working with a PR team through all stages of filmmaking.

Most independent filmmakers forgo hiring a unit or film publicist in pre-production. There are many reasons they do this, but the most common one is that they don’t think they have it in their budget. The truth is, filmmakers can’t afford to make that mistake. Planning your publicity strategy in pre-production will give your film its best chance at success. Here’s a deeper look into why independent filmmakers should have a film publicist on their team from the get-go.

Procrastination gets your film zero likes on Facebook.

I’ve never understood the inclination to ignore creating a marketing and publicity plan. The argument I usually hear from filmmakers is “We don’t have the budget,” “That’s for the distributor to do,” or sometimes I hear “We didn’t have time.” But that’s short-sighted.
If the goal is to make a movie that a distributor will buy and that people see, why would you wait to start attracting an audience to your film? The time to start creating buzz for your film is the day you decide to make it. Well planned and well executed public relations will set your film and its team apart from the herd. Building an audience will only make your film more attractive to distributors—they love films with pre-buzz and a seamless transition with deliverables. This is also true if you’re planning to go the festival route—film festivals love it when films can help promote and attract audiences.
In today’s constant stream of content, audiences learn about and choose to view a film in large part due to its publicity. Whether you like it or not, your film is competing with Chewbacca Mask Mom as much as it’s competing with blockbusters.
Besides the obvious difference in budget size, the other big difference between blockbusters and most indie films is that studios don’t wait until post-production to start planning their publicity and marketing strategies.

Read the full blog post on Stage 32