Reach

For my product the name of the game will be brand sentiment.  If I can't nurture positive prolonged engagement of my website and my film, I will not be able to creatively and meaningfully talk to my audience.  The type of image that I'd like to build would be akin to Publix.  They have managed to create the image of a socially conscious and morally responsible company.  

The ultimate effect of this image is brand trust.  My brand will live or die based on the trust of people I am trying to sell to.  The retiree demographic are constantly asked for money, and it will be hard for me to distinguish myself from the scam artists.  And measuring that level of trust will be hard to accomodate on social network.  Most of them are not on facebook, twitter, tumblr, or blogger, which means that the most accurate means of charting our message might be directly from Google.  If people are searching for our website and our movie then we're doing well.  For my secondary and tertiary audiences, all of the social media analytics make sense, but these groups will only buy into my film (or web experience) if I can capture the trust of the first group. 

viral videos

"The Blivits! Project" Veterans

The best example of what I would like to do for the sailors of the USS Randolph comes from the people that made Kony 2012.  This was a call to arms and it was a personal plea that blossomed into a world wide meme.

The results of the film are debatable, but the amount of people that saw it are not.  I would like to create a personal message that encouraged veterans to share their stories on our website.

The subject line might be "The Blivits! Project" and the text would read something like "My dad was a sailor on the USS Randolph from 1962-1965, and growing up I heard hilarious, touching and important stories about his life on the ship, but in 2001 my dad suffered a series of aneurysms that left his memory much less clear.  It was then that I realized the world needs to start collecting these stories, as fast as possible.  Please visit www.Blivits.com and click on the link the says share your story.  You may not think that your story is interesting or important, but it just might make a world of difference to someone else's grandchildren or great grandchildren.  Thank you, and I can't wait to hear about you."

Personally - Indie Filmmakers

Much like the recent release Indie Game I intend to give away as many of the interviews as I possibly can, but what might be fun would be to set up a mock interview with my dad, and then go through all the different forms of documentary interviews and explain what each does before we see its effect.

For example, Errol Morris uses jump cuts and heavy editing to make new meaning.  DA Pennebaker refuses to shoot any interviews with lights, and so on and so on until this video because a short class on documentary filmmaking.

The title would be "Mixed Mode - Understanding why how you shoot changes what you shoot." and the text would say something to the effect of "I'm making a personal documentary about my dad and the ship he was on when he was in the Navy, The USS Randolph.  In the process of making this movie, I've learned a great deal about the modes of making a documentary and I'd like to share with you how to tell the difference between them.  Please visit www.blivits.com to see more of my film."

We Won't Forget - Kids Playing War

Similar to campaign for the Veterans, but this video would be more of a call to the children of the world to ask their parents and their grandparents for their stories before its too late.  This video (campaign?) might be closer to the "It Gets Better" videos, if it were successful.

In this campaign the subject line would be "I won't forget ____" and in the blank space the young person would be able to share the story of the person in their life with military experience.

My own personal video would be "I won't forget my father, my grandfather or any of my great uncles and aunts that served in World War 2, Korea and Vietnam.  I appreciate their service in the Navy, Army, and Air Force, and I promise to remember their stories. Please visit www.blivits.com to hear more stories like yours."

General Quarters

The Enemy. (The current crop of war documentaries)

To Hell and Back Again

Chosin

The Invisible War

Their Position

To Hell and Back Again trades hard on its critical acclaim.  The top half of their homepage are quotes about the film and there is almost nothing about the content of the documentary itself.

Chosin focuses on the support's ability to request a screening, to help support the film.  However this website hasn't been very well updated in about a year.

The Invisible War is striking because it is also a call to action.  This film is about an injustice that occurred during the current US military actions.  They as well offer supporters a chance host private screenings.


Our Position
Our movie is a personal call to action.  It has a clear path that is advocated in the film.  We all feel as if we are doing an important service.  We have tried to become a part of the community that has shared itself with us, and to be a value to the community.

Us vs Them

Blivits! does not quite match up with any of these films in a market sense because it will never be sold on my abilities as a filmmaker.  I feel like that would be disingenuous to the stories that I have been given access to in the process of making this film.  We will also do much more work in attempting to reach the veteran community.  We hope that we are doing THEM the service.  This film is a cause in the same sense that Invisible War is, accept that the call to action is not political, its personal.  Each person moved to listen to their parents or grandparents, makes all the difference.

PMD Responsibilities

The PMD that I have already hired for my film is Jessica Southwell.  She promoted a film at the Florida Film Festival that sold out one of it screenings and has in general started to focus her efforts on social networking.  It should also be mentioned that my producer Jason Flynt has a very strong background in this field as well, and has been working with Dr. Mills as the PMD for Wally's Mission on Mars.

Firstly, we know who the core audience of the film will be.  The Randolph Association which is the association of crew alumni that my dad belongs to, are likely to be the film's most important audience.  There are around 400 members of that association. To this end we have gotten a place in the Randolph Association's quarterly newsletter.  Jessica and I will compile an update on our film for each edition of the "Rowdy Randolph".

Second, ultimately Jessica and I will be arranging for screenings around the country at VFW branches and showing the film to small audiences.  If there are available crew members and/or members of the Randolph Association in the area of a screening will go out of our way to get them to show for a question and answer period after the movie.

Third, the budget that we currently have for marketing and distribution is around $2000, however this would get us to our break even point and any money brought in after that would make the movie profitable.

Fourth, our primary focus is going to be finding organizational support for the film as we intend to self-distribute it after completion.  To that end we will likely find as many partnerships as we can with organizations like the VFW and the Randolph Association to get people to our screenings around the country.  We will likely use traditional print advertising for some of this marketing because that is where our audience gets most of its "news".

Five, at some point we might like to add a booking agent, as its something that Jessica feels uncomfortable having completely in her lap.  We will also use an assistant editor to put together content exclusively for the web.

Six, the Randolph Association does have an email list, but as stated previously most of the people on the list do not often check their email.  Many of them get their news through Retired Officer Magazine, or Navy Life.  We will put heavy effort into getting our story into those magazines to keep our audience abreast of the events we will be holding.

Seven, I will be looking for an assistant editor to log footage and create small featurettes for our website.  Some of these clips might be very simple like an interview that we will not use, but some of them might be much more complex.

Eight, our primary focus for release after completion of the film will be television sales.  A theatrical run seems incredibly unlikely, and we will spend most of our effort on television sales agents or VOD possibilities.

Nine, Brian Redban explains that he only recently started making money off of his podcasting empire with Joe Rogan, by selling T-shirts. And I intend to follow suit.  I think that selling tshirts of the Randolph's call signs and the DVDs that we've made might be the best way to get alittle extra money out of our movie.

Ten, though our strategy forgoes most tradition film festivals, we will target several festivals that are not film markets.  We will avoid festivals where the purpose is selling the film, because I do not believe we will have a good chance at being sold, but should it become obvious that this is wrong, we will certainly course correct and attempt to sell the film traditionally.

Eleven, again, we are attempting to make the distribution plan a part of the film's process organically.  That is to say that we will continue to exploit any options we have for distribution as they become available to us, but the only thing that we are counting on is our ability to sell the film ourselves.

Twelve, we have currently targeted the beginning of March to come online with much of our web content.  We expect that this wil give us enough time to shoot all the things we need for the film and by that point we will be putting together the feature, meaning we will know what we can use on the web and what we don't need on in the film.

Possible Consumer Profiles

1. Veterans

The primary audience for this film are veterans and the families of veterans. These people are technologically challenged so they get most of their information from association newsletters and very targeted print media.  They also still attend regular association meetings which is where they spread their news via word of mouth.  The primary concern we have in marketing to them, is that they are constantly being bombarded with people looking for money from them.  They have thousands of advertisements in those magazines and millions of pounds of junkmail that pretend to be a service for them but are really just a different kind of health insurance scam. 

keywords (USS Randolph, VFW, veteran, Navy, aircraft carrier, World War 2, retired, officer,  sailor, shore leave)

2. Indie Filmmakers.

On the complete other end of the spectrum are independent filmmakers.  These people are on twitter, facebook, stumble upon, pinterest, and tumblr.  The place where these guys and girls get their information is usually the internet.  The reason for this is probably two fold: firstly, the information comes too fast to wait for print magazines, secondly, independent filmmakers are very specific in their taste.  For example, documentary makers generally are only interested in other docs. Keywords (indie, documentary, microbudget, low budget, no budget, personal documentary, anti-verite)

3. Young Boys (ages 8-15)
This audience is a mystery in some ways.  They are technology natives which means that they understand the internet in a much different way than the rest of the world does.  However this group is not incredibly likely to aggressively look for information about Blivits! This is mostly because they would be unlikely to know that they should be looking for the movie.  To that end, the most likely way to find this people are through the television, namely The History Channel and The Discovery Channel or through their school.  We are preparing lesson plans to help teachers bring Blivits! into the classroom. Keywords (USS Randolph, Navy, aircraft carrier, World War 2, officer,  sailor, model ship, history channel, discovery channel, super carrier)