Advice?

What advice would we give the filmmaker about how to market the film in the future?

- Need to be supportive to the people supporting the movie.
- Reply to attempts at communication and be consistent between words and actions.
- Send flyers or tell street team to make them with plenty of time to perfect and print them.
- Establish budget for advertising and street team.
- Set up radio interviews prior to the day of the film.
- Plan ahead (specifically taking spring break into account)
- Put in more time up front
- Give actual time commitments:
Guest speakers should let group know about how often a day this will take and how many days.
Compare successful groups in the past to non-successful ones.

Specifically relating to Prodigal Sons...
Though Kim was very supportive and responsive when dialogue actually took place, her lack of availability and limited contribution of marketing materials put a damper on the groups potential success. For future success of films, filmmakers should do their best to acknowledge and utilize street teams by sending out as much swag as possible, as soon as they have a place to send such. Kim, though busy we understand, never got around to this advantage. In addition, any funds for FaceBook and/or MySpace ads has been proven to make things such FaceBook events more successful (as is evidenced by other groups success). Even 20 dollars, if done per click, can truly up a film's chances of selling seats at the mere two showings per film in which they were shown. Another benefit would be if the filmmaker confirms with the festival that they will be attending a screening and whether or not they will participate in a Q&A session following the showing. This knowledge can be a vital selling point when getting viewers in the seats. A general statement that might be the simplest advice, and perhaps the most valuable, it to work with the festival marketing team. To have the festival marketing team and a student run street team, there are not many excuses for going through the festival unnoticed by the public. Granted, all these actions can be discarded for various reasons ranging from lack of funds, to a severe lack of time or dedication to the project, but overall, these actions could highly impact the result of the film's success.