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Issue #224 – Mentor News
by Liya Swift
Daniel Lir and Bayou Bennett & students Manuel Hernandez, Dominic Anthony, Loren Hoyt, and Production Assistant Andor Nagy
Daniel: We just finished a really inspiring music video for one of Billboard Magazine’s 2018 Artists to Watch…[A couple years ago] when we spent a month in the Philippines, shooting some documentaries out there, we discovered that there are whole families living in the cemeteries of Manila. They have their whole bedroom, kitchen, everything there. Where people go to die, they live. So it was just a fascinating visual world, and we really wanted to create a story that brought awareness to this and helped the people there. So we created a fiction humanitarian story. So we’re going to go film that in January…
Bayou: And we just got back from New York where we filmed a makeup series for this really cool makeup brand called Winky Lux. So we’re just completing that as well. And we’re doing our own show The Dream State. It’s an infomative and inspirational show for beginners who want to break into the industry and for those who want to revitalize their sense of purpose.
You’re both experts at creating a stir and getting the word out about your various films, music videos, and documentaries via social media. What can upcoming filmmakers do to get their projects noticed?
Bayou: “What I was telling Arronn to do the whole time was to have someone on-set sharing and updating your public, your fans. Because these days your independent film is either going to end up on iTunes, Amazon, or Hulu, and then eventually, possibly Netflix. So, what you need to do is get your fans all excited for it, because if you get enough ‘pre-downloads’ then you get seen more, because they [I-Tunes] puts your film in front of more [of the] public when you do that.
So for me, it’s not only important to promote the current project that you’re doing but, this is another tip that I always used with my externs, to promote so that other people could be like, ‘Hey, I want to hire this guy or girl for my film. It looks like they’re doing a really good job and our mutual friends are doing a feature film right now, and she’s doing a lot of Instagram stories.’ So, those who are watching on Instagram are seeing tons of behind the scenes shots that are up for just 24 hours, then they’re gone, so that really creates lots of buzz and interest.”
Daniel: “Remember, good works don’t speak for themselves… If you talk to any distributor, they’ll tell you that really good pictures taken on the set of your movie can really help them do their job in getting the film out there.
Distributors release what’s called ‘first look’ images, which are images that immediately create an idea in the public of what the film is, and they’re chosen very specifically. Sometimes they’re one photo, sometimes they’re a series, but those are the first photos that are released to the public that help the public create an idea of what this film is. So, it’s important to have a really good set photographer, not only for behind the scenes, but for any specialty photos, meaning stuff done on a white background, of the actors or anything that could become a poster. If you have a great photo, your film can get publicized in a magazine or a newspaper, and it can really get you press.”
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