9 Essential Elements of an Independent Film Community Screening Package

If you’re making a film with an extremely niche audience, it can make A LOT of sense to consider hosting some community screenings in place of a more traditional theatrical run. While this tactic most commonly used for documentaries that have a strong social message, it’s also a tool that can be quite effective when utilized by narrative films targeting a very well defined niche.  Here’s what goes into the package you’ll be selling to anyone who might want to screen your film.

Essentially, what you’re selling is an event kit that includes pretty much everything that an event organizer will need to create an event around your film so both of you can make money. 
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1. The rights to publicly screen the film

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You can’t legally screen a film to a gathering of people without a special kind of license.   Many times, this license is more of a handshake agreement, but if you’re doing anything at scale you need a special agreement.  Since if you’re doing this effectively, it’s probably going to be something that’s replicated across many screens across the country, it’s best to plan in advance and include the full license as part of the community screening agreement.
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2. Questions to facilitate conversations after the film

Most of the time, the goal of a community screening is not just to show the film, but to build community around it.  Starting a conversation around the film when it’s over can be a great way for people to begin to understand not only the film, but the other people in the community watching it.  As such, providing a list of sample questions to anyone who would be hosting the event is a great way to make sure that the community building around your film is likely to go well. 
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3. Art Assets for social media

Not everyone is good at social media marketing.  I would recommend that you create a set of art assets that can be easily modified to include the host and location for each of the following.

• Facebook (general)
• Facebook (event)
• Meetup
• Twitter
• Instagram

If you think I missed one, leave it in the comments. ​
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4. A Pricing Plan

If you want to attract good event hosts, they’ll need to know what they need to pay.  Generally it’s best to structure this as a cost plus revenue share, with the potential to add consumables like DVDs to the list. If you do a Revenue Share, you need to insist that you host it though your Eventbrite. 

Another couple add ons you could consider, is Skyping or zooming in after the screening to take questions.  You could also include the ability to fly out, but that would be a MUCH higher price point that includes travel. ​
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5. Easily printable standard page size flyers in both black and white and color

You should include easily printed and customizable flyers in black and white and in color for your event hosts to put up around town and use for promotion.  You do need black and white and color separately, as color is more eye catching, but black and white is more cost effective.  These should be print-ready pdfs based on a template you created.  Here are two examples for a Masterclass I recently did in Las Cruces, New Mexico.  (They’re .jpgs so they display in this blog.)
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6. Easily printable quarter page size flyers

This is the same sort of concept as the full page flyers, but sized so they can be given out or left somewhere. 
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7. A Sample Press Release/EPK

This might be the most important item on this list.  One of the biggest reasons that you want to do these screenings is to increase the profile of the film.  If you get a significant amount of local press coverage, you’ll end up getting a significant boost to your SEO.  You should also make sure you include a few quotes from you about the film, and a few images to make the job of the local reporter as easy as possible. 
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8. Testimonials

You should get some quotes about your film from any notable person you can that’s seen it.  If you’re past your festival run, you should consider looking at any of the reviews you got about the project. 
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9. General best practices for marketing events

Not all community organizations are great at marketing events.  So, an electronic file delivery of best practices for marketing a screening like this would be very useful to them.  Having recently worked with a few arts organizations, I wish I had made a template with more detail to better get the word out and get a few more people to show up.  

Thanks so much for reading!  Next week I’ll release a blog about how to actually market this package.

This is a service I provide for my clients, so if you’d like to me to consider taking yours on, use the submit button below.  Writing isn’t my full-time job, so if you find this content valuable, please consider contributing to my patreon.  If you can’t do that, but still want more content just like this, sign up for my email list to get monthly blog digests segmented by topic as well as some great film market resources.

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