Posts Tagged ‘Film’
What does a Web Series have to do with Selling Art & vice versa?
Before I begin let me say the main point of this post isn’t about sales. It’s about exposure, following, community and influence. The sales are just the likely eventual result. (Seriously, how many artists do you see on twitter & facebook almost exclusively posting links to their new work overtly with the intention of sales. Sure it works if someone is interested and disposed, but it isn’t the way to make a first impression to someone who isn’t aware of your stuff yet.)
Maybe you already produce a web series? Do you market merchandise related to your series?
Could marketing objects and merchandise related to your series or characters hurt? A web series or series of videos gives you a way to build your community, enhance brand identity of your characters, key props or locations so isn’t it an obvious way to extend your reach?
George Lucas kept merchandising rights to “Star Wars”. At the time, no one saw much value in merchandising rights. Those merchandising rights have been a money engine and showed everyone how much value there is in merchandise associated with a popular film or media series. If you’re not merchandising based on your series, you’re probably missing an opportunity.
Statistics show the dominant and increasing use of internet bandwidth is for web video. While you may struggle to get search engines to pay attention to your blog or web site about your Art, search engines love video and multimedia pages and depend on titles and keywords and links to qualify the relevance of that content.
If you’re making stuff can you think of a way to develop short or long stories around your stuff? A series of videos based on your work or a web series that includes your work can be a very effective way of getting attention for your web sites and your work.
You’re not a visual artist or a film or video producer? ..but you are a writer or performer? Merchandising or producing a series of videos around your work may not be as much of a no brainer, but if you give it some thought you can probably come up with some sort of variation on the idea.
Again, no one wants to watch a web series that isn’t anything more than an infomercial for your work, or buy “Art” that’s mass produced “artifacts” from your web series. No one is going to be interested in watching a web series when they’re being sold to at every opportunity. This isn’t about producing commercials. The point is to extend your story through multiple channels, to give your following another way to find you and build your relationship with them.
How have you developed multiple ways to provide your story to the community you’ve developed around your work? Add your stories below. …more ideas raise all boats. Talk soon.
The Climate of Creativity
One of my core personal beliefs is that the major cause for negative conditions in the world is based in failures of imagination, insufficient creativity and yielding to fear. Anything we can do to promote and facilitate more developed creative expression and innovation in all directions reveals new and greater potentials in every situation. It is only when fears and anticipating “lack” take over that human beings put all their significant energies into conserving what they have, and staying where they’re at instead of developing what can be created and developed.
The internet and the rise of social community sites and services is making individual access to a massive ability to promote our own work the norm. This may seem obvious, but I’m not sure it REALLY is obvious to many. Quite a few are simply going about business as usual without fully grasping just how to fully utilize these new tools. Many who are established in some creative field continue to do things the way they’ve always done. Reliance on gallery owners, show promoters, publicists/PR people, agents and managers as the primary mechanism for gaining and cultivating a following for your work is avoiding what the climate should be showing you.
Many have many reasons for avoiding these new tools, but often it just comes down to an unwillingness to step into something unknown. There’s a big problem with this and it’s called time.
Why is time the problem? What many just aren’t seeing is internet content, including social content and mainly video is heading straight for the one major appliance in everyone’s living room…the television. That puts ‘creatives’ and creative content dead smack in the middle of the living rooms of the world in a ‘one on one’ way. No agent, gallery owner or other middle man or gatekeeper is going to be between you and access to the world. Even the computer illiterate will be able to manage content coming through their TV.
The rapid acquisition curve of net enabled televisions is beginning to even dwarf the original acquisition curve of original televisions that took place in less than 10 years in the forties when television first began replacing radios in the home as the main broadcast receiver. The influx of color television was quicker than the original and my feeling is net enabled TV will dwarf that in how fast it becomes the norm.
What’s already clear is that the internet is a huge, vast “maw” with an appetite for information and content the world has never experienced before. As the mechanisms for delivering, discussing and providing feedback on that content continue to be refined, the audience and appetite for that content grows even faster.
Creative individuals expressing themselves in a manner that they’ve refined and worked on are, for the first time in history, at the top of the information stream. …but only if they take the time to learn to effectively use these tools.
What’s my evidence and why should you care? Browse around twitter and facebook for established fine artists, celebrities, writers, musicians who have name recognition from careers in the past 20-30 years. Look for names you know, who pop up now and then. A few are showing real interest in, and proficiency with cultivating their followings and using the social tools. The majority continue to rely on agents or publicists/PR firms to get themselves noticed and their work valued. Some with large followings are primarily broadcasting to their fans and not really engaging. These folks are accepting the position of continuing to prove, whatever their new projects are, why they are valuable enough to have the opportunity to express themselves to gatekeepers and management types. Some of these folks are top tier artists and they just can’t seem to grasp the importance of directly engaging with their community. When you can demonstrate a large following directly, you have a lot more leverage when it comes to getting traditional mechanisms to take notice. These mechanisms are in trouble and when an individual can move the needle on their own, that’s a big deal.
What is the “Climate of Creativity” and how does it impact you? Net content will soon be in every living room with a television. Every artist will be able to find and engage with anyone with any interest in their specific interest, story …their art. Sticking with using a 20th century mindset when it comes to getting your work noticed only means you keep yourself in a box of someone else’s making and minimizing your opportunities for more freedom or ability to pursue new creative opportunities.
Please add your thoughts in the comments below. I’m really interested in how you think this is going to evolve.
