One of the particularly interesting sessions at this year’s International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) was hosted by seasoned film festival programmer and publicist Kathleen McInnis on 1 February. Titled “Meet the Expert: Marketing, Publicity, and Strategies for Independent Films”, the talk saw the United States-based marketing strategist explaining the importance of planning festival strategies early and sharing practices to merge creativity with business development in a productive fashion.

The audience attending the session was made up of mostly producers and directors, a few writers and at least one sales agent, all from different countries and with different levels of industry experience.

Talking to McInnis afterwards, she not only reflected on the session itself, but also dug deeper into her work and the prospects of indie film distribution.

Focusing on the key ideas and insights shared during the talk, McInnis first underscored: “I believe filmmakers are well served to start the process of translating their creative language into marketing language as early as development. In this talk, I helped the filmmakers in the audience understand how developing the marketing language, as well as the marketing materials, in development, production, and again in post-production, is vital to their film festival strategies.”

The publicist, who has helped to program numerous festivals including Hot Docs, Seattle International Film Festival and Slamdance, stressed the idea that the “voice [the perspective of the filmmaker] is the single most important element a filmmaker has to work with when it comes to the marketing of their work.”

“Marketing not only to ticket buyers, but to the industry at large, including programmers,” she continued. “I feel producers and directors must understand how the film they are making will speak to a global audience; what the human condition is that their film addresses, and how best to present that, be it for a pitch, a poster, a synopsis, or even a title.”

McInnis has created two models to explain some of her key concepts; the Marketing Pyramid and the Cinematic Trinity.

“In the Cinematic Trinity, we can diagram the flow of our work from conception to audience and see where the intersection of art and business lies,” she said “In the Cinematic Trinity, which can be written as Filmmaker + Artist + Industry as Conduit + Audience, we can also easily see how the work of the filmmaker journeys through various levels of interpretation before it arrives in a cinema filled with ticket buyers. In order to avoid those levels of interpretation veering away from the artistic intent of the filmmaker, it becomes incumbent on the producer/director team to prepare the best possible language to ‘sell’ the film – at all stages of this journey.”

McInnis next outlined her Marketing Pyramid concept. “In this model, the bottom of the pyramid, the strongest part of the pyramid, is your film on screen,” she explained. “The top of the pyramid is your title. In between, various elements are stacked in a very specific order, moving towards the bottom of the pyramid like a snowball – always taking from what came before it and growing larger as it moves on. It starts with title, then tagline, logline, image – a poster or iconic image which has to represent the film’s entirety in one frame – onwards to the trailer and 50-word synopsis at the same time – a paper edit of your trailer, and your trailer is its visual representation – and so on.”

The session sparked great interest among attendees, prompting several audience questions. “They really were fabulous in that they actively participated in the conversation and helped me target the talk to their needs,” said McInnis.

Europeans are often not as familiar with the position of unit publicist on a film  production, a role McInnis has a lot of experience with. Thus, many of the questions during the session – and there were several – revolved around what they do and why they are so important. “The unit publicist is responsible for creating the deliverables every film needs to sell,” she said. “They have to correctly translate the director’s creative language into the marketing language, and they work with the still photographer to identify the iconic images that will be needed in the marketing of the film worldwide.”

For most in the room, it was quite a surprise to realize how much the unit publicist has to do and that all of it is of higher quality when done on set and not after production ends. 

During the session, McInnis shone a spotlight on some of the recent titles she’s been repping through her company See-Through Films. “I gave a few examples from our films at Sundance this year, since I flew straight from Park City [where Sundance Film Festival is held] to Rotterdam. “We had four films at the festival, two feature documentaries and two feature narratives,” she recounted. “I talked a little bit about how much we can take advantage of when we have all the materials ahead of time, using our documentary “Khartoum” as one example.”

When asked whether she’s noticed any significant differences between campaigning for indie films in Europe and North America, McInnis admitted she’s actually found mostly similarities. “Filmmakers still do not seem to understand the relationship between their creative and business development when using their films on the festival circuit,” she said. “They don’t readily grasp how vital it is, in our director-centric industry, to prepare these materials which can be considered ‘shortcuts’ for anyone watching the film to see the film the filmmakers intended, including festival programmers. And I believe they abdicate their own power too quickly in many cases when handing the film over for distribution.”

McInnis believes festivals still serve as a great springboard for indie films, billing them as the easiest places to see new work, discover new filmmakers  and gauge audience response.

“However, I think film festivals need to really be clear about what they both expect of the films and filmmakers, and what the filmmakers can expect of them,” she warned. “I would like more transparency and parity, for the most part, between festivals and filmmakers. I’d like producers to fully understand just how much of their work, for this film and for their next films, happens at festivals. And I’d like directors to be ready to engage at every level during the festival – with audiences, of course, but also with other filmmakers, as well as industry regarding their next projects. The festival world is a great example of you get out what you put into it.”