Master Class: Marketing & Distributing Your Feature Film with Russell Schwartz
About this Master Class
Master Classes are in-depth, interactive learning experiences focused on craft and career building and led by renowned industry experts. Topics include fiction and documentary filmmaking, TV writing and production, and navigating and succeeding in the entertainment industry.
While film marketing and distribution has changed notably over the past decade, it will evolve even more radically over the next year as we learn how filmed media will be positioned in a post-pandemic world.
Will theater attendance slowly return to some version of normal? What about the independent theater chains? How do new options compare to the traditional theatrical release? What kind of movies will audiences want to see? Are there different methodologies we should be thinking about to market them?
What will not change is that thousands of movies will slowly resume production and each film will need a home and an audience. As we watch the new definitions of entertainment emerge, the need to identify and attract an audience with a cohesive, targeted marketing plan will never be more important.
Pandemic Marketing Corporation Partner, and former President of Marketing at Relativity Media and New Line Cinema, Russell Schwartz, will lead a three-hour, live, online master class focused on the practical aspects of distributing and marketing your feature film, as well as the changing landscape. Whether you are a fiction or documentary filmmaker, producer, director or screenwriter, this class will help you develop a plan to successfully identify and reach your audience.
Topics presented will include:
- Key marketing principles
- The three types of media
- Defining, engaging and understanding your audience
- When and how to start thinking about marketing
- The importance of your film's title
- Trailer moments
- The value of IP
- Creating a marketing campaign - what you need to know
- Distribution strategies: from microbudget to independent
Resources:
Download the list of resources from Russell Schwartz
Note: A few of the slides used during the Master Class are difficult to read via the video. You can view these slides in a higher resolution by clicking the links below:
View the Numbers and Trailer Collaborators slides
Master ClassTeam
Russell Schwartz
Instructor
Russell is currently the lead marketing professor in the Creative Producing Program at the Dodge College of Film and New Media at Chapman University as well as a member of the faculty of the American Film Institute. He is also President of Pandemic Marketing Corp which provides strategic marketing, theatrical distribution, ancillary placement solutions and digital execution for the motion picture industry.
Russell’s new book, co-written with Katherine MacDonald, THE MARKETING EDGE FOR FILMMAKERS: DEVELOPING A MARKETING MINDSET FROM CONCEPT THROUGH RELEASE has just been published by Focal Press and is presented by the American Film Market Association.
Russell was formerly President of Marketing at Relativity Media and President of Marketing at New Line Cinema where he oversaw all of the company’s marketing efforts which resulted in over 44 Academy Award nominations and 26 wins. Under his marketing tenure, New Line achieved extraordinary success at the domestic box office with THE LORD OF THE RINGS TRILOGY, HAIRSPRAY, WEDDING CRASHERS, ELF, RUSH HOUR 2 AND 3, THE NOTEBOOK, AUSTIN POWERS IS GOLDMEMBER, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, ABOUT SCHMIDT and over 100 others.
Prior to that he was President of USA Films, President of Gramercy Pictures and Executive Vice President of Miramax Films and released such films as MY LEFT FOOT, TRAFFIC, NURSE BETTY, TOPSY TURVEY, BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL, FARGO, THE USUAL SUSPECTS, ELIZABETH, THE BIG LEBOWSKI, DAZED AND CONFUSED, AND DEAD MAN WALKING.
Patty West
Moderator | Director, Collab Courses & Events
Patty West is a producer and educator based in California. She led the Directing Workshop for Women and the Thesis Program at the American Film Institute prior to joining the Sundance Institute. She came to Sundance Collab in December of 2019 and now serves as its Director.
West is a Chicago native and holds a B.S. from Northwestern University, an M.F.A. from the AFI Conservatory and an Executive M.B.A. from Quantic School of Business & Technology. She is a member of the Producer's Council of the Producers Guild of America.