Webinar Purchasing

In the path to completing your film – be it scripted feature, documentary, or short – it is important to develop a publicity and marketing strategy early on! In this in-depth webinar, leading publicist in the documentary and independent film industry David Magdael (David Magdael & Associates), who has over 20 years of experience leading PR and marketing campaigns for hundreds of films including Oscar-nominated House of Splinters, Pray Away, and A Thousand Cuts, joins us to discuss how to find the right publicist for your project. When is the optimal time to hire one? What should you expect from a publicist, and how much should you budget? Can you work with one publicist for festivals and another for theatrical and broadcast/streaming? Is social media included in PR strategy? All of these questions, and more, will be addressed in this webinar session. 

You’ve finally signed off on your finished film – now how do you make sure your intended audience watches it? Creating marketing materials that pop is essential to helping your film stand out in an oversaturated market. The look, design, and language across your website, press kits, trailers, social media channels, and more, needs to be polished and consistent – and leave a lasting impression on the viewer. In this webinar, award-winning Brand and Content Strategist Jessica Akpan, who has worked on films such as Through the Night (Co-Produced by BELLY OF THE BEAST’s Nicole Docta) and No Time To Fail, will teach you how to work with marketing professionals to make sure your film gets noticed. Akpan is especially passionate about shedding a light on the unseen and ensuring films by underrepresented filmmakers are given the attention they deserve. She will share her advice on creating a marketing timeline and what and how much to budget for these important costs.

Film festivals provide the platform for launching your film, getting industry attention, building your audience, and gaining the interest of potential sales agents, distributors and platforms . Plus, with the inclusion of in-person and hybrid screenings since the COVID-19 pandemic, there are now more decisions than ever to consider as you decide which festivals are right for your film.Join WMM Executive Director, Debra Zimmerman, as she guides you through the world of film festivals and presents ways to create the best festival strategy for your film! Learn how to optimize festival screenings with tips on premiere strategies, international and domestic fests, generating buzz, gaining word of mouth, and navigating the scene once you’re there. This is the perfect webinar to learn how to get the most out of this increasingly important part of your feature or short film’s roll-out strategy, led by one of the industry’s leading experts on independent film distribution.

Have you ever gotten over the finishing line of making your film and felt burnt-out and totally overwhelmed by the thought of selling and pitching it to distributors? Consider bringing on a sales agent!In this session, we will cover how to find and work with experts who can help bring your film to streamers, broadcasters, and distributors – both domestically and internationally! Come learn from two experts in the field of film sales – Rupeshi Shah from the Sales Group at Cinetic Media (Coded Bias, Oscar-winner Summer of Soul, Knock Down the House) and Anaïs Clanet from Reservoir Docs (1341 Frames of Love and War, Francesca and Love, Venus de Milo: Disarming Beauty) – who have a wealth of experience and knowledge about the North American and international film markets. Learn about platform and broadcast sales, co-production, post-pandemic film festival strategy, and much more from these industry experts.