Go Deep Then Go Wide.

Or How The Audience is the Real Hero of NonDē

Last week we talked to Max Reisinger who is coming off a pretty monumental win for the creator economy and film world alike in successfully running a first-time film festival championing online voices. He, and the team at Creator Camp, are also working toward answering a question we at The Label are wrestling with in real time:

How can we make people care about moviegoing again?

Not just seeing a film, but allowing their excitement to grow while they stand in line waiting for their ticket to be torn - or scanned - breathing in that buttery scent of popcorn.

Can we get them to participate in the ritualistic thrill of finding a seat next to a stranger and watch trailers that have them already planning their next night out?

And as the lights dim and they escape into another world, how can we get them to understand this kind of moment is incomparable to anything else they’ll experience in life?

Can we get people to care about things like craft?

To recognize and feel the excellence of the work itself?

The answer, of course, is still to be determined, but if FilmStack (the film community on Substack) is any indicator of what the future holds it is a resounding yes.

And as we all on here know there really isn’t a shortage of great films out there so maybe the problem isn’t just simply make better movies.

Maybe the problem is how we connect and think about audience.

What the future really demands right now is a new generation of smart, intentional people rethinking the infrastructure of cinema. And as we’ve previously discussed that starts with a mindset shift even for us, here, at The Label:

A friend of mine recently attended the Creator Camp Film Festival (Max and his team put on.) Naturally, I asked the first question anyone might: “How were the films?” His answer was positive, but what he really loved about the experience had nothing to do with what was on screen. It was the people. The room. The feeling of being surrounded by creators and fans who actually care. And in that moment, I realized I had lost the plot. I’d been focused on the output, curious about what filmmakers could produce under a 100-day creative pressure cooker. -Ellis

The films were just the excuse. The real magic was getting everyone in the same room.

This doesn’t mean quality doesn’t matter. It absolutely does.

Quality builds trust, especially with those watching from afar. (i.e. global audience.)

Think about Sundance. Yes, it’s known for premiering great films. That’s what gets the general public to pay attention. But insiders know the real value is being in the room: the kinship, the conversations, the serendipity. You can’t put that kind of community engagement on a billboard because it involves something undefinable -

the power of in-person connection.

But without the quality of the films, no one wants in the room to begin with.

So here’s the reframe: The movie is the excuse. The experience is the reward.

That’s where the opportunity lies.

Not just in making better movies, but in building a better context around them.

That means designing systems to (a) consistently deliver quality work and (b) creating events, community, and culture for this core audience that wants to experience a film, not just see it.

This is our “target audience” as they say in business.

The mistake Hollywood keeps making is assuming one can survive without the other.

That if the movie is “good enough” or “sellable” enough, the audience has to come without any thought to the audience experience around said movie.

It’s true if your movie isn’t worth seeing in person, audiences won’t go. But if their experience surrounding the movie doesn’t get them to come back, then it won’t be just theaters whose future is in jeopardy.

It’s clear the creator economy has opened the door for direct access to “audience” (but unfortunately as we’ll discuss later this doesn’t necessarily translate into ticket buyers.) And the NonDē community now is abuzz with this concept of audience building. Since you are on Substack, you’ve already made a huge step in the right direction and are ahead of most in gathering this soon to be essential “email list” of contacts and community.

One of the goals of the artist/entrepreneur is to transform audience into community. How are you going to do that without having a newsletter?

Seriously, you need a plan for that.

How do you alert your audience to your new work in a manner that comes close to guaranteeing they see it, without a newsletter? -

Ted Hope

, Why All Filmmakers Should Have Their Own Newsletter

And some rousing words from

Alex LeMay

in his post, The Filmmaker Resistance Blueprint:

Unplug from the Gatekeeper Fantasy.

You don’t need permission. You need proof.

The buyers don’t care if you’re “brilliant.” They care if you’re backed.

By audience. By IP. By momentum.

And

Sam Widdoes

is already dreaming up ways to leverage the more established audiences of creators for your film in his piece, Your Film Doesn’t Need a Trailer, It Needs A Creator:

For independent filmmakers shut out of traditional distribution, creator partnerships represent a massive potential unlock. The audiences are there, the engagement exists, and the economics of revenue sharing can work for both parties.

But the idea essentially is go deep in with your core audience then from there go wide to build up a larger general audience.

Because in building this new infrastructure the first thing we have to remember (which Hollywood seems to have forgotten) is:

THE AUDIENCE IS THE HERO.

[AND] EVERY HERO IS LOOKING FOR A GUIDE (YOU, ME, THE LABEL)…who helps us understand the importance of working hard and believing we could accomplish more than we ever thought possible. - Donald Miller, StoryBrand

The new infrastructure puts the audience back in their rightful role as the hero of cinema’s story, us, filmmakers and those in the film world, as the guides leading them, and the theaters as the third spaces in which the two meet.

And while you might think your potential audience is currently too preoccupied with tiktok and insta reels to pay any attention to you and your work, we’ve got some good news for you…

No TikTok will ever generate that kind of passionate long-lasting response….That’s why longform is making a comeback—in total defiance to the wishes of Silicon Valley and their scroll-driven strategies. Maybe that should be a lesson to them. Perhaps they should reconsider some of their other social engineering initiatives before they also meet with a painful reversal. - Ted Gioia, Audiences Prove that Experts Are Dead Wrong

So instead of sending your 63rd email to that studio exec who still won’t give you the time of day, why don’t you reply to that comment someone made about that thing you wrote and start an actual conversation with someone who could potentially be seated in a theater watching your next film when it’s released, or better yet why don’t you find a filmmaker whose film you’d like to see and see a way you can buy a ticket to it.

Cause in this new era of NonDē, community-building is the flex

those gatekeepers will catch on eventually…

agencies keep studying culture. artists are the culture. -rama sow, the best agencies aren’t agencies anymore