How to Understand Your Film's Audience & Get Them to Watch Your Movie
A case study on how to make your audience obsessed with the NonDē movie-watching experience.
I’m at the kitchen counter with one of my favorite people: my sister-in-law.
She’s so great. She’s one of those one in a million relationships where I would 1000% be friends with her whether I was married to her brother or not.
She’s a public school teacher, a millennial, a progressive thinker, and a mom living in the New England suburbs. I’m an artist, a millennial, a progressive thinker, and a mom living in a New England city.
In other words, we’re aligned.
We send each other books recs, podcast recs, TV-appropriate-for-our-same-age-kids recs, poetry that zaps us, political commentary that befuddles us, music that makes us cry, links for things that would make our lives so much easier.
We’re same-same in so many ways. The major difference between us?
At the end of the day, when we’re both exhausted and sliding into home base with the last gasp of gas in the tank1, I’ll watch a movie and she won’t.
She does not like watching movies.
Now, how can this be?!
She loves books and music and podcasts! She loves and supports the arts! She is progressive and smart and curious about the world! She grew up on the plastic-snap of a freshly cracked VHS tape case for chrissakes!
Well, dear reader, it’s simple and she spelled it all out for me, so I’m going to spell it all out for you.
But first: does this matter? Aren’t we in a new “goldfish attention era”? Can people who don’t watch 90-120 minute films suddenly become people who watch 90-120 minute films?
This post is decidedly for my NonDē filmmaking comrades out there, but I know a lot of musicians and writers also open up these emails so let me state the obvious:
Every single artistic industry has outsourced audience-building & marketing to the artists themselves.
Authors have to arrange their own book tours, musicians have to market their own albums, filmmakers have to convince folks to click play.
So all of us who are becoming non-dependent have a new obligation to connect with our audiences and meet them where they’re at now (not where they were 2-3 years ago) if we want our work to have any impact, or make enough money to sustain us.
It’s imperative we know what our audiences want, where to meet them, how to provide a no-brainer yes-I’ll-click-play experience for them, and do it again and again. That’s one domino that must fall on the path to building sustainable artistic careers.
Okay, so I’m going to go back to talking about movies now, but hopefully you’re translating what I’m saying into your own medium.
Because this collapse of industry is happening everywhere and we’ve all gotta pivot.
Okay?!
Okay, you get it! I know, I’ve kicked the horse long enough!
Moving on.
This is Why Some People Don’t Watch Movies
Of course, no audience is a monolith. This is one person’s (my SIL’s) reasons for why movies are wholly off-putting, but it’s an illustrative case study that opens up a lot of potential solutions for us NonDē filmmakers.
Let’s proceed, shall we?
Objection #1: I Don’t Want to Spend Time Scrolling
My SIL hates the experience of her streaming subscriptions. And who can blame her?
The data says 9.2/10 folks spend 57 minutes scrolling through streaming platforms looking for something to watch and never watch anything at all. Okay that’s a lie, there’s no data that says this, but it sounds true, doesn’t it?
We spend all the time we could be watching the actual movie on judging key art.
Too many options. There’s no clear place to start or end the decision-making process. PLUS! Because there are so many films, the pressure to find “THE BEST” film becomes the goal. We can’t just find something we might like because there’s surely something really good out there we could love!
So the scroll persists.
Until one’s thumb gets tired of clicking the forward and back arrows, and the entire movie-watching vibe has been decimated to a pulp, so we reallocate our thumbs to our phones.
When you open a streaming app, you’re not looking for a movie.
You’re shopping for something you’ll never find: the perfect choice.
Objection #2: I’m Wasting Time on “Content”
My SIL is a very smart person. She reads lots of books. You’d think she would be into arthouse films and international films and films by underrepresented voices. And she would be, but she can’t find them.
This is due to a) the aforementioned scroll issue, and b) the complete loss of vibes when watching movies that feel like second-screen content.
I told her about the note filmmakers often get from execs about their film not being “second-screen enough” and she chuckled as if it made total and complete sense to her. Yep, that’s what she sees, and nope, she doesn’t like it.
She likes to sit down and focus. She likes a film that makes her feel like she can’t look away. She likes the idea of a darkened cinema, but she hasn’t found a good enough reason to spend her money on the experience recently. Most movies that come into her awareness feel eh. The “content” is bland and uninteresting so she scrolls her phone as she watches or turns it off. Because what she’s served up rarely offers her the new or the interesting, the experience itself has become completely corrupted.
She said instead of watching a movie, she’d much rather read a book where her mind can focus on one thing at a time and she feels she’s getting something out of it.
(!!!)
Objection #3: I Don’t Know Where to Find What I’d Like
I believe the combination of the Endless Scroll and the Second-Screen Content have made this next objection a reliable and repeatable refrain among audiences far and wide: I just don’t know what I like or where to find it.
And how could we blame anyone for that?! When they’re being inundated with choices, and don’t have the bandwidth to vet the endless list of movies, and when they do finally click play on something but they’re underwhelmed by that choice, then it would make Alaska-sized sense to me that they internalize it to mean they “don’t know what they like.”
The truth is, I think my SIL and other folks like her do know what they like.
And in fact, I think the experience of discovering what you like, over multiple films, is something she’s primed to love.
If she felt like watching movies was her way of discovering ideas and filmmakers and visuals and symbols and stories that made her feel like she could access new parts of herself, like she could understand life differently, like she could feel the world as more vibrant and full of possibility, then she’d watch more movies. I’m sure of it.
But the experience of searching for these kinds of films is so bewilderingly dumb that who wants to waste their time on it?!
What My SIL Likes & How We Can Create More of It
My SIL loves her Book of the Month Club. At the start of the month, she gets 5-7 options of book titles, chooses one of those options, and it’s sent to her to read each month.
Here’s why she likes it:
She’s only choosing between a handful of options, making the choosing part of the process much easier and more fun.
She likes to discover new authors & follows their BTS on socials.
She adds a social component to it! She uses an app called Fable, which is like Goodreads but not owned by Amazon, which is an important factor for her choice. Because of this, it’s smaller, but it’s better for her. She doesn’t participate in the discourse, but she likes knowing it’s there and reading other people’s reviews/reactions.
She gets cute swag every now and then, reinforcing her identity as a reader.
She likes how her brain gets to focus. She feels like she’s nurturing herself.
Here’s how to translate that into how we market & distribute our non-dependent films:
MAKE IT FUN TO FIND A NEW FILM TO WATCH
Put a handful of our NonDē films in context of each other on socials & Substack.
Go on a multi-film theatrical tour.
Create eventized digital screenings with multiple films.
Curate lists for your audience of 5-7 films they could watch this month. Have them pick two. Arrange Zooms to discuss.
Invite your friends & family to go to a film festival with you as a practice, not as a one time thing!!!
LET AUDIENCES SEE YOU
Share the process of making your films in the places your audience is paying attention2.
Focus on communicating your slate, body of work, long game.
Let people know what you care about — politically, socially, cosmically. Write a manifesto and share it widely.
Amplify the people working on your film, your relationships, and your teams.
Produce your story’s backstory.
MAKE IT SOCIAL
Participate in FilmStack and other small online communities.
Create a Dark Forest for your work.
Amplify individuals in your audience whenever possible.
Create opportunities for feedback and participation from your audience.
Introduce members of your audience to each other, build the network one connection at a time, be generous about it. Give more than you take.
SURPRISE AND DELIGHT THEM
Figure out how to go above and beyond for your audience.
Give them something for free.
Create identity-reinforcing merch and add-ons to the film screening.
Understand their aspirational identity and bring in partnerships with other creators, brands, businesses, to support that identity.
Ask them their opinion!!
How to Do Market Research Early and Often
One thing I took with me from my days working for startups is the value of market research.
Market research merely means to go out and talk to your potential customer. Find out their problem, and then create the solution specifically for them.
The earlier we engage in these conversations with our audiences, the better our marketing and distribution plan will be from the jump. It’s also a great way to gather the intel that shows financiers and donors you’ll be smart and serious with their money.
Conducting market research can be as informal as sitting at your SIL’s kitchen counter and discussing why she can’t get into movies over a Red Blend, to as formal as a 1:1 interview with a stranger who leaves the most comments on your Substack. It doesn’t really matter where you fall on the informal<>formal scale. Just use whatever method works best for getting the most honest answer.
My chat with my SIL was impromptu and unplanned, but it made me realize I want to double down on this.
For my upcoming feature, I’m going to conduct some market research by having 1:1 conversations with folks in my audience.
Here’s the very basic plan of how to do it:
Reach out to specific people in my audience who I know would be interested in the themes and topics of my feature.
Ask them to hop on a 20 minute call with me & see if it’s okay to record it so I can listen back.
Ask a standard set of questions to get their answers.
Ask for referrals of other people who I should talk to.
Review their answers, bring the results to my producing team, incorporate this feedback into the process everywhere: pitch deck, partnership ideas, distribution strategy, key art, casting, film festival strategy.
I’ll refine these questions over time, but here are some I would ask:
What movies have you watched in the past month or two?
Where did you find out about them?
What did you know about them before you watched?
What was your experience of the film?
Would you watch another film by the same director, or in the same genre, or with the same lead actor?
After watching, did you do any online research about it?
What would be a great “next experience” to have with the film? (i.e. would you buy merch, go to an event, watch a director’s q&a, etc.)
Would you recommend this movie to friends, why or why not?
Do you ever write reviews or share your thoughts about a film with others?
What makes it difficult to find movies you love?
Where do you often find movies you love?
If I could wave a magic wand and make your movie-going experience the best possible experience ever, what would it be like?
What didn’t I ask that you think I should know?
Finding Out For Yourself is Imperative for Non-Dependent Work
I could write 2543 more words on this, so I’ll leave you with this one final thought.
It is imperative, now more than ever, that we talk to each other. Through FilmStack sure, but also through our art, through our films, we have to speak up. We must practice using our voices. It’ll be fine. Get out and embarrass yourself. I do every day!
It’s so important to talk to each other through market community research.
It’s imperative to go find out for yourself.
When you do, you’ll make deeper connections with the world and people around you. You’ll feel more confident in your NonDē experiments. People with fancy titles and big desks won’t be able to sell you snake oil because you’ll already know what’s what.
I was nervous the first few times I did in-the-field research3 like this. But I’m telling you, if you do even five of these interviews, you’ll (at the very least) have newsletter content through June.
And more than that, you’ll know your audience better. You’ll understand what they need, and you’ll give them the gift of trying to meet them there.
Tell me in the comments:
What have you heard from your audience that surprised you or confirmed something you suspected?
Would you do this kind of research?
What do you think we could do for our NonDē 50 Films distribution plan that would get people like my SIL to watch those films?
Who knew I could stuff so many mixed metaphors into one tiny sentence?!
That may not be Substack! Or it could be. Depends on your audience!
The first time I did this, I was standing in the middle of Washington Square Park in the middle of February, stopping people who were walking by at a pace that suggested they were utterly freezing, and asking them “Are you a creative?” to get conversations going and collect email addresses. So embarrassing on so many levels. But also, tres cool.
I build products for a major streamer that explain how algorithms and curation strategies are driving content discoverability and impact performance. A good exercise I tell creators is to think backwards: For a user experience discovering content on streaming platform, the pragmatic question is: What data do I need to convince you to give up your time to watch something new. There's a million ways to convince anyone to watch anything. While it's the algo's job to figure that out, here's where creatives can have the algo swing in their favor from day 1:
- start thinking about what "tags" would you want your content to be considered (this matters A LOT, esp as a title goes through the media supply chain). Start thinking about all the metadata that would be associated with your content from day 1!! This is EXTREMELY VITAL because this is your title's DNA when an algo is registering it.
- Additionally, as an exercise a screenwriter can put their script through an LLM (chatgpt, claude,etc) and ask it to generate tags for each scene. This can help pick up on deeper themes and trends that can help signal eventually to micro audiences (that's why YouTube has a decent rec-engine for finding niche content).
Create a movie of the month club where members are shipped a BluRay of their choice from a small selection of NonDe films.