Archive for March, 2010

Need interest from Film Distributors and Sales Agents?

Monday, March 22nd, 2010


If you’re an independent Producer and need film distribution or sales agents then it is important that you read this.

It’s probably not going to change your life, but we can definitely help increase your potential audience and aid with access distribution/sales agents at all stages of production. We know you’ve got a great movie to promote – otherwise you wouldn’t be here looking at this page.

How we can help you…

We built One Fat Cigar to help you with your aims – getting your film out there to as many relevant people as possible to allow them to have privileged access to your production and provide you with a loyal base of people keen to see your movies when they come out.

With that in mind not only are providing a great site to help you build a fan base but we’re also building relationships with some of the most exciting forward thinking film distributors and sales agents in the business and have designed One Fat Cigar to help you to maximise our network and contacts – and put your films in front of them.

One Fat Cigar helps you to promote your work all the way through the production from day 1 of script so that by the time the film is ready for the festivals or theatrical, or dvd release – you have a market for it. We have been described as ‘Facebook for Film’ meets ‘IMDB’.

Our Promise

We will, on a regular basis, promote the most exciting films on our site without distributor/sales agents attached and put them in front of some of the premiere UK film distributors and sales agents – wherever your film is shot (or being shot) in the world – if it is good we’ll put it forward. We will look at two categories… finished films seeking a release, or ‘hot’ films that are seeking a distributor and that they should be keeping an eye on.

How does this help you?

  1. First, we’re taken seriously because we’re filtering a lot of films/projects and will only ever offer distributors/sales agents the best work on our site. This means that if we recommend you, distributors/sales agents take us seriously – they know we’re going to see a lot of films and it’s not in our interests to give them bad productions to follow.
  2. Secondly, you have a pretty awesome incentive in getting some great content and in turn generate fans for your films. If you do we will notice and will put them forward.
  3. Third, Film Distributors and Sales Agents DO have profiles on our site. They may not publicize it or shout about it, but they are on here, seeking projects and looking at your work – so even if we miss your project to put forward, chances are that they will find it – if it is any good.

So who is looking at your films?

Our list includes some of the more prominent and proactive names in the UK business – from Artificial Eye to The Works Media Group. Look them up. They’ve done a bit! We’re growing this list daily and will soon be expanding it internationally.

If you’re a reputable distributor or film sales agent and want to be on our list, get in touch here.

Our Offer to you, the Film Maker…

Because we want your film on the site to give us the best choice of film projects to promote to distributors we’re making this as painless as possible and as inexpensive as we can possible afford to maintain a great site. We could charge a lot more but we want you to try out the service and be happy with what’s on offer.

We’ll be frank about it – long term is more important to us than short term today. We want you to be not just our friends – who we are seeking to help wherever possible – but also our customers, and we hope that you’ll value our service so much that you’ll recommend it to your friends and stay with us for a long time.

If you like what we’re doing, then maybe you’ll use other services we offer and recommend us to your friends, helping build our community and getting more great content which means even more distributors taken notice and want to visit us (some are already asking for specific distributor profiles by the way). We’re not here to push you into anything, just give you something you can use that might provide you with fantastic long term revenue opportunities through a loyal and trusting fan base for your productions.

It’s as simple as that.

The Price? Premium membership is around £10 (about $15) and billed quarterly.

And if you don’t like it? We’ll give you your money back.

We’re pretty sure you will but if don’t like what we’re offering once you’re on the site you can cancel within 7 days and we’ll give you all your money back. No questions asked. Nothing to lose.

All we hope for…

You give us a good film (we love original ideas – we’re film makers ourselves!) with a fan base and regular good quality content that distributors and film fans will love and we will push your project. Not sure what fans are interested in or how it works? Don’t worry. Mail us team@onefatcigar.com once you’ve signed up and we’ll provide you with a free ebook (that we wrote for us to use on our own projects) on how to promote your movie on One Fat Cigar.

For larger productions we can also provide bespoke marketing opportunities should you wish..

As if that’s not enough…

Did you know on One Fat Cigar you can:

  • Cast and Crew your productions through the website with people who have professional film credits and you can view their showreels and CV.
  • You can Post Jobs for your productions
  • Network with and easily contact other film industry professionals

Still not convinced?

If you’re still not convinced that One Fat Cigar is for you? In our first 6 weeks we had more that 750 film makers sign up to the website and over 100 different film and television projects uploaded. We’ve had projects ranging from $0 budget to $millions, and are growing pretty quickly.

We’d love you to be part of it – no matter what stage your project is during the production process.

So whether you choose to sign up – or not – we wish you the best of luck with your movies and hope you find fantastic commercial success, and we get to see them on the big screen.

To Sign Up Now – Register Here

With best wishes,

Craig and Ross

Co-Founders, One Fat Cigar.com



Major site updates/Improvements

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

Ok, we’ve made some major updates and improvements overnight that have taken us 6 weeks to do – and the changes are big and, we hope really make a difference to your enjoyment and use of the site. Most of these affect premium members but many are big site wide changes – so let’s quickly run through them!

  1. Job Posting is now fixed to make it easier and more intuitive to post jobs – there are now a load more actor jobs and crew jobs visible on the site… for both actors and crew!  (sorry to those of you who have been having problems with this… we promise it’s a whole lot better!)
  2. Project Status Updates are now working – go ahead promote your project!
  3. Project Video Updates are now promoted on the project landing page (and we have plans to make these more site wide so that more people can find out about your productions) – so the more quality videos you put up, the more you get noticed
  4. Project Avatars – that’s right, each project now doesn’t have to have the green man next to it… choose something that fits your film
  5. Full CV/Resume – we’ve made some major major improvements here – you can now add:
  • Employment History
  • Companies you’ve worked for will now be added to the network
  • Skills – had training? then list your skills here so that people can find out your levels of expertise in different areas
  • Education – as with any traditional Resume/CV you can upload your education background
  • Credits/Filmography – we’ve made major upgrades here just to make everything link better (we’ll be doing even more in this area in the future)

Why did we make all these sweeping changes/improvements?

  1. We always want to try and make things better and do things to help you – we think these changes will make your life easier, help you find jobs, find great candidates for positions (if you have them), and help you find cool and exciting projects more easily
  2. Since we now have a list of distributors keen to see the best new projects on our site we need Producers to be more proactive and begin updating their projects so that we can make sales agents/distributors aware of the possibilities – and that means getting status updates to function and promoting your latest videos.
  3. We also have an amazing competition coming up next week that will need you to fill out all this Resume/CV information – so please do that!

If you want to get your projects in front of distributors what do you need to do?

We’ve published quite a few articles about this in the distribution section of this blog – so do take a read. A quick precis puts it down to three key things:

  • Putting up great content
  • Build a Fan base – invite your friends and family to become a fan of your project and support you using the free Basic Membership
  • Regularity – content needs to be regular and frequent- during all the stages of production (it will take time, but is worth it)

With all the distributors we have spoken to – the response has been the same:

  • Show me there is a demand to see this movie (i.e. a fan base)
  • Tell me quickly why it is good (i.e. awesome trailer/synopsis/clever concept to the movie)
  • Prove there is quality in the film making (i.e. through quality video updates, quality trailer, full cast and crew profiles etc.)

And you know what?

Even if you don’t want a distributor and want to self-distribute – all of those things above are important too. Do those three things and people will want to see your movie – and you’ll get more theatrical/dvd sales.

And Finally…

We’re really chuffed with all the new updates and excited to get you guys using them… do let us know of improvements or updates that you would like to see or if things don’t work as you would expect – we need your feedback to make the site better! As you will now be aware there’s a lot going on in the background on the site to try and give you the awesome tools to promote yourselves and your projects – the results of which we hope are becoming apparent. Please do go and check out the site… www.onefatcigar.com

With best wishes,

Craig and Ross,

Co-Founders, One Fat Cigar.com

Things to do…

Sign up for our 8 week free premium membership trial

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter


Film Makers – Why we might possibly be the most helpful new film website!

Friday, March 12th, 2010

We have a few things to shout about, which we’ve been whispering quietly for a while now. We founded One Fat Cigar.com with the premise of allowing film makers and talent to promote their work (and themselves) from day 1 of script, build a following and be put in front of distributors. The site has been up 6 weeks and already 50+ feature film projects are up on the site and the community is growing massively everyday. We’re film makers ourselves, and specialists in film marketing and promotion and really want to give our fellow film makers a step-up.

Our Ethos – how can we help you?
The team at One Fat Cigar.com are here to help make your life as film makers, and films fans, better. We want to help you:
• Follow the latest hot film productions before anyone else
• Build a Fan base for your productions
• Market them from day 1 of script
• Access to leading independent distributors – if you wish
• Crew your productions from a professional pool of talent
• Provide your Casting Directors to access professional acting talent and easily filter them
• To build relationships with Directors, Casting Directors and Talent Agents

Sounds great, but how are you going to do that?
We want to be upfront with you. We want you to become our friends and value our service enough to become our customers, so that we can help you by providing more great products and services that will help you achieve your aims. i.e. getting an audience to see your movies on the big screen!

We also want to provide you with cool people to easily network with and be able to find talent for your productions.

Distribution
Making life easier is a big part of what we do, and we’re here to help make your life easier. So, on a regular basis, the best and most interesting film projects on our site that don’t have distributors attached, will be put in front of some leading distributors for their consideration. Which we think is a pretty helpful thing to do.

Fan Base
We also know that building a fan base for your productions – from before the production process – is equally important. Film Fans want to follow your productions. We’re here to allow them to do that, all you have to do is provide regular, interesting and relevant content.

Helping each other…discover fantastic new films
Another big part of our ethos is to help each other – we want to help you guys, but of course you can help others too. We’re all Film Fans (and many of us are film makers). If each of us recommends one project that we like on One Fat Cigar to a few friends, then for us this is the simplest way to help promote our films to an audience. Not only do you help out a fellow film maker, but you also help out a film fan by introducing them to something pretty cool that not many people know about yet. So help out your fellow film makers and fans… invite some friends!

Why should people become fans of a production?
Very simple – not only do you get all the latest updates and exclusive information about each project… but also you help support that project by showing distributors that you are interested in it. Like a little petition to get this film on the big screen!

Thank You
So as a ‘thank you’ for taking the time to read this we’d like to help you get started marketing and promoting your film today by…
1. Providing you with tools to help market your film (check out Susie Tullett’s film marketing guide on our blog)
2. Providing you with 8 weeks trial membership of our premium service completely FREE so that you can try it out for yourselves, upload a production to our site, and share with your cast and crew
3. …and when you’ve signed up drop us an email – team@onefatcigar.com with ‘promote’ in the subject line, and as a thank you, we’ll drop you our free guide as to how to get the most out of One Fat Cigar.com

So you’ve really got nothing to lose, and everything to gain. Sign up now and we’ll look forward to seeing you on the site!