Case study – key challenges:

• How do you make a film stand out when it is one of dozens of climate documentaries released that year?

• How do you keep your film relevant when the context is changing by the day due to current political and economic turmoil?

• How do you encourage people to watch a heavyweight film on the big screen at a time when cinema audiences are worryingly shrinking everywhere, especially for documentaries?

• Client: Sonja Henrici Creates Ltd., Edinburgh
• Job: Implementation of website design and production of all content
• Graphic design: Propaganda B, Berlin
• NationBuilder Architect: Ben Kempas, Film & Campaign
• Copywriters: Chris Silver and Rachel Caplan, Film & Campaign
• Event listings: Aga Slawinska and Rachel Caplan, Film & Campaign
• Live site: www.theoilmachine.org

Film & Campaign is folding – but not in the way you think. While we are looking at strategies for our business to survive the simultaneous collapse of the indie film industry, distribution as we know it, and all in-person events, we’ve also been wondering if there is anything we can do to support the fight against COVID-19, going beyond the hygiene and isolation measures we’ve all been taking.

That’s when we came across a project called Folding@Home. It’s a distributed computing system developed at Stanford University that allows for the use of everyone’s unused computing power to help fight COVID-19. Their aim is to have one million volunteer ‘citizen scientists’ running simulations of protein dynamics on their own computers:

• Client: Aconite Productions, Glasgow
• Job: New website for production company
• NationBuilder Architect and training: Ben Kempas, Film & Campaign
• Graphic design: Studio Rollmo
• NationBuilder database setup: Aga Slawinska, Film & Campaign
• Project funding: Scottish Enterprise, Lanarkshire Business Gateway, South Lanarkshire Council
• Domain: www.aconiteproductions.com

Client portrait: How the people behind Cycling Films Ltd. started audience build-up five years ahead of the premiere of their documentary TIME TRIAL

This week, the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) saw the world premiere of TIME TRIAL, a Scottish documentary following controversial road cyclist David Millar.

Around 1400 people packed into the Royal Theatre Carré for the premiere of TIME TRIAL in Amsterdam

As a subject, Millar would be compelling even to a director who isn’t as passionate about cycling as TIME TRIAL helmer Finlay Pretsell. He cuts a glamorous enough figure to be known as ‘Le Dandy’ to French cycling fans, and at the time of his retirement in 2014 was regarded as one of the best cyclists in the world, having worn the leader's jersey in all three grand tours. He’s also a divisive figure: the last ten years of his career as a cyclist were spent in very public mea culpa, after he was caught using performance-enhancing drugs in 2004, reinvented himself as an anti-doping campaigner after a three-year ban, and traced his fall and rise in a frank autobiography, Racing Through the Dark (2011). Almost every road cycling fan has an opinion about Millar; he’s acquired the sort of celebrity that means his smallest pronouncement causes ripples. Not just a compelling subject, then, but a potential box office draw.

Film & Campaign’s Ben Kempas was involved at various stages of the project – building and running its various websites and experimenting with an early version of 360° video – and we’d like to offer our congratulations to the production team, Cycling Films, and to the Scottish Documentary Institute, who initiated the project. 

Competing in the highest-profile competition in the biggest documentary film festival in the world is an outstanding platform for a world premiere and should open up a number of further screening and distribution opportunities for the film in the future. However, an advantage TIME TRIAL may have over the other fourteen films in the competition when it comes to the distribution stage is that there’s already an audience, dedicated, engaged, excited about the project and ready to the spread the word, awaiting this documentary.

This Friday and Saturday in Edinburgh, Jon Reiss will be talking about the role about the role of the 'producer of marketing and distribution', or PMD. This is a good opportunity to look at how this concept has evolved since Jon proposed it almost six years ago. At the time, he wrote:

"I would argue that from now on, every film needs one person devoted to the distribution and marketing of the film from inception, just as they have a line producer, assistant director, or editor."

The proposed list of the PMD's responsibilities is huge: audience engagement, distribution strategy, marketing budget, fundraising, publicity, social media, outreach through organisations, crowdsourcing, website and transmedia supervision, sponsorship... That's why Jon gave this position the title of 'producer', "because it is that important."

Who would have thought I would write a blog post about the fact that I went to the zoo with my daughter today?

• Client: Fathers Network Scotland in collaboration with the Scottish Government
• Job: Campaign by non-profit organisation
• NationBuilder Architect: Ben Kempas, Film & Campaign
• Graphic design: Phillip Whitehorn, Glowfish
• Website: www.yearofthedad.org

Case study: How can you get maximum attention to a niche documentary about dying when you only have four weeks? Short-term social media campaign, web content management, #MyLastSong video sharing mechanism

The intimate story behind our changing relationship with death
– with great songs!

• Director: Amy Hardie
• Producer: Sonja Henrici, SDI Productions
• Excecutive Producer: Lori Cheatle, Hard Working Movies
• Outreach Coordinator: Rebecca Day, SDI Productions
• Outreach supported by: The Doc Society
• Online Campaign Manager: Ben Kempas, Film & Campaign

• Client: Fathers Network Scotland, Edinburgh
• Job: Non-profit organisation
• NationBuilder Architect: Ben Kempas, Film & Campaign
• Graphic design: Ross McLoad, graphics.coop 
• Website: www.fathersnetwork.org.uk