• Client: Cycling Films, Edinburgh
• Job: High-profile film launch after five years of audience build-up during production (client portrait here)
• NationBuilder Architect: Ben Kempas, Film & Campaign
• Graphic design: Joakim Karlsson
• Database Maintenance: Aga Slawinska, Film & Campaign
• Domain: www.timetrialfilm.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."

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

Case study: Can we 'sell' a film about a world without money?

A unique love story challenging our collective and personal utopias

• Director: Maja Borg
• Producer: Sonja Henrici, SDI Productions
• Co-producer: Lisbet Gabrielsson Film AB
• Producer of Marketing and Distribution: Ben Kempas
• Outreach Team: Rebecca Day, Demelza Kooij
• Publicist: Alex Rowley, AR:PR

• Client: Cycling Films, Edinburgh
• Job: Early audience engagement for high-profile feature-length project
• NationBuilder Architect: Ben Kempas, SDI Productions
• Graphic design: Joakim Karlsson
• Domain: www.davidmillarfilm.com (no longer live, has been superseded by the Time Trial NationBuilder site)
  

Case study: How do you get people to watch a film about a man dying of a rare disease?

A film that reminds us what it is to be alive

• Directors: Emma Davie, Morag McKinnon
• Producer: Sonja Henrici, SDI Productions
• Co-producer: Sigrid Dyekjær, Danish Documentary
• Producer of Marketing and Distribution: Ben Kempas
• Outreach Team: Rebecca Day, Demelza Kooij, Letizia Finizio
• Publicist: Alex Rowley, AR:PR

• Client: Scottish Documentary Institute, Edinburgh
• Job: Release of thought-provoking experimental documentary
• NationBuilder Architect: Ben Kempas, SDI Productions
• Original Joomla build: Nic Wistreich, Netribution
• Graphic design: Jonas Hult, A Visual Affair
• Domain: www.futuremylove.com

Case study: Development and application of innovative crowdfunding and donation tools inside a video player that can be embedded anywhere 

A complete and flexible fundraising toolset

• Partners: Scottish Documentary Institute, Distrify
• Funding: Nesta R&D Scotland Fund
• Project leader: Ben Kempas
• Technology development: Peter Gerard
• Legal research and coordination: Stephen Green

As producer of marketing and distribution at the Scottish Documentary Institute and together with their technology partner Distrify, Ben successfully applied for Nesta funding for the development of a fundraising toolkit that 

• can be universally embedded as part of a video player,
• features a sliding scale in an easy-to-use interface,
• offers incentives to partners,
• also works on mobile devices and tablets, and
• can be flexibly customised for at least five different use cases (see below).

Pre-existing crowdfunding intermediaries did not offer this functionality, were expensive and labour-intensive (for example, rewards needed to be handled manually). Their static widgets were designed to draw users to a portal and didn't invite instant interaction at the point of contact.

The Portable Fundraiser toolset was launched in several stages coinciding with the global release of the documentaries I AM BREATHING and FUTURE MY LOVE, preceded by extensive outreach work.

The five use cases are:

1. Sliding-scale donations

Before and after a film, supporters are invited to top up their purchase with a sliding-scale charitable donation to a related cause, acknowledging that issue-driven documentaries often leave people deeply moved and motivated to help.

• Client: Opa Films / Scottish Documentary Institute
• Job: release of an award-winning creative documentary
• NationBuilder Architect: Ben Kempas, SDI Productions
• Graphic design: based on film artwork by Stephen Rasmussen
• Domain: www.pabloswinter.com