Success Stories: AUG'14 Platforming is even more powerful than Networking. And yes, You can do it..

Hello, you might be interested in learning about how I established a community in my home town for the purpose of supporting my local acting and film making peers, and creating an incredibly fun and powerful social network in the process. It wasn’t really that difficult to do and the rewards have been tremendous. I’m sure you could do it too and if you do, you might just open up a whole new world for yourself. Anyway, by way of an introduction I am an actor living in Sarasota Florida. And an actor living in Sarasota Florida spends a great deal of time in the nearest large metropolis, that being Tampa, because there is generally more work there. As such, over time I became aware of at least two separate venues in Tampa where “little guy” film makers could show their films to a live audience. This type of venue was lacking in Sarasota, so I decided to establish my own. (Now we are not necessarily talking about meeting and showing films in a theater per se.. Just some kind of venue.) So what I did first was contact a bunch of local commercial establishments. What I was looking for was a place that could provide a separate room for say twenty to fifty people, and I wanted them to have some kind of audio visual equipment in place in order to share films with the group. In exchange, I would provide a group of people that the establishment would not otherwise have - consumers of whatever food/beverages that the establishment might sell. At this point it should go without saying that I was not interested in any place that would charge a fee for use of their facilities. Likewise, I do not charge any kind of fees to my attendees. (This is not a money-making endeavor. Did I mention that?) I tried several bars, taverns, pastry shops, restaurants and even the local comedy club with varying degrees of success. Some had the ideal room for us but no AV equipment. Some had the equipment but we’d have to meet right in the middle of their regular patrons. Others had everything, but needed us to guarantee at least x people, which we could not. Pressing on. Finally, a local tavern agreed to meet with us and proved more than accommodating. They actually had several possibilities for us. They were not only supporters of the arts; they also understood that there was money to be made for them as well. We were off! Now keep in mind in case you are wondering, what we ended up with was not what would be called ideal – we ended up in the arcade room of that tavern. Yes we had a large room to ourselves (with table service) one evening per month for about three hours a pop. We were given access to a flat-screen TV that was mounted on the wall, but it was up to us to hook up our own DVD player, along with auxiliary speakers. Being the arcade room, we had to unplug all of the noise-making machines and cover the lights of the ones that could not be unplugged, yielding a, let’s just say less-than-Imax experience. So next we started a Facebook Group page and invited literally anyone and everyone that we thought would be interested. We begged and pleaded for people to submit their films, and then created the official Event for our first meeting. And it worked! In fact it worked beautifully. Our first meeting was probably 20-25 people. We had about an hour’s worth of films to show. Whoever was presenting a film was given a few minutes to introduce themselves and to talk a little bit about what we were going to see. The group’s energy was sky-high and after all of the films were shown, no one wanted to leave. In fact by 10:00 the tavern management had to politely ask us to adjourn to the parking lot so that they could clean up. This went on for 5 months or so and attendance grew each time. We could have gone on like this indefinitely but the weakness of the AV equipment could not be ignored and would have to be addressed one way or the other. We began to hunt for a bigger and better-suited host establishment. Still, everyone enjoyed the monthly meetings and the group grew and thrived. Film makers met actors, technicians made new contacts, and the meetings were as much a social event as a film review. Epilogue: Now I can’t guarantee that you will have the same luck that we did, but by our sixth month word had spread about our group and people were starting to take notice. In fact eventually we were invited by our local not-for-profit film society to hold our meetings at their state-of-the-art cinema, providing the ultimate thrill for the small time independent film maker - to see his/her art on the big screen. We now have over 300 members, still going strong and still enjoying our monthly meetings. I hope this has been of use to you. Best of luck in your career. Thank you, Mark Troy, ManaSota Films: www.facebook.com/groups/341622409263951/