Jeremy Bird, 2012 Obama National Field Director, Talks Grassroots Organizing and Film: Part 2

In our previous post we talked to Jeremy Bird, the former National Field Director of the Obama campaign in 2012, and discussed best practices from the Obama campaign that could help filmmakers distribute their films. In this post we will discuss our takeaways and conclusion from the interview. Takeaways

From our interview with Jeremy Bird, it is clear that filmmakers have 3 main disadvantages compared to political campaigns: 1) In film it is hard to access data and it is not clear what data sources will be most effective for targeting audiences, 2) You need experts that can interpret and use data to create models and 3) Models have to be customized to a specific campaign and this takes a lot of money and resources that independent filmmakers do not have.

However, Bird also recalled that when he first worked for the Obama campaign as the Field Director of South Carolina during the primary, they had to build their network and entire operation from scratch like many independent filmmakers when distributing their films. Bird went on to highlight 4 best practices from the campaign that filmmakers could adapt to distribute their movies.

1) Empowering volunteers by sharing access to more data and giving them real responsibility. Bird stressed that volunteers form the foundation of any true grassroots organization and need to be motivated through a sense of trust, responsibility and ownership. One of the major reasons the Obama campaign was able to effectively collect data and target persuadable voters was because organizers recruited an army of volunteers to call and knock on doors to figure out who in the universe were supporters. Without volunteers on the ground to collect information about voters, the data team would have had a far less accurate model of targeting persuadable voters.  This can only be done by giving real responsibility to volunteers and making them understand they are an integral part of the campaign.

2) Organizing consumer data to target potential supporters of a film. This can be the starting point for creating a data set of supporters for a specific film. For example, Bird mentioned the Obama campaign was able to look at consumer data and determine that someone who drove a Prius car is environmentally friendly and therefore a likely Obama supporter. The same type of modeling could be helpful for independent film, i.e. someone who liked the cult film Blue Velvet might also want to see another cult film like, Donnie Darko.  Examining consumer information further, someone who subscribes to Filmmaker Magazine or the Sundance Channel are avid indie movie goers and far more likely to want to see your independent film compared to the average consumer.

3) Creating multiple narratives about your film that market to both broad and niche audiences. The Obama campaign was very creative in forming many sub constituency groups like, Students for Obama, Latino’s for Obama and Veterans for Obama just to name a few. These constituency groups helped attract a diverse range of supporters by making them feel included. At the same time, the Obama campaign used messaging like “Change We Can Believe In” to appeal to a broad audience. In contrast, filmmakers often limit themselves by trying to decide if they should market their film as a story that appeals to the masses or only small niche audiences. The example of the Obama campaign suggests filmmakers might not have to chose and should market to both mainstream and specific groups. For example, filmmakers could cut multiple trailers of their film, one that appeals to the mainstream and other trailers that focus on certain themes that appeal to specific niche groups.

4) Using commit cards to motivate audiences to opt-in to watching your film at home. The Obama campaign increased the turnout of sporadic Democrats, people who have a poor record of voting; by asking them fill out commit cards that were eventually mailed back to their house to remind them they committed to voting. The same strategy could be used to motivate audiences to watch a film at their home. Filmmakers could create a sense of urgency around signing commit cards by sharing goals for number of VOD rentals, or hits on YouTube. For example, “commit to watching ‘Glory at Sea’ March 30th, and help us break our goal of 10,000 views.” Once someone signs an online commit card to watch a film on a certain date, it would then be sent back to them in an email to remind them of their commitment to see the film.

Conclusion

At the end of the interview, Jeremy Bird explained that with digital media the Obama campaign was trying to

“Create our own channel. When you have 20 million people on your email list, you’re no longer reliant on the establishment. We weren’t scared of things that were said about us in the bubble world because we had our own mechanism to distribute information.”

We have studied many independent filmmakers that have created their own distribution channels in order to overcome the established marketplace of Hollywood. However, many of these filmmakers are at a huge disadvantage from the start since there is no organization that can provides them with the necessary data, resources and knowledge they need to run an effective film campaign.

In contrast, political candidates can hire companies like 270 Strategies for consulting advice, and organizations like OFA and the DNC already have large voter databases and email lists they can tap in order to build their campaigns. This makes us wonder if a similar consulting firm like 270 Strategies or an umbrella hub like Organizing for Action, might be helpful for the film world.

However, how would the organization build its email lists and tap into data sources that independent filmmakers could use to grow and target their audiences? Would the organization consist of mostly of people in the film industry, or people from the non-profit and community organizing world? We plan to explore these questions in later posts.

-Michael, Josh and Carl

Introduction: Our Background

At its core, our desire to explore this area of research comes not from our experience as film producers, but from the time we have spent in political campaigns and specifically in our time working for the Barack Obama presidential campaigns of both 2008 and 2012. In fact, ever since graduating from college, both Josh and Michael have oscillated between endeavors in the political realm and producing work in the independent film world. Before our roles as producer and executive producer on Court 13’s short film “Glory at Sea,” respectively, Josh worked in Michigan on a Senate campaign, while Michael worked at the think tank Center for American Progress in Washington D.C. After the short film had its festival run, we both were brought into the fold of the Obama for America apparatus, which at the time was working with grassroots ideas in new, pioneering ways. We both worked as New Media Directors—each in separate swing states—and were asked to return as Digital Program Managers at the national headquarters of the launch of the 2012 re-election campaign. (Between the campaigns we developed and produced “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” as well as worked our own separate film projects). We each have experience in the field organizing aspects of political campaigns, which plays into our prior knowledge of how these methods and structures work. None of this is to imply that politics and film are one in the same as they differ greatly, and a political campaign can and should have a very different audience than a film outreach program; nonetheless, there is much to be taken from and learned from the expertise of these movements in reaching people and generating excitement and advocacy. And more than anything, we would like to explore the relationship between what works in political campaigns and what can work in film campaigns. However, as producers, we have had experience that has led us to want to explore this topic as well. During our time on films, we have come to appreciate that the same skill set that is required to mobilize enthusiastic voters into becoming volunteers or taking action offline or online is very much at work as a producer. Though the focus of our exploration will be on distribution, consider some parallels at play in the stages of a film’s life that come before its release. For example, though the pre-production and production of Benh Zeitlin’s "Glory at Sea" (on which we served as producer and executive producer, respectively) was entirely unorganized, unstructured, and extremely chaotic, there was definite energy and commitment amongst the crew that got the whole project eventually done – it was the kind of personal emotional investment you can find on the best kinds of grassroots campaigns. However, while on Glory this enthusiasm did not have a real structure in which to operate, on "Beasts of the Southern Wild" we were able to formalize an operation that would best fit for it. During development, before we logistically or financially able to staff up our crew, we mobilized would-be crew members around the Herculean task of finding our young star – more than ten different eventual crew members auditioned almost 4000 young girls all across the state. Similarly, we set up pre-production such that the crew would all be living together, on location along the bayous, with a home base at our headquarters that was social as much as professional. This created a community feeling that was key to our success on the film; everyone became familiar and friendly with each other through the task of building what our movie needed. Finally, the structure of various departments was set up so as to allow room for and encourage creative people who wanted to be working on the film to come down and do it. The production had the feel of a summer camp, where we were all committed to the monumental endeavor of pulling the film off, and each crew member was there because they wanted to be there. It was not a job; it was a community project. (More on Beasts in future posts).

So too are all grassroots campaigns community projects – even political campaigns. It takes a well-run structure to properly organize the enthusiasm of many around a common goal, and campaigns tend to be more structured with this in mind than film productions and distribution operations. We are interested in taking this parallel further, by exploring what other of these campaign methodologies we can put into place in the “community project” of putting out an independent film.

-Michael and Josh