Struggling to secure press coverage for screenings and events at your cinema?
Finding it tough to get national media interest in your festival with so many other festivals out there?
Drowning in a sea of podcasts, websites, online outlets and no time to plan anything?
Need to see inside a journalist’s head and work out what grabs their attention?
Have limited resources and are juggling multiple priorities?
The cut backs don’t need to have a negative effect on your PR! This one-day course will show you how to get the most out of a tight – or non-existent – budget to generate a buzz around your film screenings and events.
Take a step back from what you’re doing now to reconsider your press strategies, learn new techniques and go back to work with fresh ideas… all for less than the price of an advert!
Who is the course for?
Anyone who is aiming to maximise media coverage for film-related events or festivals and is working with limited time, money and resources: including independent cinemas, arts venue staff, established and emerging festivals, event organisers, venue PR and marketing staff, arts development officers and film distributors.
What will the course cover?
- How to successfully plan and manage a press campaign
- How to integrate your PR strategy with your programming and marketing activities, and how to communicate your press campaign internally
- How to write a press release that will hit the mark and not end up in the trash
- Recognising and selling your most appealing press stories and angles
- Why thorough research is vital for delivering results
- Who are the key journalists you can’t afford not to contact?
- Building and expanding press lists
- Successful case studies examining best practice and ideas to steal!
- Your chance to quiz a journalist about what makes a good story
- How to create maximum impact from minimum resources!
Course Leader
Clare Wilford, PR Consultant
Clare Wilford is one of the UK’s leading film, television and animation publicists, specialising in event and film festival PR. Clare gained over ten years’ experience in arts marketing and PR at organisations including the Barbican Centre, Opera North in Leeds, and the Arnolfini in Bristol, before moving into Film PR in 1992. She has orchestrated press campaigns for the following festivals: the International Animation Festival; Brief Encounters, Bristol; Borderlines Film Festival; the Times BFI London Film Festival; Northern Lights, Newcastle; the AV Festival, Newcastle and North East; the Cambridge Film Festival, and most recently she has started work on the 2012 Bradford International Film Festival. Clare was Associate Producer and Talent Manager for several Empire Magazine Film Awards, as well as Guest Speaker and Hospitality Co-ordinator for the Media Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival for three years. She has also freelanced for Premier PR and Corbett & Keene for over 10 years, handling press campaigns both at international festivals and in UK distribution. In 2006 to 2009 Clare lived in New Zealand where she worked as a PR consultant for the New Zealand Film Commission.
Course Speakers
Campbell Glennie, Marketing and Business Director, Sheffield Doc/Fest
Campbell is the Marketing & Business Director of the Sheffield International Documentary Festival (Sheffield Doc/Fest), the premier documentary, factual media and cross-platform event in the UK industry calendar. Doc/Fest is a film festival, industry conference programme and a major international marketplace, offering pitching opportunities, controversial discussion panels and in-depth filmmaker masterclasses, as well as a wealth of inspirational documentary films from across the globe. Campbell was previously Director of Exhibition at Future Shorts/Secret Cinema, a senior events producer for Screen International and Broadcast, and owned and edited Fest Magazine, voted the definitive independent Edinburgh Festival resource two years running by The Times, as well as working on events and projects for The Guardian, XFM, BBC Worldwide and Radio 4.
Mark Gough, Business Correspondent, ITV Central
Mark set up and ran a local newspaper at the age of 18 whilst he was a voluntary teacher in a rough part of Liverpool. His first paid job as a reporter was on the religious newspaper the Catholic Pictorial. After a succession of weekly newspapers, he worked at the Birmingham Evening Mail for five years and also shifted at The Sun during this time. Mark made the move to television as a researcher at Central TV then became a journalist and News Editor at Granada TV in Liverpool. For the past fifteen years he has been at ITV Central and has been a general news reporter, presented his own series called Scam, presented the news programme, news edited and edited the show and shifted at ITN. Currently Business Correspondent, he has interviewed three Prime Ministers, been to Bosnia and was in charge of ITV Central’s coverage for the papal visit in 2011. Over the years Mark’s been fortunate enough to interview lots of film, TV and showbiz people from Ben Kingsley on the set of a budget movie about Shostakovich, to Betty Driver– Betty Turpin in Coronation Street, shortly before she died. He says Steve Coogan and Dame Edna Everage are two highlights, so was touring with Duran Duran and UB40. Mark cooks – helping out at a restaurant owned by his mate, a Michelin star chef – and he plays in a surf rock band called Los Calamares.
Flatpack Festival
The course will take place during Flatpack Festival. Described by The Independent as “the UK’s most creatively curated film festival”, Flatpack takes over venues across Birmingham every March with a colourful jumble of screenings, live events and audio-visual goodness. The sixth edition runs from 14-18 March 2012. www.flatpackfestival.org.uk. Flatpack have generously offered all course participants free tickets to screenings of Le Havre (6pm at MAC) or Into the Abyss (9pm at Electric) on Thursday 15 March. Please let Sarah Bourne know if you would like to take advantage of the offer.