Monello went on to explain that online tools are not about numbers, something I firmly believe as well. It is all about the passionate fans and followers.
Monello: "This is NOT a game of numbers. This is really important to understand. No one gives a shit that you have 500,000 people following you on Twitter or your character on Twitter. The real numbers we had back then, the same numbers are relevant today. When we sold the film to Artisan at Sundance, we had an email list of 1,000 people. Now, when you start a Twitter account, it doesn't take that long to get to a thousand followers. But our thousand people were intensely engaged in everything we were doing. Those thousand people were calling radio shows if there was an opportunity to talk about Blair Witch, at Halloween when radio talk shows started talking about scary stories, fans would call up and tell people to go to BlairWitch.com and we got an enormous amount of PR and buzz from their efforts way before the movie was done. We didn't ask them to do that. They just did it because they were deeply engaged. The strategy should always be to get people to love the world and the characters of your story. That's the only strategy. If people intensely love the characters and your story, they will want to see your movie and will take action in order to see it."
"You don't need hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter, what you need is 500 really passionate fans. And you have to inspire the passion and it is really hard these days to do that. You can't just say, 'Go and call the theater and demand my film.' It has to be their idea, they have to want to do it on their own because of the time you have taken to cultivate that relationship and that engagement with your story."
MFM: Recently in some indie film publications and on festival panels, the idea of filmmakers striving to reach an audience has been reviled by filmmakers who believe their sole purpose as artists is to make great art, not worry about the audience. If they have a great story, people will just find it. The cream will rise to the top. What do you think about that?
Monello: "Yeah, my daughter wants to be a princess when she grows up. And that is my response to those filmmakers. Good luck with that, would be my answer. I would hope that we are adult enough to say that the 'art' part of your work is already a given. We have to think about the business because this is a business. At what point will you acknowledge that you have to deal with both? If you insist on being a princess, well, I can't help you with that. Go and play the lottery while you're at it."
"As for the idea that if you have a great story people will just find you. We know that is not true. When I worked with the Florida Film Festival in my early days, I saw great film after great film and they never went anywhere. It is just not true, absolutely not true. Here's a test. Post your film to YouTube and see how many views you get, if they will just find you."
"There is a minute percentage of films that hit the right zeitgeist and for some reason do build from word of mouth. Blair did hit at a time when the horror films were SCREAM, the ironic and funny horror films. We consciously decided to make a film that would scare people, we were serious about being a scary film. And we hit at a time when the audiences too said 'I want to be scared' and that was pure luck. If you want to gamble on hitting that luck and being found, I wish you well with that strategy."
"As an independent filmmaker who has a hand out for money, you have a responsibility to be honest. If you are making a personal film, only for your vision and exploration, and you don't care if anyone sees it, then you need to be honest with the investor when you present that investment proposal. I don't think you will have a lot of success raising money, but hey maybe you will. Most investors want to see that you are confident in your skills of being able to pull it off and that you have a lot of enthusiasm for the story and that you have an understanding of what to do with the movie after you have made it; that you have a plan to earn the money back. The biggest problem is too many filmmakers are motivated by the sexiness of having their film up on a big screen. The best filmmakers are not motivated by that, they are motivated by reaching people with stories."
The success of The Blair Witch Project was marred by lawsuits over rights and payments between Haxan and Artisan which eventually led to the downfall of the distributor. Monello said after that ordeal, making films wasn't fun for him any longer and he went on to found Campfire located in New York City. He now concentrates his company's work on building story worlds for brands such as the True Blood series for HBO, the popular Shark Week program block for Discovery Channel and their newest initiative is The Colony social experiment for Discovery. Each project immerses the viewers in the whole experience of the story.
