Here's how to advertise your film festival on Kermode and Mayo's "Take" podcast - free

Sharing your film festival or film-adjacent event on Kermode and Mayo's Take (formerly Wittertainment) podcast.

Edit: Updated 20 May 2024

Rather than doing this feature weekly the "What's On" part of 'Take' is now a monthly thing so you need to get your voice memo to them in time for when the episode is recorded.

General timing
"We do read every email sent to us but unfortunately not everything can be read out on the podcast. As we record on a Wednesday morning, anything we receive after close of play on Monday (1800 GMT/ 1300 Eastern/ 1000 Pacific) is unlikely to be included in that week's show."

What's On voice memo feature
"If you're emailing about our 'What's On' listings feature for smaller/ independent events on the podcast, this is how it works. ***PLEASE NOT THAT FROM MAY ONWARDS THIS FEATURES IS MOVING TO MONTHLY RATHER THAN WEEKLY***
 
* Someone from your festival/ screening records a voice note
* Maximum 25 seconds, ideally 20
* Starts with "Hello Simon and Mark, this is.. from (screening/ festival name)."
* Then describe your festival/ screening/ event and give the dates/ times
* Send the voice note to this email address correspondence@kermodeandmayo.com two weeks before the event
* We will play some of these on the podcast (time permitting)
* We need all submissions for the next month to arrive by the Monday before the last Wednesday of the current month."

The above text is lifted wholesale from the automated response that arrives whenever you email the correspondence@... address above. I can't imagine anyone would object to me republishing it here but if they do I will cheerfully remove it :-) I made the last line red though.

- - - - - - - - - - -

Original post is below

I help run the Charlton and Woolwich Free Film Festival, one of several Free Film Festivals in London, and have been really pleased that Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo's 'Kermode & Mayo's Take' podcast now has an opportunity for community film festivals and other film-y special events to advertise themselves through the medium of a 20 second voice memo clip. These are shared on the podcast towards the end. It's completely free to send one in!

This blog post is about how to do that and includes some timings so that you can hear some examples. I've also included the 'scripts' of what people said and the duration of their clip, to give a flavour of the different approaches, and at the end is a short practical guide on how to email a voice memo from a phone.

Email your 20 sec audio clip advert to correspondence@kermodeandmayo.com

 

Table of Contents
A. Timings
B. The 'scripts' of what people said
C. How to email a voice memo (from an iPhone) 

A. Timings
Note that timings vary depending on the different platforms, as different adverts are used, so I've given a rough guide of timings for the iPhone podcast app and for the same app on a Mac to point you in the right direction (but tracking a few seconds to a minute either side will probably be needed if you're using a different platform). 

A1. Timings on my phone’s podcast app were
1. Minions (1 July 2022) - approx 1hr 8min 15sec
2. Sheridan Smith (15 July 2022) - approx 1hr 13min 34sec
3. Daisy Edgar Jones (22 July 2022) - approx 1hr 17min 39sec
4. Jordan Peele (12 August) - approx 1hr 12min 07sec
5. Hugh Bonneville (19 August) - approx 1hr 11min 50 sec

A2. Timings on Apple podcasts at time of writing were
1. Minions (1 July 2022) - approx 1hr 05min 45sec
2. Sheridan Smith (15 July 2022) - approx 1hr 11min 05sec
3. Daisy Edgar Jones (22 July 2022) - approx 1hr 16min 18sec
4. Jordan Peele (12 August) - approx 1hr 09min 54sec
5. Hugh Bonneville (19 August) - approx 1hr 11min 32sec

B. The 'scripts' of what people said
1. Minions episode
"Hi Simon and Mark, Kirsty here from the Outdoor Picture Palace. Join us on the 16th and 17th of July as we screen The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Descent and The Alpinist in the Lake District at the UK's most extreme cinema. If you fancy being driven up a mountain in a 4 by 4 before geting comfy inside Honister Slate Mine with popcorn in hand, book tickets now at theoutdoorpicturepalace.com. See you in the Audience." [20 sec]

"Hello Simon and Mark. This is Steve from TAPE, in Old Colwyn, North Wales. July 1st sees the release of our second feature film Approaching Shadows. The film's been made by over 250 people accessing the charity over the last four years with every element of the work completed through an inclusive production model. It's released in the UK through Bohemia Media and we'd love people to check it out, thank you." [18 sec]

"Hi Mark and Simon. My plug is the Carbonale a one-day climate culture festival, July 2nd in Berlin. One of the organisers is a very good friend, documentary film-maker Lena Müller. The event is all about living with the climate crisis in a non hand-wringing way. That's Carbonale C-A-R-B-O-N-A-L-E.com, July 2nd, Berlin." [24 sec]

2. Sheridan Smith episode
"This is Kevin from the newly minted city of Doncaster promoting our monthly sci-fii screening at Doncaster Brewery Tap, on Young Street. The master brewer Ian will be showing the Michael Anderson classic Logan's Run on Friday 29 July at 7pm. Fish and plankton and sea-greens. It's all here, ready, fresh as harvest day." [20 sec]

Hello Simon and Mark, this is Token Homo from London-based film-club queer horror nights. Our next screening is a rare double bill of the Psycho sequels. That's Psycho 2 and Psycho 3 back to back at the Cinema Museum on Sunday the 24th of July at 6.30pm. Join us from 5.30 for a bar social then check into the Bates Motel to find out what Norman did next." [23 sec]

3. Daisy Edgar Jones episode
"Hi I'm Rob from the Recovery Street Film Festival. This annual competition gives people in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction and their families the opportunity to share their stories through the use of film and challenge the taboo that so often goes hand in hand with addiction. Find out more about how you can enter the competition and watch some of the winning entries from previous years at rsff.co.uk." [24 sec]

"Hi Simon and Mark, Lloyd Bradley here, curator of From Jamaica to the World a new season of films celebrating Reggae music on at the BFI Southbank and on BFI player throughout August. The season puts Jamaican music in its Jamaican context by covering all aspects of reggae culture and the life that surrounds it. These music documentaries and iconic films include a 50th anniversary re-release of The Harder They Come which will be in cinemas across the UK from the 5th of August." [34 sec]

4. Jordan Peele episode
"The last arthouse theatre in the Southern Hemisphere, Cinema Nova, is turning 30 this August. Starting as 2 screens in 1992, and now 16 screens, it's helped make Melbourne a major centre for cinema culture. My name is Simon, I've worked there for 17 years as the maintenance man and three of my children have also worked there as as ushers and [missed what was said here]. I wanted to wish Cinema Nova a happy 30th birthday, thank you." [26 sec]

5. Hugh Bonneville episode
"This is Pat Higgins, writer-director of Powertool Cheerleaders versus The Boy Band of the Screeching Dead, a new musical comedy horror which is screening at this year's Fright Fest on Monday 29th of August at the Prince Charles Cinema in Leicester Square. It's directly after Mark's appearance in Duelling Egos so you'll be there anyway so stick around and hopefully watch it. Cheers." [20 sec]

 

C. How to email a voice memo (from an iPhone)
 

C1. The Voice Memo app is bundled free with iPhones and the red button will record you speaking into your phone. Press again to stop, doing so saves the file to the app. You can click on it to expand it and then click on the three blue dots to bring up the various options. You can also do some fairly basic editing here (basically trimming). 

C2. The Share... icon at the bottom will let you send your recording to all sorts of places, including email. The email address is correspondence@kermodeandmayo.com

If you want to send it to another device on the same wifi network you can also switch on bluetooth then click the black AirDrop button, which will go blue while searching for a connected device, and press again to send it.

Not getting homeopathy events moved from universities - can't win 'em all

Summary - despite requests to move or cancel it Birkbeck (University of London) will continue to host an event promoting homeopathy for women's health conditions. Homeopathy is not a valid system of medicine.

Edit: I've not even published this post yet and have only just spotted this phrase which appears in the testimonials (not in the main marketing text, but what do you think testimonials are for) -

"I highly recommend taking the course on Female Diseases, as his presentation will provide a book filled with serious cured cases such as cancers, fibroids, infertility and much more" - emphasis added. It's possible that the addition of that comment is problematic under the Cancer Act 1939.

---

Universities hosting homeopathy (or any alternative medicine / quackery) events is problematic for several reasons.

1.  It gives the event the fillip and prestige of being hosted at a respected academic institution (whether or not this is exploited or explicitly implied in other marketing material)
2. It suggests that the event, or type of 'treatment', is a little less ridiculous than it might be if it had been hosted at Teehee McFunny's Mirthful Comedy Cabaret
3. Not university-specific, but let's assume that an event promoting an unproven treatment is not in people's best interests and perhaps higher-education institutes might prefer not to give them house-room.
4. As I'm not a lawyer I don't know if this is piffle (and I only read about it on Wikipedia [see bit on Education act]) but it seems that people can get away with saying things in an academic setting in the UK that they might be less able to say in another setting - possibly this affects academics only not visiting quacks. Though if it affects everyone it suggests that quacks might be able to overclaim for their quackery.

Birkbeck (part of the University of London) is hosting a homeopathy event for 'female diseases'. Presenting at the event is a visiting doctor from India and the event's application form makes it clear it's aimed at homeopaths or student homeopaths rather than the general public. However I think anyone can apply (and since 'homeopath' isn't a protected term anyone could put student homeopath (for example they might be doing a short course at a local community college)), and spend around £200 to attend. That's £200, wasted on this event.

To be fair the event organisers have not made much of the fact that it's taking place at the University of London but the text of the marketing for the event certainly seems at odds with academia.

There is a shopping list of 'female conditions' which include endometriosis, hypothyroidism, polycystic ovarian disease, amenorrhoea [stopped periods]) as well as things like miscarriage and infertility. Homeopathy is very unlikely to be of much use here.

Because this isn't an advert for a product the text doesn't fall within the remit of the Advertising Standards Authority so there would be no benefit in complaining about it to them. However I think it's interesting to consider that - if an advert - the ASA would likely rule against it, because of the mention of serious medical conditions and the implication that homeopathy might be of use to people who have them. When adjudicating on previous adverts the ASA have considered that listing medical conditions may encourage people to forgo appropriate medical advice (bad!). While the ASA don't get a say on this event's marketing it seems a good rule of thumb that if they'd not permit it as an advert it's perhaps not much good for an event at a university.

The event promo ends with "There is no claim here that homeopathy can heal, treat or cure these medical conditions. Homeopathy is used to trigger natural healing mechanisms of the whole person to work better rather than address particular symptoms. These case studies will be used to talk through techniques that were used to lift the general wellbeing of the people concerned." but simply writing this isn't really much use, given that the rest of the page rather contradicts it.

For example "Medical test results are shown before and after homeopathic treatment for most cases leaving no doubt about the changes that have occurred" and the speaker "will encourage you to feel more able to support challenging cases, perhaps even where the experts have given up" - this seems quite close to claiming that homeopathy can heal.

A couple of people on Twitter have contacted Birkbeck about this event (I don't know the outcome of that). I emailed Birkbeck (copy below) to ask them to distance themselves from the event, and while I've acknowledged my hope that it's cancelled I've not specifically asked them to do that. I just don't think it should be hosted at a university.

Recently there was some success in stopping a different event, though I heard about it only after it was all over. Curzon Cinemas had been about to host 'Vaxxed' and a Q&A with Andrew Wakefield (disgraced former medic who is no longer allowed to practice after his role in deliberately falsifying medical data relating to autism and vaccines) but after criticism from doctors and scientists this event was pulled.

There were a few tweets about it and I replied to one that "I am currently failing to get a #homeopathy event for women's health moved from Uni of London (Birkbeck)."

I was deliberately precise in my language of moving not removing or cancelling despite this a couple of people challenged me (nicely, I might add!) asking "what's the reasoning behind trying to get this event cancelled? I mean, aside from it being fake science?" and "[other text] ...but forcing ppl to pull events is a dangerous line to cross", which I hope I've clarified for them, as I'm not doing either - though I'd not complain one bit if the event was pulled.

Trading Standards have previously taken action to shut down events, or venues have pre-emptively cancelled events, where people would have tried to talk about cancer cures (doing so may be illegal under the Cancer Act 1939). Similarly there have been raids on events promoting MMS (a form of bleach) as a miracle cure, including for autism. I don't have a problem with unsafe medical events being stopped from going ahead. Women are not well-served by this event which promotes a form of non-treatment for potentially serious health conditions.

Birkbeck have replied that the event is still going ahead and have pointed me to their free speech policy for their events. It's a good document but unfortunately this homeopathy event is not considered to breach it, so the document doesn't really 'protect' against utter hooey being presented uncritically. This is good news for homeopaths and I'd advise them to host their future events at academic instutions ;)

At some point I'll add a much briefer version of this to the 'failures' section of the Skeptic (activism) successes in homeopathy post and Storify (embedded in the linked post).

Copy of the email I sent to Birkbeck in December
"Afternoon

I wasn't planning on blogging about this particular homeopathy event so please forgive me sending it to the press team but this was the first email address available through the contacts page. Twitter has made me aware that someone will be running an event on using 'homeopathy for female diseases', at Birkbeck (address listed on the event page) [link redacted] in March.

Homeopathy is not a valid intervention for any health condition and it's fairly startling that this is taking place at Birkbeck, and that people are charged money to attend. From extensive previous experience of university venues being exploited in this way it's fairly clear this will be framed as a prestigious University of London venue recognising the value of homeopathy.

Please can you pass on my request to whoever deals with room booking and ask them to do whatever is possible to distance Birkbeck from this quack event taking place. In an ideal world the event would simply be cancelled, though being moved elsewhere is usually what happens.

There is a shopping list of conditions that the speaker imagines himself qualified to speak on (doubtful) including fibroids, thyroid problems and miscarriage. This event promotes mistaken and potentially harmful interventions for women.

Many thanks, and best wishes,
Jo"

Postscript - incidentally the event organisers haven't exploited the prestige at all so I'm wrong on that one, but I am still concerned by the overall 'framing' of the event, implying that a homeopathy event is an appropriate one for academic institution, I really think it isn't. 

Marketing: why don't venues promote events happening at their venue even if organised by a third party?

Summary: venues run their own events and also hire space for others to run events. While venues will promote their own events they don't seem to do much promotion for third-party events, why?

As an event-goer my main reasons for wanting to go to an event are that I like the work of the performer(s) or am friends or colleagues with them, that the event sounds interesting even if I don't know anyone involved, that I simply want to go and see an interesting or as yet unvisited venue (that's a reason isn't it?!) or that I've been cheerfully dragged along by a friend.

I rarely give much thought to who the promoter of the event is but apparently this factor can make a big difference to how a venue advertises or promotes an event happening there. Learning this has surprised me a lot and I'm not sure I can really make sense of it, to the point where I think that my perspective must be missing something and perhaps I'm just wrong (if you know, tell me).

Clearly the event promoter can pay for newspaper advertising as that shouldn't fall to the venue but I'm mostly talking about social media (Twitter / Facebook) and email. Things that cost time and effort rather than money.

When I'm at an event I don't know if it's been produced by the venue itself or an outside promoter and don't really care that much about the difference between the two which, for the purposes of event-attending, is irrelevant.

Here's why I think venues should also tweet or blog or post to Facebook about any event that's taking place on their premises, even if they're not the ones producing or promoting it.

a) Offer event-advertising as a perk to the event organiser 
"For a [£ reasonable fee] we'll promote your concert for you" - seems like an easy enough thing to upsell if a venue has lots of Twitter followers or Facebook people. A discussion could be had about the timing, content and frequency of tweets (10 am on a Tuesday morning might reach more people than 7pm on a Friday night etc). Or a budget option might be retweeting one or two tweets that mention the event and the venue.

Caveat 1: there can be a bit of red tape in sending a tweet or Facebook post particularly if you have more than one person managing the account. Some organisations have different sign-off procedures but I can't see very many problems with retweeting a simple "this event is happening at this venue" tweet or liking a Facebook post that someone's tagged the venue with.

Caveat 2: to ensure fairness in terms of not tweeting loads about one event to the exclusion of another it's very very simple to search from:CoolVenue EventName to see how many tweets have previously been sent about it. This does take a bit of extra work. But not very much.

Obviously this has to be balanced for a large venue that has a lot of events, otherwise followers will just be swamped by information. One way round this might be to send out a tweet with a picture that shows several events at once, and a link going to a page where the individual events are linked. Incidentally the BFI are were* very good at this and create a tweeted picture with all the films they're showing that day.

*I think they stopped during Covid and didn't restart

b) It might get more people in your venue, eating your food, seeing your flyers
Presumably the more people you get into your venue for any event the more likely they are to see your flyers for your future events, or eat your food and drink while they're there. 

c) Helping your audience to experience your venue at its best
Perhaps having more people present increases audience enjoyment slightly as they get to see a whole load of other people filling up your venue and having a good time. More people in the audience could also mean more audience tweeting and instagramming about how great the event and venue are, which you can then show off to people as evidence of awesomeness.

Bonus: all marketing emails should include subscribing information
This isn't that intuitive because if someone receives your email they've subscribed already but I often forward emails to friends so I think it's a good idea to include subscribing, just in case, not just how to unsubscribe.

Perhaps this is all too difficult
Given that the things suggested above aren't routinely done... is it because I've underestimated how much effort is involved in putting on events? All my events are fairly small - 20-100 people, pretty easy - or are there other good reasons why this isn't done very much? Or is it done loads and I'm failing to spot it?!

Guy Farley wrote the lovely music for this Vodafone advert

It must be a wonderful thing to be able to write a lively piece of music that expresses a thought or idea to match something happening on screen, and for it to fit that film while be pleasing to the ear. And to last for only a minute. Delightful economy :)

I'm not one who switches over during adverts as there's always the hope I'll hear a nice bit of music (I've previously blithered on about wonderful music in adverts on more than one occasion - see below) and although I might not be paying much initial attention to an ad, after a few incidences of exposure to it I start to notice it.

There's a bit in the TV version of this advert where some trumpets make a very pleasing sound, in the example below (which is longer) it's delayed a little bit but still there. I just found that I kept noticing this advert and looking up at it every time I heard it. I've now found out that it's written by Guy Farley, so hooray for him and his composering skills :)

I did ask Vodafone who composed the piece and they replied that it was "composed by our agency". Well... no, Guy Farley did it, why on earth not give him credit (or even give the agency credit and I'd have contacted them).


Vodafone 4G - Lost in Entertainment from GUY FARLEY on Vimeo.

Edit 2 September 2016: I think he won (in 2014) an award for this advert (he certainly won one for his music for an M&S ad)

Recently I went along to hear Clint Mansell talk about his work in film composing - he was interviewed at the BFI by someone from BAFTA, an excellent interview. The interviewer introduced the event by highlighting that in the world of film often the directors and actors get to talk about their involvement but BAFTA want to make it easier for people to hear from screenwriters, costume and wardrobe folk, sound designers and composers - I've been to a few BAFTA events and enjoyed many talks from composers, so I am hugely behind this.

Anyway, hooray for Guy Farley - this is his unofficial website. I'm afraid I'd never heard of him before today but will now look out for his films etc.

Edit... later that same day
I'm watching Downton Abbey and the advert appeared. I'd forgotten I had subtitles on (don't need them, just like them) and looked up to see it explain what the music was doing :)

The subtitles (which I actually picked up on 14 February 2014) are "suspenseful strings" as the ad (this is the 30s version, not the one above) starts, then "epic soundtrack builds" and finally "triumphant fanfare". Hats off to the subtitlers.

Edit 24 December 2013
I have just found this lovely ~4m video showing the recording of the music used in a drinks commercial from a few years ago. It looks like it's recorded in the beautiful Lyndhurst Hall at Air Studios, annoyingly not open to the public ;) I'd never heard of the studios until this year.  I follow on Twitter the people who write the music for the television series Sherlock and they occasionally post photos of the place.



 

More on adverts and music

• Music that I discovered from adverts (19 May 2003)
• Jonathan Glazer makes amazing adverts (4 November 2012)
• Car adverts - they're usually pretty good on the music front (29 August 2012)

Music that I discovered from adverts

This one is likely to be endlessly updated.

Adverts try and create good feelings about their product, hopefully leading to future sales - and I'm sure this works well, but the one things adverts usually do for me is sell me the incidental music. I'm sure that's intentional. For example I can't drive but car adverts are doing a roaring trade in selling me music or at least flagging it up to me.

In all cases the band name is in bold, it's not always clear who's the band and which is the song title ;)

1. Woodkid - Run Boy Run

This came from an advert for a mobile phone company that successfully managed to get into my consciousness precisely because I realised I had to pay attention to the advert so I could find out what to search for on YouTube. Well done them.

2. Stealing Sheep - Shut Eye

Saw this on a TV advert for the programme Hollyoaks. It seems to be a fairly unpleasant programme where nobody is nice to anyone else (not quite as awful as Come Dine With Me which is just flat-out unpleasantness, with catering).

3. Leila - Underwaters

From the enchanting Avios advert which turned out to be for Air Miles. Since I don't fly (not for environmental reasons and I love air flights, just hate the accompanying check-in faffy interminableness) they're not doing much business out of me for that reason.

4. ALB - Golden Chains
Since I'm a little bit in love with the guy who's running around with his yellow underpants on I thought I'd post the actual advert too. His name's Tom Bennett and he plays both characters.

Jonathan Glazer makes amazing adverts

I was just looking at Film4's list of 30 Films for 30p which they're making available each day for people to rent in celebration of reaching their 30 year milestone (congrats!).

One of the films is Sexy Beast directed by Jonathan Glazer which I'm looking forward to renting on 25 November. But apart from his other film (the massively underrated Birth, 2004) he's possibly slightly more known to me for his work in adverts, which are amazing and likely to be very familiar to anyone reading this.

Here are some favourites.

VW Polo - Protection, featuring the Faure requiem


Guiness Surfer


Stella Artois - Ice skating priests

There's a much better resolution version available here but I didn't know how to embed it.

Here's the opening sequence to his film Birth, gorgeously shot and with music from Alexandre Desplat - it's a beautiful opening. Jad Abumrad of my favourite radio show (Radiolab) is also rather taken with it.



More info at
http://academyfilms.com/pages/jonathan-glazer-bio

Edit 29 Nov 2017
OK, not entirely sure about this one, though it certainly is spectacular ;)

My new favourite thing... apparently Cadbury's commissioned Jonathan Glazer (Under the Skin, Sexy Beast, *that* Guinness ad) to make an ad for Flake. This is the astounding result, which was declined by Cadbury's and never televised: https://t.co/u6aTc8nXHZ

— Ben Andac (@TheSakeDiary) November 28, 2017

WholeLottaSoleapalooza #6 - Some thoughts on advertising and marketing

I had a glorious time at the Belfast Film Festival - what a wonderful sociable city, it's also beautiful - but there were a couple of things that puzzled me about the festival's marketing in the city. These are some thoughts but take with a pinch of salt what with hindsight being what it is.

Big events advertising smaller events
My primary focus in going to the festival was to see the European premiere of Terry George's new film Whole Lotta Sole, which was showing on a Sunday evening. Obviously I'm going to make a weekend of it so I had a scour through the programme to see what else might be on. I was delighted and surprised to find that Terry the director was going to be 'talking film' on the Friday evening and that the film's editor Nick Emerson was going to be talking about film editing on the Saturday afternoon. I love hearing people talking about 'the making of' process and really enjoyed hearing from music composer Harry Gregson-Williams recently at the Sundance Greenwich festival in London. As I bought my tickets for Terry's and Nick's events I wondered why the ticketing website hadn't suggested these additional, relevant options to me when buying the tickets for Whole Lotta Sole.

It's true that it can be a bit annoying when websites try and promote other events to you so I suppose it has to be handled carefully but Amazon manages this quite effectively with its 'other customers bought this' while suggesting alternatives. It seems a shame not to let someone buying tickets for a film know that the people behind the film are also doing other events. Nick had two films in the festival (Good Vibrations opened the festival on 31 May) so his film editing event could have been linked to both. On the plus side the festival managed to get another booking fee out of me and I do not begrudge them it :)

After I dropped off my bags at my hotel I went for a walk and tripped over the the Waterfront Hall where the Whole Lotta Sole premiere was taking place. I had a look round and was puzzled that there were no posters advertising either the film event, or the Belfast Film Festival as a whole. When it was open I popped in and asked if there were any posters for the film going up. The pleasant staff member pointed out that they had other events going on before it took place (true) but I could see that they also had posters up for events happening in the future. I spotted only one official Belfast Film Festival poster up but it was pointing inwards. I've seen (online only) the poster for Whole Lotta Sole and it might well be a temporary one - I think it was put together to take the film round the festival circuit but it's absolutely gorgeous and it would have been lovely to have had a few dotted around. I was half tempted to get some printed up and sneak back late at night with some blue tack ;) I think it would have been nice for the people involved in the film to have seen their own poster up, and it might have made for a nice photo opportunity too.

I knew that the film was being shown in the 2,000 seater auditorium and hoped that lots of people had heard about the event - I needn't have worried though because as I got chatting to people in the Belfast (and explaining why I was in the city) it became pretty clear that EVERYONE knew about the film, and about Terry George, and most of them seemed to be coming along to the premiere. As it happens the event was sold out and there was some very good advertising via TV and newspapers, even without any film posters - hooray.

Other ways of advertising smaller events
Terry's talk on the Friday was excellent and interesting and even though the venue and time changed (it had been 7pm at the Black Box but became 8pm in a cinema theatre on Donegall Street) the co-ordination of the change of venue was really good. I had a telephone call from the organisers letting me know it had been shifted and all went well and I got there in plenty of time. There were helpful posters up outside telling venue goers what was going on at each venue which was a nice touch, however they only really emitted information to people already attending an event and perhaps looking at the posters just to check where they were going.

But I think they missed a trick in not using these posters to promote the various different events to passersby though, not just the people who'd already bought tickets or knew about the events.

Pretty much everyone in Belfast already knows exactly who Terry George is - he and his daughter Oorlagh have just won an Academy Award (Oscar) for their Belfast-based short film The Shore, and they were congratulated in the Northern Ireland assembly - but people might not know that he was speaking at an event before the premiere of his film. Might as well add something to the poster that makes it really clear.



Also, the festival had a fantastic logo that looked a bit like an owl made out of film reels - helpful to add it too, even if only in black and white. Doing so would also mean that the event's other details could be more prominent and the information about the event 'packaging' (12th Belfast Film Festival) could be further down the page.

Possibly you can't really add other's logos (eg Academy Award / Oscar is probably a protected term) but I'd have mentioned some of his other films... perhaps including the one that's having its premiere in a couple of days (the film showing apparently sold out on Sunday morning but there were some left on Fri / Sat). Possibly there wasn't much room though! Anyway Terry was hilarious and he took us through The Shore while explaining how scenes were written and filmed and a little of the behind-the-scenes stuff. Great fun.

When I arrived near the venue for Nick Emerson's talk the guidance A4 print-out poster helped orient me which I assume was its main intention, but why not stick a logo on it and draw attention to the fact that he has two films in the festival. To be fair his poster was directly below a large official poster for the festival so they were a bit more obviously linked (possibly Terry's poster was beneath a film poster but I don't remember). His talk was also fascinating and he showed a variety of clips and explained what was going on. He also showed stills from the studio where he and colleagues assemble films from the raw material and explained that they post pictures on their wall of an image that evokes a scene and this helps them see the order of things and what needs to be done etc. The nature of this event - it's probably quite niche - meant that it was hosted in a small venue, and it was packed so probably didn't need that much advertising anyway.



While I was in Belfast another event was announced that I didn't want to miss either. Brendan Fraser (starring in Whole Lotta Sole and in Belfast for the premiere) was going to introduce Gods and Monsters, one of his films from 1997 starring Sir Ian McKellen and Lynn Redgrave. I found out about it late on the Friday evening after Terry's talk when I got back to my hotel and caught up with the festival tweets. The information was also posted to the official Facebook site.

The tweet announcing a new event (click link to view original tweet)

It's a lovely tweet but doesn't contain a direct link to the page where you can buy tickets (the 'call to action' as I believe they're called, probably by marketing people). Someone tweeted in response to ask where they could get tickets and the reply was perfectly clear but still didn't have a clickable 'go here and buy tickets' link. Readers of the tweets can easily go to the QFT's Twitter profile and find the cinema's website address there and track through to find the tickets (that's what I did), or google the event - but my suggestion is that if you want to sell tickets make it ridiculously easy for people to find the relevant page. Also, the page had a 'buy tickets' link only at the bottom - I didn't really need to read the 'about this event' to know I wanted to buy tickets so I'd also vote for having two 'buy tickets' buttons, one at the top and one at the bottom.

Tweeting from official accounts and posting messages to official Facebook pages is all very well but it can be a little bit 'if you build it they will come' - yes and no. It depends who's online and who's looking at your page. Someone retweeted @jasonalba's tweet the other day "If you build it they will come... WRONG. Build it, then go find them, and bring them to it" and I'd agree with that. (Incidentally in searching for that tweet on Google I came across this lovely example of involving film fans in promoting a film and getting it into local theatres.)

After blogging about Brendan's Gods and Monsters event a few of his fans got in touch to let me know that they'd missed it, but were actually in Belfast and could have come along had they known about it. It turns out that his fans tend to be on Facebook (where I don't go very often) and not so much on Twitter and IMDb which is where I posted info about the event. So that advice is for me too because once I had secured my own ticket I wanted to let anyone else that might want to go know about it. If you're a fan of Brendan Fraser and / or Gods and Monsters and you happen to be in the same city it's a bit disheartening to realise you were that close but ultimately missed the opportunity to sit in a small theatre and hear him talk about making films and working with Ian McKellen and Lynn Redgrave.

For official tweets (and possibly even Facebook updates), I think they need to be posted more than once, a few hours apart, so that a different audience is reached - the tweet needs to be varied of course otherwise it's spammy. Bloggers often use phrases like "for the morning crowd" to acknowledge that they're republishing information but for a different audience who may not have seen it the first time and confirming to people who did see it the first time that it's the same info (they don't need to click again).

The person that accompanied me to Whole Lotta Sole (she saw my Sunday afternoon tweet offering my spare ticket to the premiere) mentioned that she'd been keeping an eye on Twitter for mentions of the film's name as she'd been trying to get a ticket but it was now sold out. She'd have liked to have gone to the Gods and Monsters event but didn't know about it and unfortunately I didn't send my tweet on the 'right channel' for her to see it. I did retweet a couple of variations of the QFT's tweet but failed to include a mention of Whole Lotta Sole which would have waved it under the eyeballs of other people too who might be looking out for that.

@miabo6190 tweeted "Just found out brendan fraser was at the premiere of whole lotta sole on sunday at the waterfront...going to cry!" - she also thought that the film festival wasn't very well promoted. I'm not sure I'd agree with that at all - Whole Lotta Sole was sold out to an enthusiastic, packed audience. While there didn't seem to be any bunting going up for for the festival or anything like that (plenty for the Olympics) plenty of people seemed to be going to the events and as mentioned they all knew about the premiere. However I still think that social media could be exploited and co-ordinated for the overall festival a bit more.

It's just not possible to reach everyone of course. Plus it can be difficult to know how to measure the success of a social media 'campaign' and someone's time may well be better spent co-ordinating interviews with TV and newspaper channels so I'm really trying not to sound critical. I didn't know until after the event that there are several Facebook groups of Brendan Fraser's fans where I could have pinged the information myself so I don't come out of this particularly well either ;-)

Here are some suggestions, humbly offered by someone who knows full well that she doesn't have to pay for someone's time to do any of this...!

Twitter hashtag - there were some tweets with #belfastfilmfestival (it's a great tag, a little long but absolutely clear... could also investigate #bff2012, #bffest, #belfastfilmfest etc) but venues didn't seem to be using them consistently, or retweeting festival-goers tweets (and reciprocal retweeting by different venues of each others' tweets) while adding the hashtag. 

Retweeting others' tweets is a very good way to engage with an audience, and bunging a hashtag on it might encourage its wider use. It can be really helpful for venue websites and festival websites to have the hashtag displayed prominently - even better if an official tweet feed is fed onto the homepage via a Twitter widget. This lets site visitors know that they'll be able to pick up updates on Twitter. This doesn't work in all settings as it will definitely depend on the demographic of the festivalgoers, of course some won't have any interest in Twitter.

Posters - of different sizes, everywhere. Well, costs permitting! I didn't find any festival booklets in my hotel although there may have been some in other hotels and B&Bs. If printing out a bit of A4 details with an event on it, exploit the lovely logo and bung that on. Having posters up acts as ambient advertising - sneaking an event or product into people's consciousness. I think people probably have to see two or three posters before they'll even really notice what they are or what they're for.

There actually were some nice film festival banners in the part of Belfast that I wasn't staying in (near the Crown bar) - that was cool to see.

Emails - I supplied my email address to the festival so that I could receive a copy of my ticketing info. I'd have been happy to be on a mailing list telling me of new additions to the programme or any changes. Obviously they'd have to ask my permission to use my information in this way, but I don't remember being asked.

****** New bit starts ****** 13 July 2012

Use of bit.ly URLs - create an account or shorten without one at http://bit.ly
Unless your web address is very brief you might want to shorten it whenever it appears on something where the reader will manually type it in - it's quicker to type. If it's in an email, Facebook or Twitter you can just want to use your regular URL (Twitter will use its own shorterner anyway to ensure the URL takes up no more than 18 characters) because people can just click on it. But even in these situations you might want to use bit.ly because of the information you get from that site about how many clicks have come via that route.

For example if you wanted to find out if you got more clicks from Facebook or Twitter you could post the same message on both but use a different bit.ly URL and then compare - this is pretty crude (there are plenty of reasons why the click rate is different). For any bit.ly link just add the + symbol right at the end of the URL and press enter and you'll see how often it's been accessed.

If you've got Google Analytics and other 'webmaster tools' from Google you'll probably get all sorts of information but bit.ly can be helpful too. It also lets you create a QR code for any website address URL.

QR codes - people with smartphones can download a free app and 'snap' to your site
These are still a bit of a gimmick I think, but unless you've used a bit.ly url on your poster (see above) it's probably quicker to get out my phone, fire up the scanning app and take a picture of your QR code which will immediately take me to your website. You can even use bit.ly to create yourself a free QR code for any page, each page on your website can have its own QR image. Each page can have more than one QR code / bit.ly URL too (see above).


****** New bit ends ****** 


Slightly more random thoughts
Post adverts about events on other sites and pages and get people (however peripherally) involved with events to share it with their own networks. Almost every time the concept of advertising or marketing comes up I suggest postcards in newsagents' windows as a cheap way to reach lots of people (everyone goes into a newsagents don't they?). Having said that I've never tested this theory so it might be a really crap idea.

Local DVD shops - no idea if this'll work but it seems to me that people who go to films might also buy films. Possibly they'll buy them online but they might buy them from local DVD shops (I see Belfast has an HMV and another DVD shop) - how about offering £1 off a DVD with a festival ticket. I didn't go to any of the DVD shops so I don't know if they sold film events tickets in there but that would seem sensible and probably not, as one might first think, putting sellers of films in competition with one another. However I'm really not an expert.

Further reading
See also Is there a Songkick for films?
It's very easy to find out when your favourite band is on tour, less so for films or directors etc giving talks.

Wingardium Avios-a and other flying things

Love the new Avios advert. It's immediately arresting (well it is to me, I just stared and gawped at it the instant that soundtrack came on) and really stands out from among the other commercials. Avios is the new name for Air Miles (never use them myself, am mostly earthbound). The ad agency is (?? the magic comment pixies might tell me ?? - edit: they have, see below) and the music is Leila Arab's 1998 track "Underwaters".

 

Edit 29 November 2011: A nice man who is doing some work for Avios got in touch with me to tell me about this web page which has more detail on the advert. Thanks Jamie :) I've pinched a little bit of text to illustrate who's behind it:

Director Simon Ratigan from commercials production company HLA and agency 101 London have completed their new commercial for the launch of Avios, BA’s relaunched Airmiles travel rewards scheme.
 


Fly observes a collection of domestic objects taking to the skies, from washing machines with propellers and high-flying whisks to floating petrol pumps and even levitating lawnmowers. 


This video below shows the making of the advert and I really like that green bit of kit the chap has in his workshop. I've already tweeted this but I can't resist plugging it a bit more :)

 

 

The comments on the video suggest that there might have been a bit more CGI involved but however they did it the end effect is very pleasing.

It's not the only flying thing that's delighted me recently. Vincent Akkermans at Queen Mary University of London made this paper / styrofoam aeroplane which he's given a voice, specifically sound files of jets and airports. The aeroplane has an accelerometer and plays different sounds depending on what it's doing - sounds of jet engines when in flight, sounds of airport hubbub before it takes off - he's written about it on his site here and I posted this video to my Flickr page taken at last week's Dorkbot London #76. [Edit 2023 - I think you need to click through to view the video as the 2011 embed is no longer supported, I've tried re-embedding but didn't work].

 

If you're here for Nicola Conte's rather good Jet Sounds album (it's ace but disappointingly no sounds of jets that I could hear) then it's here in its entirety on YouTube too.

Is there a TV programmes 'incidental music' database?

Edit: 24 June 2013 - pretty sure I've just heard the bit of music referred to in 'Chicken Run' below in a Channel 4 Dispatches programme on problems with police, in the first segment on the Lawrence murder. 

Edit: 20 July 2015 - an enterprising person submitted an FOI request to the BBC to get information about a song used in an episode of Tracey Beaker. This is probably overkill but might work as a last resort.

There's something very pleasing about hearing a piece of music you like, or recognise, but not knowing what it is and then finding out. For me, the longest gap between hearing and knowing what something was about ten years when I finally found out that the Ford Mondeo advert featuring David Duchovny was using Bernard Herrmann's 'Prelude and Rooftop' score from Vertigo.

 


Every television programme I've ever seen has credits at the end for everyone involved in bringing the programme to the screen, but the incidental music doesn't seem to get much of a look in. Why?

I know that the details of (most? of) this music must get noted down somewhere because royalties might need to be paid so presumably the information exists although there may not be the will, or the requirement, to publish this anywhere.

There are quite a few ways to find out what a piece of music is, for example:-

• Shazam - there's a free iPhone app and it's not bad at all (it solved this bit of shop-based music for me)
• sometimes the subtitles (if you've got them switched on) will tell you what a piece of music is, especially on adverts
• Googling - extremely effective if you want to know what an advert's music is as you've got your keywords sorted out and are bound to find a forum somewhere in which someone's asked and answered that question. YouTube's also a good source. A bit tougher if your music of interest is 17 minutes in to a particular programme though, but not impossible.
• Twitter, obviously
• Edit: http://www.musipedia.org via commenter below, thank you Anonymous. This is pretty cool - you can play a few notes on an online piano and then search for it. Clever.

People seem happy to answer questions about what a piece of music is (done it myself on several forums over the years) and they also seem happy to add their contributions about all sorts of things in a crowdsourcing way. Plenty of things on the internet where people have filled in the gaps in a slightly obsessive way, for example Wikipedia has a list of all the Midsomer villages that appear in Midsomer murders in case you'd forgotten one.

Is there something similar that collects notifications of incidental television music? It would seem to be the sort of project that would lend itself quite well to crowdsourcing as there lots of bits of music used many will recognise, and a few obscure ones that my mate Neil will probably know and everyone knows an obscure bit of music that other people don't know don't they?

Unfortunately I haven't the faintest idea how ones goes about creating and setting up such a website, and given the nature of the thing I thought it would already exist (there are several sites covering the music featuring in adverts and themes from children's television programmes etc) but I've not found it yet.

One day this database will exist and I'll find out what the incidental music was for a BBC Panorama programme about cruelty in the poultry industry called "The Chicken Run" broadcast in May 2003. It had some eerie music in the background, but Shazam can't help me as it's not on television now.

I suppose another thing I need is some sort of web-based computer app which has a keyboard that will let me record a few notes and send people a link saying "It sounded a bit like this... do you know what it is?"

------- Successfully bagged incidental music, that I obviously like --------

Incidentally (hoho) Andy of @Digitonal is pretty good at knowing what a piece of music is...

See also Music that I discovered from adverts

Brian Eno - An Ending (Ascent)


Subterraneans (Part.01). Philip Glass David Bowie Brian Eno


Elbow - Mirrorball


Philip Glass - Koyaanisqatsi (The Grid)


Philip Glass - Koyaanisqatsi (Pruitt Igoe)


What things do you hear cropping up in programmes and know what they are?

Dettol kills extremophiles. Fact. (Maybe)

Here we go. Another blog post to put down some thoughts before complaining to the Advertising Standards Authority about a strange claim made by Dettol in a recent advert.

I didn't get the exact phrasing but it seemed to be along the lines of bacteria can survive in lava so some of them are a bit indestructible but fear not, for Dettol can get rid of them on your kitchen surface.

I have some questions that I want to investigate, before having a formal whinge, which are...

1. Can bacteria survive in lava?
Lava's pretty hot (quite a bit hotter than those hydrothermal vents I think?) so I wouldn't be surprised if they'd struggle to survive in the sort of lava that's pumping out of an active volcano. Equally, bacteria have turned out to be fairly flexible in the range of environments they can surve in and Wikipedia has a long list of the various 'extremophiles' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremophile), so maybe they can.

Of course, lava's only hot for a short time. It soon cools (and as an interesting aside the rate at which it cools determines the type of volcanic rock it produces). Cool lava can presumably contain the sort of bacteria that like to live inside rocks; apparently these are called endolithic bacteria. I don't know though if the bacteria move in at a particular temperature, or if they manage fine at any temperature of lava, even at its hottest.

2. How common are these bacteria? Do they live on my kitchen surface?
I'm assuming the sorts of bacteria that like living in volcanic rock aren't the same ones that I'll find in my kitchen. It doesn't particularly matter if Dettol can kill these bacteria if the bacteria are nowhere to be found in my flat. Question 2b is 'can Dettol kill lava-dwelling endoliths?' which is not a question I expected to be asking myself when I woke up this morning.

3. Is it appropriate for Dettol to draw these inferences from 'badass' bacteria? (See Youtube comments)
@medtek and @jdc325 have kindly sent me a link to the original advert so I can check the exact phrasing and amend this blog post later (those dishes won't wash themselves...)

Dettol Complete Clean Advert
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCOSFTugYZM

Clearly they are implying that some bacteria are 'tough' and require firm handling, but I thought the tone of the ad was a bit overkill. Question 3b is 'how effective is soap and water at getting rid of surface bacteria?'

Suggested use for bad science stickers

Last night on Twitter @zeno001 said
"Advert on London underground at Kings Cross for vitamin supplement for kids - someone added sticker: "Bad Science Alert" Probably illegal!"
http://twitter.com/zeno001/status/4638609432

and @bengoldacre replied
"someone design it, i'll print em RT @zeno001 Ad at Kings Cross for vitamin supplement for 4 kids, someone added sticker: "Bad Science Alert""
http://twitter.com/bengoldacre/status/4639903129

which I think is a great idea.

Should this come to fruition the resulting stickers could simply be used as an advert for the badscience book or website, where iffy claims are dissected, as sort of hinted at by the sticker @owencm designed but I have another suggestion.

I'm thinking of something similar to the Bookcrossing concept. A sticker is placed inside a book, which is left in a public place, with a web address and a number on it. You go to the website, type in the number and you get information about who first released the book into the wild and any other information about where it's been on its travels.

How about numbered bad science stickers (with a dedicated website - perhaps the badscience forum?) which will let readers of the advert find out more about why someone thinks the advert is potentially misleading - basically a sort of meatspace Sidewiki.

When you're on the train and see the advert for Bassetts Soft & Chewy Energiser vitamins you might notice sticker 1038 attached and visiting the magic website that's not been invented yet you'd get information about the tablets, perhaps with the suggestion to go to bed an hour earlier (I'm a bit disappointed they don't mention getting more sleep / going to bed earlier in their 12 suggested steps to avoid the afternoon slump).

Clearly the person doing the stickering would have to double check the 'database' to see if someone had already bagsed that advert, in which case they'd simply redirect number 1038 to number 357, for example, and perhaps add a comment.

I think the following would be important:-

1. The stickers should be replaceable / removable and not permanently mark the advert. Whatever I might think about the ad, someone's paid for it to be placed there and damaging it is not good. But non-permanently amending it's fine. Someone was recently in trouble for defacing one of the Alpha posters.

**EDIT**: Thanks to @zeno001 for alerting me to @jackofkent's related blog post that I missed today:- QUICK BLOGPOST: The Alpha Course and Graffiti - Ticking The Wrong Box http://bit.ly/49Y1F0

2. The website should allow additional comments to be added - this of course includes the possibility of a right of reply from the owner of the ad, should they hear about it.

3. Information about boundaries should be placed prominently on the website so that commenters do not find themselves at the wrong end of scrutiny from the owners of the ad.