A Short film Podcast is not for everyone. For example, if you are a law firm who specializes in apartment evictions, it may not help you. However if you are a small boutique film production company in Chicago, well like us for example ;), it could be a life line. With the overall success of Project 3to1, our monthly short film Podcast, we've decided to share a recipe for a successful short film Podcast.

If you are planning on starting your own, consider these:

Pros:

• Cheap* way of making waves.
• Keeps skills sharp -- stay fresh from mundane corporate or broadcast work.
• The work can be recycled for many promotional uses.
• Easy way for people and search engines to browse your portfolio of work.

Cons:

• *Cheap only if you have connections for gear and production insurance (but you can always go guerrilla).
• A film that premiered on the web HURTS your chances if you submit to upper-tier festivals i.e. Sundance, Toronto etc.
• If it's not a quality product, don't put it up as it may hurt your brand.

How to make your Short Film Podcast successful

This list assumes that:

• You have a good understanding of the film production process.
• You know what a Podcast and RSS are.
• You have already made a film, preferably an interesting one if possible.
• You have the capability of appropriately compressing a digital video file for use on the web.
• You have the necessary space and bandwidth to support these files.

If you do not meet the list above, stop here and just hire us to do it for you .

Conceptualization and Branding of your Short Film Podcast

The more thought out this stage is the better your results will be. Think of it as pre-production for your Podcast.

1. Who is the Target Audience
2. Come up with a name for your Podcast. - For example, you can title your Podcast, "Classic Cinema Reviews" or "old skool n00bs get pwn3d!!!" while the content may be the same, it will attract a different audience.
3. Give your Podcast a clear description of the content.
4. Think of 5 descriptive one-word tags for your Podcast (some sites ask for this).
5. Design an easily reproducible logo/mascot that will clearly identify your production company and brand all of your projects as well as your feed with it.
   (optional 4b. Create a 2-5 second production bumper, with your logo, that you can add to all your movies.)

Compression

Your film will most likely see its share of transcodes (m4v > flash > wmv > divx > and back to m4v) during its time on the Internet. So it's important to start out with the highest possible quality file.

1. Start your encode from the digital master of your film.
2. Encode to h.264 in the m4v wrapper (the native iPod video format) - There are a number of programs that can do this but, I'd recommend simply using the current version of Quicktime Pro for the encode using the ''Export Movie to iPod'' setting. I know this doesn't give you any options for tweaking, but this way you are guaranteed a file that will playback and be optimized for the newest iPod firmware (plus the size/quality ratio of h.264 is very nice and seems to only be getting better).
3. Upload your movie to your site and give a brief description/synopsis of the film.

Promotion

There are a number of things you can do to help promote your films:

Note: In 99% of cases it will not happen overnight.

• Submit your feed to all the major players - iTunes, Democracy, Digg, Vlogdir and Yahoo! There are many other sites that host Podcast feeds. But you don't need to submit to all of them. In fact, some of them may be topic specific in which case your submission could be considered spam.
• Make a simple page for users to subscribe to your feed - Use shiny ''Web 2.0-ish'' buttons, people look at those and think easy.
• Use URL rewrite to create a simple URL to both your feed and your subscribe page.
• Make "1-click subscribe" buttons. Both iTunes and Democracy both support that.
• Make a button directly to your RSS feed.
• Keep a film production blog of your experiences of making each episode with production stills to compliment it.

Participate in relevant high-traffic community sites

Note: I said PARTICIPATE in RELEVANT topics not SPAM in ANY topic.

• Search for relevant topic film communities, iFilm, AtomFilms, Shortsville, FireAnt - How do I tell if its a high-traffic site? Use Alexa's Traffic Ranking
• Post relevant comments in these communities and post links to your Podcast either in your signature or your profile.
• Make your username the same as the title of your Podcast and the description of your Podcast as your bio (providing the site offers bios).
• Allow your viewers to post your films to Del.icio.us, Digg, Facebook, Reddit, Furl, etc. - only really pick about 3 or 4 at most. Don't scare your user away with more badges than they know what to do with.

Foster relationships with other filmmakers & organizations

After creating a few episodes, try and collaborate with a select number of talented local writers, directors, editors and composers who might be interested in working with you. Ideally, collaborations would act as a catalyst in popularity but watch out, they don't always end on a positive note.

• Feature collaborative efforts of already established filmmakers on your Podcast.
• At film industry related events such as NAB and HD Expo, name drop people you have worked with (you know, for street cred).
• Create a section on your website of people you collaborate with.
• Build a network of other filmmakers for future collaboration.

Other forms of promotion

• Email newsletters, but not spam. Collect email addresses in a kosher method.
• Create an offline mailing list and create postcards to mail to everyone.
• Post on free community bulletin boards with little tear offs of your website.
• Craigslist...Take it or leave it.
• AVOID standing on a street corner handing things out to people telling them to visit your site. You might as well ask them to throw it out for you.

Keep up the work

While it is a cost-effective tool for marketing your company, time is money and usually coming up with fresh ideas and going from development and pre-production to the big screen takes a lot of time. The most challenging part of having a successful Podcast is keeping your content up to date.

• Decide the intervals in which you will debut new films (weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, etc.)
• Let the user can expect new episodes prior to their subscription.
• If you only plan on making one episode and then calling it quits, don't bother making that a Podcast, just upload as a single video file.

Overall, have fun when making your films and hopefully the rest of the Internet will have enjoy watching it.