Insider Trading

To announce a (real) new project by AMAUTEUR, I created a trade publication as fake as the rest of ‘em

As many of you know, I’m executive producing the short film Meow by Sarah Meital Benjamin. It’s a lovely, honest film and I hope you get a chance to see it on the big screen sometime.

When I joined the project a few months ago, Sarah and I brainstormed a number of ways to unveil our collab. Even though Meow is a short, we wanted to give it the same level of care and attention we would a feature.

A common way to share news in/with the industry is via an “exclusive” in a major film trade publication. Scroll social media and you’re bound to see filmmakers sharing screenshots of trade headlines announcing a premiere, an acquisition, a trailer release or something along those lines. If you follow a bunch of filmmakers on Instagram, you see these screenshots every day and they start to blur together.

Fun fact: Did you know that all of the major film trades — Variety, Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter and Indiewire — are owned by one parent company? Did you know this company, the Penske Media Corporation, also owns Rolling Stone, Billboard, GoldDerby, Artforum and ARTNews? Did you know they are a 50% stakeholder in SXSW, and also own the Golden Globes?

It is also an open secret that places like Variety, Deadline and THR often function as mouthpieces for studios, agencies and PR teams. That’s not to say that every story they publish is planted, but a lot of them absolutely are. The trades rely on insider scoops and in exchange shape public perception in favor of their sources. All the Penske-owned film trade publications are, to borrow a phrase from Chomsky, lapdogs of the establishment.

Those screenshot announcements look and feel good on Instagram, god knows they do. But all they really mean is that the team has a PR person or industry-backing in some undisclosed way. Trade announcements do not happen organically.

What can you do if you cannot afford a publicist (and their rolodex) and you don’t have some Hollywood power-broker making deals behind the scenes for you?

Create your own film trade publication, of course!

I created this “screenshot” in Photoshop

Deadwire is a screenshot-only film trade publication. It is entirely made up, and more or less as legit as any trade owned by Penske. I’m joking but also I’m not.

Can I — with this little experiment — take some of the power from industry mouthpieces and redistribute it to filmmakers outside the system? Can I empower the non-dependents while disempowering the lapdogs? That’s the test. That’s the goal.

I created the above “trade announcement screenshot” in photoshop and Sarah and I used it to announce our collab on Instagram. It was quite easy to mimic the aesthetic of a trade publication and their uniform way of presenting something like this. Most people on social media thought Deadwire was a real trade and the folks who got the joke thought it was funny. The post substantially outperformed our other posts, and achieved its aims.

Deadwire is something we — the Filmstack community — can all now have in our back pocket, ready to go whenever needed.

The only rule is: THE NEWS HAS TO BE REAL. Everything else can be a goof, but the information has to truly be legitimate.

We should use the trade sparingly and intelligently.

Do you have a world premiere coming up? Let’s announce it in Deadwire! Did an incredible actor or producer join your project? Deadwire, my comrade! Are you announcing a slate of upcoming projects and/or a world takeover? Let’s do it!

Perhaps Dan Mirvish will share an exciting announcement about Atomic Fondue. And/or Avi Setton will announce the world premiere of The Big Break. And/or Ellis J. Sutton will announce the next Coffeehouse Cinema line-up. And/or Victoria Michele Miller will share an exciting casting announcement! And/or Alain Martin will share the next step(s) for his brilliant new doc. The and/ors could go on and on because a million cool things are brewing on Filmstack.

Reach out in the comments or via DM and I’ll create a free Deadwire trade announcement screenshot for you and your project. I’m also happy to send along the .psd template to anyone who wants to create their own.

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