Bricks in Motion
We are a friendly filmmaking community devoted to the art of stop-motion animation using LEGO® and similar construction toys. Here, you can share your work, join our community of other brickfilmers, and participate in periodic animation contests!
A place to discuss, share, and create stop motion films.
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Hey all!
I know this isn't technically speaking "post-production," but it does come after production:
How do you guys get the word out?
What have you folks found to be the most effective way of building an audience for your hot new brick film?
Try social media. Create a Facebook page, maybe try twitter, even create a website if you want to. Stop motion is quite a niche market, so whatever you do, you won't get a massive following overnight. One of the things that really helped me expand my following was sharing my films on brickfilm communities on google plus. Really, in the end, the best thing to do is keep making good quality content. Every time you upload a new video, the chances are that new people will start to discover your work. Slowly more and more people will start subscribing to your channel over time. Of course, my expience is on YouTube. I should imagine that Vimeo, being much less popular than YouTube, it might take a little longer for you to expand, but trust me, you will.
People love stories. Every story has a main character which, either influences- or is influenced, by other characters.
If you're a film maker, then you know this very well.
When you are advertising something you are simply committing an action. That action is done by a character. Your "Brand" is the relationship between the "Story" and "The Character". Animation is simply the medium for which you are expressing yourself, it is as vague as the color brown. Don't try to look for other colors of brown to compare yours too.
Sit down and interview yourself, your films and your ideas. If you summarized your filmmaking career into a person- Who is s/he? What do they like, value, belief or prefer?
Know what your "Story is" will ultimately help you to market to your audience, and to make meaningful connections to other artists who may be willing to share their fanbase with you.
Social media, Blogs, Forums- All great mediums for you to spread your creations too, but pointless unless you know where, how and who to spread them to.
What have you folks found to be the most effective way of building an audience for your hot new brick film?
Most brickfilms I see are recommended by YouTube, in the BricksInMotion directory, competition, or brickfilm of the week, or in a brickfilm YouTube channel's "liked videos" or "favourite" playlist. This would rely on either luck or a really good effort.
What really hooks me in to unreleased brickfilms are when someone posts behind-the-scenes images of their film. Especially if the sets/setup is extremely intricate and complex. I'm still waiting for NathanWell's Appetite Lost, Dear Cousin and The Cleaners
Having a production logs in the production forums of bricksinmotion also builds an audience. I believe that MightyWanderer's Lose My Soul and William Osbourne's Appman would not have as much attention that they have now if they didn't have a production log for them.
There's a few brickfilm channels which I won't name, that leaves a compliment or criticism on nearly every single recent brickfilm on YouTube. It isn't like self promotion or gather an audience but they get their name out there. Scroll around the YouTube comments and you'll probably know who I'm talking about.
Don't expect a million views but it somewhat gets you a larger audience than just uploading the film.
Also, people love free things. The above suggestion of "Behind the scenes" is a great one. If you give away resources, you will attract people to your media.
Try Instagram; post your behind-the-scenes on Instagram and use hashtags, post regulary and put your YouTube channel or your website link in your page and below every post. Instagram is a great tool to improve your work and gain a lot of followers, even fake ones! I haven't seen any brickfilms or pages related to brickfilming on Istagram and there are only MOCs, so you can grow easier because there are few opponents.
Tip 1:
Comment on others posts and praise their work. Don't forget to put a username decorated with some Emojis under your comment. This is an an old trick used by many people on every Social Media/Weblog/Website and most of the people know that you're just advertising and the praising part is void (!) but trust me 
This will lead people to your page. When you use Emojis and put your username, people will be willing to visit.
Tip 2:
Contact with MOC/LEGO pages and exchange followers. Like their posts and comment on their posts; by doing this, they will find you and you have a chance to be followed by them because most of them are LEGO fans and AFOLs. Don't forget to follow them back.
Tip 3:
Use #Hashtags. They'll help your posts reach top on the search. For example, if you put #Brickfilm under your post and then, a LEGO fan searchs for "Brickfilm", s/he has a chance to find your post and then your page and...
Last edited by Shahriar (August 27, 2016 (09:56pm))
I second that. Instagram is really effective. When I post pictures of my films and just use the the hastags Lego and Brickfilm, I get dozens of likes in a matter of seconds. Out of all of the social media websites, Facebook is the least effective one, and I only post there so that my family get to see my films. Although I have hundreds of twitter followers, I rarely get one like for each post. With Instagram, you get so many likes. Even if those people don't follow you, your Instagram page is still gonna get the most activity.
Last edited by William Osborne (August 29, 2016 (01:39am))
I like posting my progress on tumblr (my signature file has the link)
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