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A website that helps you test screen your film at no cost

A useful site for indie filmmakers to find audience

I am promoting a web app that helps indie filmmakers discover and engage with potential audience: filmocrats.com

For those of you who are confused about my previous post I apologize publicly here. I wanted to see how many people will be interested in the platform and I pulled a marketing trick that apparently hurt the feeling of some of the members here. That was silly and I apologize. Members hate those things.

Our product is really great actually. 1. it lets any filmmaker run test screening for free online. 2. it helps you discover and engage with test audience. It's a niche product.We just focus on test screening and test audience for now. For those of you who are thinking of submitting your film to a festival or looking for a distributor, you can certainly use our product to test screen your film with your audience.
 
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Just came across this interesting website where you can discover new audience and interact with them privately: filmocrats.com .

For those who want private feedback on their films before submitting to festivals or distributors, this site might be helpful.

Seems like it's still in private beta, but access approval is pretty quick.

William Yang is the CEO of filmocrats according to Quora,
Facebook and Twitter.

You're indietalk profile list you as William Yang. Yet you tell
us you "Just came across this interesting website" Two posts
where you use this marketing technique.

Honestly I find it insulting. I have great admiration for people
who start an on line business. This "I just came across" method
of marketing treats me (a potential customer) as if I'm not very
smart. We are all a little smarter than you think we are.

I suggest you show a little respect to filmmakers and be proud of
your business. What is it you feel you need to hide from us?
 
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So i was finishing up my film and wondering if there is a place where I can find some test audience, and I just came across this interesting website where you can host private screenings
No you didn't. You're using a very insulting marketing technique.

You didn't just come across this website. You are the CEO of this business.

Why are you not proud of that? What are you hiding?
 
I don't think you need to feel insulted. We are testing out different marketing strategies at different sites and I am asking early users to spread out words for us as well. If I will have to cheat I would would have hidden my identity completely. I apologize if you feel insulted, but I certainly welcome you to criticize our product. If you are the administrator of this site and feel I am being untruthful, you can simply deactivate my account.

I think your strategy of lying to potential customers and your target demographic is pretty sad. I will not be using your 'services'.
 
You misunderstood. We are testing to see if indietalk can give exposures to our business. I am not hiding anything, in fact my name is right there in my profile. Everybody can see it. This is simply a marketing technique to see how many people will see the post. That's all that is. The product is great and I am not hiding the fact that the product is great at all.
It's an insulting marketing technique. I did not misunderstand.
You have changed your post because you lied. You did not
"just come across" the website.

I'm a filmmaker. I don't know anything about marketing. But
I know I don't like to be treated like a fool. I want to be told
the truth. It was not true when you said, "Just came across this
interesting website where you can discover new audience and
interact with them privately". I don't think I misunderstood that
statement at all. What you said was not true. And that does not
encourage me to trust you to give honest feedback of my films.

I hope you will rethink this marketing technique.
 
It's an insulting marketing technique. I did not misunderstand.
You have changed your post because you lied. You did not
"just come across" the website.

I'm a filmmaker. I don't know anything about marketing. But
I know I don't like to be treated like a fool. I want to be told
the truth. It was not true when you said, "Just came across this
interesting website where you can discover new audience and
interact with them privately". I don't think I misunderstood that
statement at all. What you said was not true. And that does not
encourage me to trust you to give honest feedback of my films.

I hope you will rethink this marketing technique.

I understand you don't know about marketing, and I have apologized publicly for making anyone confused. My intention was simply trying to see how big the indietalk community is. I will rethink my marketing technique and make sure the message is delivered properly in the future. However I do feel that you are getting a little worked up about this, the Admin also understood I was trying a little too hard to promote my website. What about a friendly hand shake to leave this thing behind?

It is actually the first film forum I have come across and I am very excited to get to know more members here going forward. :)
 
However I do feel that you are getting a little worked up about this,

I am getting a little worked up about this. I don't like your
marketing technique. I feel it's insulting and rude. Promotion
is great. I LOVE new products and businesses. I admire people
who try new things. I dislike being lied to. Sometimes when
you try something you will get honest feedback. You got
honest feedback from me. If you do not want an honest opinion
and open discussion then tell me to back off.
 
I am getting a little worked up about this. I don't like your
marketing technique. I feel it's insulting and rude. Promotion
is great. I LOVE new products and businesses. I admire people
who try new things. I dislike being lied to. Sometimes when
you try something you will get honest feedback. You got
honest feedback from me. If you do not want an honest opinion
and open discussion then tell me to back off.

I need to stop replying to this thread so that other members don't have to suffer from seeing this thread on the top of this forum all the time.... But again, Directorik , first of all I apologize for making you feel bad. Second, I would LOVE to see feedback on filmocrats.com from you. Would it be okay if we open another thread to just talk about the product? I certainly want honest feedback on the product as well. ;)
 
I understand you don't know about marketing

I don't want you to take this the wrong way. Most film makers do understand marketing. Some more than others. Most do get it, even if it's on a surface level.

I also find it silly that marketing people (and often owners) use the line, "I came across this website/service/idea/film/trailer that you may find useful/interesting/worthwhile" etc. etc. It's like people came across an book/article that says, "The customers are dumb, word it this way and they won't know the difference". Yes, social proof is important. If done right, it comes across quite well. Done poorly and it falls down in a heap, as we witnessed.

Last but not least, film makers who look at new services often require a level of trust. Lying to your potential customers will destroy that trust, especially if you're "found out".

This (indietalk) site isn't exactly unique, though it does have a habit of ripping promoters a new one quite often. Those who do well are often up front, willing to create a dialogue and work with the users to come up with real world solutions to current problems.

I'm going to suggest to the users that we give the OP a fresh slate.

I'll give you a piece of feedback. One of your google link took me to a page that was broken. http://www.filmocrats.com/filmmakers/new - It may be worth programming in a redirection. It's second on the google page. I clicked on it as I don't like to click on beta links without knowing they're the most recent. The top google link makes it look like you need to login, which doesn't appeal to me. Going to check it out now:

Whoops. Need to enter in your personal data to check it out. Ain't happening. Window closed.

First impressions. I have no reason to trust your site. I don't like potential spam. I don't like when sites are collecting my personal information. I don't see a compelling reason that would entice me to hand over that information.

There's my feedback. I didn't even get to the point where I know what you do and what's in it for me as a film maker. I didn't get to the point to see whether this service is useful to me.

I wish you luck in your endeavors.
 
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I don't want you to take this the wrong way. Most film makers do understand marketing. Some more than others. Most do get it, even if it's on a surface level.

I also find it silly that marketing people (and often owners) use the line, "I came across this website/service/idea/film/trailer that you may find useful/interesting/worthwhile" etc. etc. It's like people came across an book/article that says, "The customers are dumb, word it this way and they won't know the difference". Yes, social proof is important. If done right, it comes across quite well. Done poorly and it falls down in a heap, as we witnessed.

Last but not least, film makers who look at new services often require a level of trust. Lying to your potential customers will destroy that trust, especially if you're "found out".

This (indietalk) site isn't exactly unique, though it does have a habit of ripping promoters a new one quite often. Those who do well are often up front, willing to create a dialogue and work with the users to come up with real world solutions to current problems.

I'm going to suggest to the users that we give the OP a fresh slate.

I'll give you a piece of feedback. One of your google link took me to a page that was broken. http://www.filmocrats.com/filmmakers/new - It may be worth programming in a redirection. It's second on the google page. I clicked on it as I don't like to click on beta links without knowing they're the most recent. The top google link makes it look like you need to login, which doesn't appeal to me. Going to check it out now:

Whoops. Need to enter in your personal data to check it out. Ain't happening. Window closed.

First impressions. I have no reason to trust your site. I don't like potential spam. I don't like when sites are collecting my personal information. I don't see a compelling reason that would entice me to hand over that information.

There's my feedback. I didn't even get to the point where I know what you do and what's in it for me as a film maker. I didn't get to the point to see whether this service is useful to me.

I wish you luck in your endeavors.

Thank you, although I certainly hope that not every single one of my remarks are being picked out..

First of all, I do need a fresh slate of this and I want the Admin of this site to do it for me. I have apologized publicly, and I have done it over and over again to pretty much everyone who replied to this post. So in that sense, I am being sincere.

We haven't done any search engine optimization work since we just released the private beta a little more than a week ago. We will work on that as soon as possible.

The information we require from those who sign up is to make sure that only filmmakers get to sign up. It's a niche product only for filmmakers who have a current project. Audience will only have access to the platform if they receive an invitation from a filmmaker. Once you fill out these information we will give you access to all the functionalities asap. Information such as your name, email are required in order for us to contact you and help you better use the product.

However, I do have received similar feedback that urge us to post a demo on the homepage, and we are working on it.

Thank you Sweetie.
 
I certainly hope that not every single one of my remarks are being picked out.

It's better than being accountable for other peoples remarks, right?

I do need a fresh slate of this and I want the Admin of this site to do it for me.

The admin ain't going to be able to help you. It's something that you'll have to work towards. Quite frankly, you made the mistake, it's your mess to clean up. That's fair, right?

The information we require from those who sign up is to make sure that only filmmakers get to sign up.

Truth be told, that isn't enough to get me to sign up. I'm a part of many film maker communities. I don't think there's been a single community I joined, handing over my information before I was able to get a taste.

Audience will only have access to the platform if they receive an invitation from a filmmaker.

I think I'm starting to get an idea of what you're trying to build. I do have to ask. What's the difference between me posting a link to a friend asking for specific feedback (which is what I currently do) and your site?
 
It's better than being accountable for other peoples remarks, right?



The admin ain't going to be able to help you. It's something that you'll have to work towards. Quite frankly, you made the mistake, it's your mess to clean up. That's fair, right?



Truth be told, that isn't enough to get me to sign up. I'm a part of many film maker communities. I don't think there's been a single community I joined, handing over my information before I was able to get a taste.



I think I'm starting to get an idea of what you're trying to build. I do have to ask. What's the difference between me posting a link to a friend asking for specific feedback (which is what I currently do) and your site?


I've mentioned that we are working on a live demo to let you get a taste of it. The private beta is for early sign-ups who we connected to see if there is anything that makes no sense in the product. When we get to the public beta stage, we will have a live demo that allows anybody to try out before they sign up.

Notice that this is a test screening product. When you do a test screening in a theatre you usually give out questionnaires to a group of audience and collect them when the film finishes. Since the audience can't fill out the questionnaire during watching, their answers are not necessarily accurate when they fill out the surveys after the film finishes. We preserve that instantaneity without compromising the watching experience. The filmmaker can pin several questions at certain point of your film and audience will see those questions during watching, and they can simply pause and write a quick note and keep watching.

So to answer your question, you can't collect real-time feedback which is far more valuable than any questionnaires. And you can't collect real-time feedback from a group of people at the same time if you are not hosting an offline test screening with the current available technology.

We give all these for free online to the filmmakers. Test screening has been for those who have the budget to do, particularly Hollywood studios. We made it available to every filmmaker. That's mainly what we've done so far.

Does it make more sense now?
 
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I think it makes sense.

Assuming I'm understanding right, how do you pause the movie to answer a questionnaire without pulling the audience out of their suspension of disbelief? The reason I ask, once you pull the audience out, I would imagine their feedback from that point on would be tainted. No?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean?
 
I think it makes sense.

Assuming I'm understanding right, how do you pause the movie to answer a questionnaire without pulling the audience out of their suspension of disbelief? The reason I ask, once you pull the audience out, I would imagine their feedback from that point on would be tainted. No?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean?

You will be surprised. We tried it out with a few student filmmakers here in Canada where they are working on some school projects. The video keeps playing when they answer the question so that they won't feel like they are being deliberately pulled out of the video just to answer some questions. Just imagine you have an in-player chat box and the video keeps playing. PM me your email address so I can invite you to just try out the functionality. It's pretty cool.
 
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