Tribeca: PR Perspective - Final

So what goes into promoting films premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival? A lot!

As an intern at 42West, a PR firm that's representing several Tribeca movies, I was able to speak with and to observe people as they prepared for Tribeca.

Everyone I spoke to told me that media outreach is definitely one of the most important parts of promoting the films. It is crucial for the publicists to see which media outlets and which journalists are going to be covering the festival so they can see who they can reach out to with information about one of their movies.

Everyone in the office had to work on an extremely long media list that had the names of all of the journalists who would be covering Tribeca and their news organizations, everything from national newspapers to college papers to personal blogs. The task that came with this media list was to obtain all of these journalists' contact information, either an email address or a phone number, so that they could be sent information on certain films.

Once the media list was compiled, the publicists started sending out press notes and screeners to the journalists. "By sending out press notes and screeners, we are trying to get the journalists interested in covering our movies. Then, if they do decide to cover the movies, they will have enough information to write a complete story about them," said Tim Brunner, who worked on sending out this information.

The publicists continued their contact with the journalists in the days leading up to the movies' premieres. This way they knew how many people and which major news organizations were covering the films.

On the premiere days, the publicists arrived to the theater early to make sure everything was running smoothly. I got to go with some publicists to the premiere of Bart Got a Room and I witnessed how they got in touch with all of the actors and filmmakers who were attending and kept them up to date with everything that was going on. They also explained to me the importance of organization and of having a set game plan, down to knowing the amount of reserved seats that needed to be set aside. The publicists knew beforehand which major news organizations were going to be covering the event. They handed out press notes to the journalists and took note of which journalists attended.

In the days following the premieres, the publicists looked for any press that the movies had received. All of everyone's hard work paid off!