Transcript

Approximate read time: 47 minutes

Orren: Hi Ella, thanks for making time to talk today. So your story is pretty interesting, I heard about it first through the Flinders Partners team and I met you in about mid-2012 and I was really impressed with the Wastelander Panda’s launch and the numbers you were able to achieve. So I want to kick this off with the big context of who you are and what you are currently doing.

Ella: Well, as you said I am Ella Macintyre and I do a few things. Primarily what I am up to at the moment is working on Wastelander Panda it’s a continuing project and lucky enough to receive rounds of funding and support from fans since early 2012 launch that I handled the online marketing for the project, since that would have been in the past couple of years since I first met you, we have partnered with Mad Man production company and the resources they have in their staff. It’s a bit more of a larger team than the one man operation I was running back then but yes that’s my job there and then I also kind of work in the film industry which doesn’t put a lot of money in my bank account. I also work as a developer in the city called Mighty Kingdom and I handle their marketing and user acquisition for them.

Orren: Right. Can you give a bit background on yourself and how you got started in film and perhaps start with what you studied and how you came in contact with Kirsty and the Epic Films team and then what brought you to the points of getting involved with Wastelander Panda.

Ella: Oh, yes so I studied a Bachelor of Creative Arts at Flinders University in the films. When I was in high school I had a massive passion for both films and television that is really where my interest lied and I wanted to get into that and then there I met Victoria Cocks who directs Wastelander Panda and hanging out with all my film friends I met Kirsty who graduated a few years before Vic and I started, we were sort of old friends for a while and I guess how I got on board the project was, I sort of aware that Vick and Marcus who plays the Panda in the episodes had this idea that they were kicking around called Wastelander Panda and I sort of that’s cool but I was doing my honors year at that point and I wasn’t involved with it and by the end of the year they manage to secure some funding from the academy, a couple thousand dollars for a short year and yeah so they had shot that and had it sort of to show at films and I watch it and I was sort of blown away by it. I had written it off – how were they going to do it but they did it so number one was really impressive, number two I love the vibes in it, the idea was really interesting, so then it’s sort of a strange coincidence. We were sort of hanging out at my house one night and I ask them what they were going to do with the video because they were working at it so long and it’s one of those things where we finish a project and it’s done, especially in the film industry there are a few narrow avenues to go down and encouraged to go to film festival route and if you go to the right one, press pays attention to it, it was sort of a traditional sense, kind of like the stepping stones. This is kind of like a 3 minute concept for the idea, it’s kind of clear that that wasn’t the way to go with it and I sort of thought, I was looking at it and there was just something about that Panda doing things that you don’t normally see a Panda doing in a world that kind of have a richness to it, you can look at it and kind of extrapolate like that’s a waste land and these kinds of people aren’t going to live here and it sort of gets the taste of this potential from 3 minutes of this trailer. So yeah I have I ask them if it would be alright if I should it around to some people with some blogs who I thought would be interested in it, because it’s kind of thing I could have mentioned coming across online and seeing it and thinking it was amazing, so I sort of thought we were would I mention seeing this and they were kind enough to let me do that and that night everything took off from there and I haven’t really get back in.

Orren: Sure, so one thing that jumped out to me in what you are saying that I find really interesting was that you knew a lot of the people that were involved with Wastelander Panda before your involvement. How important I guess was testing those relationships before actually getting involved in a formal working capacity with the team?

Ella: Yeah I think it is an interesting one. I was really close friends with both Kirsty and Vic and pretty much everyone else who worked on that project in that initial 3 minute video and I guess, yeah Epic Films was started as basically sort of an entity to be able to receive money for funding by Kirsty and Viv Madigan who is cinematographer on the project, because Kirsty comes from a lot of senior photography and they initially sort of set it up just to save money for their own projects that they could shoot themselves, like they wanted to shoot on 16mm film which is an opportunity they knew they really wouldn’t get unless they tried to peruse that on their own. That was kind of all set up and we really never expected this to happen and the Epic Films to become something more than that, so I think it was sort of a lot of it being, I would say on the back foot but it’s kind of taking it as it comes come and we do want to go further with this and there was some potential here. So to go back to the original question, I think what influence my choice to come onboard was, like the strength of the project I think that it’s a strong compelling idea and I love TV and I obviously want to be a part of that but I don’t think that either of them would have let me experiment the way I do to stress relief unless they were my friends and I definitely, I mean at the same time not that I could make this go viral but I don’t think I would have spent the time that I did if they weren’t my friends and see them succeed so yeah, they do see relationship definitely important. There are some companies definitely involved since then and didn’t stop helping it wasn’t a play to try and get in it was just sort of, this was something I really liked doing can give me the opportunity to keep doing it I guess.

Orren: Sure. So some of the things you just mentioned there were the richness and some of the qualities of that proof of concept video and that really jumped out to as being something that was compelling and from there moving on to showing it to some blogs or outlets that you would think that you would naturally, organically stumble up on that, It ended up doing around ten thousands views in the first twenty-four hours and then a hundred thousand within the next seventy-two hours and then today it done something like a hundred and eighty-five thousand views which is incredible, can you give a slight break down of what happened in those initial three days particularly?

Ella: Yes, so I guess what happen was I and started contacting people at about 9pm Australian time and that turned out, not really planning this, it was a coincidence…

Orren: And what time was it actually released on that same day?

Ella: I think it was about 4pm or something like that and it really just went around to our friends on Facebook, and had some dinner and do you want to go further with this? At that point I started contacting places I though was a be receptive to the idea at about 8:30-9pm which is wake up time in America for those blogs and when people are checking their email of what happened over night or what am I going to chuck on the blog today. So that kind of was really helpful because it positioned us at the top of the inbox that make sense? If you contacting someone and that’s one of the first email they see throughout the day.

Orren: What day was it do you recall the day of the week?

Ella: In fact it was really hard to say because it was the day before the 22nd or the 23rd I can’t remember.

Orren: I had it down as the 23rd but……

Ella: It must have been the 23rd because that third day was Australia day, yeah so that would have been. It was mid-week which was important it’s the same thing these outlets can’t operate, it’s moved on since bedroom blogging. They are legitimate news sources that have payrolls and 9 to 5 and all of that kind of thing. So if we release on the Saturday for instance we probably wouldn’t have got as much traction because it was just not happening on the internet that time and there is fewer people checking stuff out, work and things like that which about I have to say that was not at all intentional on our part just a coincidence.

Orren: So in retrospect that launched though the timing of that in particular was pretty important?

Ella: I hesitant to do a tribute, too much of the success to that but I do had it recognized that now is something that we have been quite helpful, yeah so that night I was sending things out and I have identified a few places that I thought would do it but I was also think that when do those places get their information from, it is online it’s all about content, the move content you have the more content you have the more views you are going to drive the more revenue you are going to get from however you are monetizing the site.

Orren: So you’re basically looking up stream, for sources up stream.

Ella: Yeah, that’s a great way of putting it, so I was thinking about that but I was also kind of acutely aware that I couldn’t just go straight to Buzzfeed and say right put us on the front page, you know what I mean? We had to have a groundswell and prove that this was something people interested in and I knew that instead of going a first couple out there and having the first couple of stories that there was going to be snow ball from there. So I can’t remember who exactly I contact here, I think I contacted io9, Neatorama and a few others, I singled out those two because I think were one of the upstream websites for a lot of people and that quite a few other people expose to it and then from there, the other thing I think is worth learning is that I contacted the websites and a representative of the film makers in the sense that I’m connected to this up front and all that kind of thing but a few other friends of ours both known to me at the time and unknown just contacted them without disclosing and saying I found this and I really like that.

Orren: And they were friends, associates and so on?

Ella: Yes, I was maybe one of the friends who was following up to make it appear more organic, they’re just doing that to basically make appear that this is something someone like so much they needed to go out of their way to tell someone about it to do some social proof on that video.

Orren: So they would have you know, sent an email say “hey I found this looks awesome, you should check it out, here’s the link.”

Ella: Yeah, my pitch was a bit more, my friends made this I really like your website it’s something I can imagine seeing on that page, I think you should check it out or share it with other people. So there were 2 tactics there, from there thinking about what were the wider sources of sharing one thing and instead of looking at aggregators. So we submitted it to the Daily What which is the Cheezburger Network. And Buzzfeed was another one and a few others again I pull out these ones because they were the successful and forget the ones that fell on their face. The whole time I was kind of addicted to looking the numbers like I woke up and it was on Neatorama and it had jumped thousand views since that day and things like that, so I kind of like really into it and not paying attention at work and I was all about this video. We released on Vimeo because we’re film makers and that’s what we see all the really great high quality high quality films and we could get back to back if you want but yeah we released on Vimeo and one the benefits of the Vimeo backend and the analytics and the information about who is watching your video is that they show you were the views are coming from in the sense of if your video is embedded on a particular website that show you how many people loaded that page and then how many people went to go and click on your video. I was looking at and I noticed most of the videos that was kind of like a two percent conversion rate or like a five percent conversion rate for some of the big websites, which is you know that’s fine when you’re talking about hundred thousand people loading it in the couple of hours and things but one of the ones I noticed about Buzzfeed was we were getting a 25% conversion rate there and that’s telling me something about Buzzfeed’s audience, so at that point we sort of had made some tractions, this was day 2, there’s quite a few people finding Epic Films Facebook page, at that point we didn’t have a Wastelander Panda page, yeah and we were able to move our support network both family and friends and the fans that had popped up since and say go comment and up vote this video on Buzzfeed we want to get their attention, the audience is really enjoying it so being able to do that and move our channel across, channel our audience across to their, that ended up being on the front page of Buzzfeed, which is one of those up stream websites, it’s a bit more circular now but it used to operate in a much in bit of a different way 2 years ago but yeah see that was one of the ones that the minute you get there you start getting syndicated on Salon.com and Huffington Post and I knew that would happened because I’ve seen that kind of, we got this from Buzzfeed sub title in a lot of their articles. I know that would have been a big guess and it was, so yeah and then at this point I think they too was the peak day and day 3 was Australia Day so I was les involved with the checking everything out constantly 24/7 we were all on our phones and checking things throughout the day and we knew it was on the downward curve as well. With viral videos there is a 3 day hump (peak day 2 and tail off from day three onwards.

Orren: So really those first two day?

Ella: Yes.

Orren: They’re the most critical?

Ella: Definitely.

Orren: Ok. And that’s where all the time should be invested and resources within that very fine…

Ella: Yeah and definitely, so just be aware of that as well, everything has a used-by date on the internet I guess and your are competing with seven hundred other Wastelander Panda’s for people’s attention plus all of the big news that is coming out of about “real films” and things like that and cats that have sad faces but you have to deal with as well it’s a constant battle for attention so I think that’s one thing to be really aware of it’s not just going to go up and up it’s rare for that to happened, you’d more likely to see a blip on the radar and that’s you sort of opportunity I guess, so yeah we aware of that and that was that day three we hit a hundred thousand views which was awesome but we knew that it was on the way down. Yeah so we knew the intention was waning and we were just going to go back into obscurity again so we kind of thought ok we really need to capitalized on this opportunity it’s really rare and it’s not something that we’re going to be out of easily replicate any time soon, so we got together and thought there is this new thing called Crowd Funding let’s try and see what this audience can give us in terms of how much are they going to back us to make some more. So yeah from there we were scrambling to I think it was even that night we were scrambling to sort of put together a champagne and work out with our budget, what we can sensible expect from this attention in terms of like people putting their in and wanted to see more I think we came up with a number like, our goal ended up being twenty thousand but we sort of worked out the between us we had a couple of thousands that we could chuck in if we didn’t meet our goal. Instead of being pessimistic we just had no idea what to expect for there and that leads into the next phase of capitalizing on that opportunity and making 3 more episodes.

Orren: Sure ok, one thing that mention as I want to rewind back to was you’re talking about submitting to sites like the Daily What can you give some practical examples of how you did that was it through an email address, was it through contact form?

Ella: Yeah it’s kind of those case by case basis some of them do have big submit buttons and they’re aggregators and they work on other people just handing them that content and then filtering it through, others you could dig a bit deeper and go there’s the person that writes about online videos I need to find their email address listed on the website somewhere or make up what I think it could be and hope for the best and others just have context and tips pages where they say or have you seen something like this so I guess the message there is like don’t be afraid to tell people about it because they wouldn’t have tip boxes if they didn’t want to know what the content their audience is interested in, I guess.

Orren: Sure, you came across the outlets like the Daily What and Neatorama, they are obviously really niche to your audience, how can people go out and fine outlets that are relevant to their audience, their product or their industry?

Ella: Yeah, once set of rules that I like to love my life by is, if somebody is interested in something, someone somewhere is talking about it on the internet. There’s so many community that do so many different things online you just need to spend more than first two pages of google looking for them, I was really fortunate in the Wastelander Panda release because I was already part of that audience so I had a strong idea of where to look for things and extrapolate further, I get one piece of advice I would say is spend time not only creating the video but learning about that audience because if you create a video that you want to really capture the imagination of a particular audience you need to know what is it they find interesting or what is going to capture that attention rather an a guess to being with. So yeah it would be following link on particular blogs or forums and really getting to know that audience working out where it is that congregate what it is they’re talking about.

Orren: Previously you mention in the key metrics that you were monitoring during the launch, you mentioned views and conversions was there anything else that was important to guide what you do next?

Ella: Yeah, I guess you may know as I say conversion as much as we’re looking at conversion I was also looking at where the video was popping up, to look pretty quickly to see who is interested in it and who’s not interested in it and being able to go right these persons isn’t interested in it, where can I find more of this type of outlet or where the audience of this website what else do they like?

Orren: You said because they weren’t responding to emails they just went publishing, is that what you mean by their interest level?

Ella: I guess yeah, there were some website where they don’t even reply to email they just throw it out because they got things to do, some of them they’ll ignore it and they won’t even post it but the ones that do post being able to say io9 seems to like it, where do io9 readers also read? That kinda thing. And then from there looking at how that audience is converting and obviously spreading resources and time to looking at things similar to those views that’s a really fun one.

Orren: Was that just through the Vimeo page?

Ella: Yeah, we were just using Vimeo which is actually in comparison with YouTube it’s probably changed a little bit since then but YouTube as fanatic analytics to really dig deep into how you are capturing the audience’s attention.

Orren: But you also used Vimeo because film makers, that was the platform of choice at the time?

Ella: Yeah, I mean on one hand the Vimeo audience because there is a really strong community they were really supportive and really big factor in the success of the views but at the same time the sheer number of people who’re just searching for things on YouTube and doing that same kind of thing, it’s also huge so I wouldn’t, I would say think about who your audience is before you choose platform over the other but yeah the YouTube is a bit more based on really in depth analytics in the way that Vimeo isn’t. Yeah so I mean those are the one that I was testing that those are the ones I was testing but that I’ve had access to more front and center.

Orren: And we you using things like Google alerts to see what was popping up in how much real-time?

Ella: Yeah, back then in real time and Google weren’t really found in the same sentence for a little while now , yeah was still interesting, had a tweet, tweet a bit of checking up and things like that, was tracking the tag on Tumblr, all that kind of thing that wasn’t mostly focused on getting it to me on both sides, because I knew that that kind of, its also knew some people were tweeting that on Twitter, at the time I didn’t, I was using Twitter so I didn’t have the ability to sort of direct an audience in the same way I did by contacting the specific gatekeepers of the content (overlapping conversation) yeah, yeah, I had no real influence on Tumblr, I had no influence on Twitter because I didn’t have this page as much so anyway its going to be starting from step 1 there and take a little time, just black post it, these days I definitely propose to do it again I’d be much, much more interested in those 2 platforms because their potential is huge but if you’re not there and entrenched, you can miss the audience and not even be able to get anything off the ground, but you can also make miss-steps and instead of throw pass, and have your content ignored as well. So it sort of a knowing, I was confident about a website, I was comfortable about goals the because I knew how they operated but yeah as a consequence I was sort of neglecting to Twitter and Tumblr and socialize much.

Orren: So with Twitter and Tumblr then was the big opportunity sees there is it about voting platform, having that following there, that has the new distribution fire hose?

Ella: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I mean it’s a bit more about self starting kind of thing where you know you type into a blog, some one else is writing all that content for you some one else, is like piggy backing on their fire hose as you say but definitely on Twitter and Tumblr, you know it’s the audiences there are huge again its one of those things where if some one is interesting in it they probably talk about it on the internet somewhere and one of those things you know just by share odds, they probably going to be doing it on Twitter so it’s another way of just finding those audiences and if you can, if you do have the time and the inclination to build your audience on Twitter and Tumblr you know on social media in general before hand, that’s great, but if you’re starting from zero don’t try and build a massive audience to begin with that’s sort of something that kind of follows on from you kind of create that content in the first place I think.

Orren: Yeah, it’s really clear in the strategy that you took that it wasn’t that initial audience and platform to start with so I was looking to, I guess alternative means to get that same end.

Ella: Yeah, I mean, and having said that I learned this back in England on Twitter, you know what I mean, I did actually sort of have a stab at them, I did realize that it was going to take a lot more time than I have had was working against a 3 day clock basically.

Orren: Yeah. So you’ve mentioned resources previously you just I guess touched on it then, once that video was live, what were those main resources that you have, was it just time and attention and how did you focus them in those couple critical days in the areas that were winning and the ones that weren’t?

Ella: Yeah, I guess sir, when I say resources I sort of time and attention definitely one of them but also the ability to raise help and use it so obviously your immediate network and our immediate networks but also looking where we kind of jumped on board and just got rid of some to see what was going to happen next and we were able to pull a day off here in the project some where I became, you know and we did that with necessary Facebook being able to communicate we’d go in awkwardly so going party tour, you know comment on these things, see how much likes I got kind of thing yeah and then again time, time was the other one because we were dealing with it so just being able to you know throw, not necessarily throw everything at the wall but instantly work out what’s working and what’s not or work out as quickly as possible, work out what’s failing, abandon it, work with what’s working.

Orren: And was that done through your personal Facebook accounts for example I know you have mention that you have large platforms and audiences on some of those networks, was it just through the teams personal accounts?

Ella: We were kind of pushing through, well pushing a message through the Epic Films Facebook page…

Orren: And that was small at the time yeah?

Ella: Oh, yeah it was tiny; it was like 300 fans or something. Yeah just through Kirsty and Viv’s personal networks and some industry people supporting Kirsty and Viv’s upstart, and that obviously grew as more people discovered us and things yeah so we had about 2000 likes by the end of the day and that was really grubby, that was clear we can see that people were, we had a link underneath the pen dangle there which when we realize that it was sort of doing something and we wanted a place to sort of caught up with store, I mean I wanted them to, I wanted their eyeballs looking in there, yeah ability to sort of, to check in the project actually because its that kind of thing where you sort of very rare that option like that comes along so you want to capitalize on that as much as possible.

Orren: Right. I got you. So it seems like the west end appear trailer appeal to multiple niche audiences and I know you mentioned that it was very focused but to my mind you know there’s things like science fiction fans and film makers and post apocalypse fans, I’m sure there are probably other interest groups as well. When I initially saw the trailer I found it very captivating that’s something you mention previously and also that really high production value. Having said all that though, I’m saying you weren’t directly involved in the creation of the trailer so how important was the quality of the film both in terms of film production, the storyline and the market research in making a film that people would get excited about?

Ella: Well, I guess, one of the things that Victoria is really interested, the director is really interested in is acting laws, like the heart of the movie, trailer, I guess it was really in her mind when she was cutting it, but yeah, I have to say that it was, it wasn’t at all created with the intention to go viral. It was something that was just you know, the interesting, that was the idea and they wanted to showcase the fact that it could work as something that people were interested in, not, this is not something that, not to cast a wide net and then grab as many people as possible it was sort of for me the niche television and satellite, satellite general audience viewing in mind you it just sort of happen it was able to reach a slightly wider one but, and I think in terms of the market research, again goes back to an understanding of the audience. Victoria is you know she is the audience for this project love those cousins, those words, really rich words of vibes inspirational I guess that’s where that all came from so yeah I mean I’m sorry I cant give you more data cause it was just one of those things where it just happens to work out well rather than being engineered I wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t things I we can learn from that and walk away from.

Orren: Ok. So then do you think the quality of the product in this case the film does that matter or does the skill swing towards distribution as being the important aspect or is there a combination of both?

Ella: One thing that was really important is that we had that quality there and I think that is important in this very specific instances, for instance our pitch was, you know this is an idea that we think other people would like and that’s something we can deliver on so that had to be of a high quality to convince people of that fact and cause it would be presented as it own product if that makes sense. So maybe to be of a very high quality if it was something you know but I think there is sort of an attachable element in being sort of rough around the edges cause that some people perceive as being a bit more authentic so like if you’re trying to produce something more down footage or people’s reaction to a product or something like that if you get to manufacture that side of it, it cant appear manufactured it has to have absolute amateur quality to cause that improposition was, this is a high quality piece of film making that we’d want you to take seriously, it means try to position it as a drama, high drama, people would, we’re aware of the fact that people would think it was a comedy, because that’s how Pandas have been portrayed, this is pretty pretend area as well so familiar with that, people would think I’m pretending and that’s not at all where we’re willing to go with it and you say that more of that absolute cute funny thinking handle that kind of thing rather than very few cause I’m really imposing scary animals so it had some sort of working hard against that so because of how would we be doing that, yes, it really needed to be of a high quality but having said that I don’t think that that’s necessary to be there, its definitely a case by case basis for sure.

Orren: So what you’re saying is really context specific (overlapping conversation) And I bet the distribution obviously is also super important if you don’t have your own distribution, finding another distribution channel that you can leverage as well.

Ella: Yeah, definitely and finding other people to broadcast your message and that’s what we were doing. We were about to best way to do that for other people probably going to be more individual influences on social media that kind of thing but it was yeah finding that distribution channel and being able to piggy back on it, its really important because its very unlikely, unless if you’re on mailing list or its not your first media or product your launching its unlikely you’re going to be able to reach that many people that you’re going to need to be able to get that background in action.

Orren: So if everything is content specific, is there simplistic or formula, step by step process for creating something and then distributing it?

Ella: Yeah, I mean there is definitely things that you know can look at or viral videos that have been really successful in the past and worked well, there’s quite a few common friends that can be found in all of them and can be included one of the set of jokes is that general thumb had to keep a herd of animal during something extraordinary that would get people’s attention but I would really like to encourage everyone to maybe think a little bit more outside the box but in time get away from the kind of entirely if an animal doing something we wouldn’t think of or you haven’t seen before then again I guess that would go to what I would think of as matching together something ordinary with the extraordinary which goes into I guess one thing that I think is really important is the need to have a story: the video story as well as the sort of the pitch to get people what they value from this thing, what I gather they have to say, in the case of Wastelander Panda it’s a crazy machete wielding anthropomorphic Panda walking around a post-apocalyptic Wasteland, even if that’s not right up my alley I’m still curious enough to see where that’s going. Where is, you know there’s could be another line there’s lots of different things that you can come up with for where it could be handled and if that one is the one that we said hey keep this, I guess this is what you’d say I think from there the other thing that I think is still important, I think more people are trying to pushing away from it at the moment but I think its still a something that I think still holds true is make it less than 3 minutes and its a bit slow to get started even with that 2 or 3 minutes cause it get some pet review if I was to truly engineer this worth going viral to get that Panda running in the first 15 seconds still have a reveal but have it, get it go right to the film he doesn’t run until about 30 seconds into the film , you see his hands and things but that could be done much more effectively cause they didn’t just drop off and you can see it in the YouTube stats, since we have put it on YouTube that’s where people fall away. It was sort and I think that was further illustrated by then to release that was sort of out of the next 3 episodes would be after that prologue they were all much longer and have a narrative and that’s big ask, the shortest one was 8 minutes and I was freaking out cause I knew that that wasn’t going to have that same viral hold on someone cause people aren’t going to stick around to be taken on a story they wont let a blot rather than a meal of a story mean on a story so there, that would be my big thing yet, the biggest thing is help make it something that you want to talk about. Think about the audience that you’re targeting, think about what they are going to be interested in and give them something organize that they would want to show other people.

Orren: Great. Excellent! I want to go a bit more granular now. What’s the best way for someone to set up either Vimeo or a YouTube page for maximum impact you know going from things like branding, keywords, thumbnails.

Ella: For sure, sure. I mean, for Wastelander Panda obviously kind of hard to find a really good front and centre for those contender only find a couple that we are having to use at least from those list of 35 minutes of contender that we had for a while yeah I guess you value the competition front and centre that should be thinking about your page and your fun now especially after videoing something else that’s the sort walk in sign I guess the joy that people are going to come through to look at that video so if you can kind of tease that piece of extraordinary video that you going to film that’s really important. One thing that we’ve discovered was that the Vimeo image, cause Vimeo was kind of random add links at the time I’m not sure if it does now, it kind of randomly assigned a variable and it wasn’t of a Panda and it wasn’t, it needed to be so that was like the first thing that I’ve changed so yeah that was something that we think about further down so yeah but having that fun now, but having that fun now will be relevant to your, like you kind of manufacture one, YouTube will let you upload your own from now so you can add to extra branding on it and things like that but if you value proposition doesn’t match what’s in your video then fall away and that’s going to affect your rankings all of that kind of stuff cause I think you should pay attention to that kind of thing so having it be the sort of the welcome mat I guess is about what you do because its real important.

Orren: Ok. So it’s kind of that snap shot or that instantaneous snap shot that then brings them into the next 3 minutes.

Ella: It’s the kind that makes people ask the question like ‘what the hell is that?’ probably makes people sort of go ‘Oh that looks like something I want to see more of,’ Yeah, I mean obviously it’s hard to give more of an example without you know, cause there’s so many things of what a video can be but something that asks a question and then invite a quick that kind of thing, think about it from that perspective.

Orren: Ok. You briefly mentioned previously and I just wrote down some note, how do you capitalize on the video success you mentioned that you expanded your existing fan by some subscribers and then you launched a crowd funding campaign. You then got you know some subsequent production dues. Can you go into some of the details of how those dues originated and then how they fit into the long term picture for what Wastelander Panda is and can be?

Ella: For sure. As I mentioned before was we were on the back foot when we were thinking about right we got this opportunity, we need to do something about it. As we say crowd funding were very new we hadn’t done it before, were kind of in the dark about what that would entail, which was a lot of work. Yeah so we basically set up a crowd funding campaign asking for $20,000.00 but in the mean time we were talking to the funding buddies in south Australia this is actually the name of the South Australian Film Corporation this example was very specific to a certain pathway like Australian film, film makers that have a network of government support its not entirely don’t write it off if you’re in America that’s the thing to me I guess its not something to be learnt from its not something that can be easily replicated unless you have this kind of network of support so we approach them actually with that and the fact that we having this dues it was our first approach and people want to see more of this. So the SA Film response was when you don’t meet your goal come and see us and we’ll top it off for you by which way we were like alright if that’s how you’re going to play it and that even felt lead to reach the goal and ended up exceeding the goal which was great. That just created more proof and it showed the people who number 1 wanted more Wastelander Panda and wanted the idea but they were willing to pay for it to enter and that was really important from a government funding perspective because that’s just very risky for us most investors are especially film investors very risky but they would approve the market with this small, and prove there was a market which was willing to pay which obviously very important in the world of film making yeah so from there we were able to write, we were able to apply for grants, we had that $25,000.00 that crowd funding help us obviously a bit of that went to fees and rewards and things so it was a fair chunk of money that we were able to get and convince the SAFC to come on board and support us there from there we made those three episodes they obviously as I said before didn’t do good they didn’t go viral but we weren’t expecting them to, it was important that that was the expectation was sort of set that which show that we were able to sort of prove on that, prove that we were able to do without the narrative episodes of these west end of the world, so yeah that proof of course they wanted an audience, the audience was willing to pay it was really important to offer government resource was their risk at this and you know from there we were able to, we released, we didn’t go viral this time but that’s fine cause we weren’t expecting it to, we didn’t engineering to sort of do that but we did kind of you know we were always playing for a larger bit of air time to borrow a phrase we always knew we wanted to make longer episodes and we want to make sort of continuous narrative arcs the three episodes that we did make was sort of bites of the wasteland to see who would be interested in which parts and where the story could go and we so we sort of had 3 snapshots that said this is what we can do basically in terms of the budget, this is what we delivered on. Nick Batzias who was the producer at MadMan Productions saw Kirsty pitch at a Screen Producers Association pitching competition and he was impressed with her and contacted us and suggested a co-production which was fantastic because the minute you should have get larger company on board with that infrastructure that much more help that we need been in the industry for awhile and this open doors that we didn’t have access to so that was really important as well but yeah I guess the main take away there is just delivering and over delivering on what you promised and managing risks in sort of, managing risks in an incredible risqué industry.

Orren: Yeah, sure. You mention Twitter and Tumblr before, about being some key lessons learned but are there any other take a ways or anything that you’d do differently next time beyond those two?

Ella: I mean I would never ever do it again without a plan, unless it was another Wastelander Panda is a lot doing or else this is going to blow up in our faces, I would want, haven’t since look at all about the planning and having a strategy and trying to build those not only having a strategy in a sense but to read in the content and where is the audience and who is the audience and etc, etc but having a plan in the sense of trying to do that same support so you have like a foundation to work from cause we were working from zero foundation in the sense that nobody knew hat Epic Films was, nobody knew what Wastelander Panda was, we went we borrowed from a tech industry thing and we didn’t have Twitter, we didn’t have Tumblr set out, we didn’t have anything, nobody knew what it was so we had two problems that we had to overcome so we had to educate and we had to motivate. We had to educate them as to what Wastelander Panda was and we had to motivate them to watch it and like it and enjoy it and share it with everyone else. If we could have taken, if we could have just spent all of our energy motivating, that would have been double advantage. The minute you try to split your message then it becomes dull you did basically. I think that also is another big lesson learned we were also trying to direct a lot of people all at once and giving them several different messages what to do. If we were sort of you know trying to build a Facebook fan, trying to build a following for the Wastelander Panda idea, all that kind of thing, if we were able to be streamlined but I guess what is important to note is that that actually takes a lot of confidence in the idea and all of the time and energy and effort involved in that preparation is very risqué cause your time is valuable. So yeah, I guess keeping that in mind but I guess at the same time if you’re not confident in your idea then why spend how you are going to convince other people to be confident in that, so yeah that sort of just one thing that I would flag is to, you know you can sort of launch 100% properly, you never going to get 100% ready but try and think about it for like 30 seconds before you do it unlike us.

Orren: Yeah you got through blind so to speak from the get going.

Ella: Yes, you know it didn’t hurt, we had a lot of luck on our side but I don’t think that we’ll ever be that lucky again the things that we have no idea of knowing and being able to look back and go wow that was actually really important.

Orren: So turning the attention to listeners now, under what circumstances should someone try to create, distribute or borrow videoing and when shouldn’t they? I guess what time of projects would get some really good mileage out of this form of distribution?

Ella: Yeah, I guess I mean that’s a really smart question, I guess one of the things I would say is if you don’t have a really strong idea, don’t launch with something a bit weak. Because that’s going to be, it’s so much effort and to spend your effort doing something that is unlikely to capture people’s attention, don’t spend time on it. I would say if you’re doing something that is or can be, I’m sorry I’ll rephrase that, don’t try and shoot one thing, do video you know I say kids and animals like don’t think you can make excuse for a kid or an animal, try and make it kind of really matter and relate to the video…

Orren: So pull those elements out that capture people’s attention from those types of content and engineer it into whatever…

Ella: Yeah, that really works for your product because at the end of the day if it’s not working for your product people are just going to remember the video, they are not going to remember your message afterwards I guess, which is really what the video is, and it’s a vehicle for your message. That being said if you’re in this sort of social good space, non profit, all that kind of stuff, if you can make it be uplifting, people will love it. Like there’s a reason that Cliff beat is so popular, it’s clearly something that that sort of culture is grabbing on to and enjoying something that people will share. I guess the other thing I would say is if your audience is not online and its you have a very neat product, like super neat and it’s don’t go the video route with that one because to really be truly viral, you need to have that large, large audience that’s going to be receptive, if you’re just aiming at academics who buy tweed and leather patch jackets in North America then you’re 45 years and older then its unlikely that you’re going to find something that is going to really hit cause there’s not enough of them to be sharing it within networks. Again if you try to make something that , sorry or if you cant even find your audience online, then don’t do it because it might reach a wide audience but if its not reaching your audience, then its not working for you either and I guess I would just say that the other thing is, yeah don’t put something together without the acknowledgement that it need a lot of time in it you know if you hit the ground running fast and you’re trying to get something out really quickly, then the time that it takes to sit down and really make a viral video well you know put the money in and you have time again, and just cropping it so that it does work for what you want, that is a lot of time so yeah just don’t underestimate that factor as well.

Orren: Ok understood. So if someone has got a strong concept what should they do after listening to this, what immediate next actions should they take to get some momentum?

Ella: For sure I think they really need to test their idea, they need to think about it and go, does it have the qualities of a viral video? Does it have something that I think can capture an audience, my audience? From there definitely find out where your audience is, that’s the biggest thing, if you don’t already know and spend time really learning your audience learning what they like, what they dislike, when they are online, when they are not online, who the influencers are in that audience as well like that’s a really big one as well obviously blogs and things and influencers for Wastelander Panda that maybe not necessarily the case for the other ones. Actually just going back I think people sort of forget what an influencer is like they’ll just blindly tweet beyond getting to ask every tweeter like that’s not just going to happen think about it in a much more sort of realistic terms you know, somebody with 500 Twitter followers might not be you know the best, you know the most ideal candidate but they might 500 followers at least have 500 followers themselves, so sort of think much more I guess don’t shoot for the stars right away you can do it from there and create some social group again with some smaller outlets that’s something that can be taken to a wider audience and I’d say also just know that audience and have that audience view the plan before you even get the video cut and edit, like shot and cut, know what you’re going to do with it so when its done you can go right, these are people we contact, this is our story, this is the story that we’re telling and these are the people we’re telling it to.

Orren: What are your thoughts on test audiences I know this mention so briefly around that what are your thoughts on providing that video in small batches to your groups of friends and things like that to see how they react and what their response?

Ella: Yeah, I think that definitely that’s something to do; it’s definitely something that is something to do, that Vic and Kirsty did and getting their response, I would say definitely do it in a private way though, don’t put it up on YouTube and everyone say yes and then you promote it because that’s sort of, you know you might get a bit of a burst and then one person might find it organically and write about it or something by the time you direct a larger website to it they are going to say its two weeks old then they’re going to be less interested in it than if it was something new. So do it you know, make that sealed and also I would say just show everyone with the context that it is a test and respond to that feedback and take that feedback on board but also make sure that they are members, they are representative of your audience because you can show it to mom and dad but if they are not likely to be interested in what you’re selling, then their opinion ultimately means nothing as much as you prefer you can let them it’s actually what they think is not important if its not for them, so make sure that your audience is of the target audience.

Orren: Great let’s wrap it up here. I’d love to talk about crowd funding and probably mobile app marketing at some other time. We probably push over an hour with this now. Where can people find more ads about you or how can people get in contact with you and how would you prefer people to communicate with you?

Ella: Yeah, I guess Twitter is an easy one. I’d be happy to answer any questions anyone has on Twitter or anything like that. They can also email me at ella at epicfilms dot com dot au but any questions you have about nature video or anything like that yeah I’d really try to help if I can in anyway but yeah I think those are the two places there.

Orren: That’s great. Thanks for your time. It’s really been good talking and hopefully we’ll chat soon.

Ella: Thanks Orren.