Thoughts About Outreach & Community Engagement

By Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar, Producers, Made in L.A.

Why did you make your film? If it’s a film dealing with social issues, what are the social change goals, or actions that you hope your audience will take after watching your film? In other words, what is it that you want to do with your film, and what do you want your film to do?

When we first started making Made in L.A.  – which tells the story of three Latina immigrants fighting for their rights in Los Angeles garment sweatshops – we knew that we wanted to use the film as a tool for social change around low wage workers rights, women’s issues, and immigration reform, but we didn’t quite know how. Over the past two and a half years of intense outreach and community engagement work, we’ve learned many lessons and developed a clearer framework for how we’d encourage social issue filmmakers to approach community engagement.

To us, outreach and community engagement are about connecting audiences and communities to the particular goals you set for your film, which could range from inspiring discussions to calling for a very specific action, like contacting legislators to support a bill. Outreach is thus much more than that brief section of the proposal that many of us have written in the last minute – the way we view it, it is an integral part of making a film, from fundraising to distribution, and beyond.

You truly cannot start doing outreach early enough, and you should approach the production process as a time to build relationships that will be instrumental once the film is done. While Made in L.A. was still in production, organizers screened the 10-minute trailer at hundreds of events, including many university presentations. We also held several houseparties that helped build a community around the film, as well as fund the first four years of our work. These events can be strategic: while your project may still not be “mature” enough to be of interest to major funders, your core audience (those who are deeply invested in the content of your film) will be there for you. Not only might they help you raise funds and provide valuable feedback, but this process can also serve as the start of your building a database of supporters that will be with you along the journey of making the film (For help in planning your own houseparty, download our guide “Reach Out! Planning a Fundraising Houseparty in your Community”.)

Potential funders will also want to know what impacts your film can have, and how you plan to reach audiences, so the film does not stay on the shelf. More than ever before, your outreach & community engagement plan will be as important as the treatment for the story you want to tell!

With all this in mind, we have spent the last two years working full-time to ensure that Made in L.A. makes an impact. This process is strategic – planning the right audience engagement plan for your film – but also evolving, as you must listen and respond to your audience needs as they emerge. For example, as we saw that our audience didn’t have the resources to pay for public screenings, we devised a Screening Kit model that (along with a extensive suite of free downloadable materials) would enable groups to organize screenings very easily and even raise funds with Made in L.A. (to explore these resources visit our “Host a Screening” page).

In this process, you’ll find yourself both attending to requests and being proactive in reaching out to groups to partner around specific goals. For example, with the goal of Made in L.A. serving as tool for Immigration Reform, we recently organized a MayDay Community Screening Campaign  that yielded 100 screenings nationwide and was featured in dozens of prominent blogs and on Laura Flanders GritTV; we created an online “Immigration Headlines” widget with the Media Consortium, a network of the country’s leading independent journalism organizations, which received over 30,000 views; and we held a targeted screening for legislators and advocates on Capitol Hill and at the National Council of La Raza, co-sponsored by Amnesty International and the faith-based national organization Sojourners. Most recently, we have collaborated with the United Methodist Church so that congregations organize screenings of Made in L.A. nationwide.

These are just examples of the kind of exciting and impactful things you can do with your film – in the case of each film and each partner, the ideal partnership and strategy will differ. Needless to say, this is time-consuming work, but it can be extremely rewarding. This is the moment when you see your audience cry and laugh with your film, when you see them taking action, and it’ll be the best reminder of why you fought so hard for your film – and why you made it in the first place.

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For a detailed case study of Made in L.A. (up to February 2009), read the Center for Social Media Made in L.A. Field Report