Izzy ChanDeveloping a Communications Strategy for Your Documentary
After investing so much of your heart and soul into making your film, how do you ensure your hard work is seen and makes the impact you envision?
Many filmmakers feel ambivalent about promoting the film. After all, their passion and core expertise is in filmmaking, not promotions! Some filmmakers love talking about their movies, but their efforts are scattershot and not as effective as they can be.
In this masterclass, award-winning filmmaker and seasoned advertising strategist Izzy Chan shares a simple step-by-step framework to create a communications strategy for your film. She leverages the strategic know-how she's honed working with top brands like Apple, Nike, and Virgin America, simplifying it into practical guidelines that filmmakers can apply to their projects. As an independent filmmaker, Izzy understands the need to keep the strategy actionable with limited resources. More importantly, she gets that the communications plan has to be authentic and creatively inspiring for filmmakers to follow through and implement it.
Izzy Chan is a storyteller deeply curious about cultural and social trends poised to change life as we know it. Her award-winning documentary feature on the rise of breadwinner moms and at-home dads, "The Big Flip—Stories from the Modern Home Front" (2016), premiered at the Austin Film Festival and Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival and was featured in the 2017-2019 American Film Showcase. As a film envoy, Izzy has traveled to Egypt, China, and Ukraine to conduct workshops on storytelling and strategy.
After graduating magna cum laude with a double degree in Cinematic Arts and French from the University of Southern California, Izzy built a successful advertising career as a researcher and strategist. She leveraged her insights into human behavior, social trends, and popular culture in her work on brands such as Apple, Google, Nike, Honda, Audi, Virgin America, and Visa. Brought up in Hong Kong and Singapore, Izzy's creative process integrates her cross-cultural background, experience across diverse industries, and her passion for filmmaking and storytelling as tools for instigating understanding, action, and change.
Izzy is currently working on Matriarch, a documentary series set in four matriarchal communities: the Minangkabau in Indonesia, the Mosuo in China, the Tuaregs in Africa, and the Khasi in India.