A church pays for a film. It premieres on a Sunday. People clap. It goes up on Facebook that afternoon, gets a few hundred views, and then it is over. Six months later somebody in a budget meeting says video did not really work for us.
The film was usually fine. What failed was everything after it, and almost nobody budgets for that part.
One good film used in five places will do more for your growth than five films posted once each. The second version costs five times as much and performs worse.
Why the premiere is the worst use of a film
A Sunday premiere shows the film to the people who already come. Those are the people who need it least. They already gave, already serve, already believe you.
The people the film could actually move are not in the room. They are on your website at 11pm deciding whether to visit, or they are the friend somebody is nervous to invite, or they are a donor deciding between you and two other organizations.
So show it Sunday. That part is good for morale. Just do not confuse it with distribution.
The five places, in order of what they return
Your homepage, above the fold
This is the highest-value spot you own and most churches waste it on a stock hero image. A stranger deciding whether to visit will spend under a minute on your site. A real person on screen telling the truth about your church answers the question they actually have, which is what kind of people go here.
The page where people give
Giving pages are usually a form and a paragraph. Putting the film there attaches a face to the decision at the exact moment someone is making it. This is the single easiest change on this list and almost nobody does it.
Your welcome or new-here page
People who click New Here have already raised their hand. They are trying to reduce the risk of walking in cold. Film lowers that risk better than any amount of copy about your values.
Email, more than once
Send it, then send it again six weeks later to the people who did not open it. Nobody notices you repeating yourself. Everyone assumes they saw everything you sent, and they are wrong.
Social, cut down and native
Not the whole film. Pull the strongest 40 seconds, put the subtitles on, and post it vertical. The full film lives on your site where you control it. Social is the trailer, not the theater.
That list is not clever. It is just the part that keeps getting skipped because it happens after the exciting phase is over and everyone has moved on to the next thing.
Plan the placement before you shoot
Where a film will live changes how it should be made. A homepage film needs to work with the sound off for the first five seconds. A giving-page film needs a clear ask. A social cut needs a moment strong enough to survive being pulled out of context.
If you decide placement afterward, you get one film that is slightly wrong everywhere. Decide it first and you get one film that is right in five places. This is the same reason we plan before we shoot rather than sorting it out in the edit.
Making the film is the part everyone enjoys. Using it is the part that grows anything.
An honest word about what film cannot do
Film makes an existing message travel further. It does not create one. If people visit once and do not come back, a better film will bring more people in to have the same experience that already was not working.
That is worth saying because it is against my own interest. I would rather tell you to fix the return problem first than sell you a film that makes it more visible.
What to do this week
Open your website on your phone. If you already have a film, count how many of the five places it is currently in. For most churches the answer is one, and it is not the homepage.
Moving it to the other four takes an afternoon and costs nothing. Do that before you commission anything new.
If you want a film built to work in all five places from the start, that is how we plan them.
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