Everyone knows you’ve got to hustle when you’re a young filmmaker – it takes networking, charisma, and sheer moxie to build a career and sell your work. For Film Production grad Paul St. Amand – you’ll know him as the writer/director of the acclaimed Parallels and Grover’s Mill and producer of Alibi, Inc. – that’s meant building an online identify for himself.

VFS champions student work all over, including online outlets like YouTube and now Joost, as well as both the traditional and non-traditional festival circuits. But Paul also uses his very refined SanchinFilms.com, along with podcasts and a host of other methods, to promote himself.

We asked Paul about his strategy, and what drives him as an emerging filmmaker.

I’m particularly interested in what you’ve done with your student work since leaving VFS. You have a really nice-looking website to feature Parallels, Grover’s Mill, and so on. How do you approach that as a filmmaker?

It was always part of my plan to create a website to promote myself after finishing at VFS. I started work on the site a few months before graduation and it went live the week we graduated. Because I had some experience – I worked as a designer and web developer before VFS -I knew I could build a quality site which would set me apart from many filmmakers. The great thing about websites is they’re cheap (mine costs me around $5 a month to maintain) but they can make a huge impression. If you have some design ability and put in the time, nobody can tell your shoestring-budget site from one costing thousands of dollars.

Luckily, I could do most of the design work myself. I also had help from my brother Jean, who runs a marketing company and builds websites all the time. Whenever I bumped up against my technical limitations, I could turn to him. He did all the more complex coding on the site.

One year out from launch, I am very happy with the site. I’ve had other filmmakers and even festivals seek me out because of it. For example, a small festival in North Carolina will be showing Parallels in September. They emailed me to request it after seeing it online. The site is like a demo reel that’s always there, accessible from anywhere. As important as a good demo reel is, I don’t bring demo DVDs with me everywhere I go. It’s also difficult to keep demo reels up-to-date. I find it much easier to hand people a business card and tell them to check out my website, where they can view all my films. It’s worked really well for that purpose.

You’ve made full use of other online distribution methods – iTunes podcasts, YouTube… I’ve seen you interact with viewers on the VFS YouTube channel too. How important are those venues to you?

For the most part, short films don’t make money. They are meant to get you noticed, so I wanted to get my films in front of as many eyes as possible.

Websites like YouTube are a great way to do that. It’s an exciting time to be a beginning filmmaker. Ten years ago, the only way to get your films seen was at festivals. Now there are all kinds of online venues that show your work to tens of thousands of people. I love the idea that my stuff is constantly screening for new people 24/7. In terms of numbers, my films are viewed far more often on external sites than they are on sanchinfilms.com.

Any advice to people following in your footsteps, with a bunch of VFS films under their belts as they take their first steps into the industry?

Be very aggressive marketing yourself. This is a lesson I’m still learning. It’s not something that comes naturally to me, but networking is everything. I would also repeat some great advice I got from several VFS instructors: always be working on something. People are always more interested in your next project than your last one.

What’s next for you?

I am working on my first feature script, which I hope to shoot here in Nova Scotia. It’s called The Phenom, about a gifted young hockey player returning to his home town after suffering a career-threatening injury. I am also hoping to shoot a short 35mm project in the fall. In the mean time, I’m back at my old gig as a graphic designer.