Adobe Express powers social media at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival

Every year, people around the world turn their eyes to Utah for one of the entertainment industry’s most influential events: the Sundance Film Festival. The Sundance Institute is committed to discovering and supporting independent filmmakers. For the past 40 years, the annual Festival is key to its mission to create opportunities for bold new works to reach audiences.

Whether people are attending the Festival in person, taking in screenings and panels online from where they are or only following the buzz on social platforms, they want to hear about films, events and interviews as soon as they happen. Creative, well-timed social media can play a big role engaging audiences while keeping them informed about the hottest upcoming films and filmmakers.

At this year’s Festival, Adobe Express emerged as an indie darling as the Sundance Institute, filmmakers, and media outlets like “Variety” and “IndieWire” embraced the app to create engaging social media posts.

Posting social media on the go

The Sundance Institute manages a variety of artist programs throughout the year, including fellowships, labs, and masterclasses, and millions of dollars in grants. The prestigious Festival is the nonprofit’s largest public event showcasing independent film and fundraising to support artists throughout the year. During the Festival, Sundance Institute leverages social media to share highlights, news, and events with their millions of followers.

“Our goal is to cover a lot of ground,” says Austin Davison, senior manager of Social Media for the Sundance Institute. “Our days consist of running between panels, screenings, and events. We hardly see each other, so we need to be as autonomous as possible.”

This year, the Institute used Adobe Express to create its daily “ Tip of the Day" social media posts. “We saved a lot of time with templates since we could create a post that was polished and on-brand in minutes,” says Grady Bing, graphic designer for the Sundance Institute. The number of social media impressions increased by 86 percent, leading to a 70 percent increase in followers.

“On social media, things can become old news in just a few hours, especially with other outlets posting content. When there’s something fun and engaging, you have to post it ASAP,” says Davison. “Adobe Express helps us do that. Next year we are looking to expand the Sundance social media team’s use of Adobe Express so we can easily post all content as soon as it happens.”

The Sundance Institute Tip of the Day social post.

Helping next-gen filmmakers promote their projects

Adobe has deep ties to the Sundance Institute as Sponsor of the Festival for more than a decade, in addition to sponsoring the Sundance Ignite x Adobe Fellowship for young emerging filmmakers and the Sundance Women to Watch x Adobe Fellowship for women filmmakers. At this year’s Festival, Sundance Institute and Adobe hosted exclusive events for hundreds of aspiring filmmakers. One workshop, “Film Promotion Strategies for Emerging Filmmakers”, demonstrated how to use Adobe Express to create quality social media posts and market films.

Sundance Ignite x Adobe Fellows at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.

Among the participants was filmmaker Gabriela Ortega, a 2019 Sundance Ignite Fellow who saw her short film, “Huella”, become an official selection for the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. She has been a fellow of two more Sundance Institute programs, the Producers Lab and the Screenwriters Lab, where she has been able to work on turning the short into a feature.

With small budgets and few resources, independent filmmakers like Ortega don’t have the backing of big studios to generate buzz — which means they have to work hard to get people to watch their films.

While Ortega taught herself to edit on Adobe Premiere Pro and uses it for filmmaking, she’s excited to add Adobe Express for other parts of her work. “It’s very user-friendly and intuitive,” says Ortega. “Just like the name says, it’s Adobe Express: when you want to do something fast and share it with as many people as possible, without sacrificing quality.”

Ortega sees a lot of potential for Adobe Express beyond promoting her films. She can edit her audition tapes for her roles, shoot behind-the-scenes videos to boost engagement on social media, or recut her director’s reel in a fraction of the time.

“When you’re a director, you’re often traveling to where the opportunities are,” says Ortega. “Sometimes you’ll meet someone at an event and you need to get them your reel fast. Adobe Express is a perfect fit for how we work in this industry because there’s no waiting. You can keep pursuing opportunities and updating socials wherever you are.”

Filmmaker Gabriela Ortega participates in a panel discussion with other Sundance x Adobe Fellows.

Bringing the Sundance Film Festival to more fans

During the Festival, film and celebrity buffs follow major media outlets such as “Variety” and “IndieWire” closely to keep up with the hottest news.

Lauryn Kistner, senior director of Brand Marketing at “Variety”, oversaw social media for the publication during this year’s Festival. The team used Adobe Express to highlight panels and parties produced in collaboration with Adobe. That content alone generated over 1.14 million impressions and 2,700 total engagements on Instagram. For Kistner, the templates didn’t just make social media posting faster and easier — they enhanced storytelling.

“When making panel posts, I’d start with a title slide followed by quotes with dynamic animations and branded elements to tie everything together,” says Kistner. “The slides flowed together naturally and encouraged me to think about posts as a story instead of disconnected images.”

Festival social media coverage from “Variety”.

For “IndieWire”, an online magazine launched in 1996 to celebrate independent filmmaking, the Festival is one of its biggest events of the year. Senior social media manager Veronica Flores used Adobe Express to uplevel Instagram posts. “When you’re starting from a great template, you get inspired to make it better and more aligned with the brand,” says Flores. “This year we used Adobe Express to create about 20% of our content, and that’s likely to increase next year.”

Adobe Express enabled Kistner and Flores to easily create and customize content on the go for their events at the Festival in partnership with Adobe.

Festival social media coverage from “IndieWire”.

“Social teams usually struggle to collaborate during events like Sundance because they’re always sprinting to the next workshop or panel,” says Flores. “With Adobe Express, you can check what colleagues are doing by looking at their projects online and make suggestions before anything is posted.”

Social media drove millions of impressions during the Sundance Film Festival, attracting huge buzz for the latest upcoming films, filmmakers, and actors. Whether you’re a social media manager or independent filmmaker, Adobe Express gives you the speed and quality you need to drum up likes and get eyes on your posts.

Learn more about using Adobe Express to level up social media here.