"The Judas Kiss" US Premiere and "Sound Of Mind"
The whole festival circuit is a crazy thing. You have to choose your premieres very carefully based upon what you are trying to accomplish with your film. Obviously, if you can premiere in Cannes or Sundance, you do that, but otherwise it's a matter of placement and timing...
"The Judas Kiss" had its World Premiere in Monaco of course, and we learned many things about the circuit...namely, that films like "American Cousin" and "Lost in America" can bang around festivals for awhile before getting enough attention to be picked up. So you don't want to have lost all your steam by premiering in, say, the Acme Market Straight-to-DVD Festival if you can get into ones that are attended by the distributors who have a history of buying films like yours.
So anyway, my point is that the North American or USA premiere has to be carefully chosen, and we are still waiting to hear from Philly and Ashland. Since these occur concurrently, if we are accepted into both, I'll surely piss someone off by turning one down unless I can talk my way into having two premieres on the same day! Because if they aren't held on the same date, one would negate the importance and legitimacy of the other. I would have to designate one as North American and one as US if we are lucky enough to have the aforementioned scenario unfold.
While that goes on, we are still pursuing distribution in the European market: German, Italian and French contacts. Simultaneously, I am trying to "flip" the project over here or sell it outright; this also is a situation in which one potentiality negates the other. It's a real mosh pit, this business!
In the meantime we are putting together more investors for "Sound Of Mind" and trying to build interest with a few big names. I now have two workable budgets, and my task this week is to open up a dialogue with two more actors, stay on top of the pitch to the initial talent we approached, and convince a bona-fide movie star to accept a fifth of their normal rate to play lead in a film by a fledgeling ProdCo in an off-market city, stewarded by two guys with one major festival between them. It should be fun!
"The Judas Kiss" had its World Premiere in Monaco of course, and we learned many things about the circuit...namely, that films like "American Cousin" and "Lost in America" can bang around festivals for awhile before getting enough attention to be picked up. So you don't want to have lost all your steam by premiering in, say, the Acme Market Straight-to-DVD Festival if you can get into ones that are attended by the distributors who have a history of buying films like yours.
So anyway, my point is that the North American or USA premiere has to be carefully chosen, and we are still waiting to hear from Philly and Ashland. Since these occur concurrently, if we are accepted into both, I'll surely piss someone off by turning one down unless I can talk my way into having two premieres on the same day! Because if they aren't held on the same date, one would negate the importance and legitimacy of the other. I would have to designate one as North American and one as US if we are lucky enough to have the aforementioned scenario unfold.
While that goes on, we are still pursuing distribution in the European market: German, Italian and French contacts. Simultaneously, I am trying to "flip" the project over here or sell it outright; this also is a situation in which one potentiality negates the other. It's a real mosh pit, this business!
In the meantime we are putting together more investors for "Sound Of Mind" and trying to build interest with a few big names. I now have two workable budgets, and my task this week is to open up a dialogue with two more actors, stay on top of the pitch to the initial talent we approached, and convince a bona-fide movie star to accept a fifth of their normal rate to play lead in a film by a fledgeling ProdCo in an off-market city, stewarded by two guys with one major festival between them. It should be fun!