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THREE IN THE KEY OF SUNDANCE
A while back I posted a call for Sundance and Slamdance filmmakers to send me information about their own DIY marketing and release plans. After the Sundance selection this week, many of its filmmakers are scrambling for publicists (Ted Hope has published a helpful list of indie film publicists here at his Truly Free Film blog) but others are also building up their own marketing infrastructure.
One of those filmmakers is Mike Mohan, whose One Too Many Mornings is premiering in the new Next section. The film has an excellent blog containing posts from Mohan and his actors, including a video of them learning that the film was accepted to the festival while standing in front of the Stanley Hotel, featured in The Shining. (They say that if they got in they could celebrate and if they didn’t they could be sad and lonely and chase each other with an axe.)
And here’s Mohan from yesterday’s post about the challenges that lie ahead:
After the Sundance announcement went public a few days ago, I feel like I’ve been bodysurfing on a tidal wave. It’s awesome, terrifying, and massive. While we’re trying to actually finish the movie, we’re also trying to figure out all the things that will potentially effect how wide we can get it seen. When we sat down to tell this story, we had no idea of the journey it’d bring us on. We never thought we’d be talking to publicists about how they can help shape the press coverage. We never thought that we’d be chatting with foreign sales agents about international markets. We never thought we’d be dealing with independent consultants about the hierarchy about whether or not your film can go online before it hits cable vod.
I didn’t become a filmmaker to deal with this stuff, but I’ve come to terms with the fact that if I care about this story as much as I think I do, then it’s my responsibility to get it seen by as many people as I possibly can. Part of that is scaling this learning curve/cliff. Part of that is digging in the couch for nickels and dimes to see if we can afford some of these opportunities. And the biggest part of it is trying to think if there’s some completely new way or new path that nobody has thought of before.
While more news is promised from the One Too Many Mornings crew in the near future, for now, check out three songs associated with the film — one by composers Capybara, one by music supervisor The One AM Radio, and the other by musician Brad Breeck. In proper and forward-thinking DIY fashion, the songs are free, you have to give the film your email address and join their list to receive them, and the mechanism to do so is easy (and easily embeddable). You can find it below.
