RSF (WEST) Update #5: MySpace

I'm learning a little more about this whole "viral marketing" thing these days. If you've heard of the Internet and have been anywhere near a computer than you've more than likely heard of youtube.com or even the ever-growing and more than popular MySpace.com. Yes, you know of these things? Good, than this will make it easier on both of us.
I've spent a good portion of my days off loading video clips to these various sites, building and maintaining these sites, and clicking around through overloaded pages on a search for friends to add. The grand hope of this cyberspace misadventure is to get a few more people familiar with or, at the very least, somewhat interested in what our film DIVINE MANIPULATION OF THE THREADS is all about.
Upon loading these clips, I decided to dig in and add a little bit of personality to the site by loading a few clips from the "MAKING OF" portion of the extras on the DVD. Here you can see a scene of well played "humour" (counting on the fans of British humor to help me out here) and it's accompanying clip from the "MAKING OF" so that everyone gets a little behind the scenes laugh in addition to all of the nut jokes we lay out there for you from the movie. Click on the scenes and watch them. I'll get back to you in about five minutes.
DIVINE MANIPULATION OF THE THREADS (Clip) - The Peanut Shoppe

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Making of DMOT: Nut Jokes

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Back already? Laugh a little bit? Laugh a lot? Fantastic. So, that's an example of the things you can find out there from these websites. A little viral marketing for those Internet zombies starved for entertainment. There are plenty more of these clips available for the viewing... In addition plenty more will be added as we work our days along toward festivals and all the like. So, would you like to see more? Here's where you can find the Official DIVINE MANIPULATION OF THE THREADS - The Movie! MySpace site:
www.myspace.com/divinemanipulation

If you have a MySpace page, add us. It's an easy way for us to get in touch with all of our friendly Internet junkies out there.
On another note, I've been looking for work outside of news. I think that I may have quite a great opportunity coming up... but I'm in a "trial period" where these new employers are seeing if they like me and if I like them. It's like making friends on the playground... or high school... or really cool adults that realize that they're kind of playing for a living.
Will I miss news? Yeah, some of it. But I'm not in the clear yet.
As far as my little rant earlier about submitting to film festivals, anyone that has ever run through the gauntlet of this festival submission mess can more than likely relate. There are manic ups and downs that come with acceptance or denial. So far, the pretty girl around the corner "unnamed Film Festival" doesn't like us that way. So, I'm going to have to ask out her sister and make her jealous. It's a huge game and for some reason I felt like I needed to let people know that (in the words of David Bowie) "It ain't easy."

Check out the MySpace page and get back to us!!

-Bevan

RSF (WEST) Update #4: Submissions and Rejections.

You make a film. Now what? You want to show it to people right? Of course. We all want our magical little baby film projects to learn to walk on their own two feet and show the world that after learning to walk they can briefly brush the "running" phase and skip straight to kicking ass. Here's where we are right now:

"Oh, you had your premiere in April." "For ten days... you don't say?" "That sounds nice." "Oh, in Memphis." "Has it played anywhere else?"

No it hasn't played anywhere else... with an exception of home theater viewings hosted by friends and (with all great hopes and wishes) a few festival screening nights. That is the dilemma known as the dead period between grand opening and festival limbo. I have submitted our wonderfully fun feature comedy DIVINE MANIPULATION OF THE THREADS to a handful of festivals. Every week (or two) I'm submitting the film to at least two film festivals. As I've spouted off before, the process gets expensive. So at an average I'm diverting money from paying off my credit card to tenderly gardening this growing bulb of a film at $90 bucks/dollars/greenbacks a week. Yeah...
So far I've sent the film out to eight festivals. You do the math. Done? Yep. Expensive. Therefore, when a festival writes us a letter that basically says, "Thanks for sending your movie. For no specific reason - because if we got into specifics we would have to write a more personalized rejection letter that gave some small hint that we actually watched your film and are not just writing this because you paid the 45 dollar submission fee - Your film was not chosen for the festival program this year. We look forward to you stupidly sending in your piece of crap movies to our festival so that we can Xerox this letter next year. Chump," It gets a little disheartening. There is a twisting in my stomach that runs similar to being kicked in the balls. It's not that I hold any ill will towards any one of these festivals, especially the very popular festivals that seem to make or break a measly little film no body like myself. This little stint of depression is not so much a feeling of rejection as it is a feeling of, "Oh shit. I have just wasted a bucket full of money that I will never be able to get back."
Perhaps I should remind those that have gotten down to reading this far that our film, DIVINE MANIPULATION OF THE THREADS was made with NO-BUDGET. Yes, we don't have money just to throw around for things like publicity, a press agent, or production representative. We can't pay someone to go out and work the system to get our film into the right hands. We have to ship it off to festivals and pray to the film gods that some fair wind blows our way. It's frightening. It's a huge leap of faith... but without those leaps and without the faith in ourselves as much as we have faith in our projects, we would no longer strive to do anything better than put in 40 hours a week at a soul-less job, paying a mortgage, car note, and cable bill.
I want more than that... and I think that our film shows that. Although we've only received one letter of rejection, I'm certain there will be more. You sling a lot of chum on a wide swath hoping to attract the big catch. Lets just hope that we're going to need a bigger boat.
I'll let you know.

-B