There is a blackhole in the lifespan of every film, a period
producers often joke that directors don't even realize exists until
they've entered it. It's called post-post-production or marketing, the
process of getting a film in front of an audience. As Director/Cinematographer Michael Tully said in a recent Twitter conversation, "making a good film is its own war and [I] hate hearing
talk about posters before the film is actually made." It's slightly tacky and extremely
daunting to think about how you're going to entice an audience to show
up when you've been working 18 hour days just to get the thing made. But
those of us who have investors to answer to don't have the luxury of
imagining a scene where our film gets accepted into Sundance and the
Weinsteins show up to carry it away on golden wings. (These days
the Weinsteins themselves probably can't convince themselves of that.)
In the past, when marketing was done well, it was completely
invisible to the viewer. Word of mouth and well-placed reviews were
enough to get people to see your film at a festival or (in the glory
days) to its theatrical exhibitions. Now, with more competition for
fewer festival slots (many fests scaling back due to loss of corporate
sponsors) and fewer distributors to buy films, the hustle of selling
films has become an increasingly public performance--as elemental to the
film as its plot synopsis.
Until
recently, one of the most popular tools film-maker teams employed was
the swag approach. Creating tchotkes for press kits or to hand out at
festivals was a fun ploy that both reminded festival goers of a film and
served as tongue-in-cheek commentary about the ridiculousness of swag
itself. My friend and mentor Brian Benson's first film that went to
Sundance (Groove, a narrative about club kids shot around the Bay Area)
handed out miniature disco balls with the film's name emblazoned them.
Later, with Cherish, a comedy about an unlikely romance between
a woman under house arrest and her parole officer, they handed out
velcro "ankle monitors". These items were funny, memorable and (God
willing) enticed a few more audience members or distribution reps to
attend his screenings.
In our
modern age, this early connection to viewers is still key, but the way
these interactions take place has changed drastically. We're rarely more
than a few feet away from our phones (and physical swag has the gauche
aura of having a Godzilla-sized carbon footprint) so general thinking
about how to build these relationships to viewers has become more
focused on building interactive websites, engaging social networks and
smartphone apps that make your message more "sticky."
Documentary has always had a problem with "sticky." Rarely do
non-fiction films have the visual signatures that
narratives can lean on. Documentaries that are tied to some kind of
social issue have a little bit more to work with. King Corn has a fun
(and mildly addictive) online "corn maze" game where the players answers
trivia questions about food politics and help a farmer collect
ladybugs.
With a film like The Adults in the Room, a documentary I
produced with Phoebe Owens last summer, the issue becomes even more
complicated. The Adults is a hybrid documentary-narrative about a
relationship our director Andy Blubaugh had at age 15 with a deeply
closeted man twice his age. Now in his 30s and teaching young teens, Andy reflects upon how this relationship served as the foundation
for his future relationships, as well as the startling contrast in how
he perceives and relates to children and his students.
The film explores boundary gray areas and how culture and the
law succeed and fail at protecting teenagers. In the film, celebrated
advice columnist Dan Savage shares that his first sexual encounter would
technically be considered statutory rape--and that he has no regrets
about those events. The bevy of guidance counselors and journalists we
talked to have differing opinions. Since one of Andy's goals with The
Adults in the Room is to engage dialogue around the gray areas of the
thorny issues raised by his experiences, it's unlikely anyone interested
in the issue of statutory rape as a social cause would be an ally to
our film.
In one (late night) producer meeting, we bandied
about the idea to build an iPhone app where people could look up age of
consent laws based on location. Or create an intuitive database that
sifted through LiveJournal postings to determine which zip codes had the
most depressive or horny teenagers. And since we've affectionately
shortened the film's title to "TAITR" for most of our discussions, I
came up with "a game.. that involves.. tater tots?" For obvious
reasons, none of these ideas left the table.
Despite our creative failures in that regard, we've been honored to be
invited to screen the film at festivals in Sarasota, Ashland, Miami, New
York and San Francisco. As we get ready for 'the festival fugue' we're
constantly asking ourselves, "are we doing enough?"
Last month we were delighted to
partner up with Kickstarter, an exciting new online venture that
crowdsources funds for creative projects in various states of
completion. In doing so, the film has been covered as part of
crowdsource funding stories in indieWIRE and NPR. With the flood of new
interest we find ourselves now asking, "Is begging for money the new
post-post-production strategy?"
Here's
hoping it works.
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