How to exxxttteeeeeeend our film's life?

Jon Reiss recently addressed an interesting topic on his blog. Jon's post was a response to an article by Brian Newman which you can see here. Basically, they are talking about rethinking the "life" of a film. Generally films put a ton of time, money, and energy into pre-release PR. The goal is to build as much buzz as possible so as to maximize the exposure of their release. After the release, that's it. The movie is out there and people buy it, watch it, download it, whatever. While Jon feels that pre-release PR is very important because this is what puts a film on the media map, he and Brian also suggest that filmmakers consider putting more into the post-release life of their films.

This rings true with us. A lot of people have given us the old line "You only get one release, that is your biggest chance for sales, don't take it lightly". The "release" is just a date. It is (in the case of Self Helpless, and lots of other micro-budget films) nothing more than the first day you can buy or download our movie. This idea of the release date as some sacred and pivotal moment seems to be a hold over from the old distributor-based distribution days. So what are some concrete actions that filmmakers can take to continue to grow their audience after they release their film?

The main idea that we have for post-release PR for Self Helpless is a demand based tour. A lot of filmmakers seem to be touring their movie in order to build an audience before their release. This didn't appeal to us. With no press, or stars, or giant youtube following, we found that it was incredibly difficult to manufacture an audience once we got away from our home zone. We still think that a screening tour would be a great way to build audiences and get a shit-ton of tail. We are going to use "demand it" to set up a post-release tour. If we can build an audience with our torrent release, then hopefully those folks will want to see Self Helpless in a theater and meet the assholes who made it.

What are some other ways that filmmakers can continue to build their audience after releasing their film? Are there things that we can do that don't cost a ton of money? Everyone would like to release an app and an online game and a graphic novel, but that just aint in the cards for us. We would love anyone's suggestions.

If you are interested in connecting with some folks who are pondering answers to similar indy distribution question, try searching #infdist on twitter.

Why isn't the movie done?

Ok, here is the complex answer to this oft-repeated question. Firstly, I acknowledge that we have been saying "in a month" for about four months. The further we get into this movie, the greater potential we discover that it has. This, in turn, leads to more work to reach that potential.

Filming took place from August to December of '08.

Rough editing all the scenes was completed around February of '09.

Final editing, animation, and music composition is finally close to being finished right now.

What remains is the main audio mixdown. Basically this is the process of looking at every single sound clip (dialogue, sound effects, background audio, songs) and seeing what needs to be done to make it sound as good as possible. Some things are too loud, too quiet, too sharp, blown out. Some need special effects to make them sound like phone calls and such. As you can guess, this is an exhausing process. First Adam and I spend between 2 and 5 hours (depending on the scene) setting all the clips in our audio editing program. Then Drick spends another 2 or 3 hours actually doing the mixing. This is a serious time investment, but it is essential to the quality of the viewing experience.

The computer goes to Drick's house in a couple days. He will probably be mixing for 2 weeks or so. Drick has vowed that, in the name of productivity, he will enforce a "no dope smoking until after mixing" policy for himself. A new leaf is being turned over.

During these 2 weeks of mixdown PK, Ski, and I will be working on: titles, a rough trailer, web promo materials, film festival stuff.

I'll hit you guys with an update on the film festival scene soon.