So the trailer for my film is out. Now what?
The response for it has been almost entirely positive. I’m certain some people must have hated it, but for the most part people have been saying nice things about it. And not just my close friends, either. Some people I haven’t talked to in ages have reached out to tell me they liked it, which makes me believe them (you’d have to be especially cruel and not very imaginative to go out of your way to make me semi-believe you liked my trailer when you didn’t just to hurt me/make fun of me). And even some strangers, friends of friends who shared the trailer here and there, seemed to like it.
Of course, I realize this is not the kind of film everyone will like. Look at my main influences like Wes Anderson and Woody Allen, their films have actually a very small audience when compared to the average film. And they’re much better than I am, of course! So you do the math. If 10% of the public actually likes those movies, what’s the percentage for mine? 5%? 2%? (I’m pulling these percentages out of my ass) That means that of all the people I manage to reach, maybe 5% will actually enjoy it. Which seems to be more or less what’s happening. So I need to find a way to get to a dramatically larger number of people, and then maybe 5% of that will be a big enough group to actually keep it going.
Much is said about using the Internet and how wonderful it is to be able to connect to your fans directly and all that. And that is wonderful, yes, but for the most part, it only works for people who are already established. One newcomer or another may be able to break through and attract more attraction, but then how is that different from doing the festival circuit? I’d argue it’s not. If anything, it’s a little harder. It’s incredibly difficult to get into a festival, but once your film is in, someone will be seeing it. Then you might take it from there and do wonderful things on the Internet, or someone there might want to distribute the film, I don’t know. Those things happen. But on the Internet, even if you manage to grab people’s attention, it won’t last. There’s always something else. It never stops.
It may seem like I am bitter by reading my last paragraph, but that is not the case at all. I’m grateful to be getting some good feedback, and I’m happy that we got nearly 500 views in three days. That’s way more people than I know, and it makes me think there might be an audience for it out there, somewhere. It’s just a matter of finding it. For now, it looks like the festival thing is the best way to go about that, as painful and slow and that may be.
Where that’ll take us remains to be seen.
