While I Have this Chance to Breathe...

Our effort to sell south loop has hit a point where we're a little less busy than usual, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to look back on a few things I might have done differently in the making of the movie.

First, I would have put together the self-distribution plan while in pre-production. I made a bunch of little mistakes that would have easily been avoided with some foresight: getting the right printer lined up, mastering the disc, designing the one-sheet, etc.

Second, I would have spent more time in pre-production working on the visual design. Don't get me wrong, I love the way the movie looks, but my DP (Kirk Johnson) and I both wish we had given ourselves more time to discover a coherent visual strategy.

Thirdly, and finally, I would have hired my entire post-production team in prep. In fact, we did try to do so but it just didn't work out that way. I would have tried harder.

In short, DO IT ALL IN PREP and the rest gets easier.

Filmmaker Sentenced to 6 Years in Prison

Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi was sentenced to six years in prison and is forbidden to make films for twenty years.

The absurdity of that sentence speaks for itself.

An Anecdote from the Premiere

Our DVDs arrived a few days before the screening and the covers looked like shit so we had to get them reprinted locally. The DVDs were shrink wrapped which meant we had to unwrap each one, take out the shitty cover and replace with it with a new one, and do this all on time for the screening.

The way things worked out, Juan (my producing partner and lead actor) and I spent two hours before the screening replacing DVD covers in the lobby of the Portage Theater while they put up their Christmas decorations.

I told Juan that's what self-distribution looks like. And it was fun in a way.

The Screening

The premiere for south loop went very well. We had a good turnout (better than my cynical expectations) and I didn't vomit during the Q&A. And we sold a few DVDs.

The highlight of the night was the two or three times I peeked inside the theater and got to see and hear the movie play on a big screen. After watching it on monitors for two years, it was nice to see it projected. Really nice.

In all seriousness, I know Q&As are important to the process and ours went well. It's important to just be as direct and honest as possible. And avoid too many tangents. Provide the information the audience wants and deserves and move on to the next question.

Anyway, you can buy the DVD at the movie's website for $15 or for $10 in person (at screenings).

"south loop" at the Portage Theater

Thursday, December 2nd at 8pm south loop will make it's Chicago premier at the Portage Theater. Admission is free. That night will also mark the launch of the sale of south loop on DVD. Independent Filmmaker Josef Steiff will moderate a Q&A with the producers after the screening. DVDs will be on sale in the lobby.

Admission is free. That means you don't have to pay to see the movie. No money.

Please come see our movie.

Reciprocation as DIY Principle

After raising $5K on Kickstarter, I have received a number of congratulations from fellow filmmakers. More importantly, those colleagues have offered to help with south loop in various ways. They understand how "small" movies have many needs and few dollars to throw at them. I appreciate their generosity and will take up some of them on their offers.

And whenever a fellow filmmaker does favors for my movie, perhaps the best thing I could do in return is reciprocate. Paying those favors back, or paying some forward, is what gets our movies made.

$5K

My plan had been to post for every 1K we passed on our way to raising $5K on Kickstarter. So much for plans.

Anyway, we raised our money! And we did it because:

1) We have amazing friends and family who contributed and/or helped spread the word, and
2) Kickstarter works.

As a fundraising tool, Kickstarter integrates your project into a community of like-minded creators, protects the contributors by releasing funds only AFTER the goal amount has been raised on deadline, and it affords an air of legitimacy to your fundraising. I can't count the number of people who told us they were skeptical about giving to an online fundraiser UNTIL they encountered Kickstarter for the first time.

I also think our success had something to do with our circumstances: we had a completed movie so we could put clips in our video as a sort of proof-of-concept, we were asking for "only" 5K, and we set a deadline of 31 days from the establishment of the fundraising so our campaigning wouldn't drone on forever.

And I think that's the key to utilizing any online tool for independent filmmaking. You can't expect any tool to work miracles be it Kickstarter, IndieGoGo or even Facebook. You have to know HOW to use the tool properly for it to do your project any good.

That and a lot of loving, generous people working on your behalf.

Thank you to all 103 of our backers on Kickstarter (to date).