Archive for the ‘TDDUP-Festivals’ Category

I’m happy to announce that just recently, the paperwork was signed to have my short film, Till Death Do Us Part, distributed by Ouat Media.  Their sales team will be making efforts to get the film shown on television, cable, airlines, the internet, and more.

This is pretty exciting.  The more people that see it, the better!  The bad news is that I won’t know ahead of time when it will be on!  If for some reason I do get fair warning, I’ll be sure to let it be known here.

If you see it, be sure to let me know!

For quite a while now I haven’t been submitting Till Death Do Us Part to festivals.  As unfortunate as it is, I’ve been so busy that I can’t find the time to deal with the somewhat tedious process.   I won’t go so far as to say that I won’t submit it to anymore festivals ever.  It just won’t be happening very often.

What now?  I’m not exactly sure.  I always had thoughts of putting it on DVD and selling it ultra cheap, but honestly, I’m not sure if I can find the time for that.  There is a lot involved and I certainly don’t have the time to market it as needed.  Another possibility is to find a distributor.  That may not be a bad idea if I can get accepted.  And lastly, I could just put it on the net for everyone to see.  I’ll be making some decisions soon.

I learned quite a bit through this experience.  I’ll share probably the most important piece of info with all of you making your own shorts.  Make them short!  Twelve minutes is too long.  I talked with quite a few programmers from various festivals that really liked TDDUP, but it was too long to fit in their show.  If you embark on the journey of making your own film (and I can’t recommend it enough), please do yourself a favor and make it under 5 minutes.  Not only will it be less work, but you’re more likely to get it into festivals.

I had an opportunity to attend the Sonoma Film Festival yesterday.  It is always nice to watch something you worked so long and hard on in front of an audience.  Hearing the applause and comments from those in the theater is inspiring.

It has been quite a while since I’ve been to that part of California.  Even though I only live a little over an hour away, it’s hard to find time to go up there.  I’m glad I had the chance.  It was a warm and beautiful day and although I didn’t see many films, I had a wonderful time.

I’d like to thank the folks that put on the festival.  They are first class.  The volunteers were great, the filmmaker hospitality room was awesome.  They had great food and a 60 inch plasma to play Wii on!  The filmmaker gift bag was incredible.  First off, there was a bottle of wine, a squishy THX (the robot mascot guy) toy, gift card for Starbucks, some chocolate, and a free pair of tennis shoes (that retail for more than $250)!  I wasn’t expecting any of that.  Thanks so much to the festival and sponsors for being so gracious.

In the next couple of weeks I’ll be attending another local festival, this time the Santa Cruz Fest.  I can’t wait to do it all over again!

If you weren’t aware, you can click a link on the right side to see the upcoming screenings. However, if you are too busy to do that, you can just read the following list that takes us through May (Edited to include Newport Beach):

Sometimes you can go a while between festival screenings and then of course, several festivals accept all at the same time.  Don’t get me wrong, I love that.  But, it puts me in a situation where I have to decide who gets what screening copy.  Unfortunately, I only have a HDCAM and two DigiBeta’s.  The HDCAM and one of the DigiBeta’s is spoken for and then I have two festivals that need the second DigiBeta copy.  One of those festivals will have to get a MiniDV copy.

I guess that is the way it goes.  I’m grateful for being accepted!  However, I’m bummed that someone will be seeing the short on a lesser quality format.