For those of you keeping score . . . it's been a while since our last posting. Months in fact. Let me bring you up to date: sales were very good during the past Christmas season. We got our feet wet in self-distribution and it's everything that it's cracked up to be - - in other words, its a lot of work! Making the film, believe me is the easy part. When you make a film, you're using the skill set that you're the most comfortable with and you pretty much go with the flow of pre-production, production, and post production. You know how to tell a story, and make it interesting. THEN comes the distribution where you're LEARNING how to market, how to promote. And it's quite a learning experience.
Thanks to all our supporters during the first Christmas season of ROCK and a HEART PLACE.
January and February came 'round, and besides taking a short, well deserved break from marketing, we turned our attention to the business of earning a living. We were on the road planning and implementing events and marketing videos for our corporate clients. (gotta eat!). That took pretty much all of our time and energy until we volunteered to work on the Garden State Film Festival in Asbury Park.
We employed our event-planning experience to help out the film festival that awarded ROCK and a HEART PLACE the best feature documentary prize in 2006. Working with Diane Raver and the core committee, we were able to make the 6th annual GSFF a rousing success.
We also produced a short documentary that opened the festival entitled "Sense of Place". The DVD will now have a life promoting the festival as the premier arts event in the state and Asbury Park as a center of the arts in NJ. More to follow on Sense of Place in subsequent posts, and we hope to have it up on our website soon.
The festival utilized 9 different venues spread throughout Asbury Park, screening 150 films over a three day weekend. It was fantastic, and we look to be on board again next year. We met a lot of new friends and while a lot of work, we had a lot of laughs as well.
Put it on your calendars to attend next years GSFF - the first weekend in April, 2009.
We've cleared the decks now, and we're powering up the marketing machine to get ROCK and a HEART PLACE in front of audiences.
A Christmas movie in the spring and summer you say? ROCK and a HEART PLACE is first and foremost a documentary about volunteerism - it just so happens that Holiday Express concentrates its efforts during the holiday season. We've had a lot of interest in the film being shown as a primer for volunteer efforts in all sectors, so that's where we're heading.
I promise to keep this updated throughout the process.
-Michael
