Zombie Farm invades Denver!!!
It started off as a fun project with friends. Two filmmaker friends needed help on a film they were making, and I volunteered. I have assisted them on other film related projects, and we have an interesting groove when we work together, the three of us have complimentary but different skills and tastes, and working with the two of them is always a blast.
I ended up becoming the Production Supervisor on the film, and learning a lot. But, that isn’t what this post is about.
During the course of making this film I became very, very excited because I realized that we were making something very, very good. A funny film, a film that has a broad appeal. A film that works because the actors are all great and the director has an eye for what makes gore funny and can tell a good story.
The excitement grew last month when we screened the rough cut, and the response from the viewers was phenomenal!
In January, Fangoria magazine ran an article on the film, and almost immediately we had two offers to show the film at two different film festivals. So, last weekend found the Executive Producer (Vince Lara), the Writer and Director (B. Luciano Barsuglia), two of the lead actors (Jed Rowen and Bobbie Field), and I in Denver at Horrorfest for the world premier of Zombie Farm.
As many longtime PFC readers know, I do marketing and programming for the SoCal Independent Film Festival. Part of the fun of showing Zombie Farm is being on the other end of the festival experience. Getting picked up from the airport. A suite at the Marriott. A large gift basket with champagne, the best chocolates I have ever eaten (and to know me is to know my passion for chocolate), and other goodies. A personal concierge. I felt like a star, even though I am just a helping hand for the creative team…
Promoting a film is hard work. I have watched friends do it. I have watched filmmakers at the SoCal do it. But, this is the first time that I have done it. We spent Friday night working a table with our marketing materials talking to everyone who would walk by, trying to generate an audience and interest in the film. If a person walked by the table, one of us would hand out a flyer and then start talking about the film. I left early because I was sick, but the guys stayed until after midnight, working the crowd.
Then, on Saturday, there were two tables to work. One to promote the film, and the other for an autograph signing. I was amazed that people wanted my autograph, really I am just a background hand, but people are excited to meet anyone who is associated with a film, and to talk about films, as well. Friday night I met a documentary filmmaker who was making a film about sci-fi fans, and managed to get an interview with some of our team for her film, and then managed an impromptu interview with a blogger who was interested in the making of the film.
Saturday the guys did a panel on making independent films, which had a pretty decent turnout. Then, the rest of the afternoon was spent working the crowd, trying to generate a buzz about the film until the very last minutes before the film started.
Yeah, many of you are probably bored at this point of the point-by-point breakdown of the day, but I write it because it is only a glimpse of the madness and hard work it takes to promote a film in a festival/convention setting. I see this happen at festivals all the time, but this is the first time I have had to work the other end of the crowd, finding press opportunities, answering question after question, and talking about the film with numerous people, while not trying to say the same thing over and over again so what I had to say was fresh and exciting.
Then, the moment of truth, the screening. We arrived with an almost complete screener copy and were almost immediately beset with technical problems. The sound was bad. Not on our film, it was the equipment. I had flashbacks to earlier in the week when I was one of the audience members at the Valley of Flowers showing at IFFLA that went bad for the same reason.
Twice the film had to be stopped while the technicians tried to fix the issue. But, very few people walked out. By the time the sound went off the first time the audience was into the film. And, I mean INTO the film. It was a party. It was like a screening of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. The audience was yelling at the screen, interacting with the film and the characters. Then, they began yelling across the floor at each other, making jokes and comments and having fun with each other. We knew we had a funny film, but were overwhelmed by the response. I was laughing at the comments from the audience almost as much as at the movie itself. It is an awesome and awe inspiring feeling to know that a project you have worked receives this type of response from the audience, that they loved it as much as they did. Then, the Q&A, which ended up as funny as the film.
I took a walk after the screening was over, starting conversations with various people who I knew were in the theater. The feedback was great, and any negative feedback I heard was about how the film looked. No problems! The film screened in a large convention center hall on large projection screens which washed out some of the fine details, none of which occur when watching the DVD copy, and none of which would be obvious on a regular movie screen. I ran back to tell the guys, just BEAMING about the amazing feedback!
One major benefit of this screening was that even though we had great ideas to positon and to promote the film, we are now in a better position to do so because of the ideas we came up with during the course of the weekend – inspired by our audience and the other festival attendees. The benefit of showing a film at these types of events is that there is so much to learn and so many ideas to be influenced by, and we are inspired by so much of what we took away from the festival.
The next screening of Zombie Farm will be on June 9 @ 7:30 at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco. We have been invited by “Another Hole In The Head” which is the horror film festival put on by the San Francisco Independent Film Festival. We can’t wait for this opportunity, and if you are in the Bay Area, we hope to see you there! Many of the actors from the film are confirmed to attend, and of course I and the creative geniuses behind Zombie Farm will be sitting in the back of the theater, enjoying the crowd enjoying our film.
We will then have a limited theatrical release, with more details about this to follow!
I can’t finish this post without mentioning the staff and volunteers at Horrorfest who invited us to show the film and gave us so much support during the weekend, incuding the technicians who busted their asses to get the film up and running during the technical glitch. If I could remember names, I would mention all of them here by name. But, I really can never remember names, so if you are reading this, thank you all.
I also couldn’t finish this post without a link to the trailer, could I?
[youtube]YGjfVgei5CY[/youtube]
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Congratulations on the premiere of your movie. I am in love with the line “Jennifer and I were gonna give you lesbian sex tonight”… you get a lifetime authorship on PFC if you could please email me Jennifer and the actress’ phone numbers ;)
Congratulations! Does being involved in the making of a horror movie remove the fear factor when you watch another one (since you know how the effects are done and all)?
congrats t!! :D (the second exclamation mark refers to the excitement) do keep us posted on how the bay area screening turns out.. and of course, the release
Congratulations! Do you need any invitation or prior bookings to attend the San Francisco screening?? Since I am in the Bay Area, I would definitely love to be there.
@ Shripriya – You ask an interesting question that shows that I am somewhat crazy. Because, I don’t like violence. I don’t like horror. I can’t watch a character in a film throw a punch without averting my eyes. I am a big sissy. But, the types of horror/zombie films I do like tend to be the campy, unrealistic kind, so the horror is obviously fake and usually funny, so I enjoy it.
That is part of the reason I am such a fan of J-Horror, the horror part is there, without the overt blood and violence that makes up the American “horror” genre nowadays….
@ Striker – Thanks!!!
@ FenderBender – You need neither invitation or prior booking, but presales tickets went on sale yesterday (I will post the link later, do not have it on hand). I will keep you posted. My plan is to come up a day earlier to see some of the Asian films playing Friday afternoon that look awesome!!! Hope to see you there! And, Saurabh, you too, wherever you are right now….