Unseen Abilities

Crowned Indie-Fest Winner for the 5th Annual EFF (Ellensburg Film Festival), Unseen Abilities headlined the short program on Sunday, October 4th.

Films winning awards at EFF were:

• Best Feature - World’s Greatest Dad
• Best of Washington - Back to the Garden
• Best Documentary - Sweet Crude
• Best Short - Fan Mail
• Indie-Fest Competition Winner - Unseen Abilities
• Best of Fest - Pirate for the Sea

EFF was a blast. Looking forward to future festivals!

Just saw the trailer for Official Rejection - a film that, ironically, is getting picked up at various film festivals. It certainly has appeal to hundreds of thousands of filmmakers wondering what they have to do to get into a festival (and if getting selected is even that helpful).

To date, the film has submitted itself to 48 different festivals, but got the nod in 10 of them, including wins at the Oxford Film Festival, deadCenter Film Fest, and VISIONFEST.

Though they are doing well at festivals and are selling clothing and books on their site, I think they are missing a far greater marketing opportunity. If I were working with Official Rejection, I would launch a community site to embrace the “rejected” filmmaking community and would create badges, awards (most rejected, etc) and otherviral enablers as their audience is far greater and far more valuable than then the film festivals they are attending. I recommend they embrace rejectees, rather then brag about their festival acceptance.

Check out the Official Rejection trailer yourself:

I wrote a guest post last month over at IndieGoGo, a great fund raising and awareness tool for filmmakers, on the topic of using search marketing to attract an audience for your film.

Here’s a quote from the post:

Making a film is a big enough challenge in itself, but if you are like most low-budget independent filmmakers, you’ll quickly discover that finding an audience for your film can be even more challenging.

Outside of widely known marketing methods like submitting to festivals, inviting people to special screenings, and attempting to make friends on social networks, most filmmakers fail in allowing their audience find them on their own.

If you are a filmmaker looking to build an audience, I suggest you read the rest of the article: Build Your Film’s Audience Using Search Engines

Most, if not all, film festivals have Myspace accounts, some are on Facebook, but I was most surprised to discover festivals using twitter. It came to my attention when @slamdance recently opened an account. I also see @cannes and @afifestnews. Despite the great popularity of the festivals, the three are only averaging about 20 followers a piece thus far.

The greatest value of a festival twitter account for festivals will be during the festival for last minute updates, connecting live wither others at the festival, and getting instant feedback on the movies and events.

Like most new filmmakers, my primary goal with my film was to submit it to Sundance and get accepted into the film festival. As you join the industry, you start to learn about many other film festivals that matter as well, but there something about the recognizability of Sundance. In the public eye, if you say you’ll be submitting it to film festivals, the first thing that will come out of most people’s mouths is: “You mean like Sundance?”

Last Thursday I mailed out Unseen Abilities in time for the regular Sundance deadline and you should have seen the look on the girl’s face who prepared my package - she was absolutely amazed that someone from around here was mailing something to Sundance (complete with a Hollywood, CA address). Even though I just gave her my address, she was star-struck and said “Are you from around here?”

I must admit that it felt good to mail out to Sundance, but it will feel much better to get in. Only time will tell…

Tropic Thunder, a comedy film that premiered at a red carpet event August 11th starring Ben Stiller, Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr has was protested heavily for using & abusing the term “retard.” It’s all over the news and Special Olympics chairman Timothy Shriver wrote a long article for the Huffington post calling for a ban on the “r” word.

This topic is relevant to Unseen Abilities as our title refers to one of the two main characters in the film, who is physically handicapped after a car accident. Unlike Tropic Thunder, I don’t see Unseen Abilities upsetting anyone as the beginning of the film quickly shows how likable & capable the physically challenged can be.

I do think Timothy and others have raised very good points, but I’m afraid their efforts are only giving the film lots more press, driving up box office revenues. I was happy to hear Dreamworks and the actors took the protests seriously. Hopefully Tropic Thunder doesn’t cast a dark shadow on other films that handle the topic more gracefully.