Official Rejection Film
September 10 2009
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:
Comment: ( 3 so far )
3 Responses to “Official Rejection Film”
There selling it (promoting it) to the wrong crowd. I agree with the writer of the post. They should go on places like twitter and start asking who’s been rejected by film festivals. They’d have a HUGE niche market. Most filmmakers don’t get into fests.
John W. Bosley
September 10th, 2009
Good points John. They actually just joined Twitter (http://twitter.com/O_Rejection), but so far the account is self-promotional. By not embracing the rejected community, they are missing out on a great opportunity. Hopefully they discover this post.
Dustin
September 12th, 2009
Hey guys-
My name is Andrea and I’m the publicist for OFFICIAL REJECTION and I’m so glad I stumbled upon this post!
When we first started promoting OFFICIAL REJECTION, we actually DID start that discussion of commiserating about festival rejections and asked people to send us their rejection letters and share their anecdotes with us. And yes, we just joined twitter and have been trying to get into the habit of tweeting.
I’m pleased to announce that by the end of the year, OFFICIAL REJECTION will have played 22 festivals in the US and Canada. That being said, all of us having full-time jobs in addition to promoting “OR.” Paul Osborne, the film’s writer/director, is newly married and has two young children, so he gets very little sleep as it is. That being said, keeping up with all the community sites becomes increasingly more difficult to say the least.
But I agree wholeheartedly with what all of you have said about really tapping into that niche. Other than the obvious Twitters and Face Books of the world is there another filmmaker community site already in existence that might be more of a “one-stop shopping solution” where we might start posts like that?
Until after the DVD release in November, I just don’t foresee any of us having the time or energy to foster such a site ourselves.
We do have some exciting news to share: OFFICIAL REJECTION will be released on DVD on November 17th on Amazon.com.
Thanks so much for discussing our little film and I look forward to hearing any of your ideas.
Andrea Sumpter
September 24th, 2009
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