Just saw the near final draft of the very noticeable (1/5 page) Washington City Paper ad for the 7/12 - 18 run of Date Number One in Kensington, MD & it looks awesome! - whoever worked off of my draft of the ad at CP did a great job - thanks anonymous CP graphic designer person! I'll post the ad here on Thu or Fri.
The ad features a quote each from The Chutry Experiment, GreenCine Daily and Hollywood Is Talking. Seeing the ad gave me an idea; in order to reward & further encourage bloggers to review and or otherwise write about indie/real indie/low-budget DIY movies, I am going to give prominent position to quotes from blogs in my print ads for the movie. There will be DNO reviews coming up from print critics - if not during the coming Kensington run then from some or many of the 50 or so 1 week long (or longer) runs that I am planning for this film; to occur over the next few years - but bloggers started reviewing DNO over a year ago! As the owner & the distributor of the film, I can keep playing the movie for a long, long time since I am only doing one city at a time and my DVD distribution capabilities will not be able to get the DVD out to the whole country at once. And I certainly can't do simultaneous nationwide advertising, so DNO will roll out very slowly across the US, with various places discovering it at various times. And every time I do a week long run of the movie there will be at least 1 print ad. Eventually I expect to see quotes from bloggers/net reviewers & print reviewers in the DNO print ads - but will be pushing blogs more; see some reasons below.
Print reviews are difficult to get for low - budget, real indie movies right now, even if they play prominent festivals. In my limited experience a film has to play/has to be booked for a week or more in order for newspapers to even think about taking that movie seriously enough in order to write about it.
It will be nice when we get to the point where even a one night only screening gets print press as newspapers now do with music performances. Perhaps competition from film blogs will make newspapers adopt wider & more generous coverage of film events.
It takes a lot of effort in order to get newspapers to review or write about real indie/low budget/self-distributed movies, but blogs are a lot more accessible. But bloggers are often not paid for their work, also blog & other web press & reviews are essential for the kind of distribution that I am engaged in, so perhaps playing up blogs in print ads & other advertising is a good way for me to show my appreciation to the essential contribution that bloggers make to the current indie film scene. The additional publicity that blogs receive from my print ads may help make those blogs & their writers more successful, thus making it possible & worthwhile for them to review more DIY movies. That's what I am thinking.
The CP claims to have a circulation of about 85,000. So it is probably fair to assume that this weekend at least a few thousand DC area people may learn about the existence of The Chutry Experiment, GreenCine Daily, and Hollywood Is Talking from my ad. And that's a good thing for indie film, I think.
- Sujewa
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