Since New Year’s Day, I have worked every day because the world premiere of THE DREAMERS AND I, a film I worked on, was in mid-March. For decades, I have been partners in filmmaking and in life with Kenji. We committed ourselves to that film festival premiere date when the film was not quite ready. Making it was a relentless push.
Day by day, week after week, we struggled to “lock picture” aka stop editing.
Then the woman who managed the theater where DREAMERS would premiere told me, “The theater is large.”
“How so?”
“500+ seats.”
For one of our other films, we had recently worked hard on “outreach” and sold out a 60-seat theater. But 500?
I put my hand over my heart and told her, “My heart is pounding.”
From that moment, if I wasn’t in the editing room, I was personally emailing friends and colleagues about the premiere, then organizing a list of 1500 people to receive a cheery bulk email about the premiere.
Woven into all of this was our work with a documentary film marketing expert who is at the top of her game. Pro bono, she has been advising us about every facet of launching this film, reducing the amount of agony, helping us have more fun.
With the premiere deadline chugging down the tracks, we spent an entire weekend working remotely with her and with her compadre, a designer. One of her talents is to assure us that her feelings would not be hurt if we didn’t like one of her ideas. Looking at one draft of the poster after another, taking time away only to eat and sleep, we came up with one of the most creative posters that any of our films have ever had.
And, to my surprise, although we didn’t sell the theater out, we filled it!
Now, two weeks after the premiere, I’m re-learning how to be quiet.