Pre-Test Screening Horror (14 July, 2009)
It’s 10:22 pm P.S.T. In 24 hours it will all be over. In 24 hours I will be convinced that “everybody hates me right now”. How am I going to sleep tonight?
As a director, there’s nothing more vulnerable than screening your movie for the first time to a bunch of people, whoever they may be. It’s almost pathetic how painfully excruciating the anticipation is, and I can personally only compare this to a visit at the dentist: You know you have to but you know it’s gonna hurt.
So you invite your closest friends to rob your baby of its virginity. You lay it out in the open and you ask them to point out all of its flaws. I might as well stand naked in front of everybody and listen to friendly suggestions of how an abs class may help out my tummy issues.
The irony is that you have to do it and you do it voluntarily and you do it with a smile. Because any screening is priceless. You do not want your film to get out there without having addressed any problem you can.
So I bow my head and listen to my friend’s advice of using airline vomit bags - which apparently allow me to be social before a screening, yet also comfortably safe. Thanks, David.
Post-Test Screening
I don’t know what the hell I was so worried about. I’m such a chicken.
Test screenings are one of these things that once you do them, as much as it may hurt beforehand, it feels oh so good afterwards! Really the dentist analogy keeps on going. You’re just so glad you did it once you walk out of that practice. My half-sister is a dentist and I just went to see her. She filled three holes (ouch!) but I left with a big smile on my face and super healthy teeth…
The screening went really well. People enjoyed the film. There were issues, but we were hoping to hear about them anyway.
I got so excited that I screened the film again for my entire family in Poland. That’s a lot of cousins gathered around the TV set. They all talked over it (“Is this your garden?” “Are these people dating in real life, too?” “What did she say?” “Is she insane? She doesn’t look insane.”) but in the end they claimed that it was the scariest film they’d ever seen. Families are lovely…
I’m more excited than ever to finish our little film and show it around. It won’t hurt anymore.
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