Critical Masses

Last week our trailer suddenly spiked 1200 views in a matter of hours. A little Interweb research revealed that somehow our teaser got posted on a Romanian entertainment link site. A little more research revealed it wasn’t “somehow”: another low-budget film called “THE Fugue” is being self-released on DVD, and it seems they mistakenly linked to our trailer instead of theirs.

While it’s great to suddenly have the trailer take on a life of its own (especially since we haven’t sent it to any news sites yet), with an increased audience comes an increase of opinions. In particular, we had some very angry comments from a couple of Romanian guys. I won't reprint them here, but they are still on our YouTube page if you're looking for some Pulitzer-grade critiques.


Now, I’m not posting this to wallow in self-pity or subtly ask for encouragement. In fact, we already had a boatload of very nice response comments to these guys. I’m writing this to illustrate that once you put your movie into the world, the floodgates of opinion swing wide. Anyone with a computer, anywhere on the planet, will have a reaction to what you made. They also have the freedom to post their thoughts about it. And those thoughts may not be very nice or constructive. Often, they will be tactless, cruel, horrendously misspelled diatribes filled with anger and cynicism.

(Side thought: Why is there so much anger and cynicism on the Internet? Probably the anonymity factor. Also, it’s easier to bash something than to praise it. I’m no linguist, but I’d bet there are more words for “dislike” in the English language than “like.” Finally, it seems the haters are more likely to leave comments than fans.)

The point is, as filmmakers we have to find a way to not let the negative comments bother us. The movie is done. Any remarks about how to make it better, or how low-budget it is, or why it doesn’t stack up to "Armaggedon," are moot. All we can do is learn from our successes and failures on this project, and apply them to the next one.

Secondly, we can’t please everyone. It is impossible. In fact, highly respected films will usually garner backlash specifically because everyone likes it. We can hope that more people will like it than not, and that people will want to watch it, but that’s all. We’ve already had people refuse to see the movie simply because of the genre.

Finally, the film doesn’t exist in a vacuum. There are any number of factors – the timing of the release, the nature of the screening, the attitude of the viewers when watching it – that are going to affect how audiences receive it. Once the movie gets out there, we can’t control any of that. We can only hope people will like it and respond to it.

Being an extremely low-budget movie with no stars or a big studio marketing budget, any way “Fugue” gets out there has to be looked on as a success. Already, the trailer has been watched by more than 5000 people – far more than we know personally. Simply the fact that our little backyard movie is pissing off some guys in Romania means it’s grown beyond our little circle.

And hopefully, this is just the beginning.