Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Hurry Up and Wait


Filmmaking moves in fits and starts. You’ll be going along at a work-like pace, then something will happen – a festival acceptance, an interested actor – and suddenly you’ll be putting in 14 hour days, eating nothing but take-out, and grinding, grinding, grinding. Then you wake up one morning, and it all stops. You’ve sent off your DVD, or your latest draft, or your agonized-over email, and there’s literally nothing to do except wait for a response.

And wait. And wait. And WAIT.

It can be a bit nerve-wracking, to have spent all this energy on something, only to send it out in to the cold, cruel world with no idea whatsoever is happening. That’s why I learned a long time ago to always have multiple projects going. You finish a stage with one, you go immediately into something else. It’s the only way to not drive yourself completely crazy.

In the “trying not to go crazy” department, we signed with a sales agent a month ago. His name is Jeff Cooper, and he was very up-front about what the market is like right now. Short version: there’s not a lot of up-front money for sales, the DVD market is shrinking by the day, and there’s more and more movies jostling for distributors’ attention.

What we do have going for us is some positive press. The reviews have all been pretty good so far, and we’re confident that once it starts to get out there, word of mouth will help out our sales. For those not following us on Facebook, we just had a great interview with Barbara published in “Rogue Cinema.” You can check it out here.

But for the most part, “Fugue” is in the waiting room. Waiting to hear back from festivals, to hear from distributors, and to see what will be required for the next hurry phase.

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