It was an early spring morning in 2011. Robin and I boarded a plane for Los Angeles to screen our film Cooper, which would soon be called Angel Dog, at the International Family Film Festival. The fact that we were an Official Selection at this particular festival (IFFF) was no act of chance but a very targeted festival entry for us. Remember all that planning and research we did earlier before we started shooting? Well, another thing we researched was which film festivals we needed to win if we wanted to get distribution. There's that word again. The holy grail of the independent movie producer right? More on answering that particular question later. Our best chances of getting this movie distributed was to win this festival. Even if we could screen there, we would have a pretty good shot at selling this thing.
While trying to sell our film Leftovers, Robin and I did a really good job mastering the art of the "pitch package". A pitch package is a book or sometimes even a 'kit' that presents your movie to someone. It explains what your movie is, what it will look like, what it will feel like, who made it and why they should consider watching it. By the time we got to this movie Cooper, we were really good at making these things. Because my day job at the time was designing things for NewTek, I was no stranger to this kind of work. The Cooper pitch package was amazing. It was a small black box with a matte finish round emblem border collie logo on the top lid. When set on the desk and opened, it contained a beautifully crafted photo booklet with full bleed still frames from the film and descriptions of the story, wonderful bios of our key cast and crew. Also contained in the box was an engraved dog tag keychain which had our film's name and url. Also inside, was a double pack Blu-Ray and DVD screener of the film. Robin and I spent a lot of time particularly exploring good "Out of Box Experience" designs. How does a customer feel about opening this package? What are their first thoughts seeing the package, once they start, does it invite them to explore more? How do the placement of materials inside the package "question" and "answer" their experience and flow? How long does it take them to explore the entire thing? When we first heard the news that we were an Official Selection at IFFF, we researched and found out which distributors would be there and sent them all this box. "See you at the festival", we said.
So. Meanwhile, in Hollywood. Cooper was to be screened at Raleigh Studios in 3 days. Robin and I woke up early and drove our rental car all over LA posting 11 x 17 Cooper movie posters at every single vet clinic, pet shop and pet grooming establishment in the city. At the bottom of the poster, there was a spot to list the time and location of the screening. We really wanted to fill the seats because we knew this was going to be a big shot for us. We were going to make this night the one we had been working for. The night we had been dreaming about.
SIDE BAR------
Something interesting Robin and I did during pre-production on this film was that we shot 'pre-visualization' footage for the entire movie. Yeah, we tend to take planning and pre-production to the max… some say too far and over the top but we like it that way. We took a DSLR out to all of the locations, used our kids and relatives as stand ins and shot the movie before we actually shot the movie. This helped a lot because it let us spend all the time we needed to work out exactly what we wanted. This way, when we got on set for real, we could almost hit the ground running. When you are making a movie on a tight budget, it's nice to have everything figured out before you get your paid actors and crew there. I pulled a few of these 'pre-vis' shots, matched them up with the real film footage and play them side-by-side. You can see how closely stuffed matched. At the bottom of this blog post, look for the link and check it out. It's a decent way to plan if you have access to your locations early like we did.
END SIDE BAR------
The night came and we both were super nervous. I still get nervous even today watching my own movie with people. In fact, I always sit in the wings of the theater! When the movie finished, we had distributors lined up to talk to us. Robin and I couldn't believe this was actually happening. We gave out our business cards and set up 3 meetings to talk about Cooper that very next day! Wow!
That night Robin and I laid in our quaint little hotel room in Hollywood. It was raining that night and I could hear the rain drops thumping the window and racing down the glass. I slinked out of bed and spread the curtains back. Looked out at the city of angels then turned back around to see all of the lights painting our otherwise dark room with color and light. With this, Robin sat up, indian style, and we just stared at each other. "Are we finally on our way?" she said. That was the question wasn't it. What does it all mean? Are we just going to instantly be rich? Can I quit my day job and buy a really cool house in the Texas hill country? We both didn't know the answer to that question. It was seriously all new territory we were traversing, we were completely and utterly lost in a game we had never played. Didn't sleep well that night… can't imagine why.
Click to watch the Pre-Vis VS Real Footage stuff
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