Sunday, November 28, 2010

Taking the Show on the Road

Well, the deed is truly done.

Last Friday, Francine G. (our fantastic, patient and positive post-production coordinator), Barbara, Claudine and I all screened - and approved - the glorious 35 mm answer print of our finished film!

In French, the answer print is called "copy zero" - meaning: the only way to go is up. Meaning: from hereon in, the film goes forth and multiplies!

And so do we - in the sense that we now hope to grow the number of people who have seen the movie by many multiples!

And so the "distribution and promotion" phase of this adventure begins....

To officially kick it off, we will be screening the answer print for our investors and distributor (Métropole) here in Montreal on Monday and then Barbara, Theresapedia and I will once again travel that well-worn trail of celluloid dreams to Toronto, cans of film in the trunk and high hopes in our hearts.

Once we've shown the finished film to both our Quebec and Toronto-based distributors (Mongrel), we'll sit down with both offices to discuss distribution and marketing strategy. Will the approaches be different in Quebec and the ROC? What festivals will the film be submitted to? When will the film be released in theatres? What can we do to draw people to those theatres? What means and media can we exploit?

If all goes according to plan, we'll have theatrical trailers to cut, posters to design, web sites to build and god help me, interviews to give!

I'll keep you posted on all of that as we go, but in the meantime, we (Barbara, Luc and I) have started a very cool side project, a natural offshoot of the film ...

We're putting together a kickass soundtrack album! A whole new frontier, but with familiar faces - very cool.

Oh, and Go Als!

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Road to Recovery

I wrote a fellow filmmaker last night, "As much as making a film is probably the most challenging thing I've ever done, the next most challenging thing is letting go of that thing and finding the sense of my life again."

In the wake of the last big push before sending this creation out into the world, I am starting to have a better understanding of why Woody Allen "chain filmmakes" - essentially sparking up his next film off the dying ember of the last with barely a breath in between.

Call it separation anxiety. Or adrenaline dependence. Or gluttony for punishment. Call it what you like, but now that I'm actually here, practically on the other side of making my first film, I find I'm in a nostalgic limbo. Not an entirely unpleasant one because there still is a whole exciting stage left to this project - the showing it part - and there is the delicious luxury of finding the next inspiration ahead of me - but I find I'm in a longing limbo nonetheless. A bit floaty, a bit foggy, a bit gushy... especially over the people who have brought me so far towards achieving my dream...

To all my talented collaborators, each one of whom I've mentioned here over the months, each one of whom has worked so tirelessly to hook into my vision and help me realize it and more, I give my heartfelt thanks.

And in keeping with my gushy, mushy mood, let me paraphrase a saccharin Jack Nicholson:

"You all make me want to be a better filmmaker."

In the meantime, I'm thinking of taking up the clarinet...

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Melancholy Mix Mania

It's Final Playback Eve here in Studio E and so it appears we are really, truly nearing the very end of our run....

"Mix"ed emotions abound.

We just placed the last of our Dolly remake tunes over the final credits (if there was a Juno/Genie combo award for best end credits, I would say we'd be a serious contender! Nelly and Geneviève have done a fantastic job taking us out of our film but making us want to stay in our seats to read all the credits of all the folks who worked so hard making this picture).

Even though the "crafty" part is coming to an end though, there's more film fun to come. Soon we'll be submitting the finished film to festivals and start planning for the Canada-wide theatrical release and who knows - maybe doing some promo junkets.

Road trip anyone?