Cover Art and Marketing

So I thought I’d write a blog about some of my experiences on the creative side during the distribution phase. Let me preface by saying that making the film was the easy part… navigating distribution is very much the hard part.

From a creative standpoint distribution has been very interesting because PALO ALTO, CA is a very tricky title to work with. The film is half teen comedy and half indie drama. Fortunately / unfortunately it doesn’t exactly fit into either category which means that it’s a wild card for distributors. After months of searching for the right distribution deal we finally found our home with Image Entertainment. Image is a pretty cool company because they do a lot of diverse stuff all the way from playboy TV to the Criterion Collection.

After the deal was the task of devising how to market PALO ALTO, CA. Most of the promotion that we did for the film in festivals and random screens was targeting the young indie filmgoer with a cool indie film, kind of a realistic cinema verita feel, made by kids, for kids. This is the poster we made and used:


Image was very happy with the grassroots following that we established through our little marketing efforts, but when they took over the angle changed. This is the poster that Image made with a bunch of photoshop from images that we took at a photo shoot:



Mind you, it’s the same film being sold with both of these posters although it very much doesn’t look that way… Our old poster is much more in line with the tone of the film but we’re told that the new one is going to sell more copies… aw yes the artists dilemma. Well actually this one wasn’t too much of a dilemma for me because I didn’t get much of a say. Image being the distributor handles the marketing and does what they want. As much as I disagree with their direction it’s hard for me to argue with their track record. We’ll see how it plays out. In conclusion if you like either poster please buy the film, you’ll probably like it and we’ll like you for watching it.

-Brad Leong

PALO ALTO Release!

Happy holidays!

Thanks for following the progress of 'Palo Alto.' Sorry we have been out of touch and our online updates have been limited to non-existent. We have been very busy over the last year planning for the release of the film. Going into this project we thought getting the movie made was going to be the hardest part, but it turns out distribution is an even bigger challenge.

The website will be updated over the next week with all of our plans, but in the meantime we wanted to give you a brief breakdown. 'Palo Alto, CA' (the title was changed for distribution) will be receiving worldwide distribution through Image Entertainment domestically and G-Machine, an international sales agent, for territories outside the U.S. Needless to say, we are very excited to make this announcement.

Through our partnership with Image the 'Palo Alto, CA' DVD will be hitting shelves on February 17, 2009. At first it will be primarily available for rent through Netflix and Blockbuster, but over the proceeding months major retailers will be adding the title to their shelves. For now, it can be pre-ordered on Amazon here. If you are feeling generous this holiday season, we would greatly appreciate it if you pre-ordered the DVD as it will have a meaningful impact on our sales to places like Best Buy.

In addition our home video release we will be screening the film on college campuses. Please send us a message if you would like us to visit your school. We are in talks with several schools around the country. The website will be updated with screening dates so you can attend showing in your area.  

As you know this is a small movie so any help you can provide in promotion would mean a lot to us. The possibilities are endless, but a few things that would be particularly helpful would be sending messages about the film to your friends on Facebook (and telling them to join our group), getting friends to attend screenings that are happening near you and helping us to set up showings at your college. Also, saving the film to your Netflix account and giving us positive comments on Netflix, Amazon and IMDB would go a long way.

We've just activated a Facebook Fan page for the film that will be another good resource for updates on the film.  Become a fan to make sure you don't miss any information on important events, or screenings of the film in your area.

We are very grateful for your interest in the movie. As young filmmakers, it is absolutely surreal to be announcing we have closed a distribution deal… the film's success moving forward is very much in your hands. We hope you enjoy this labor of love! 

Best wishes for the New Year,

The 'Palo Alto, CA' Team

We're Wrapped. No Fake.

This is the final shot we rolled last week. It was a nice change of pace, Brad and I just sat for two hours as the sun set. Usually we're running around, doing ten things at once, and worrying about eleven. We'll update everyone soon on our release information so don't forget about us.

We've learned a lot about filmmaking and about distribution. Once everything is finally pushed out we'll open the topic up and give what will hopefully be useful information for anyone hoping to follow a similar path.

Finishing the Movie

We spent the last weekend taking some extra B-Roll for the film… I know what you’re thinking it’s been over a year and we still aren’t done with it. Well we just want it to be as good as it can be when you guys actually do get to see it.

Friday we picked up all the gear including the camera checkout from Panavision, which took the majority of the day.



We drove to Palo Alto from LA on Saturday morning with my car jammed with gear. For such a simple shoot we didn’t think it would be necessary to get a grip truck… turns out it would have been nice but we made do without.



We mostly needed static shots of empty hallways/classroom/lockers/etc so we spent most of our time at a local high school shooting late into the night. It was pretty cool because we got to really focus on setting things up simply for pretty shots without having to deal with actors, sound, or coverage. As the director I didn’t really have to do much. Mostly I just sat around and assisted Rachel (our DP) with whatever she needed.

Saturday during the day we took some more daytime B-Roll all around Palo Alto. The Law family was kind enough to let me fly in their little Cesna plane to try for aerial shots of Palo Alto. A BIG thanks to Mr. Law and Uncle Ron!



I’ve heard that aerial photography out of a little plane doesn’t work so well because of vibration and poor angles of view. But once we got up in the air everything seemed to work perfectly. I was jammed in the backseat with the camera handheld looking out the passenger side window. We were able to get the window fully open so that it wouldn’t obscure our shots. I could lean out the window a little and tilt the camera down to get about 45 degrees and then Ron (the expert pilot) could tilt the plane a little more and we could get around 60-70 degrees which is pretty close to 90 degrees (ie looking straight down).



Rachel didn’t really want to start shooting day B-Roll till the sun got low enough so that the lighting didn’t look toppy - so we sat around until 5ish and then drove around PA until dark, picking up random pretty shots here and there.

All and all a pretty cool weekend.

We’ve got one final re-shoot to do and then, I promise we’ll be done and releasing. Things are in the works… thanks for staying interested!

-Brad

UCLA Screening

We had an advanced screening on the UCLA campus that was so full people were sitting on the floor. It went very well, and Brad, Ben, and Justin showed up during it so we all decided to do a little Q/A afterwards. I hope everyone enjoyed it, it was definitely fun for us because it was one of our better audiences.

We haven't made any 35mm prints of the film yet so we had to project digitally, which usually makes us nervous if the facility doesn't have top of the line cinema projector. UCLA of course did not, so before the screening we picked up the next best thing, a 1080P HD projector and hdmi DVD player from our favorite rental house, Circuit City. It was a damn good projector though and the picture looked better than some of the professional screening rooms we've been to.

Below is a picture of us on stage, with some shutter lag going on for some reason.

AFM Panel

SAGINDIE hosted a hosted a seminar at AFM (American Film Market) for the topic of "Do it yourself" filmmaking, and invited us to speak on the panel. The audience asked some pretty interesting questions and overall we had an itelligent discussion about how to make a low budget independent film and work with SAGINDIE. It would have been very educational if we had attended something like this right before going into production and I hope the people that came found it to be worth their time.

Vote for Cody's Film

Cody Foltz was the boom operator on PALO ALTO, and he just sent us a link to his team's entry in Apple's Insomnia Film Festival. If you want to check it out and vote, click the banner:



From what I can gather, each team had 24 hours to submit a 3 minute film that made use of certain elements (characters, dialogue, locations, etc) that Apple posted at minute one.