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