One year ago today, April 30, 2018, filming began in Klamath Falls. We filmed the Bingo’s scenes at Roosters Steak & Chop House, exteriors at Silver Tip Trailer Park, and the “before” interiors of Bobby’s office. It rained, and we postponed street exteriors, but overall it was the first of twenty full & successful days of filming.
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less poetry, more tactics this week
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Flixx Festival Screening & First Ticket Sales
Our second public screening of Phoenix, Oregon was Friday night in Ft Jones hosted by Jefferson State Flixx Festival. We had a warm welcome from a sold out crowd and enjoyed bowling & drinks after the screening thanks to Denny Bar Company.
The 134 tickets sold represent our first revenues, and it feels great to start earning revenue within one year of production.
Klamath Falls screenings this Thursday
We have two screenings this Thursday in K-Falls with an after-party at The Pikey. The 7pm is sold out. The 7:30pm is 60% sold.
Per the theater, “we’re beating Avengers” in pre-sales. I think they were both encouraging and teasing me a bit, but it’s certainly nice for a moment.
Selling tickets is a bit like crowd-funding
Every screening is starting to feel like its own “Kickstarter”. Each day we push ticket sales through social media and email, slowing whittling away at the total number.
Each new post sells a few tickets, and sales follow a similar curve to a crowd-funding campaign: 10–20% in the first few days, very few sales in the middle unless we push, and the final 20–30% of sales in the last two days.
We are trying to find ways to be creative and create value for followers instead of continually posting “buy-buy-buy”…
We’re developing a template for each city which includes:
- Radio & TV spots
- News articles
- Instagram & Facebook stories
- Facebook posts with photos & links to news stories (and a link to buy tickets)
- Ticket give-aways on radio & Facebook
- Reviews
- Engaging the communities represented in the film
Q&As, screening logistics and merch
As the team does Q&As, interviews, radio & TV, we are refining and writing down our branding & messaging content, so they are repeatable across the country by anyone on the team.
Screening needs include: mic & PA system, point-of-sales devices, guest check-in, merch table, email collection strategy, and media capture (photos/videos).
We pre-sold six t-shirts at the last screening and are testing another ten t-shirts at these next screenings before ordering one hundred. Thankfully we have some time to test before the national tour.
Venue Bookings
Our theatrical booker extraordinaire (and Exec Producer) Kim is rocking the venue bookings. We couldn’t be doing this without her. We’ve posted most of our Oregon screenings on the website with 20+ between now and June.
In most cities, we will only be on one screen, and we’ve confirmed that playing at both a PAC and an art-house is a no go as they are often in direct competition in small to mid-sized cities.
The big chains are not yet won over nor do they necessarily need to be. While the art-houses are willing to do splits on one-night events with options for a run and hold-over, the big chains are so far requiring rentals. If a city is without an art-house, we may set up a few outdoor screenings in parks.
MPAA Rating
The movie was rated R for language as expected because of the f-bombs. It’s ok, but on the other hand, I’d rather have my twelve-year old watch this than many of the shows made for tweens.
With the rating comes a requirement to update all of our marketing materials ASAP to include the rating.
Movie Ad / Title Art for Theaters
After a much researching, emails, and phone calls, I finally realized how simple the process is for MovieAd theater signage.
All that is needed is to email the artwork to their in-house graphics person: [name]@moviead.com.
Send two artwork backgrounds (a 6 x 15 and a 5.125 x25) and the title graphics in a separate file. From those files, they create all sizes needed by the theaters. The theaters pay for the printing of the mylar title art and theater signage.
This checkbox turned out to be much easier than expected.
Tour Buddies
There is another film on tour in parallel with us! They are awesome.
We’ll be comparing notes and sharing tips. You can follow their adventures also: Bite Me Joyful Vampire Tour
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Here’s to a productive week for all aliens, bowlers, vampires and tour buddies!
♡ Annie
Photo credit: Megan Peterson, Flixx Festival