There are three types of publicity in play for the theatrical release of Phoenix, Oregon: 1) reviews, 2) interviews and featured articles, and 3) generic newswire press.
- Reviews — We now have about twenty confirmed critic reviews which will be coming out the week before release. These are mostly Rotten Tomato critics, and while it makes me nervous, this is the whole point of doing a theatrical release. Without theatrical, there are ususally no reviews. On Calvin Marshall and Redwood Highway, we had less than twenty reviews each. For , we had only a handful. Having reviews and pull-quotes really does help to sell the film over the long-term. We are still aiming for about 45 RT critics. Our booker/publicist has been reaching out to his contact lists of reviewers directly.
- Interviews and Features — In each market, there are opportunities for radio, print and television. Gary and the cast have started doing interviews for feature articles in each city. The biggest challenge we run into is that many of these cities are quite small with limited media outlets and writers. Some rely only on sourcing news from the AP wire or syndicated national radio shows. We have hired a writer to create a reusable article for these smaller markets.
- Newswire — At the end of last week, the publicists put our general press release on the news wire through EIN Newsdesk which distributed it to over a thousand media targets. From that, the press release was picked up and printed by 111 media outlets across the US. This was a fairly generic release, but it raises awareness.
Flyers seem to be working — I’ve had a few emails from people who have seen the posters in Grants Pass and have questions about the 300 promotion (the first 300 ticketholders in each theater can claim a free digital copy of the movie.) We are going to try to flyer the rest of the markets by the end of this week.
♡ Annie