Film Festival as Trial Balloon

Editorial
We're engaged in the process known as the 'film festival circuit' and virtually every indie film travels it, or at least attempts to. I'm learning do's and don'ts as we began the process with the Tribeca FF back in April. I was much better at the do's then because Tribeca is so well organized for filmmakers, and we had Falco Ink as PR and those gals just told us where to go and what to do without telling us what to say. I'm not saying that I'm making more mistakes now without Falco to manage me, but I do see where I could have managed things better in the ensuing Provincetown FF, where we had afternoon screenings on a Friday and Sunday in a RESORT BEACHTOWN and that was it. The little schoolhouse for our first showing with one of those home movie screen-on-a-tripod was sweltering and had 12 people. Good people. Really good people. Like John Waters. But imagine the pressure of having Mr. Waters sitting right up front with a lot of empty seats around him and Tom and me sitting in the back. Somewhat humbling since we'd SOLD OUT 0VER 2000 seats at Tribeca in five days.
I'm not going to list the things I'd do differently, but it's long, and so is the list of festivals we'll be doing until at least February 2009.
Paul H-O