EXCITAUSTION

Excited + Exhausted = Excitaustion. That’s where I’m at.

Last night was fun. And late. I hit the Rooftop Films IFP Filmmaker Labs Sneak Preview — where Rooftop screened 19 of the 20 trailers from the narrative and doc labs. Rose Vincelli convinced me and my documentary cohorts that fiction filmmakers are not so different than our non-fiction breed (I asked Rose if those fiction guys speak our language — she assured me they did) — so there was some fun intermingling at Galapagos after.

Oh, and regarding the fact that only 19 of the 20 lab participant trailers were screened: who was the loser non-screener you may ask? It was me. My film War Don Don deals with an on-going war crimes trial in Sierra Leone (appeal resolved, hopefully next month) so I’m refraining from public screenings until after the trial is over. My loss.

So on little sleep, a small dose of remorse for missing out on the Rooftop screening, and a lot of adrenaline — I went into the first full day of meetings. I’m at IFW with two films (War Don Don and The Life and Mind of Mark DeFriest) — so my day was busy. Highlights include meeting with Peter Broderick of Paradigm Consulting who gave me the low down on alternative and hybrid distribution strategies; Wendy Ettinger, Judith Helfand, and Natalie Difford of Chicken & Egg Pictures (from whose mentorly nest I’d like desperately to hatch) asked me tough and thoughtful questions about my engagement strategy and pitching approach; and Charles Schuerhoff of PBS Distribution discussed strategies for foreign distribution. In sum, lots of strategy talk. And lots of folks saying show me a rough cut.

After meetings, hung out at the Project Forum cocktail thingy and debriefed with some IFP doc labbers who I hadn’t seen since April. Anna Farrel impressed me to no end by distributing small jars of homemade jam to industry folks. There’s a really lovely and lyrical scene in her film, Twelve Ways to Sunday, where one of the characters cooks jam. Filmmaker, Treva Wurmfeld, ate an entire jar of Anna’s delicious concoction (Treva claims it was small). I’m just glad Treva didn’t use a similar strategy to promote her film, A Texas Heart, a character driven documentary about two Texas surgeons racing to push the bounds of science and create the world’s first functional artificial heart. Treva’s trailer has some scenes of artificially hearted cows licking icky, gooey substances, and I’m glad she refrained from passing that stuff out this week. Jam much better.

So, in sum:
Exciting. Exhausting. Excitaustion.

Let’s see what tomorrow brings.