As described in my last post, our theatrical world premiere opening night at The Colonial Theatre in Keene, NH was a big success.

We sold out the nearly 1000-seat house and turned hundreds away. We were fortunate to have our congressman Paul Hodes join us along with the state’s first lady Susan Lynch, Keene’s mayor and many other dignitaries. The local daily paper carried the event as their lead front page story. Our spotlights beamed through the sky and our red carpet was rolled out in style for actors David Strathairn, Ian Somerhalder, and Elisabeth Waterston. It was an incredible night for all of us.

That was on a Friday. On Sunday The Colonial called in our box office numbers to the various national reporting services as they do for all of their films. On Monday, to our pleasant surprise, Variety and the other trade papers listed The Sensation of Sight as #4 in the nation for per-screen average box office gross. That was fun to see. At least for our opening weekend, our little indie film was holding its own with the big guys.

After our week’s run in Keene, NH we opened for a week in Peterborough at the Community Theatre, the local movie house. This was the town where we shot the film and the first weekend sold out. As a result, the theatre immediately added a second week to the run. It was great to see so many people from town turn out for the film—folks we had gotten to know during the shoot. They loved seeing so many local landmarks in the film, like the bridge over the waterfall, the granite benches in the park, and the Peterborough Diner where we shot two key scenes.

Our next stop was Concord, New Hampshire’s capital city. We were fortunate to land a week’s booking at Concord’s new art house complex called Red River Theatres. They treated us as a major release and put our film in one of their two large theatres. Playing opposite us was No Country For Old Men, which had just started its national release on the way to winning the Oscar for Best Picture a few months later. One of my favorite pictures is the one below of the Red River Theatres marquee featuring No Country and Sensation the week they were both playing (thanks, Matt Newton of the NH Film and Television Office, for the photo!). And I’m happy to report that Sensation topped No County at the box office on opening weekend in Concord—it’s important to savor the little victories when they present themselves!

As we progressed through our month-long run through these New Hampshire towns, we started getting calls from art house bookers in Boston and as far away as Madison, Wisconsin inquiring about the film’s availability. They were following the trades’ box office listings and could see that the film was attracting audiences. Several favorable reviews from state papers were also available online, which also may have caught their eye.

Then we got a call from Scott Mansfield, head of Monterey Media, a respected small distributor based in Los Angeles. They too had heard of our New Hampshire release and were interested in talking with us. We immediately did our research and found that Monterey Media had been around for many years and distributed serious dramas like ours, including the recent David Strathairn starrer Steel Toes, as well as a large number of quality family dramas. They were also the biggest outside supplier of programming for PBS. We talked with a number of producers and directors who had had their films distributed by Monterey Media and heard positive things about their honesty and the respectable way they treated filmmakers.

So Scott Mansfield and I began talking. He loved our film and understood it and wanted to help us get the film into national release. They offered us a decent advance and a pledge to give us an initial limited theatrical release. They sent us a draft of a contract and we had our lawyers look it over. Everything seemed legit. We started negotiations and although it took a while to finalize a deal, a deal was struck and we finally had a legit distributor on board for our film.

In hindsight, I’m convinced that we wouldn’t have attracted an established and respected distributor if we hadn’t jumped off and first done our DIY release. It was a lot of work, but it sort of gave us an edge in terms of the large number of indie films constantly trying to enter the marketplace. And at the time of our release, partnering with a distributor was by far the best shot we had to get our film out there and into the public consciousness in any substantial way.

(Next: Our national release…)

From the beginning of this project we were fairly certain that one way or another we going to have a special premiere for the film here in New Hampshire.

After all, the film was entirely shot in Peterborough—the same town Thornton Wilder used as his model for his wonderful play “Our Town”—and we raised roughly 90% of our financing in the state. In a very real sense, the production was a grand partnership with many NH people and organizations and we knew we wanted somehow to celebrate that fact when the film was finished.

With no indie distributors knocking on our door offering us a decent deal, we finally decided to take matters into our own hands and open the film theatrically ourselves in our own back yard. We set our sights on our hometown of Keene, NH, a small but beautiful city with a wonderfully restored 930-seat old movie house—The Colonial Theatre—a well-known art film house and performing arts center. For many years, week after week, The Colonial had been screening the better films that didn’t show up at multi-plexes—the kind of films that we personally always sought out. It seemed the perfect fit for our movie’s theatrical launch.

So we sat down with The Colonial’s executive director Alec Doyle and his staff and talked about the possibility of booking the theatre for a week’s run, including a gala opening night event for the actual premiere. Alec was behind the idea from the start and very supportive, wanting to give a locally made feature film a fighting chance and as big a splash as possible. However, he also warned us that our expectations shouldn’t balloon out of sight, saying that from his experience with booking films and other events at the theatre we should think in terms of a huge opening night success being 400 to 500 people—half the capacity of the house. That sounded good to us as well.

At the same time we were talking to The Colonial, we also were able to book following weeks at a small movie theatre in Peterborough, where we shot the film, and in Concord, our state capital, at a fabulous new art house complex called Red River Theatres that had just opened. Both of these venues were also very supportive and, as had been the case with The Colonial in Keene, both offered us a fifty-fifty split of the box office. Needless to say, we were excited to have booked a month-long run for the film right in our home state.

Immediately we set to work getting the word out about The Colonial premiere, knowing we needed to start our run with as big a bang as we could muster. We ordered more posters, both large and small, wrote press releases for the local and state papers, worked with the theatre on ads, sent out invitations to a long list of special guests including all of our investors, the Governor, the Mayor, Senators and Congressmen from our district, and invited everyone on our extensive email list.

We also planned special VIP before and after parties in downtown Keene. The Monadnock Fine Art Gallery, next to the theatre, and Trikeenan Tileworks, just up the block, offered to hold pre and post parties, and local downtown merchants generously pitched in with offers of hors-doeuvres, wine, coffee and desserts. Very quickly, it seemed, the entire town got behind us and wanted to help make the whole event succeed.

Other offers started pouring in, such as free limo service for VIPs, huge discounts on hotel rooms, and just about anything we needed to make the evening a success. We got a great price on a new forty-foot long red carpet that The Colonial helped us pay for, and we got a good deal on a set of four huge spotlights swivel-mounted on the back of a truck to blast streams of light up into the sky—so bright that people told us later they could see the beams from miles away. It became a true community project and the momentum built quickly—especially when we were able to report that actors David Strathairn, Ian Somerhalder, and Elisabeth Waterston (and her father Sam) had agreed to be a part of the festivities.

As the day of the premiere approached, I started checking with The Colonial Theatre box office to see how ticket sales were going. With a week to go, we had sold about a hundred tickets. Then as the days ticked off up to the premiere, the reservations steadily increased—passing the 500 mark with two days to go. We were thrilled—the buzz was happening. And then the day before the opening we sold out the entire 930-seat house. In fact, on the night of the event extra chairs were added in the balcony and over 300 people were turned away and had to catch the film later in the week.

Our premiere in Keene was, for all of us, one of the most memorable nights of the entire saga with the film—an opportunity to truly celebrate having gotten this far with so many of the people who had helped to make the project a reality.

(Next: Our DIY release continues…)

As our festival run got underway with San Sebastian, we were already thinking in terms of finding a distributor.

I have to say at the outset of sharing this part of our journey that the timing for us with this film in terms of what was beginning to happen in the industry in general for indie filmmakers was not the most advantageous.

A retrenchment among distributors of indie films was at that time already quietly underway—a retrenchment that surfaced big time about a year ago with the demise of so many specialty wings of the major studios and many other smaller distributors and that hit full force at the beginning of this buying season as witnessed by the almost total lack of any indie film sales at the Toronto Film Festival this past fall—one of the worst years in recent memory.

Actually, what we’re seeing is a seismic shift within the industry as a whole, especially in terms of distribution for independent films. The onslaught of the digital age is finally hitting the industry and, in the process, effectively turning the business of filmmaking upside down.

Of course, these clouds building on the horizon went unnoticed by us and just about everyone else back when we were starting to actively probe the distribution waters. With the help of our producer’s rep we sent out queries and screeners to all the obvious art house distributors with no results. So we kept working the festival circuit and were pleased to get into many highly respected fests with rave reviews from programmers and continued strong notices in the press. Our approach was that we just had to be patient and persevere—that a favorable deal would materialize eventually—a deal that would give us a limited domestic theatrical release (something we’d always envisioned) as well as all the other platform releases.

But as the months wore on and we knocked off festival after festival it started to become clear to us that maybe a traditional distribution deal wasn’t in the cards. We did get a couple of offers that we turned down because they didn’t really make any financial sense for us—meaning that there was no advance offered and little or no promise of a marketing budget to promote the film in even a very limited theatrical release. We did get an offer for a DVD release with a small minimum guarantee that in hindsight might have brought in some revenue for us, but at the time, for better or worse, we were still of the mindset that a theatrical release was how we wanted to start the rollout of the film. In fact, that was the way (up until the past year or so) almost all good indie films were expected to hit the marketplace.

So on we went from festival to festival hoping that with the mounting number of strong reviews that something in the form of a reasonable distribution deal would still materialize. We felt then and still feel that we have a serious obligation to our investors to at least repay their investment, and we were and still are determined to make that happen. One way or another we knew we had to find a way into the marketplace that would give us a fighting chance to recoup.

Finally, about a year into our festival run we came to the conclusion that maybe it wasn’t going to happen as we envisioned. So we made the decision to take advantage of the good will and strong press we had garnered in our home state of New Hampshire and make a concerted effort to release the film theatrically ourselves at a number of theatres and see what happened. As it turned out, this was one of the best decisions we could have made.

(Next: Our DIY world theatrical premiere…)

After our American premiere at the Starz Denver Film Festival we continued to tour the festival circuit for well over another year. The entire list of seventeen festivals can be found on this website’s film festival page.

It was quite an adventuresome time for us as we always had at least two more festivals looming as another one was wrapping up.

Probably the most fun experience for us was a trip that Aaron and I made with Ian Somerhalder and his father Robert to the Vilnius International Film Festival in Lithuania. And it serves as an excellent example of how being selected at one festival can lead you to another.

The director of the Vilnius festival is Edvinus Puksta, who travels every year to all the major fests looking for interesting films for his own festival. He saw the film at San Sebastian and loved it. Shortly after San Sebastian he got in touch with us and managed to arrange financing for the four of us to travel to Vilnius a few months later for the festival and to stay at a lovely downtown hotel.

The Vilnius fest was one of the best run festival experiences we encountered. The city itself is an unspoiled old world Eastern European beauty and the venues for the fest were all first rate. And we were treated royally by Edvinus and his team from start to finish.

Best of all, our film was extremely well received by overflow crowds. In fact, The Sensation of Sight was voted the 4th most liked film out of the 60 films hand picked by Edvinas and his programmers from around the world. Extra screenings had to be added beyond those officially scheduled and the enthusiastic feedback we received while we were there was gratifying to say the least.

Aaron and me with Edvinas in Lithuania

We think that one of the reasons the film was so popular in this Eastern European country is because Lithuanians still had a lingering memory of the repressive communist regime that ruled there less than twenty years before and were able to relate to the themes of loss and rebirth that the film deals with. The audiences there are thinking people who love to engage with cinema with both their hearts and their minds and it seems our film was a good fit for this crowd.

We also had the chance to tour various sites in Vilnius, the most memorable being the KGB prison museum—the actual former prison right in town where political prisoners were held sometimes for years without formal charges against them and who were tortured and often never seen again. It was a sobering experience for four Americans who breezed into town and were being feted at a film festival. It was also a reminder of what these people suffered for so long under communist rule and helped to explain why we sensed this combination of seriousness and spirited enthusiasm from the Lithuanian people we met.

Another memorable part of this trip was just hanging out with Aaron, Ian and his dad and enjoying this unique opportunity to dive into a different and vibrant culture. Everyone was so friendly and welcoming that we seemed to be constantly moving from one event or party to the next with very little time for sleep—especially traveling in the company of the Somerhalders who, both father and son, love a good time and never seem to run out of energy. After a couple of days I realized sleep would have to wait for the long flight home. We all left with many fond memories indeed.

Robert and Ian Somerhalder in Lithuania

I want to go on record as saying that the Vilnius International Film Festival is a gem. The film selection, the staff, the city, the savvy audiences—all combine to make this one very special and unique.

So the rest of our festival tour around the world continued over the next year—from Shanghai, China to Durban, South Africa to Krakow, Poland to Tallin, Estonia and to many other American cities like Seattle, Boston, Dallas, San Jose, Santa Fe, Ashland, Stony Brook, and Mendocino. A colorful ride and somewhat circuitous route to be sure.

And all through this extended tour we were also actively looking for a distributor and sending out screener after screener. And that’s a whole other story…

(Next: Moving toward distribution…)

When you’re just starting out with your first feature film, playing the festival game can be a bit daunting.

The dilemma, of course, is to know—especially at the front end of a film’s festival run—which invites to accept. Everyone told us to be careful and strategize how we wanted to play this. The premiere only happens once and until that card is played, it has great potential value. Once it’s played, the top festivals are pretty much off the table, as “premiere-itis” among the major festivals is very much alive and kicking as it has been for many years.

So from the beginning the question was: given our timeline with Sensation, do we ignore respectable early festivals and hold out for possibly premiering at a later top festival and reap the potential subsequent greater publicity and more important press? Or do we begin submitting to several strong upcoming festivals and accept invites as they come in—first to last—and simply be grateful for those that loved our work and wanted to celebrate the film?

For better or worse, in the end we decided that to solve the dilemma we would carefully chose (as best we could) from the schedule of upcoming worldwide upper tier festivals and then submit to those, accept any invites that presented themselves, and not worry about “what ifs” or “should haves.” Looking back, to be honest I’m still of a mixed mind as to whether we took the right approach.

No doubt this decision prevented a lot of stress and possible heartache. Holding out to premiere at a bigger festival scheduled months down the road without knowing if an invite would materialize was and still is a risky business. You could find yourself looking at an empty slate after many months of nervous waiting, after other great festivals that actually could have wanted the film have already come and gone. And suddenly you find that your finished film has been gathering dust for a long time and perhaps even picking up the rep of having been already shopped around (I’ve heard that programmers at the major fests share notes) and it isn’t considered “new” anymore; other fresh films have now appeared on the scene and are taking the limelight.

On the other hand, holding out for one of the few biggies (if you think you have a genuine shot at one) and then laying out a festival and subsequent distribution strategy based on that outcome also makes sense, because the added potential push a major festival can give to a film is obviously enormous and the risk could be worth it. We felt some of that festival power with San Sebastian, but it’s much greater at others like Sundance, Toronto, Berlin, and Cannes. Nevertheless, when it came to our solution to this conundrum, we simply went with what seemed the wisest and most clear-headed at the time and proceeded accordingly.

So on the heels of San Sebastian, we were a part of the Sao Paulo International Film Festival in Brazil—one of the premiere South American festivals. Our subtitled print of the film was shipped directly from San Sebastian to Sao Paulo and Aaron quickly found himself on another long flight to the lower hemisphere. The festival paid for his travel and put him up for several days and he and our film were feted royally. The festival director Leon Cakoff was especially fond of Sensation, making the trip an especially good experience for our first time director. You can check out Cakoff’s comments on the film on our Synopsis – Reviews page on this site.

As we were hopping from Spain to Brazil with the film, The Starz Denver Film Festival, set for a few weeks later, also wanted the film for the US premiere. This very established fest in the mile high city was well known for programming strong indie films and celebrating independent film in general and we were thrilled to be invited. In fact, so was almost our entire principal cast who joined us on the red carpet for our homeland premiere along with all of our producers and some key crew members. It was the closest we have come to a reunion of the film’s production family. Needless to say, we had a blast in Denver.

Aaron with the actors in Denver (L-R): David Strathairn, Ian Somerhalder, Joe Mazzello, Elisabeth Waterston, Scott Wilson

Ron Wyman, Elisabeth Waterston, Ian Somerhalder, Heavenly Wilson, Scott Wilson in Denver

David Strathairn and me in Denver

(Next: In the end, are film festivals worth it…?)

Once our opening night was over all of us breathed a sigh of relief and set about having a good time at the festival in one of most beautiful cities in Europe. The festival itself helped out in numerous ways by supplying us with great hotel rooms with ocean views, passes to everything, and numerous dinners and parties in various tucked-away places in the oldest section of town. We enjoyed seeing films from around the world and caught glimpses of film actors and directors there such as Jeanne Moreau, Max von Sydow, Matt Dillon, Tom DiCillo and Steve Buscemi.  One night we wandered back from a screening of “The Children of Men,” amazed at the beauty of San Sebastian and the fact of where we were and what was happening to us, so far from home….

In the old section of San Sebastian

Probably the most enjoyable part of our trip—other than experiencing standing-room-only audiences respond positively to our film in five different venues throughout our stay—was simply walking through the ancient streets, poking into shops, and grabbing tappas to eat that seemed to be available at every corner. Needless to say, we never went hungry, even though Aaron–who didn’t like tappas–was always trying to lure us into McDonalds.

One of the fun experiences throughout our stay was arriving at one of the many parties and almost always having a crowd of Ian Somerhalder fans waiting at the door to get his autograph. Ian, who played Boone in the first season of  ”Lost,” was at that time a hot commodity in Europe because the series had just started over there the season before the festival. As a result, we were witness to what a celebrity has to put up with at every turn. Ian was always the patient gentleman, gracious and appreciative of the constant attention. We enjoyed giving him a hard time about it, but it was also fun to watch him interact with such ease with his army of fans.

Ian and his fans

As filmmakers, we had passes to see any and every film we wanted to and we tried to take advantage of the privilege. And as participants in the festival, we also had easy access to other filmmakers and had the opportunity to make a lot of new friends. We had many great discussions about our particular movies and the state of independent filmmaking around the world. We concluded that indie filmmakers in Europe have a somewhat easier (but still not easy) time getting their films financed than those of us on this side of the pond. Generally speaking, movie making in Europe is actually considered an art form and therefore government grants are often available. We grew quietly envious, knowing the degree to which we as truly indie filmmakers in America have to fight to get anything of value produced.

The huge sales office was another interesting haunt for us during our stay. This was an enormous marketplace on a lower level of the main festival building, the Kursaal. Although San Sebastian isn’t considered one of the major market festivals, the space was crammed with long rows of booths manned by sales agents, distributors, and film equipment vendors. Posters lined every inch of wall space. Buyers were crowded into small screening rooms and banks of television screens were available for watching any film that was a part of the festival. Off limits to the public, this market place gave us a opportunity to escape the crowds and get a taste of the business side of it all—not necessarily our favorite pastime while at the festival, but part of the total picture to be sure.

Aaron, Mark & me in front of the Kursaal

Overall what San Sebastian provided us in the end was a sense of where we might fit in the international cinema landscape as we continued to launch The Sensation of Sight. We felt privileged to have been a part of such a prestigious festival and were grateful to have learned so much about our film and how audiences responded to it outside of America. And for all of us, the memory of this initial release of the film into the world will always be special—not only because it was an impressive way to initially launch the movie, but also because it served as a lovely way to celebrate the two and a half years of hard work it took to get us there.

(Next: On to Denver and the U.S. premiere…)

Aaron and his wife Keri and me and my wife Kris flew from Boston to Paris, then took a connecting flight to Berlitz in the far southwest corner of France. Picking up a rental car, we drove into Spain from there, arriving in San Sebastian about an hour later.

Ian Somerhalder and fellow “Lost” star Maggie Grace arrived separately, as did Ron Wyman our documentarian and Mark Constance, one of our producers. Ron suffered quite a trauma getting there as his cameras were lost in transit (and never recovered except for insurance replacement months later) and Mark’s plane connections delivered him to the hotel in the middle of the night, long after Opening Night ceremonies were over.

Travel traumas aside, San Sebastian is an incredibly beautiful ancient city on the northwest coast of Spain. The town has all the classic features of centuries-old buildings–narrow cobblestoned streets, hidden plazas, and in the nearby hills, ruins from eras even further back in time. Our hotel, just off the huge curve of beach front and boardwalk, was adjacent to the old part of the city which is filled with what seems like hundreds of restaurants. The festival’s main venue–a huge theatre complex called the Kursaal–was within walking distance through the old part of town. The setting for a film festival can’t get any better than this.

Arriving the day before our premiere screening in the Zalbategi (New Directors) festival category, we had a chance to get acclimated and meet with our PR people, who guided us through the press procedures and went over our schedule of interviews with European press in the coming days. They also warned us not to attend the press screening of our film that was scheduled for that very night—the night before our premiere. They said that a large contingent of the press who attended these screenings were notorious for only staying long enough to get an idea of the film and then get up and walk out—not a pleasant thing for us to witness as we began our experience at a wonderful festival like San Sebastian. They also knew that some of these press folks were very vocal if the film they were watching didn’t fit their taste and would let everyone else know their displeasure as they noisily left the theatre.

We listened to our expensive PR people. And I’m glad we did, as we found out later that our film caused quite a stir at its press screening. I’m actually happy I’ll never know how that exactly manifested itself.

So then the big day arrived. Our screening was scheduled in the featured time slot for the Friday night of opening weekend at the second largest theatre in the Kursaal—a beautiful 800-seat venue. All decked out, we waited as a group for the festival limos to arrive at our hotel and drive us the several blocks to where our film was set to unspool at 9 pm. But as we were about to find out, we almost didn’t make it.

As our limos approached the Kursaal, suddenly we were stopped by a large and angry local Basque protest—a political demonstration timed to be staged on this very night to attract press attention from the dozens of reporters there for the festival. Our limo drivers didn’t know what to do. They kept driving us around the adjacent blocks over and over again as the clock ticked away, but they were unable to pull us up to the front of the theatre to drop us off as they had been instructed.

Then, as the clock was striking nine and we realized we were about to miss the opening of our world premiere, we finally convinced them to just let us out and we’d walk (or run as it turned out) the two blocks to the theatre. Moral to that little episode: the barriers for indie filmmakers never totally disappear…?

All of us finally got inside the building, hurried down hallways and up stairs and, out of breath, at last were ushered into the auditorium. What a moment: the place was packed with people dressed to the nines—all of them patiently waiting for us to show up (they’d been told of our unintended delay). We were shown to our seats, the house lights immediately dimmed, and there at last was this moment of magic as our film began playing on an immense 50-plus foot high screen in front of us.

Sitting there, it took me a few seconds to catch up to what was actually happening, but I quickly realized how special this moment was for all of us. Looking around at the audience, I wondered again how we ever managed to get to this point in our journey.

And, in spite of our difficulty in getting to the theatre that night, to this day I hold that moment in my memory as one of the true highlights of the entire experience of producing the film. For here we were in San Sebastian, Spain at a major festival witnessing the screening of our baby for the first time to hundreds of people who were there to see some of the best of new films selected from around the world. And right at that moment, this large gathering of European filmgoers was settling in to experience ours.

(Next: Having fun in San Sebastian…)

As September approached and the San Sebastian International Film Festival was rapidly coming into view, a whirlwind of activity commenced for us.

People in the film industry were excited for us and everyone was giving us tips on how to best “play” the festival. Being the innocent greenhorns we were, we listened gratefully and tried to implement as many suggestions as we could.

One of the interesting episodes we encountered in these final weeks before the festival was a meeting we had with one of the top movie PR firms in Los Angeles. Having heard of our selection at San Sebastian, the head of the firm invited us to his offices when we were in LA finishing up getting the film print ready for the festival. He wanted to discuss with us how we should handle the whole San Sebastian experience from a public relations/press standpoint. Even after telling him we were a small indie company with little or no money left in our bank account, he still wanted to meet.

When Aaron and I arrived at the company’s offices, we were ushered into this big boardroom and the head of the firm joined us there and the three of us had a long friendly discussion of what we were getting into. The most interesting thing that came out of it, however, was the first question he asked us. After a few niceties in the way of introductions, he looked us in the eye and asked point blank:  ”Who got you into San Sebastian?” Aaron and I looked at each other and shrugged, saying the film got us in. We told him that we simply submitted the movie ourselves through the normal submission channels and then quickly heard that we were selected. The PR man looked at us a bit dumbfounded and somewhat amazed, saying that pulling something like that off was extremely rare, almost unheard of. I must admit that at that moment, even we were impressed.

On reflecting back on our journey with The Sensation of Sight and what we’ve learned launching it into the world, however, I must say that his initial question was one of those telling moments for us. It instantly confirmed what we had heard and had long suspected about the big festivals–that they were for the most part a closed shop and open only to those filmmakers who had on their team those with an inside track to the programmers. Sneaking into a major festival through the open submission door was a fluke of the first order. Needless to say, we are thinking long and hard about that as we move into our next film, Someplace Like America, and how to approach the festivals.

Anyway, this same PR guy suggested that we hire a European PR firm to handle San Sebastian and gave us several suggestions. We ended up with a firm from London that sent two of their people to the festival to work it for us and guide us through the entire process. It was an extremely expensive item, but also fairly critical as we didn’t know the ropes and needed to be coached through the various press components in order to take optimal advantage of our film’s world premiere at a prestigious fest.

And then there were the passport updates, booking the flights, coordinating who on our team was coming over for the fest, renting cars, negotiating hotel rooms with the festival staff, and on and on. It was a busy month prior to our departure. But somehow all the arrangements were made and suddenly one day all of us were boarding planes from various places and heading for Spain.

(Next: Arriving for our world premiere…)

Our film festival run with The Sensation of Sight started out with a bang. Within a couple of weeks of having finished post on the film and with DVD screeners in hand, we submitted to several top festivals including Telluride, Toronto, and San Sebastian in Spain–the next big festivals coming up in the early fall.

Within three weeks of submitting, we received an invitation to the 54th San Sebastian International FilmFestival–one of the oldest festivals in the world and generally considered one of the top ten international fests. We were a bit stunned by this and surprised by the speed in which we were selected. We were also very pleased and excited by the news, especially when we found out that our film was selected for their New Directors sidebar, called Zabaltegi, and of the 18 films selected for this sidebar, ours was the only American film.

And then the work began all over again. First, the festival required that a 35mm print be sent to them by the end of August for their late September festival. So we immediately made arrangements with Technicolor for this to happen–an expensive and somewhat complicated process, although everyone at Technicolor was extremely helpful and seemed to take a special interest in our film from the start. When the first print was made we viewed it in a small screening room at the Technicolor complex in Los Angeles. This was a fun afternoon as the print was perfect and for the first time we were able to see the film as we had always envisioned it–a 35mm print projected on a big screen.

At the same time our post production supervisor Geoff Garrett suggested we make contact with Mark Matsuno of Matsuno Design, one of the major movie poster/graphic art designers in the industry. Geoff had worked with him in the past and thought that we’d be a good fit. We didn’t think we could afford someone of Mark’s stature to do our poster art, but immediately hit it off with him and his associate Laura Debole and they offered us a great break on price. They adjusted their schedule so they could join us at the Technicolor screening of the print and later we set about pulling a number of screen grabs–photo stills from the actual movie–that Mark and Laura used in coming up with their many initial versions of the poster art. We finally settled on Mark’s first design (David Strathairn pulling the wagon across the top of the title) and it’s become the signature symbol for the film.

As with everyone else we had worked with up to this point, I can’t stress enough what a pleasure it was to work with Mark and Laura. They truly partnered with us and gave us a vast array of possible designs from which to choose. Again, we were very fortunate to be able to work with top pros who in the process also became friends.

With a 35mm print ready to go and our poster design settled, we next had to have the dialogue translated into Spanish and subtitles lasered onto another print of the film, a complicated and expensive process that took several weeks. At the same time we had to ship over to Spain 1200 press kits that had to arrive by a certain date prior to the festival, another involved process of writing copy, printing covers and inserts, and assembling and FedExing the many boxes of materials to San Sebastian. And then there was the hiring of a European PR firm for the duration of the festival to help us prepare for and manage the onslought of press we were going to face.

Suffice it to say, we were becoming painfully aware that being selected for a major festival in Europe was another mountain to climb for a small indie film company. That’s not a complaint, but it was our reality.

(Next: San Sebastian here we come…)

As Aaron and Mario were ensconced in their house in the woods editing, we also began making arrangements for moving our entire operation to Los Angeles where further finishing work on the film would commence once we had a “locked picture” in hand. The reason for planning this move from one coast to the other was because, after much research and investigation and receiving quotes for the work that needed to be done, we realized we could finish the post work on the film less expensively in Los Angeles than anywhere on the East Coast. The sheer volume of post production work in L.A. actually made for lower quotes and therefore a favorable cost scenario for us even with having to cover flights and most meals. We were fortunate to find places to stay with friends as the production bank account was dwindling.

While we were early in the editing process in New Hampshire, we were also extremely fortunate to be able to hire a wonderful post production supervisor in L.A. , Geoff Garrett.  Geoff was invaluable in helping us set up in advance the involved process that the digital version of the locked picture would go through out there for an additional two and a half months before we had a finished film.

By the second week of February, after much tweaking and fine-tuning, we were satisfied we had a locked picture and were ready to make our move. So we shipped all our elements to L.A. , and Aaron and Mario flew out for the duration of the work there. I joined them when there were steps they needed me to see and hear, especially for the final mix of all the various components of sound and music with the picture.

Briefly, the next steps we had to go through with the film with the help of Geoff included transferring the entire film to a much higher quality digital master, designing all the sound effects, color correcting the film scene by scene so it had the visual tone, mood, and consistency that Aaron wanted, and re-recording dialogue scenes that had unavoidable unwanted background noise that we couldn’t eliminate in the sound lab (like a scene in a town park next to the water when the flooded river was roaring into the microphones but we wanted desperately to use one of the stone benches there–that sort of thing). Then the final steps were mixing all sound and music in with the finished picture on a high-tech sound stage and finally making a digital master of this finished version and dubbing dozens of DVD screener copies from this master for use in promoting the film.

In addition to working on the actual picture and sound, we also were negotiating contracts for all the pre-recorded music and songs we’d selected to use in the film. This in itself is a tedious and involved process and requires the services of a professional music supervisor. Again we were fortunate, through Geoff, to connect with Mason Cooper, who as an experienced music supervisor spent weeks contacting every music publisher, recording company, and artist for each song we wanted to use. As it turned out, there were only two songs out of sixteen that we had to replace because they weren’t available or we couldn’t negotiate a workable deal, and we were told that was far below the usual number of songs that have to be replaced in an independent feature.

So by the beginning of May we had in our hands The Sensation of Sight as a finished film on DVD. We hadn’t transferred it back to 35mm yet, but we had all elements available to do so. The final transfer back to 35mm would wait until we needed it for a film festival or after we had landed a distribution deal so the distributor could pay for it (or so we thought). So with our DVD screeners we were ready to begin the next phase of the process–the launch of the film into the world.

(Next:  Hitting the festival circuit…)