Oh my, Avenger Fans,
I've been bad. I let nearly two whole months slip by without an update! However, I've been super busy, not only with life/work, but also with further Internet promotion of the short and (drum roll, please)...STORYBOARDING OF THE FEATURE!!! FINALLY! A few weeks ago, I met with Toronto artist, Sam Agro, and we began churning out boards for the Scarlet Avenger's origin sequence, that will kick off the feature film. It's a pretty visually dense part of the picture, so it'll be a little while before it's locked down, but I am totally blown away by the work Sam's done so far. I'll be posting samples of it sometime in the very near future.
Another important part of my journey to get the feature made still involves promotion of the short, which will in turn promote the character and create anticipation for the feature. It does feel a little strange knocking on doors to get people to watch my ten-year-old student flick, but the buzz is steadily building. The entire online serial/pulp fan community has seen it, as well as countless fellow filmmakers and general movie enthusiasts. The kind letters I've received from people all around the world have really inspired the heck out of me. I just updated the Avenger's Mailbag section with a whole new batch of letters to browse through.
The great thing about this picture is that it has aged very well. People who saw it back in the day, and then re-watched it recently, have commented on how well it has held up. Part of this is because it's a period piece, in which every prop, piece of set dressing and article of clothing is iconic, rather than part of a dead fashion trend of the past decade. But, more importantly, it's just a well-told, classically styled adventure tale. Getting the world to see it though hasn't been the easiest thing to do, especially when I have absolutely no advertising budget.
The student short has really become a classic! It's just an old-fashioned adventure tale done right!
Anyone who's ever tried to promote a short film on the Internet will tell you that it's like pulling teeth to get people to watch your work. They'll also tell you that unless you've got that 'one in a million' viral video, you can't simply put your movie on YouTube or Google Video and expect people to watch it. For the most part, folks have to be directed to it by Internet postings of some sort. Okay, sounds easy, right? Wrong! You'd think people would be more eager to see a good little movie...for FREE! But, unfortunately, the glut of horribly produced shorts, that has flooded the net in the past few years, has made people very reluctant to waste even a nanosecond of their time on what they believe will, most-likely, be garbage. Even well crafted shorts are often met with total indifference, or the filmmakers are flamed for simply trying to promote them. This is because the shorts were not presented to their target audiences. You don't show Lars Von Trier's latest art film to a bunch of Sly Stallone fans, and vice versa. So, sending out spam e-mail telling people to watch your film is generally not a good idea. Finding your target audience is a very difficult task...knock on the wrong doors and people will set out to destroy you with negative reviews, but hit the right people and, if your film is good, they'll thank you for it, and maybe even tell their friends or blog about it.
There are only so many places you can advertise your film on the net though, and you can usually only do it once per site. Any further posts on the site will be seen as spam and the administrator will ban you from participating in it any further. To make matters worse, most forum administrators see it as their god given mission to destroy all filmmakers' promotional attempts. Now, while some people are truly annoying in their advertising, I think these administrators should cut the more subtle promoters a little slack. To be honest, I think it's often a case of jealousy...the 'fanboy forum administrator' simply being jealous of the person who actually got up off their butt and did something with their artistic passion. I got booted off a few forums (generally those of the more 'commercial' film sites, like AintItCool.com and FilmThreat.com) for the most innocuous posts about my film. However, other sites have been much more kind and the administrators have even praised my efforts. SerialSquadron.com and TheFedoraChronicles.com have been great supporters. But, I eventually hit a brick wall with the forum posting. Since you can only really post about your film once per site, you'll miss most of its casual visitors, and only get a quick glimpse from the regulars, of which there aren't really that many to begin with. I also tried posting on serial/pulp fan sites, nostalgia sites, filmmaker sites and even the occasional blog. While the initial number of hits the short received skyrocketed for a while, it eventually petered off. What next?
Finally, I came up with the idea of creating a MySpace.com page, not for my short or myself as a filmmaker, but rather for the character of The Scarlet Avenger. Nearly every fictional character in the universe has a MySpace page (Luke Skywalker, Homer Simpson, Donald Duck, etc.), so why shouldn't 'The Scarlet Avenger'? So, I made a simple page for the character (myspace.com/thescarletavenger), listing his interests and advertising the movie he 'stars in' and...success! I've been amazed by the response I've gotten. 'The Scarlet Avenger' has befriended nearly every other pulp/serial character on MySpace, as well as hundreds of 1930s and 40s movie stars, musicians and historical figures, as well as legions of retro fans...everyone from modern swing dancers and burlesque performers to World War II re-enactors. The Avenger's presence on MySpace seems to appeal to the role-player in everyone. So, this is a very important lesson I've learned about marketing..."SELL YOUR FANTASY AS REALITY". It works! Now, for those of you wanting to 'befriend' the Avenger on MySpace, be warned that he has a mind of his own and only seems to recognize people from his own era. Therefore, you'd better come in costume if you want to get into his party:-)
The Scarlet Avenger's MySpace 'friends'. They all share a lot in common.
This fellow deserves some sort of award for his truly amazing Blackhawk costume!
Aside from storyboarding and promotion, I've also been exploring my love of 1930s & 40s pulp and serial characters in great detail. For those who've looked carefully, a new feature popped up on my site a little while ago, called Pulp/Serial Links. It's still in development, but I've been collecting links related to the world of 'The Scarlet Avenger' like crazy! The page is broken up into a few rough sections, including serial links, pulp links, radio play links, general retro links, links for music from the era, etc. I'll most likely be discussing this new page in more detail in further posts, but if you're a fan of the pulps and serials, or just of the 30s & 40s era, my hope is that you'll be in retro heaven, browsing through some of these truly amazing sites. I'd love to hear from you all about what you think of it. So, until the next episode...adios!
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