Uncover the Mysterious Power of the Ladybug Effect with Greg Porper – SYS Podcast Episode 535 Exclusive!
Ashley
Yeah, yeah. So then did you do the festival circuit? Once you had the film done, did you go out and submit the festivals and did that ultimately help you find a distributor?
Greg Porper
did do the festival route, we really, we aimed, I would say we aimed high, we aim to all the big festivals. And knowing that, you know, in most of those cases, that the percentages of getting in are minuscule, it’s easier to get into like Harvard than it is to get into these festivals, just by the number percentages. Yeah. And we got into the Austin Film Festival, which is a fantastic festival in general, it’s a great writers festival. That’s how I knew it. I wasn’t really as familiar with their film component. But because there was some name recognition with Austin, we were a movie that actually shot in Texas. It felt like a really like full circle moment to kind of have our premiere there. And I’m really glad we did because there were so many people I met through Austin, there were a bunch of distributors, not necessarily there, but distributors who were watching the films that were getting into the festival, because then all of a sudden, you know, I think my emails up on IMDB. I always encourage people to reach out, I will always like respond to someone who reaches out because that’s what I respect the hustle so much. And there were distributors that did reach out through that. And then in other cases, I would do a little digging and say like, what are the companies that I should be reaching out to? In one case, my mother-in-law was sitting on a plane next to an accountant at shout studios, and talked about my movie and I ended up reaching out to this accountant. And it was like the email subject was like, you sat next to my mother-in-law on a plane. And then she connected me to someone on the acquisitions team. And it just a lot of times was like that, or I would speak to other filmmakers, who did you speak to? Like a lot of times it was going through like, how can I find a direct connection myself? And in a few other cases, it was, you know, distributors did find me and that helped jumpstart things. And that was Austin is what jumpstarted the offers. We got one offer before Austin, but a bunch of offers came in after Austin.
