We met with Daniel Katz and it went really well. He's super easy to talk to and very on the level. Arin had actually met him at SXSW where Katz had been on a panel about distribution. In the panel the distributors outlined the difficulty in distribution small no name independent films. Arin created a distribution video that outlines how we plan to overcome these typical problems. Arin had worked in the footage of Katz and some of his peers into the video. I think we caught him off guard with the footage and his reactions were hilarious. He seemed to appreciate our sense of humor. He hadn't seen the film yet so we left him with the latest and cut.

The meeting with Ian Bricke at sundance channel was pretty cool. We talked with Ian in Robert Redfords office which is used as a conference room when Redford is out of town. He too was cool and gave us a lot of information on what Sundance Channel looks for in programming. They're most interested in having a range of stuff and not too many things that are too similar. They want to have a little of everything and enough content that is basic and feel good to pull people in and hope that they stick around for the edgier stuff. The idea is for all the programming to be quality. One thing we found out is that sundance channel doesn't plan to compete with the filmmaker lifestyle element that IFC seems to be attempting. So they are probably not the right home for our video blog.

But he did respond well to the trailer and seemed interested in seeing the film. We discussed some examples of semi-day-and-date and it was funny to hear that "Funny Ha Ha" was on the sundance channel and then went on to do theatrical distribution much later. Rather then this being the innovative shifting of windows he described it more as people simply not noticing the film was on the channel and therefor not having any affect on theatrical attendance. But one innovative thing he mentioned was that another film aired on the channel the day of the theatrical premiere and then didn't come back to the channel until after the theatrical and DVD run. After the meeting we came to the conclusion that the best way to be on the Sundance Channel would probably be as part of a Day-and-Date release. That way word of mouth would have that much more fuel and that could work to promote the theatrical runs that were happening.

The other cool thing that happend is we had a podcast interview for Karl Jacob's new show "Keep it Reel". There is a new Podcast Channel called IndieFilmFeed.com which our video blog series and other film related podcasts like "Keep it Reel" will be a part of. Susan and I were the first interview subjects for Karls show which will be mainly interviews with directors as well as updates on Karls acting career.

Next blog entry will be about the interesting responses we've gotten from the recent indiewire story that was done by Eugene Hernandez about our struggles to get distribution.

Till then,

Susan Buice

co-director - Four Eyed Monsters