What Next?

I just finished writing 31 cover letters to various Film Festival around the country. I even took a chance on entering a few in Europe. The cover letters were part of the submission packet for the festival entry. I used a service called FilmFreeway which is a one stop shopping site to enter festivals. If I had the money, I could probably enter at least twenty more. But I cut myself off. No more schnitzengruben for me. The Film Freeway site lists thousands of festivals on every corner of the planet.

For The Last Captain, I used Withoutabox to enter the majority of the festivals. During the time I was making Stro, IMDB shut down that site. I thought Withoutabox was very successful and yet they are no more. However, some online film festival guides still direct you to Withoutabox to enter your film.

The next thing for the journey of Stro: The Michael D’Asaro is waiting. Lots of waiting. And more waiting. I’m sure it won’t be stressful.

I’ll get my first notification about whether the film has been selected or not on May 14th from a festival showcase in London. If this occurs, it’s off to Pinewood Studios.

But that notification is an outlier. Most of the notifications will come towards the end of July and through August. If I get some selections, it could turn out to be a very busy few weeks in September and October. I will be realistic. 

We entered a lot of festivals for my previous film, The Last Captain and was only selected to one festival (It’s actually two festivals. The Last Captain was selected for the Melbourne Film Festival. But I never received any email notification from Melbourne and only found out about our selection after the deadline for accepting had passed) The festival we were selected for, selected everybody who entered. They did this in order to sell trophies and plaques. You could get an award based on what tier you were on. We were in the fourth tier out of five. I didn’t buy an award.

This time, I will be more diligent in keeping abreast of the notification dates to preclude any tragic mishaps.  I’ve already put together a google calendar to remind when the notifications are supposed to occur. I also have the days marked when the festivals take place. It seems if I’m selected I will be going to one festival in London on the same day I will be attending a festival in Ojai. I think the next day I’m in Coney Island. If Stro gets selected for all those festivals (fingers crossed) we’ll work something out and get representatives to all those places.

In the meantime, I’ve sent links so all the people in the film can watch the film. Yes, I’m still hoping to have a public screening for some of the cast in the Bay Area. But it’s been over two years since the start of the production. The cast has waited long enough.

So far, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. If I look at the statistics on Vimeo correctly, it seems 14 people have seen the film all the way through. Gene Glazer, one of D’Asaro’s NYU teammates, responded to my email saying he enjoyed the film a mere two hours after I sent the link. Stro is an eighty-eight minute films. 

It’s been gratifying to hear from what has to be the toughest audience possible, that they are enjoying the film. If anyone was going to hate it the most, it was the people who knew D’Asaro personally. I lived in fear they would accuse me of screwing up the story.

Now, I’m going to sit and wait for the festivals to decide if they want people to see Stro: The Michael D’Asaro story. I do have a few smaller projects to do. I heard a lot of stories that didn’t make the film but will make nice extras to share with people, like I did with the Snake Story. I mean I never even mention Neil Diamond,

Stay tuned.