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Truly Free Film

Blue Potato – Breaking Down the Barriers of Film Marketing

By Kavita Pullapilly

You’ve heard about Fortune 500 companies signing product placement and marketing deals with big studio movies. But it’s next to impossible to actually get a significant marketing deal on an independent film. Filmmakers Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly’s feature film, Blue Potato,  signed a deal with Terra Chips that will become a game changer for how independent films work with companies to support a distributor’s marketing efforts and increase audience engagement and visibility for the film. This high value deal will not only enhance a distributor’s advertising campaign for the film but open up new lines of marketing exposure that have not been done at the independent level.

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Truly Free Film

Film Festivals Offer The Life Lessons For Longevity

By Kellie Ann Benz

Okay, I’ll admit it. I think ‘Jersey Shore’ offered some of the best life lessons. I’m not too cool to reveal that I gleaned much from the leg-humping silverbacks who F-bombed their way into obscurity on that cautionary tale of a show.

Replace, if you will, their onenightstandpad with a film festival party, and you can see how they offered all of us a first rate how-NOT-to for which should be grateful. 

I cite their example as a sobering reminder for everyone packing for their first film festival.

First, the good news. Film festivals are wicked wild fun.  Truly.

Festival attendees are some of the most electric creatives you’ll ever meet – and when actors or actresses are in attendance, some of the most beautiful humans you’ll ever see with your own eyeballs – film festivals offer a throwback to Dominick Dunne-esque invitation only cocktail parties.  At the best international festivals, the ribald wits congregate as safe harbour from a cruel, cruel world that only understands their stories when told in a linear three act structure.  At the discovery-zone of regional indie festivals, you can feel welcomed into an exclusive club where only the cinematic smarty-pants go.

For the chosen ones with films competing, a film festival is