Today’s guest post is from Mike Vogel.
I recently premiered my first microbudget feature The Waiting List in my hometown of Portland, Oregon. I’ve read a lot of blogs and tweets about how important it is to turn your screening into an event. There are many well thought-out reasons for this, but the only true reason is that no one wants to see your crappy indie film. Or my crappy indie film. I’m not saying yours–or mine–is actually a crappy film, but since it didn’t get into Sundance and doesn’t have any recognizable stars from Entertainment Weekly, it must be plotless, poorly acted and guaranteed to be boring. Like a foreign movie or something. I assume that’s the mindset of 95% of the people I’m trying to convince to watch my movie–let alone pay to watch it. So the amazing opportunity to see my movie at an out-of-the-way theater on a weekday evening has got to be pretty compelling. Here are a few small things I did to make it interesting for someone who has never heard of me or my movie.
