Quite an experience, all told.
It's easy to get discouraged when your very first screening is early in the afternoon on a Friday, and you poke your head in to find that no, in terms of audience numbers, you have not yet begun to set the world on fire. But that was Friday afternoon; by Friday evening, when I sat down to watch the movie with the kids arrayed next to me, the theater was nearly full. And more importantly, it was full of receptive, discerning people who "got" the film and took the journey the film asks them to take. They laughed in the places we always hope people will laugh, and the Q&A afterward was lively and detailed. It made me extra happy that the screening the kids saw was clearly the best one so far.
What's remarkable is how well our distributor, Marc Halperin, was able to predict the entire weekend's numbers from just the first day's numbers. I won't reveal his formula, lest it turn out to be a state secret, but suffice it to say that what he predicted on Friday night for Saturday and Sunday was incredibly accurate. This, right now, is when we really begin to appreciate what a smart distributor does; this is the moment when he begins to orchestrate the release of the film, like a conductor with a baton in his hand.
The good news is that we made the first set of numbers we needed to make: we are able to extend into a second week in San Francisco. Advertising costs will drop a little, so we might be able to make some extra money even if our numbers only stay the same. And the best part about extra weeks is that if word-of-mouth does its thing, there might just be enough time for those numbers to grow.
So Los Angeles and Pasadena are next, this Friday. We're throwing a little party Friday night, all our friends are coming, and we have high hopes for a decent set of numbers here as well. If so, maybe we'll be able to extend the L.A. run as well, and then Denver/Boulder opens and it just grows and grows.
A very good start; but this isn't a sprint, it's a marathon. And I can't wait to see what happens next.
No comments:
Post a Comment