Because of this website, I receive press releases on a daily basis from a multitude of PR firms. It's clear with many of them that the sender hasn't spent more than 5 seconds thinking about the audience for this website. Some of these are pretty unintentionally funny: My favorite media alert is probably the one about a re-recording of a jingle for canned beans by a Country music recording artist. But I digress. The point is, few notices get my attention. And even fewer do I end up writing about. When I receive a notice like the one quoted verbatim below, though, I try to act on it.
Why? Four reasons:
1) The thing being promoted sounds interesting.
2) The people that read this website might be interested in it too.
3) The thing being promoted sounds as if it could use my help as far as promotion goes. I tend to favor humble affairs, not stuff with a big advertising budget. (In case you hadn't noticed by now.)
4) The release sounds like it was written by an actual human being. You'd be surprised at how rare this is. Or maybe you wouldn't.
Oh yes, I'm sure Kat Candler's email breaks all sorts of "rules" about writing press releases. But I have noticed that there seems to be a direct correlation between points #1-3 and point #4. In the end, the result is that, Candler's email not only makes me want to see this movie -- it makes me want to tell others about it.
And in my book that's a press release that works.
cicadas Screening on PBS in New York Saturday, 7/19, 11:55pm Sunday, 7/20, 4:25am WNET, Reel 13 http://www.bside.com/films/cicadas
Long ago, I made this feature film called, cicadas. We shot it over the summer of 1999 in a tiny, tiny town called Bertram (population 835). We shot the film on a Canon XL1 back when mini-DV was brand spankin' new. Over 6 weeks, Thursdays through Sundays a cast and crew trucked out to the middle of nowhere Texas to make a story loosely based on a crush I had at age 16 on a skater punk kid.
The summer of 1999 was one of the best summers of my life. We had no expectations, no grandiose ideas of making it big ... we just wanted to make a feature film just to learn how to do it. And what came out of that little film was a family of friends, a super fun summer and a little movie that could.
The film went on to win some audience awards at festivals, get picked up for distribution and then dropped by distribution. And then picked up again for distribution.
If you have friends in New York who like to stay up crazy late or can record stuff to their VHS or DVD players, pass this along. It's fun to share your heart with people. Even if it's super rough around the edges and frayed along the hem line.
One other thing to note about press releases. For me, whether or not I write about something is also a matter of timing. Some days and weeks I'm slammed. Some days, a notice will come in and, if I've got a few spare minutes, I'll throw something up on the web. People that are paid to blog full time probably work differently, but that's how I roll.
As always, thanks for reading. And if you're a filmmaker, don't be afraid to see if I can cover your film. Just don't be hurt if I don't.