One Hell of an Angel Trailer

See my Indie, Comedy, Feature Film on the Big Screen!

September 13th at 7pm 

at the

Fine Arts Theater, 36 Biltmore Avenue, Asheville, NC 28801

Get your tickets here (be sure to select the 13th) Order Tickets Online Now

more info at: www.fineartstheatre.com

A demon with an existential crisis and an angel with PTSD team up to save the career of a washed-up rocker.
Demon, Kyle, is a stabber on the third level of hell. He knows his business. But when he starts wondering about the nature of life and death, his superiors shut him up and send him to the "Angel in Training Program."
Angel, Mezudio, has been around a very long time-so long that he developed PTSD and goes catatonic at the sight of blood. Relegated to feeding parking meters and cleaning up dog poop, Mezudio is afraid to trying anything new, but his boss has other ideas. Mezudio is charged with training the stabber, Kyle to be a good angel and earn his wings...or at least stop stabbing everyone.

Katie Damien is an Asheville based award winning Writer, Director, Photographer, and Producer. Support local film making, get your tickets today!
Tickets $10 and are available at the Fine Arts Theatre box office, or online here

Hope Trailer

homewardboundwnc.org

Trailer for the short film "Hope." Based on a true story. When a widow with mental illness attempts suicide, she survives only to find herself homeless and unable to reconnect with her son. After a year of living in a shelter with no hope of overcoming her situation, she has a chance encounter that changes her life.

Hope Poster

The one and only Robert Klein, local graphics guru, designed not only this awesome poster, but the opening titles for the movie.  I found him on Instagram, if you like graphic design, cool photos of Asheville and stop motion animation check out his feed: https://www.instagram.com/kleindigital/

Hope Production Stills

We just wrapped production on the short film "Hope" for Homeward Bound.  The cast and crew have been beyond amazing!  I can't believe how smoothly everything went, from the cat who stuck out her scenes like a champ and even turned to the camera like she had been trained to do that, to the volunteers who showed up to be extras, to the cast who gave me goosebumps more than once, to the crew who worked with speed and precision.  I loved this shoot! 

Hope Behind the Scenes

These are some fantastic behind the scenes photos shot by my awesome set photographer Ben Aviv.

Tickets Please Poster

Thanks to Matt Shepard for this awesome poster design!

Tickets Please

Tickets Please was another whirlwind weekend of filmmaking fun for the 48 Hour Film Project.  My and crew cast rocked it!  We had so much fun on this shoot and made a great little film.

Trailer for the short film "Tickets Please." When an assistant forgets to procure tickets to a sold out show for her boss, she enlists the help of her sister to get the tickets by any means necessary or lose her job and be forced to move back in with their parents.

Ghost Image

I had such a great cast and crew for this short, thriller, horror film "Ghost Image."  Rebecca Morris is the best!  She worked so hard throughout the shoot and turned in a brilliant performance.  Penny Munroe was the perfect ghost, what a pro.  Greg Hugins was my brilliant DP and brought with him a dream team of a crew.  I don't like watching horror films nearly as much as I like making them!

An except from the award-winning short film "Ghost Image." When a ghostly apparition shows up in a photographer’s work, she’ll have to find a way to eliminate all cameras from her life or risk losing it to the thing that haunts her.

Ghost Image Behind the Scenes

Thanks to Ben Avivi my set photographer for these great stills!

How to Distribute an Independent Film in 8 Steps

Self-distribution used to be a sad term for people who made movies so bad no one wanted to pay money to see them.  Today it’s not shunned the way it used to be, in fact there’s great potential for the artist making the movie to cut out the middle man and go straight to audience members.  Everyone wins right?  Well sort of.  Most artists make terrible businessmen and vice versa.  There’s a ton of media available on a ton of different platforms, how are people supposed to find your little film among the fray?  If you’re going to self-distribute, you the artist are now responsible for getting your film to audience members.  Most filmmakers study shot composition and acting.  We’re storytellers not story sellers.  So how does it work?  I don’t know yet.  This is my first foray into being a story seller, but here’s a candid break down of what I’m doing with my first feature film, My Toxic Backyard

Click the Links to go more in depth.

1. Film Festivals

Feature films fees average about $50 per entry.  Then if you make it in, you want to be able to attend and network.  The costs can add up quickly.  Did you remember to budget for it?

2. Marketing

You have to spend money to make money right? 

3. Limited Theatrical Release

Having a theatrical release seems really lofty, but it’s totally doable.

4. Broadcast

Because I had a documentary film, it made sense to broadcast it over the air for free on TV.  This might not make sense for most projects, but I’ll tell you why I did it.

5. Scheduling Releases

With multiple ways for people to view your movie, you can make it available only one way at a time and maximize your revenue and announcement process.

6. Traditional distribution

This used to be the only way to go, but now with alternative distribution you have choices to make.  Traditional distribution has both advantages and disadvantages.

7. Self-Distribution

What do you need to have together to get your movie ready for distribution?  How long will take?  I went with Createspace.  I'll tell you why I did and what I learned through out the process.

8. See the Film Referenced Here

I keep talking about this film My Toxic Backyard that I am in the process of selling.  Check out the actual film and see how it looks on Amazon and in my official store set up through Createspace.

Everything you read here is just my opinion and my personal experiences going on this crazy roller coaster ride.  If you're not a filmmaker, I hope you gained a little insight into what it's like as an independent artist trying to make it in the world.  If you are a filmmaker, hopefully you'll have a little more knowledge after following my film's journey and maybe it'll save you a little frustration with your own work.

Katie

Limited Theatrical Release

Having a theatrical release seems really lofty, but it’s totally doable.  First, find a small art house movie theater and see if you can get them to give you a screening, maybe at an odd time, maybe for one time only, but see if they’ll split the ticket revenue with you.  Usually the theater keeps 60% of ticket sales and the distributor (in this case that’s you) gets 40%.  You might think, yea of course they’ll go for it, I’m the one giving them my movie, but keep in mind that you’re a risk to them from a business standpoint.  You are responsible for getting people to buy tickets, not them.  You have to advertise your own screening and fill up those seats.  They’ll post the time your screening is happening and maybe they’ll have a marquee or something, but you have to do everything else.  That’s what traditional distributors do, that’s why that system is still in place.  It works.  Distributors buy airtime and ad space.  They screen trailers and get posters out there and seen so people know there’s a movie at the theater that they need to go see.

If the theater doesn't want to take a chance on you, that’s totally understandable and you can still do a screening, just rent the theater.  You can rent a small movie theater at anywhere from $300-$500.  Now there’s no risk to the theater and let’s say you sell tickets at $10 a pop, if you rented the theater for $300 that’s only 30 tickets you have to sell to break even.  Anything over 30 is 100% profit going straight to you.  You might actually make money.

One thing you'll have to get together a head of time is a DCP of your film.  DCP, or Digital Cinema Package is the format you'll need to have your film in so it will play in a professional digital projector.  That can be an expensive endeavor if you have someone else do it ($1,500 to $3,000) but I made one with Open DCP.  It was a pain, but worth it.  I have more info on how I did it here.

 Another advantage to a theatrical release is a film critic might now review your film, since it’s available to the public.  You might be able to do this at the film festival stage with local critics in the area the festival is happening, but there are lots of films for them to write about and it’s harder to get a review.  In your home town, you stand a better chance.  Reviews give you free advertising, an unbiased opinion that people are more likely to trust and critical reviews show that your film is of interest to the public.

My Toxic Backyard screened at a fantastic local arts theater, the Fine Arts Theater, for a week, which was unprecedented and awesome.  There was never a sold out screening, and audience sizes varied greatly from day to day.  I was a little disappointed at my own inability to fill the theater.  Even with extensive community outreach weeks before the screening, a story on the local news, radio interviews and magazine articles it wasn't enough to generate as strong of a turn out as I would have liked.  I was able to split ticket sales and still made some money.  I also got two movie reviews in local papers.  Both were really positive!  It was definitely a worth while venture, just not something to take lightly.

Film Festivals

Feature films fees average about $50 per entry.  Then if you make it in, you want to be able to attend and network. That can cost you $650 to$1650 per person per weekend (my breakdown at the bottom.) A regional festival within driving distance is really the only way you can do it on the cheap.  You have to make a very well researched list and budget for all that.

Let me preface this by saying you don’t have to go this route, it’s expensive and if you have something that you think is sellable, but maybe not a good fit for festivals, skip this one and go to the next step.  That said, you only have one year of exclusivity to hit as many film festivals as you can and try to rack up some laurels.  My Toxic Backyard screened at 9 festivals (one of which was an amazing film tour) and won 2 awards.  Done and done.

 
The cost was high though.  I spent about $1000 just in submission fees (I submitted to a lot more festivals than I got into.) It’s more fun to talk about the places you get accepted, then all the places you’ve been rejected from.  It can be really disheartening to get all those rejections, but you have to develop a thick skin and learn not to take it personally.  Sometimes you don’t even get rejected because the screeners and programmers of the festival didn’t like your film. They might love it, but aren’t able to find a place for it with all the other films they have programmed.  Maybe it just doesn’t fit time wise and/or theme wise.  If you really want to get an idea of what film festivals have to go through to choose the films they’ll go with, volunteer to be a screener.  It’ll be good experience and film festivals need all the help they can get. 


Then there were additional costs in traveling to some of the festivals.  Keep in mind staying in NYC for a festival is a lot different than staying in a small town in Texas.  Sometimes you might get help with room and board from the festival.  They might offer free hotel rooms or at least discounts.  It never hurts to ask, if you’re planning on going. Couch surfing is a thing.  I've hosted and been hosted and had good experiences.  You also might look at youth hostels.  I've done that before too.

So what do you get out of all that?  It’s fun.  I love traveling and I love movies and this is the best possible mash up.  Your film finds audiences.  Festivals are great places to have your film showcased.  You can engage the audience, generate some buzz, and have a lot of people see your work on the big screen.  You might find some distribution for your film.  Then there’s the laurels.  Laurels say: this film was chosen with a select few out of the hundreds of other independent films made that year because someone thought it was worth seeing.  Film festival acceptances and awards say to the average viewer that someone thought this was better than the rest.

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Festival Travel expense breakdown:

Plane ticket: : $300 to $1,200 (overseas)
Accommodation for 3 nights: $80 at a youth hostel to $500 hotel
Travel: $0 if shuttled by festival staff to $100 for train/bus/shared taxi fare to $400 car rental
Food: $100 to $300 you gotta eat something
Drinks Entertainment: $60 to $300 you gotta meet people
Miscellaneous: $100

Marketing Materials are in a separate blog entry.  You want to have all that together before you even submit.  Don't forget to budget for that too.  Why would you spend all this money to submit to festivals, if you don't have a poster, trailer, website and business cards?  Why also would you submit, if you had no plans to attend any festivals?

 

My Toxic Backyard on TV

My Toxic Backyard finally had it's broadcast debut.  It aired on the local CW channel here in Asheville at 5:30am on a Sunday morning (because that's what I could afford.) I ended up buying air time to have it broadcast and with Diamond Brand as an associated sponsor that really helped defray some of the cost.

I submitted My Toxic Backyard back in July to our local PBS channel, but they turned it down.  They sent a letter telling me how much they liked the documentary and that they thought I was a talented filmmaker, but because it was a "point-of-view documentary," they said they did not "have a place in [their] schedule to broadcast point-of-view programs." They went on to say, "for complex issues, like the topic you tackle in your film, we look for a more balanced representation." I can see where they're coming from.  I could have argued that both the EPA and CTS refused to comment on the record, or grant an interview, or even release a statement to me, but I decided to let it go. 

I also tried to buy air time on another station before I went with the CW, but was turned down by that station for pretty much the same reason as PBS.  They bring up an interesting point about documentaries that I've discussed at length with many filmmakers: does a good documentary have to present both sides of an issue or story?  My answer is not necessarily.  While there is always a desire to represent events and people truthfully, sometimes (like in my case) you can't always get all sides.

If all you had to do to make a documentary is make a non-fiction film, one could argue that a gas station owner who has video surveillance is making documentaries.  Certainly it's possible to make a documentary from surveillance footage, but I don't think anyone would call the footage on its own a documentary.  There must be some selection of shots, some choices on what is presented and once that happens, no matter how objective the author of that content is, you are presenting a version of reality. You are manipulating events. 

I think the key is to acknowledge that you are altering information to create a compelling story while also working to present that information as truthfully as possible.  If you are able to present different perspectives in your documentary, I do think that can make the piece stronger, but I also don’t think a documentary should be abandoned simply because you weren’t able to present multiple viewpoints.

Katie

Principle Photography Wrapped on New Feature Film

Jaime Byrd, Katie Damien, Coco Adams (DP, Director and AD) photo by: Lexi Rufty

I've just wrapped principle photography for my upcoming comedy feature Angel Demon, Stab Stab Stab (working title, it was Touched by Angels.)  The shoot was grueling and glorious.  We did 17 days, with only one day off, working 12 to 14 hours each day.  The movie looks better than I could have hoped for thanks to our amazing cast and crew.  We had great actors all around, crew members that really stepped up and did much more than was asked of them.  I'm really excited about where this movie will go.

We'll be doing a completion fund raising campaign soon, so stay tuned.  This photo is all I have to share at the moment and I have no idea what I'm directing people to do, I obviously had plenty of coffee that morning.

Katie

Press: Asheville Filmmakers Work for Passion

Cover Photo by Matt Rose/Asheville Scene

Written by: Tony Kiss

Movie Making in the Mountains. Asheville Citizen-Times: Scene Magazine.

To be sure, Asheville has landed its share of big-budget movies.  Think of the Oscar-winning “Being There,” (1979) or the romantic epic “Last of the Mohicans” (1992) and, in March, the futuristic adventure “The Hunger Games.”

Even some local independent films, like Chusy Haney-Jardine’s “Anywhere USA” (once known as “Asheville, the Movie”) got some big attention in 2008 when it won a special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival and compliments from director Quentin Tarantino.

But beyond the glitzy Hollywood productions, there’s plenty happening in moviemaking here.  On any given weekend, local filmmakers are grabbing their equipment and scripts, pulling together their cast and shooting short films – even features – mostly for love of the art.

Photo by Matt Rose/Asheville Sce

Those filmmakers are really just hoping for a little appreciation and exposure at events like this weekend’s Asheville Cinema Festival.

“It’s a thing I have to do,” said Asheville filmmaker Katie Damien.  “If you love it, you will do it regardless of how much money you make.” Like most local filmmakers, she has a day job, working in creative services at WLOS/Channel 13.

Damien’s short fiction film “Second Parent” has won the Cinema Festival’s Prestige Subaru Film Competition for local filmmakers and will be screened Saturday at 1:15p.m. at Asheville Community Theatre.   (Damien will also speak at the afternoon event, “Short Films for Women by Women.”)

Her movie is about a same-sex couple and what happens to the family after one of the partners dies.  “I wouldn’t have made it if it hadn’t been for the competition,” Damien said.  “You only have so much time to do what you want to do.  You are not getting paid, and this kind of competition is good for filmmakers.”

It turns out she will get a little cash out of the contest – a first-place prize of $500 (the second-place winner receives $250 and the third gets $100; all will be screened at the Cinema Festival.)  Nine short films, none more that seven minutes long, were entered into the Prestige Subaru Competition, said Asheville Cinema Festival executive director Wyman Tannehill.  The competition is about “supporting the filmmaking scene,” said Tannehill.  (The local Subaru dealership is the presenting sponsor of the entire fest).  “I think the filmmaking community here is very diverse,” he said.  “Not only in the age of filmmakers but in the type of films that people are creating.  You find people downtown shooting on some street corner or in a back alley.”....