So in the beginning of 2016 we got our film on Blu Ray, on DVD, on DCP and on a streaming platform. We were holding it with our hands and we had to do something with it. Later on I realized that actually the easiest part is the making of the film and I know how absurd this statement sounds. However, this is the truth. Making the film itself is easier than selling and bringing it to the public. It is extremely difficult to catch their attention and make people desire your film. It’s extremely difficult to motivate and hook them for as long as possible in order to make the film desired and seen by as many people as possible. I am not even speaking of making it profitable.
Cinema is DEAD because it doesn’t have any real control over the Distribution/Publicity/Marketing/Advertising, cinema is dead because it can't afford to make powerful Distribution/Publicity/Marketing/Advertising at least for those low budget, independent films out of Hollywood systems. Films which are not high concept franchises and sequels, but are thoughtful, bold and provocative filmmaking.
I knew that I had to start working as soon as possible over digital marketing in order to compensate for the lack of money, resources and I started working on the digital marketing from the very beginning of the project around at the beginning of 2014. It has been an outgoing process till very now. I have read so many books, watched so many videos and listened to many podcasts about gorilla marketing, about micro budget self distribution, PR and advertising.
It was very difficult to make NoOne as popular and interesting to the Bulgarian public as possible with NO budget. And the NoOne’s genre had its own limitations, which we couldn't cross over. First of all it was in the genre of art-house, low budget films, an auteur film, without famous actors, with Bulgarian language and non popular genre – psychological drama. Despite its provocative and bold filmmaking, NoOne had only two chances to become worldwide famous and to reach a wider audience: first was by breaking into some of the world famous film festivals( check the specially dedicated chapter for it) and the other through web streaming and VOD.
Here comes a very important question which every filmmaker and storyteller must answer to:
WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS FILM? I have answered this question few times already, but I will give it another shot here too. I did this film, because I wanted to make a film about an inner human transformation, a sort of enlightenment which moves the audience emotionally and intellectually as much as possible. Here you can see where the conflict is, it was in my motivation and reason. First of all, I wanted the film to be as author and independent as possible, and second of all I wanted to be as popular as possible. Of course, these two worlds occasionally merge and unite but in reality, this happens very, very rarely.
Maybe, because of my lack of experience, or just a high self belief or because I trusted so much in my instinct and believe in the final film and neglected the facts which were brutal about the possibility for a movie to break into a huge film festival and to make a wide theatrical distribution. In 2016 UK produced 1000 feature films, 20 of them got a wide theatrical release and only 2 of them recouped their investments.
By saying that I want to point out how difficult it is for a film to get theatrical release and to make profit from it. Yavor and I at the very beginning discussed that probably for us it was better to skip the theatrical release and the film festivals and to go straight to the Internet. However, we were hooked on the production value of the film and We really believed that the film had big chances to be in some of the major film festivals. We decided to enter into the biggest 5-10 film festivals. We applied to 20 film festivals with the film and we spent another good amount of money just for entry fees, copies of the film etc. Thus we had to wait around one year until we received all of the film festival answers. Of course we believed that from our first main film festival application we would be selected; this was Cannes film festival, but this story can wait a bit because there is more stories coming in.
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