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Demystifying The Indie Film Journey
We have a movie in theaters right now, Garrett.
Garrett:This is where it begins. Like, people are saying, boy, you ready to take a break? Or or now that it's in theaters, bet you're glad that's over. It's like, no. No.
Garrett:No. That's just It's
Daren:a starting line. All the other work was to prepare for the starting line.
Garrett:That was the training. That's the training and now the sprint.
Daren:This is truly independent, a show that demystifies the indie film journey by documenting the process of releasing independent films in theaters. Each week, Garrett Batty and I, Darren Smith, will update you on our journey, bringing guests to share their insights into the process and answer your questions. Today, we talk about the opening weekend for Faith of Angels. That's right. Faith of Angels opened in theaters this week.
Daren:It opens on the 27th September across the country. So today, we're talking about how it went and how you can go see the movie. This is episode 17.
Garrett:Darren, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing?
Daren:Dude, I'm so good. I'm so, so good. I I got a little under the weather over the last weekend, but there's good reason for that.
Garrett:Yeah. Well, this is and that that leads us into this is an interesting, episode because we're the turnaround on this episode is like that because we wanted to record an episode where we're talking kind of a reaction to our opening weekend, which we've just had.
Daren:Yeah. Yeah. We did similar last week. We wanted to talk about the premiere pretty close to real time and get, like, our real reactions to it because, you know, I was thinking about this, to this morning in the shower, but, like, it was almost 3 months ago exactly that we started this podcast, I think. Was it June or July?
Daren:I probably have my numbers up. Maybe it was 4 months ago. But, like, how far how fast that went came and went? Like, I'm definitely sitting here going, I wish we had had 6 months instead of 3.
Garrett:Right.
Daren:Because it goes so fast. And it's been But we're here now.
Garrett:It's gone fast, and I think every episode has been informational with different aspects of what we're trying to do. I think, you know, when we started it, we set off and said, hey. We're gonna open well, when we started, remember, we weren't even talking about Faith of Angels. It was just we're gonna open Carpenter in 6 months or 5 months. Now that that is about a month away, depending on when you're listening to this.
Garrett:And in the meantime, we've opened Faith of Angels in between that.
Daren:Yeah.
Garrett:And so it's been a fun fun journey.
Daren:Yeah. It's it's crazy that we, you know, we called our shot a little bit by saying we're not just releasing 1, but 2 movies this fall, and and, man, this one came and went. But my gosh. I'm sitting here going, we just we have a movie in theaters right now, Garrett.
Garrett:This is where it begins. Like, people are saying, boy, you ready to take a break? Or or now that it's in theaters, bet you're glad that's over. It's like, no. No.
Garrett:No. That's just
Daren:It's the starting line. All the other work was to prepare for the starting line.
Garrett:That was the train that's the training and now the sprint. It's like you do these long distance trainings. Not not that I'm a runner or have ever run anything, but it feels like longest is longest since and now we're kind of in this, you know, the the firing gun has gone off. We're in a sprint now, and it will go and there is no stopping.
Daren:Yeah. Well, I think it's it, we'll get into this today as we dive into the numbers and and the results for the weekend. But, like, you can only, like, be as good as you've trained to be. Right? You can only, have results that you've earned, so to speak.
Daren:So it's very exciting. Why don't we dive into box office as we typically do? Because and this is so cool. Like, we're on this sheet now. Like, we're at boxofficemojo.com and move in the movie.
Daren:Faith of Angels is right there. We're number 27 and our box office over 30 screens, $62,930 for an average of $2,097 per screen. Garrett, one of our big goals that we set from the onset of this show was a $2,000 per screen average, and we hit it. Yeah. Yeah.
Daren:We did it, man.
Garrett:Which is awesome, which is I mean, thank you to the audience, thank you to those that are listening and those that are going, you know, because, yeah, we can only do so much until it goes and we have to have you've done the numbers on this more than I have, but we have to have a certain amount of people that show up and buy a ticket in order for this plan to work. And so just to just to have that type of support has been really fun. So before we get into Faith of Angels box office, let's do our, kind of, our top 10 box office because the plan for the for the Carpenter is, you know, we wanna break into the top 10 box office And we've play we've 2 different plans, 2 different movies. Right? For Carpenter, we've talked about box office, top 10.
Garrett:And does that plan work? Does it is there evidence of that working here on this? It looks like this weekend, I mean, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice led the box office. Speak No Evil, there were 4 new releases in the top 10.
Daren:I see I see 5. 1, 2, 4, 3. Yeah. Crazy. Yeah.
Daren:Well and overall, I think we counted 9 new releases this week. 1, 2.
Garrett:Yeah. It's it's remarkable. And our distributor, and I guess there is no way to avoid these discussions without talking about Faith of Angels, you know, at the box office now that we're in there. Our distributor is trying to book screens, book theaters, and that was one thing they kept coming back and saying, guys, it is a crowded marketplace. Like, there is just a a surplus of product and theaters that don't have a ton of screens just don't have room for a little indie
Daren:Yeah.
Garrett:Which is understandable. That's where we're at. That's the game we we have to play and we have to accept that, hey. We're we're a low budget indie. We're opening, a a micro budget film compared to some of these, and with very, very little marketing spend.
Garrett:And so, you know, we take what screens we can get.
Daren:Yeah. Well, we we should shout out the forge still going strong. Number 9, did another $2,000,000 this weekend in their 4th weekend, which is awesome. And then, we had God's Not Dead, which is another faith based film, opened on 1392 screens and did 1.5. So a really big box office this weekend too, like 1.5.
Daren:I think we've seen 1 or 2 weekends where the 10th spot was, like, 1.4, but 1,500,000 to make the top 10. Like, that is a massively like you said, massively crowded. Four new releases in the top 10. 2 of them that were, you know, well, 3, if you include 4, if you include Reagan in the forge, God's Not Dead, and Am I Racist? We're all kind of our same demo, our same market.
Daren:So, yeah, really, really awesome to see a really big weekend for movies. But, yeah, it's those are the things that are outside of your control, and you just go, wow. Let's celebrate that people are going to movies rather than focus on any negative stuff.
Garrett:Right. No. I think I think it's really interesting too. I think one of the reasons that the bottom box office, the, you know, the top ten threshold is so high is because the number one movie Beetlejuice, you know, only, and I'm air quoting, did 55 millions or 51,000,000 Mhmm. Over the weekend.
Garrett:So it's this disbursement of, you know, if the box office total is, you know, whatever it is, a a 120,000,000 or something, I guess it's not even that. It's under a 100,000,000 for the box office total for the weekend. That just gets spread out, among those films, which is kinda neat. So maybe maybe that you start to think, okay. Do we make that part of our play?
Garrett:Or you say, hey, we are going to open counter, you know, counter open. If there is a number one movie, like, a guaranteed, some sort of Pixar movie coming, do we open that weekend in order to make the box you know, in order so to lower the threshold for having to be in the box office top 10?
Daren:Yeah. Well, it's hard to know besides the big movies that are promoting a year or 2 out and announcing their dates, what's gonna be out. You know, I hadn't heard of a lot of these other movies. And so it's just it's so interesting. I just love looking at it and going, wow, what's really happening and what can I learn from this?
Daren:And hopefully that's what this episode is about. What can we learn from opening weekend for Faith of Angels? So very, very cool. My, indie movie of the week, I saw Faith of Angels 4 times last week, so that one counts as mine.
Garrett:Conner. How many times that's been on our indie movie. Oh, it's better screening. Oh, no. It's harder this.
Garrett:It is fun though to watch it with a with an audience, with with a big crowd of people. We know we had our premiere and we talked about that episode and then to have paying tickets sold and people going to watch it, it's been neat to need to show that. So maybe let's talk about that. Should we talk about, kinda where we are on on opening weekend, kinda and reactions to that.
Daren:Yeah. For sure. Hey, indie filmmakers and movie lovers. This show is sponsored by Purdy Distribution. Since 2011, they've been bringing incredible independent films to theaters, like Garrett Batty's The Saratov Approach, T.
Daren:C. Christensen's Love Kennedy, and McClain Nelson's Once I Was A Beehive. They've worked with top notch directors like Mitch Davis and Mark Goodman specializing in family, faith based, and funny films. This year alone, they've released hits with JK Studios like Go West and Villains Inc, and have even branched out internationally with films shot in
Garrett:South Africa and Japan.
Daren:Purdy Distribution works closely with and Japan. Purdy Distribution works closely with indie filmmakers, designing personalized distribution plans whether it's a theatrical release or straight to streaming on platforms like Amazon, Itunes, Google, and more. If you have a PG or PG 13 film ready for the world, think about reaching out to Purdy Distribution. They're approachable and knowledgeable, ready to help you visualize your film's distribution. Even if your film isn't fully polished, they can offer valuable guidance.
Daren:Plus, if you need that crucial distribution piece for investor packages, Purdy Distribution can provide a letter of intent to distribute, helping you secure funding without locking you into a contract. Mark your calendars for Purdy Distribution's upcoming releases, Tokyo Cowboy on August 30th, the digital release of Thabo and the Rhino Case on September 1st, Faith of Angels in theaters on September 12th, Villains Inc on Amazon and Itunes on October 1st, and The Carpenter on November 1st. To stay updated on these releases and more, sign up for their newsletter at purdiedistribution.com. That's purdiedistribution.com. Now back to the show.
Daren:I wanna add something to last week's, which was what what's one thing you would do different or or better? I would, put on a lot more hand sanitizer after shaking 500 hands because I got a little sick after that day. So just, cleanliness, you know, like, sanitize those hands when you're shaking 500 people's hands at a screening. But, yeah, let's get into it. And what I hope people take away from this, it's that it's more than just box office.
Daren:Like, we're gonna dive into a lot of this stuff. So what you always see reported is such and such movie did this much at the box office this weekend, which is either good or bad. And there's so much more nuance now that we've been spending so much time in reports and data and spreadsheets and going, wow. There's a lot of amazing, awesome things that are happening. So that's what we wanna highlight today, I think.
Garrett:Perfect. And I think we lead out I mean, Monday morning so the way it works as far as independent film, in our experience, Monday morning, you have the the calls and your distributor is frantically working to see, you know, throughout the weekend. It's just kind of a non sleep weekend where you're just going, okay, Friday night, here are the numbers as they as they come in. The theaters report the numbers, to the distributor and the distributor tallies those and then reports those to box office module. We do that repeatedly Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
Garrett:We know with a faith based movie of this nature, Sunday is sort of a non day and Monday actually becomes that Sunday. So we're already up against that for the distributor. But at any rate, the distributor over the weekend is tracking the numbers and sending the reports. Right? And then Monday morning is the is the frantic phone call, that Susan Tuckett talked about and and, Purdy has discussed that you are just on the phone or email with your current theaters and with potential new theaters, and making sure that you have a reason for them to hold the movie into the theaters.
Garrett:And so the goal is to say, does the data support that?
Daren:Yeah. Well, let's get into some of those numbers specific for Faith of Angels then. So Friday, the movie did 36,650. Saturday, 22,600. Sunday, like you said, it was a it was a 90% drop from Friday.
Daren:It was 36100 instead of 36,000 because Yes. All of our all of our Utah friends that would see the movie are all in church or not going
Garrett:Well, yeah. And
Daren:not going most.
Garrett:Yeah. Faith based audiences typically aren't gonna do that. So if I'm a theater booker then, Darren, what's what's your response to me? Because I've I've gotta say, look. I've got Beetlejuice.
Garrett:I've got Speak No Evil. I've got Am I Racist. I've got all these movies that had a great Friday, Saturday, and Sunday showing, and then you're saying that you had a great Friday. I'll give that to you. You had a great Saturday.
Garrett:I'll give that to you, and then Sunday drops off. So, clearly, people don't wanna see your movie.
Daren:So then you extract then you go out a day or 2, and it may be telling them, hey. Just wait till Tuesday or wait till Monday. And look what happened. You know what? We're recording this on a Wednesday, and we just got our numbers for Tuesday, and they were bigger than Saturday.
Daren:And here in Utah, at least, I don't know if it works around the country, but you get a lot of theaters doing, like, 5 buck, Tuesdays, you know, bring your family kind of stuff. And so we had twice as many people see the movie on Tuesday than saw it on Saturday, which is huge. And what we found looking at the data was we were the number 2 per screen average of every movie that's out right now on Tuesday. For that day, we had the number 2 per screen average. So that's what you point to and say, look, this is a movie that's performing.
Daren:It's just different than other movies.
Garrett:So that's okay. So that's a discussion, though, for still Wednesday morning.
Daren:Mhmm.
Garrett:On Monday, I've already had to make my decision as a theater owner. I'm like, hey. Sorry, buddy. I've I've gotta book showtimes for Friday. What what can you tell me?
Garrett:And I think that I think for me, the data and the pivot point and the the real strength of this movie is look. There are 4 faith based movies in the top ten right now in America. Four faith based movies. Faith of angels only open on 30 screens. Mhmm.
Garrett:We're we're opening more on the 27th September of September. But of all the faith based movies, faith of angels had the highest per screen average by almost double.
Daren:Even without a Sunday.
Garrett:Even without a sun you've got faith of angels. So this is my discussion to, and this was my discussion to the distributor to say, please relay this message to the film buyers. Say, look. You've got, you know, great movies. You had you had good, faith based films with Reagan and the Forge and, Amiracist is kind of that conservative, one and, certainly, Faith of Angels is a what was the 4th one?
Garrett:There was a
Daren:God's Not Dead.
Garrett:God's Not Dead, which is also a brand new release. Mhmm. So so you have all of these faith based movies. There's clearly an audience in your theaters for faith based movies, and Faith of Angels, which hasn't released yet, beat out those movies on the per screen average. So great.
Garrett:September 27th, book us, book Faith of Angels in your theater to meet the demand of a faith based audience.
Daren:Yeah. And that was I'm glad you brought that up because that was the conversation on Monday. That's exactly what you said. And the distributor was like, that's it. That's the hook.
Daren:That's the thing we're gonna lead with to make sure that they understand the value of this movie. And then something else that came up today, which I think applies to the Monday phone call, is where does our movie sit as far as that theaters, per screen average? Right? As far as the take for each movie in that theater. And we were looking at some of the successful ones that we, opened in this weekend.
Daren:And, like, in, what was it, Southern Utah, like Saint George area, we were the number 2 movie out of 12 or 15 in that theater. And so that was another thing the distributor was saying that you're looking for is where are you at? Because every week, they're gonna kind of churn through or rotate out the bottom 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 movies, however many it is, depending on what is coming out. So if you have another weekend where, you know, we had 9 movies released last weekend. If we have another 9 movies come out, that's all new potential stuff for that theater because, again, it goes back to supply and demand.
Daren:So if we're in the top two movies, 3, 4, 5 movies out of a 10plex or a 15 or even a 20 24plex, we're safe. Right? They're gonna keep us in because the movie's performing well. But if we're in that bottom half, that bottom 50%, that's where we are maybe at risk of being dropped or or going into what do they call it when you're,
Garrett:Your hold or your splits you're going to splits.
Daren:Going to splits where you have a screen for some of the screenings per day, and then you're sharing that screen, that theater with another movie on other time slots. So we wanna avoid that for as long as we can and have as many showings as possible going forward. But that was an interesting thing to highlight as well. It's like, okay. It's per screen average.
Daren:That's a good thing. If we're number 2 in your theater, we're staying in. And we can use that to say we're looking at the data, the same data you're looking at. Keep us in. Yeah.
Daren:We're good. Yeah. We're gonna hold you. Awesome. Great.
Daren:Move to the next one. And then they're calling through, you know, hundreds of theaters every day to, like you said, hold the theaters that we're already in, book new ones, and get us ready for September 27th when it goes wider.
Garrett:So with that data, our distributor was able to come back and they have now booked the film on 200 and where are we at? 200
Daren:and 242?
Garrett:242, something like that. I mean, it continues to grow. Yes. But with that discussion so it's not them going, hey, we did, you know, 60,000 of box office over the weekend. You know, that's not an impressive number, when you're when you're oh, you know, when you're looking at wide release movies.
Garrett:But to say, we're the number 1 per screen average faith based film and there is clearly an audience for faith based films, that's a that's a that has resulted in over 200 bookings.
Daren:Yeah. And and we're still you know, that was 200 bookings Monday. So we're 2 weeks out from the the wider opening, and our goal was 200. My my thinking, my expectation is we'll be close to 300 because new theaters are booking every day. The more that they reach out, the more that they share this story of how it performed.
Daren:Everyone's lining up to book it. So it's very exciting. I gosh. I love the strategy of it all and getting into it because it's like, okay, well, yeah, we're not the number one movie in America, but that's not our story. So what is?
Daren:And it's really about positioning and framing, and it's these kind of marketing ideas and principles that we have to understand and we have to utilize just as any other industry does.
Garrett:One of the things that stood out to me too about you know, and and we have the data now to support this is the amount of value that theaters sending emails to their own list has brought to the movie. So you say, hey. We open on 30 screens and we did very, very well on a particular number of theaters. And you can kinda say, oh, this is where we did well. This we did well with this group and this group down here was lower attendance.
Garrett:You say, well, what did we do at these theaters? Well, in both cases, we performed very well at Cinemark and at MegaPlex Theatres. And in both cases, we worked with them in theater marketing departments to promote the movie to their lists. It's like they know what their audience wants. They have the resources to, reach their audience.
Garrett:And so by us giving them some funds, we're giving them some of the marketing money, not just us blasting out on Facebook saying, hey. We're playing a Megaplex business. Like, no. Megaplex, you take the funds that we would spend. You blast those to your group and we've seen a really good result with with Megaplex and Cinemark Theaters.
Daren:Yeah. And it's literally taking a chunk of your marketing budget and allocating it for in theater marketing where you're saying, we want you to play our trailer on your screens in the theater. We want you to promote it to your list. We want you to put it on your social media. And I've seen ads every day from Cinemark and from Megaplex saying, get tickets now.
Daren:And so, gosh, it's working. And I think we we don't have data yet because the data from them, we may not get for 60 or 90 days after, you know, the the marketing has run its course. But compared to what we're seeing from just kind of your generic social media advertising, it's way more effective because you're look the reason, I think, is because you're messaging people that are have already said, I like movies, and I like going to your theater because I follow you on Facebook or because you've identified some aspect of the algorithm that says I'm the right person. Instead of, interrupting people and hoping that they are, a, someone who likes movies, b, someone who likes our movie, c, someone who wants to go see it in theaters, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. It's you're meeting them in a different place in that kind of journey, of awareness, and it's way more effective.
Garrett:Well, they're not finding new customers. Right? They already have a customer for their product. They're saying, here's another product that we have for our customer base. And it yeah.
Garrett:So it's a lot easier too. It's easier easier to, you know, write them a little bit of a check for marketing to their group rather than sit there and try to figure out design and create content and market it to the broad audience then you you as you say, we're interrupting their scroll. Mhmm.
Daren:It'll be exciting to see how it plays out once we go national because Megaplex we're pace basically hit most of the Megaplex theaters already with that in theater marketing because they're basically a Utah. Do they have Arizona, Idaho? I don't know if they have anything else.
Garrett:I think there's some I think they I think they have, like, a Las Vegas. Yeah.
Daren:But Cinemark's nationwide, so they have hands on. They're looking at all the data and going, wow. This movie is really getting a good response. So when it goes wider, they already know what's working. They know who to target it to.
Daren:They know the theaters that have performed well in the past, just like we do for faith based films. And we can even tell them, here's the markets that we're opening in. And they know because they're booking the theaters. So it's a really symbiotic relationship to say we're we're in this together rather than just giving Facebook money. We're gonna give you that money.
Daren:We want you to help market the film, and they already kinda have a proven model. So they just kinda put it into their machine, their system, and it sells tickets. It's really nice.
Garrett:Darren, we've talked for we've talked you know, we're 20 minutes into this. We've talked about kind of the reaction and how we're feeling great and things are going great. It would be an opportunity missed for us not to discuss ways to improve or what, you know, what what have we learned? What are what are what are we not regret, but, yeah. How do we improve both for this coming week, for our national release, and then for Carpenter?
Daren:Yeah.
Garrett:What are your thoughts?
Daren:There's 2 things that come to mind that I wish we had right now that we don't have yet. And one of those is reviews. I think we would benefit from having more reviews out, having a a Rotten Tomatoes score, or, more national coverage of the movie. It may be too early for national, so maybe that's why we're kind of delayed on that front. But, I know a lot of movies opening weekend use that that 98% Rotten Tomatoes score as marketing, and we don't have that.
Daren:Right? Because we don't have enough audience reviews yet. We have, like, 17, and we need 50. We don't have enough, like, official I don't know what you call those on Rotten Tomatoes, but, like, official reviewers that are Yeah. That's critical.
Daren:Verified. Critical. So we don't have enough of those. I'd love to see that. And there was a second thing, but I forgot what
Garrett:it was. Was it that's an interesting idea with that with those reviewers. Yeah. You have to be a we've we've had certainly Utah critics review the movie and review it very positively, which is which is great. We want that.
Garrett:But you're right. If they're not a Rotten Tomatoes certified critic, it doesn't count. It only speaks to their immediate audience. And so we've talked about this film trying to reach past the one degree, past the first degree of connection. Mhmm.
Garrett:You know, if you go to the theater and everybody has the same last everybody in the audience has the same last name as people in the movie, then you're not past the one degree. Right? We need to get 2nd and third degree audience members there. And I think you're right. I think part of doing that is to have good reviews, you know, critical reviews that are saying good things about the movie rather than just the guys that made it.
Daren:Yeah. I mean, we've talked before about the benefit of getting in the top ten is now you've got dozens, maybe hundreds of news outlets that are gonna report on what was the top 10 box office last week, and that's a lot of free or earned media that you can now reach millions of people with your movie. And they those are people who are like, woah. Never heard of Faith of Angels. Let me check it out.
Daren:And a percentage of those are gonna go click and find it and check it out, watch the trailer, buy a ticket. Right? So it trickles down from 10,000,000 people seeing that it happened to a 1000000 people clicking it and a 100,000 buying tickets, and there's an extra $1,000,000 our movie just made. But Yeah. We don't have we don't have top 10 box office numbers, but what we could have is, you know, a 98% Rotten Tomatoes score.
Daren:And if we have that going into opening weekend, well, guess what? You know, Rotten Tomatoes probably has 10 or 20,000,000 people a month going to their website. And on the sidebar is here's all the top rated movies right now. That's free awareness. Like, you know how much it would cost us to get 10,000,000 impressions on Facebook?
Daren:A lot of money.
Garrett:Yeah.
Daren:Whereas that's free if we can leverage. So we're doing a lot of that now. We have someone who's helping us reach out to reviewers and get some of those reviews coming in. And what I really hope for is that we can see an audience score. Maybe those were the 2 things, an audience score and a Rotten Tomatoes score before opening weekend because that is gonna give us a lot of marketing, material.
Daren:We can post that all over the place. We could share it with the theaters that are doing in in theater marketing. But then we can also benefit from all of that extra free awareness, because it has a high score. I'm assuming it's gonna have a high score because it's good. And, you know, so far the reviews that have come in on from the audience score are, you know, 5 stars.
Daren:So and, you know, you look at IMDB, we're at a 9.2 out of 10. So all the reviews so far are positive. We're getting really, really good feedback. Someone locally, you know, had us as their pick of the week out of all the new movies that came out last weekend and gave it an a minus score. Like, the movie is good.
Daren:So I'm I I think that's something we did well for this release.
Garrett:Yeah. So then how do we do that for and and maybe what we need to do is we need to have a guest, some sort of movie critic on the show to talk about that. Like, what and we can work on that. There's a couple of names that come to my mind that I could reach out to. For Carpenter, I think it's a matter of reaching out right now, sending those screeners to the critics.
Garrett:The the risk is always, what if the, you know, what if there is, What what if the response isn't positive? And so, yeah, I think that that I guess that's a risk you take or maybe have an embargo on your on your postings and say you can only post, you know, review the movie now and only post the week of and that way there's momentum there. But I guess we don't need to be concerned about that. You know, we believe in the movies and we we think that we've we've made the movies that need to be made. So, yeah, I think you're right.
Garrett:We need to reach out to critics earlier to get those a part of the the big conversation.
Daren:Well, I think you can be strategic about the reviewers you're going out to. Right? Because the way that reviewers are seeing our movie right now is we're sending them screeners. So
Garrett:Yeah.
Daren:We're looking at people who like faith based movies, who have had positive reviews of your movies in the past, etcetera, etcetera. You can stack the deck a little in your favor, and then, yeah, you can't say only post your review if it's positive. But you're you're saying we're not sending this to people who hate faith based movies. We're we're we're asking for bad reviews. So I don't know.
Daren:I I think that would be great to have a a movie critic, someone who's in that system, a certified reviewer to say, how does this work? And what what is a a good strategy for filmmakers to reach out to reviewers? That's really cool. Yeah. So something else I think we did really well this weekend was we had these special screenings.
Daren:You know, not everybody could come to the premier. It was sold out. We had 561 people there, including everybody who was in the hallway and stuff afterwards and before. Because I had 2 or 3 friends that came, said hi, took a picture, and then left because they couldn't stick around. Yeah.
Daren:But we set up these special screenings on Friday Saturday night. So you hosted 1 each night, and I hosted 1 each night. And then based on where our actors were were based out of, where they live, they could choose 1 or 2 to attend. And so, like, Ben Lomu came to both nights of mine. We had Joel Bishop and Ivy Mitchell and Kirby Hayborne and Sam Torres came to the 2 that I hosted, and you had a slew of people.
Daren:And that was huge because we then had material to be able to say, look, a sold out crowd on a Friday, a sold out crowd on the Saturday. Tickets are selling out fast. You wanna get your tickets. Come see the movie with us. I'll be at this theater.
Daren:And I had dozens of friends both times that came, and they're like, I'm so excited to watch it with you. This is so cool. So that was a massive success in my book. How is it on your end?
Garrett:Likewise. Yeah. No complaints about that. I mean, it's always you always want if you're gonna invite your cast to go to a screening, you wanna make sure that there's an audience there and so there is that balance of really pushing attendance at those screenings. But, yes, when when that finally happens and the cast shows up and the audience shows up and, everybody's watching and enjoying the movie together, you're right.
Garrett:It creates a certain amount of buzz. It creates a positive experience around the movie for any audience member, and then they talk about that and that there are ripple effects from that. So I I would highly recommend doing that. Any anytime you can. I think there is a note to pay attention to the theaters, you know.
Garrett:You wanna be mindful of the theaters and we're an independent film and don't wanna, wear out our welcome as far as, you know, the theater staff. We're like, we gotta, you know, put up with these guys again. But I think it's like, TC Christiansen does for his movies. You know, he he'll do screen checks and he'll just stop in and thank people for coming and, doesn't have to make a big formal q and a event out of it. But he he's out there letting people know of his gratitude for them supporting the movie.
Garrett:And, opening weekend, we did that in a big way and I think we will continue to do that to to show people to to just, again, thank people for supporting the movie.
Daren:Yeah. And it's also a great way to get some understanding of where people are hearing about the movie. Right? Because if you don't recognize them, they're not your friend or family or in your congregation. Well, where how did you guys hear about the movie?
Daren:Oh, we saw it on Facebook. Oh, our friend told us about it. Oh, my friend's daughter is the costumer. You know? Like Yeah.
Daren:Okay. Cool. And that's a good way to gauge, like, where are we at as far as degrees away from you and I and the cast and crew? Because we're talking about I think we already touched on this, but we were talking about it this morning. Like, I think we're not quite at the point where we've hit word-of-mouth, and it's taking off.
Daren:I think it'll be after it releases wider that we see that phenomenon happen. But, you know, we're still seeing a lot of people bringing their friends because their daughter's in the movie. You know? So their whole family of 40 people that live in Utah are gonna go see it, which is awesome. Like, we need all of those tickets as well.
Daren:But we're I don't think we're quite at the point where people who don't know you and I or don't know anyone related to or who worked on the movie is is, telling people to go see the movie or bringing people to the movie, but excited to see that in the next 1 or 2 weeks.
Garrett:Yeah. Yeah. I think we'll I think that that will be that will be the tipping point, the threshold. Once it's it's no longer they're no longer being they have a connection to the movie beyond, you know, the cast and crew. Yeah.
Garrett:Then that that that's our tipping point. One other thing we did, and this was an interesting situation. I had a a group call, and want to do a screening outside of a theater on Thursday night. Thursday night was our, you know, our sneak peek open like, Friday's our opening. So Thursday, the theaters are already selling tickets and there's people attending the movie on Thursday night.
Garrett:And this group of about 500 people said, hey. We can't go to the theater. This was for a college, institute group and they said, we can't go to the theater. Would you allow us to screen the movie here? And there's that dilemma of like, well, we have to have a high box office.
Garrett:What do we do? Do I say yes? Do I say no? Are we gonna lose money doing this? And, so forth.
Garrett:And so, ultimately, we decided to make the call. We said, yes. We'll show the movie. I said, 4, we'd be glad to show the movie and do you know, make it a big event for you. Can you help promote it?
Garrett:You know, promote it to your whoever you want to come to your screening but also help us get the word out there by emailing your student body or whatever. And they agreed to do that. And so while on paper, you know, there's not a cash transaction for that screening, with 500 people show up on a Thursday night right before we opened and have an incredibly positive experience with the movie. I realize now, it cost us nothing. Mhmm.
Garrett:Which is a lot cheaper than trying to do a word-of-mouth screening in a theater Yeah. Which we've been doing leading up to this. So maybe I'm discovering this just even on this podcast. It cost us nothing. We had 500 people that saw the movie and are going to be talking about it and we had the school promoting it to their email list.
Garrett:We've seen increases in attendance in the theaters surrounding that school.
Daren:Yeah. That's interesting. Well, and you've you're talking about college kids who saw it. Right? Who probably aren't spending $10 to go see movies.
Daren:Right? I don't remember going I was going to the Dollar Theater and waiting 8 weeks until the movie was in the Dollar Theater when I was in college. Right? And so but who do they have that they're connected to that's in our demographic? It's their parents and their grandparents, their aunts and uncles.
Daren:And they're saying, hey, what'd you do? How was your week on Sunday? When they go back for Sunday dinner or call home? It's like, oh, I saw this awesome movie. You guys gotta go check it out.
Daren:You can't pay for that kind of recommendation. Right? Like, that's that's untouchable from social media and advertising. You can't get that kind of stuff, but we did it for free. So like I said or like you said, very, very beneficial, and we can see those effects, already taking place, which is awesome.
Daren:So, yeah, man, I Once we once
Garrett:I once I did I was just gonna say, once I did see those, I immediately reached out to the other local colleges and said, hey. We'd love to bring this movie. Love to screen it. You know, every every local or faith, you know, affiliated college from Idaho to Southern Utah, and, we'll we'll make headway that way.
Daren:Yeah. It's super smart. It's a great strategy. I don't know that it works for every movie. I I you know, this group is a religious, group, and so they're not gonna screen, Deadpool.
Daren:They don't need the help, but, you know, it I think it plays well into the strategy for a faith based movie or a a family film.
Garrett:Or or a movie that finds its audience. So say you've got a fight movie, you know, Carpenter is doing this. They're doing they're partnering with, UFC. Right? Yeah.
Garrett:And so, find your audience and maybe give your product to them in exchange for broad advertising. That that seems like a potential win.
Daren:Yeah. Giles touched on that when we had him on the podcast. You know, he had, like, a a vegan documentary, and he's like, well, we're gonna go specific to these groups, and we're gonna that's how we're gonna raise our money. It's the exact same thing in a different, phase of the movie. Now we're in distribution instead of fundraising, but, yeah, it's the exact same idea of who overvalues this.
Daren:How do we get in front of the people who we know will love this movie and be grateful that we extended this opportunity for them to come to a screening, come to a premiere, see the movie with their family and friends. That's what we're after. So cool.
Garrett:Yeah.
Daren:Alright, man. I got 2 questions for us. So Okay. The first one is what's now what now? Like, we've released the movie.
Daren:We mentioned this is the beginning of the race, not the the end or the middle. But, like, we're 10 days or so out as this, as this episode comes out. It's this weekend. Like, you're listening to this now. This weekend, the movie comes out across America.
Daren:So what are we doing right now? What's the the focus for the next week and a half?
Garrett:So for me, you know, we've we've we do have these this collection of, I'd say, 1st degree people that are connected to the movie, all over the country. You know, since we launched our website back in June, there was a request the theater. Right? Ask for this theater and people were gathering people's emails and their ZIP codes. Now we know which theaters are going to book the movie.
Garrett:So the onus is upon us now to let those people know, those that requested theaters, to let them know that the movie is now coming to the theater that they've requested or close to them and to get them to purchase a ticket. Yeah. So that's why my my focus and and, it seems tedious, but if, you know, if we look at our first degree connections and those people are bringing 10, 20, 30 people to the movie, it it will be very worth it.
Daren:Exactly. I think that's exactly right. So the second question I think goes along with this is what can someone do who wants to help? Like, if you're listening to this, you're going, man, I really hope to I I want this movie to do well. I've been following along the story and the journey this whole time, and I'm so grateful for the podcast.
Daren:I wanna repay you guys. Then how do you help? Well, we sent this out, and this was something that, is also an answer to the first question. We sent out an email about how to become a champion of the movie. And we also had a list of about a 100 people or so that when they filled out a form weeks weeks ago, said they were interested in bringing the movie to their theater, right, or interested in helping promote the film.
Daren:And so we basically gave them the playbook of how to do that. And it's like, okay. Pick the theater that's close to you. So go on to faith dash of dash angels dot com and find the theater. It it should just pop up based on your location, but you can type in Provo, Utah or wherever you're at, and it'll show you the theaters that are playing.
Daren:And then you can pick a screening and basically take it upon yourself to set up, like, a special screening like what we did. And you're basically saying, I'm gonna go see the movie Friday at 7:0:5 at the Cinemark. And you invite your family and your friends and your church group and your soccer groups and your all your band groups and all the different groups you're involved in. You tell all your family and friends, and you go. And guess what?
Daren:Instead of that movie having 10 people in the audience, now they have a 100 because you championed the film. And so that's what we're trying to leverage over the next 10 days is, like, giving people enough, to say, hey. We need your help, and this is how you can help. This is the very specific thing you can do. It's not gonna cost you anything besides your tickets and popcorn, but you could bring people with you and make an event out of it.
Daren:And that's really, really cool. But the other thing we're doing, to go back to question 1, is we're doing more special screenings. Right? We're setting up screenings for the 27th 28th, in other states and cities besides Utah. So we're traveling.
Daren:You're flying out. I'm flying out. We've got actors that are outside of Utah that are involved. And so we're continuing that strategy of, okay, how do we get 500, 200, 300, whatever people in a in a screening in Atlanta or Dallas or Sacramento or Burbank or New York or Nashville or wherever we have connections? And that's our we're gonna repeat the plan for week 3.
Daren:So we're just gonna keep going.
Garrett:No time for sleep.
Daren:Which is why we're under the weather. Well, I'm under the weather. Can't speak for you. But yeah. So if you also would like to champion the film, shoot us an email, and we can send you, like, a poster of the movie, digital posters that you can post on Facebook or Instagram, and that's an easy way to do it.
Daren:So just hit hit hit Garrett, Garrett at 3 coin pro dot com, and we'll send send you all the stuff. I just gave you more work, Garrett.
Garrett:Bring it bring it on. No. It it is it is doable, and it's very realistic that, on 27th, if we have one ambassador for each theater that we're opening at, you know, 250 ambassadors, I say, yeah. I make I can I can help tell my friends and family I'm in that area? We will make a splash, a major splash.
Garrett:And we've seen movies do that and, that I think that's our next thing. Say, we have 250 people, 1 at each theater that is an ambassador bringing 10 or a 100 people, whatever, getting the word out there, that ripples and really spreads the word for this type of message.
Daren:Yeah. So so true. So if you wanna be a champion, be an ambassador, you have permission. You don't need to ask us. You can just do it.
Daren:But awesome. I'm I'm feeling overall, I'm feeling really proud, really pleased, and just how cool it is to walk into a theater, see sometimes 2 movie posters that you've produced with your names on it, and see on the marquee, there's your there's your title and what time it's screening and then see trailers and see the movie in theaters. Like, it's it's dream come true level stuff. I know you've done this a number of times. This is my first time having a theater or movie that I've produced in theaters, that wasn't just a premiere or a screening.
Daren:And so it's amazing. I'm loving every second of it. I'm excited to see how how far this is gonna go, and I I just wanna do everything I can to get us to the point where it can take off. It can pick up that word-of-mouth and just run on its own. And like we mentioned before, it's in the hands of the audience at that point.
Garrett:K. Well, let's keep at it. Thank you, Darren. Congratulations on a great weekend. And, yeah.
Garrett:Here's here's to 27th. Let's make that happen.
Daren:Awesome, man. We'll see you next week. Thank you for listening to this episode of Truly Independent. To join us on the journey, be notified of new episodes and screenings, and ask us questions about today's episode, head over to 3coinpro.com/podcast, and put in your name and an email address. If you're a fan of the show, please leave us a review on your favorite podcast app, and be sure to share this episode with a friend.
Daren:Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week. Our intro and outro music is Election Time by Kjartan Abele.