One of the main problems with being indie (read underfinanced) when it comes to filmmaking is being involved in productions where a media blitz just is not in the cards.
When a famous individual is a declared fan of Dorkness Rising, and has not yet seen JourneyQuest, in part because he was not aware it was from the same people, you have a problem. But an ad in Variety stating that the Dead Gentlemen have another project in the works is both A: too expensive and B: not going to reach our core fans anyway.
So how do we reach those people? Because there is, as we are discovering, a massive disconnect between the fans of our prior work and our current work. Lots of people who adore The Gamers, et al, aren’t even aware we’re still creating film projects.
That is where we rely almost strictly on social networks and con appearances. Our screenings reach people who didn’t know we were still active. The 1000 postcards we handed out at PAX (thanks to Blue Child, Samara Lerman and Trin Miller) were in part just informing a good chunk of the nerd populace that we are still putting stuff out there.
That is also a major job of our weekly updates and our reaching out via social media. There are so many fans who will love us who aren’t even aware that we exist just yet, either fans of our prior work, or folks who are waiting to discover us, but who haven’t managed it just yet.
We keep being asked what folks can do if they have no money to contribute to our future projects like JourneyQuest Season 2. The easiest thing you can do is expand our profile. By sharing and liking our videos, your friends will find us, who might already be looking for us, or something like us, or who might be thrilled to discover something singularly geeky that speaks specifically to them as an audience member.
On the most basic level, if you want to help, the best thing you can do is make sure all your friends, all your gamer buddies, and all your Facebook friends are aware that a wonderful project like JourneyQuest exists. The Creative Commons license on our projects means you can have screenings without worrying about paying royalties (for legal reasons, we don’t advise doing this with Hollywood films) and that means it requires nothing more than a screen and a disc or file for you to introduce dozens or hundreds more people to our work.
We have so many more projects to bring to you, and we are committed to doing it in a way that does not leave us beholden to Hollywood terms, demographics, test screenings, marketing whirlpools, and everything else that is wrong with the “system” as we know it. We can’t do it without you.
