Update on "jumping off bridges"

Here's a recap of recent "jumping off bridges" news, per Kat:

FESTIVALS: Michael Emerson and Kat attended the Jacksonville Film Festival in May. They had an extremely successful screening. The first show sold out and the festival added a second screening later in the week that was packed as well. In early June, Stacy was in Saugatuck, Michigan for the Waterfront Film Festival. Both screenings were well attended and the audiences were enthusiastic and appreciative. St. Edwards University also made us part of their lecture series for a new MBA program. We had a full house for the screening and a large crowd for our follow-up panel discussion that included Texas Film Commissioner, Bob Hudgins. The next screening is in Lubbock at the Flatland Film Festival. If you know anyone in Lubbock send them out to our screening on Friday, August 11th at 7:30 at the New Firehouse Theatre at LHUCA. Kat will be in attendance discovering the gem that is Lubbock. We're now only submitting to festivals via invitation, our focus is on self distributing the film theatrically.


DISTRIBUTION: We talked with several distributors after SXSW and found a general consensus that they loved the film but found it to be a hard sell. We were close to signing with a distributor that would have only pursued cable and DVD, in then end, he didn't feel the film was "big" enough to take on. We continue to feel strongly about getting into theaters one way or another, to support DVD rentals and sales. Our feedback from festivals has shown us that we do have an audience. Our goal is to reach them.

With that said, here's a general idea of what we're doing this fall.

FALL PREMIERE/TOUR: We've mounted an ambitious effort to screen the film this fall in over 20 key cities across the country in conjunction with national non-profit suicide prevention, grief recovery, and mental health groups. To that end, we have surrounded ourselves with lots of helpers: Tracy Frazier, who is also our newest Storie Productions partner, Leslie Langee, one of our actors who has been working with us on publicity and outreach, and Brittany Kessel, a recent college graduate with a degree in event planning and ties to the suicide prevention network. We've had several meetings with Texas representatives of suicide prevention and mental health organizations and have begun talking with three national organizations that focus on suicide prevention.

The screening plan was hatched after brainstorms with Luke Adams who started marathon training with Stacy and Kat last fall. Luke worked at Morgan Creek as a VP of Marketing for many, many years and inundated us with ideas and methods. He loved the film and felt that it was extremely important to get it out into the world. He basically said, "you're a suicide film, market it to that audience, they're the ones that will respond to it the most and in turn bring other people to see it." So that's what we're doing. In a nutshell.

With these screenings we will target therapists, counselors, people who have lost loved ones, professors, experts on grief and suicide ... We'll bring in critics and distributors so they can experience the film with our target audience. Our goal is to sell out in cities all across the U.S., get the attention of distributors, and show them our film does have an audience and isn't such a hard sell.

So far we've locked down the following cities ... Austin (either 9/26 or 10/10), Houston (10/14), Tallahassee (10/6), Seattle (9/13) and Montlair, NJ (not sure the date just yet). We're working hard to secure about 15 more cities with help from friends, friends of friends, peers and random strangers. There have definitely been some amazing folks who don't even know us helping out with this venture. It's been sweet.

We'll be sending out a list of cities and dates later on. We'll need your help to spread the word to people in those communities. We'll be promoting the film using grassroots methods. It worked for us in the festivals and we feel it will work for us with these screenings, too. We're also pursuing an educational distributor for the film. It's an outlet we hadn't anticipated originally but have since realized is a good bet for use in outreach efforts and a tool for awareness.