Last night in a small studio in Soho, the London bloggerati got together to watch a film. Bloggers go to geek dinners, why not a geek film night?
But this wasn't just any film screening, Gaping Void blogger Hugh MacLeod, asked twenty or so blogger friends to come watch a pre-release version of the film Hallam Foe by Hugh's friend David Mackenzie. Maybe it would snowball, maybe it wouldn't, he said. The film is in post-production right now for release next February. The title sequence is just some rough animation outline at this point, and the final credits aren't done.
As Hugh said:
This was the first time members of "the public" got to see the movie, so Dave was pretty nervous at first.
David said that he was looking to the bloggers to help create an 'identity' for the film. After watching the film, this is definitely not the kind of mainstream movie that will translate easily into a grabby trailer, or the kind of Hollywood pitch made famous in Altman's Player.
Now, in the age of word-of-mouth advertising, it's clear that pre-screening a film like this is designed to build buzz, everyone instantly thinks of the Snakes on a Plane phenomenon. But this was also a chance for the marketing team from Buena Vista International to pick some of the brightest brains in British blogging about how to organically promote the film. Trying to callously seed this in the blogosphere could just as easily backfire.
How did the experiment turn out? I'll let JP who writes the Confused of Calcutta blog and Gia let you know. It's a big thumbs up from Gia. Will that get you out the theatre to see it?
