My cell phone rings and I check the caller ID. "Unknown Caller," it says. Great. It's bad enough that telemarketers, with their caller-ID-proof phones, harass me at home, but now they've got my cell number?

I decide to answer. "Hello," I say. I'm ready to tell a telemarketer to go to hell when the voice on the other end of the line says, "Is this Chance Shirley? I'm with the Acquisitions Department of Lions Gate Films, and I'm calling about HIDE AND CREEP."

Oh, that's different. "Hey, man, this is Chance. How's it going?"

Audience

As difficult as making a movie can be, finding an audience for the movie can be even harder. You can screen or sell copies of the movie yourself, but it will probably be seen by more people if you get it into a festival or it's picked up by a film distributor or studio. So I was excited to get the call from Lions Gate, which is one of the larger American independent film studios, before I'd even finished HIDE AND CREEP.

Not that Lions Gate is going to release HIDE AND CREEP. But somebody at Lions Gate watched it, which is further than I've made it, business-wise, with other creative ventures. I mean, I've played in rock bands for half my life, but I've never had a record company call me up and say, "Hey, Chance, we want to hear that new album you've been working on."

Hollywood-Style

I'd like to say that Lions Gate called because of my sterling reputation as a writer/director/producer, but that is (obviously) not the case. A few weeks after we started shooting HIDE AND CREEP, Birmingham filmmaker Michael Praytor told me to put an "in production" notice in the HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, one of the big movie industry newspapers (VARIETY being the other).

So I filled out a form (you can order it online) and faxed it in. I never saw our listing (I don't subscribe to the REPORTER, and I can't find it at any newsstands around here), but several other people did. I was contacted by Lions Gate and a few smaller distributors, probably because they were looking for a horror movie and the REPORTER listing mentioned zombies. I was also contacted by a few music composers, which would have been useful if we didn't already have Eric McGinty working on the score. And local effects makeup master Jonathan Thornton, who eventually did some 11th hour work on HIDE AND CREEP, initially called me after reading about the movie in the REPORTER. So being listed in the HOLLYWOOD REPORTER brought us to the attention of all these people, and it didn't cost me anything except a little time. Talk about bang for the buck.

I only wish I'd gotten us listed in the REPORTER earlier. If I ever get to make another feature, I'll apply with them for a listing as soon as we lock down a date for start of production.

My Own Private Web Site

Another cheap way to let people know about your movie is the Internet. As soon as we'd sort of decided to call the movie "HIDE AND CREEP," I registered the domain name "HideAndCreep.com" for about eight dollars. I already had my own web space for hosting the eventual HIDE AND CREEP web site, but there's lots of almost-free and free web space available for people who aren't so lucky.

If you're interested in some inexpensive web space, check with your ISP or one of the many free web hosts out there (Angelfire, GeoCities, Tripod). There are also free services -- like the ones at MyDomain.com -- that can forward your cheap domain name to your even cheaper web space.

Other Web Sites

The column you're reading right now is one of the best things that ever happened to HIDE AND CREEP. The HOLLYWOOD REPORTER got us a call from Lions Gate, and my "This Movie Ain't Gonna Shoot Itself" columns got us a call from Dimension Films (the genre division of Miramax). Not that Dimension is releasing HIDE AND CREEP. But they watched it, and even had some nice things to say about it.

I realize that MOVIE POOP SHOOT can't publish a column by every independent filmmaker in the world, but there are other pop culture and entertainment sites out there (even if they're not quite as cool as the 'SHOOT). If you're working on a film and can string nouns and verbs together, get in touch with some sites and see if they're interested in publishing what you've got to say.

Some of my 'SHOOT columns have been mentioned or referenced by other web sites, usually horror-centric ones. After this happened a few times, I realized there is definitely a web advantage for folks making genre movies.

There are several sites dedicated to specific genres, especially horror (CREATURE-CORNER.COM, DREADCENTRAL.COM), and some of the bigger general movie sites (AIN'T IT COOL NEWS, CHUD) even skew a little toward genre material.

The best site for coverage (especially reviews) of indie films of all shapes and sizes, regardless of genre, is FILMTHREAT.COM. FILMTHREAT has reviewed several short movies I've worked on in the past, and they were the first site to review HIDE AND CREEP.

We've occasionally sent some pictures or a news item to a genre web site or two, a very small "press release," as it were. I remember CREATURE-CORNER.COM ran a news item about some of the makeup work Jonathan did for us, since he's fairly well-known to horror fans. We've recently started sending screener copies of HIDE AND CREEP out to a few of these sites, hoping to drum up some early reviews.

Best Foot Forward

Speaking of screener copies, I've been spending a lot of time on packaging lately -- trying to make whatever I send to folks look as interesting and professional as possible.

Some friends who work at the local film festival told me that, when given a choice of two movies they're equally familiar (or unfamiliar) with, they tend to watch the better-packaged one first. Makes sense, and I'm guessing that distributors and press folks might take a similar approach.

So I got some help from our pals Carol Hartsell (graphics design genius) and Ces Marciuliano (writing genius), who run the very entertaining DRINKATWORK.COM. They came up with a fun and informative press kit for us to send out with screener copies of the movie. I ran with some of Carol's ideas and designed a DVD slipcase cover using Adobe Illustrator. Hearing from some of my film fest pals that festivals the world over like seeing postcards with film submissions, I designed some of those, too. If you'd like to take a closer look at all this print material, online versions are available at www.crewless.com/hideandcreep/pressinfo.

Illustrator note: Illustrator isn't marketed as a print design tool -- that's more of an Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress thing. That being said, I like Illustrator for print design, anyway. It's great for working with text and shapes and exports files in Adobe's PDF format -- a near-universally accepted format for printing -- like a champ.

Illustrator tip: After you save your Illustrator document as a PDF file, do a "Select All" and choose "Type" then "Create Outlines" from the top menu bar. This re-renders any type in your PDF to line drawings, eliminating any font-compatibility issues if you send the PDF out to someone else for printing.

Quality and Quantity

I have a love/hate relationship with Kinko's. Sometimes their customer service is great, sometimes it's terrible. Sometimes they make great-looking prints super fast, sometimes they take forever to run a job and the end result looks like crap.

Unfortunately, for small runs, Kinko's is one of the few games going. If you're going to make 500 DVD covers, you can get a run made at somewhere like 4over4.com, who Carol recommends. But I just need 50, maybe 100 copies of most of my stuff. Local filmmaker Robb Rugan, a bit of a graphics design genius himself, tells me I need to go with a digital press -- one that can print high-quality short runs without charging an arm and a leg.

I've also found quality differences in DVD cases. I've tried a few different brands of the Amaray-style cases, the ones that festivals (and the general public) seem to prefer. I ordered some red ones online, but they're kind of flimsy. I got some classic black ones from Wal-Mart, but those are hard to open and close, and the clear plastic that holds the print insert seems unevenly bound. I recently found some clear ones at Best Buy made by Memorex. These seem to be the best quality-wise, they're not too expensive (10 for 10 dollars), and, since they're clear, I can make the DVD covers two-sided.

Still Bleeding (Edge)

I love DVD. I love watching movies on DVD. You know, we used to have to watch movies on VHS videotapes. Those were dark days.

Recordable DVDs, though, I don't love so much. I mean, they're great when they're working. But there are still some compatibility issues between certain recordable DVD standards and certain models of DVD players. Even though recordable DVDs have been around for a few years now, there are enough bugs in the format that, in some ways, it's still bleeding edge technology.

But DVDs are so much easier to dress up in a cool package, I much prefer sending them out over VHS tapes, even if they're not universally viewable. If I'm sending a copy to a festival or distributor, I'll ask if they prefer recordable DVD or VHS.

Inherent problems with recordable DVDs aside, I've noticed that some brands of blank DVD seem to play back more universally than others. So far, I've been getting the best results with Verbatim DVDs.

Next time, in Part Eighteen, we'll check out the rest of the things I've been doing in an attempt to get HIDE AND CREEP noticed. In the meantime, I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving holiday (if you celebrate that sort of thing) and a pleasant first week of December.

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