Queer Fruits Film Festival test screening & market research

i have just come back from the film festival in Lismore and we may be very happy "The Confession of Father John Thomas" was very well received by our intended target Audience. There where about 200 people in the audience and before the screening started i had placed flyers on about 300 seats! Because of some technical difficulties with the last film of the night, a lot of attendance left the theatre, which made it a little hard to race down to the exit and ask people to fill in the short questionnaires i was collecting. But i managed to collect information from 27 people of our target group. The overall rating of the animation was 4.5 stars, so that is very good news. Two people signed up that they want to help out with funding a queer animation series in the future. A lot of the success of the film and the future of getting a series funded will come from building a fan base and a bit of a following for the film and the characters. OUr hardest job will still be how to reach our target Audience and have their support. I was speaking to XuxE who has traveled to Lismore form San Francisco who told me about the websites www.indiegogo.com and www.kickstarter.com. You can build a following for your film there and do a crowd raise, which means people give you money for you to make more films! We will definitely look closer into that, because out of our survey 90% of the people interviewed want to see more animated shorts with the same characters, as 95% had never seen any animation before with Queer genitalia as characters! Almost 50% wants to see the animation series broadcast on free Digital TV with an equal 10% in each category wants to see it on Pay Internet or Pay TV or Buy a DVD! These initial figures will help us with pitching the series in the correct medium and market. Even in these Global internet times, people living in Regional Australia still prefer to see a regular series broadcast on Free Digital TV.

The coming out on the big screen

The journey of our new animation film "The confession of Father John Thomas" is about to start tomorrow with the first public test screening in front of an subjective predominately Queer audience in Lismore ( Northern NSW Australia). Leigh and i decided together with the festival director Akkadia Ford to do a public preview screening of the film where the audience is asked to fill in a short questionnaire after the screening of the film. (see picture) For the last two weeks Leigh and i have been working hard on getting the website up and running. We also started a Facebook page where people can become friends with Father John Thomas and confess their sinful thoughts. In order to attract attention to the website and the facebook group i posted the following message onto the Queer Fruits Film Festival Facebook group

"To our queer congregation. We would like to divulge to you that our courages Father John Thomas and our sinful Miss Beaver Eater are coming out on the big screen in the provocatively sexy animation of THE CONFESSION OF FATHER JOHN THOMAS. If curiosity gets the better of you check out our naughty trailer before opening night of the Queer Fruits Film Festival, Lismore www.fatherjohnthomas.com.au. Like me as your friend and confess your own dirty sinful thoughts! Bless you .... Father John Thomas xxx"

My curiosity has now become, how we attract pour audience to our website and to the Facebook group. I have started with printing 400 flyers to distribute tomorrow evening at the opening of the festival. The theatre has a 390 seating capacity and they predict a sold out opening night tomorrow, so everybody should get a flyer! Since we launched the website and the Facebook page on the 10 of Dec 2010 we have 72 people that like the Trailer and 23 friends on Facebook. I suppose what we are trying to do is create a bit of a following for the characters in the film and in return gather momentum and an audience for the next episodes of the trilogy or a series with more episodes. More Tomorrow....