BTS - The Road to Park City

Posted by Tom Quinn

December 18, 2007

With Slamdance only a month away, I thought it may be worth detailing the process of prepping THE NEW YEAR PARADE for its Park City premiere. Fortunately for us, the IFP Narrative Rough Cut Lab had prepped us on dealing with distributors, sales agents, and planning our festival strategy. But even with their guidance, I found myself initially overwhelmed by the tidal wave that hit last month. Before the Slamdance announcement was even public, we began getting tons of calls from distributors, sales agents, and other filmmakers – many of whom had seen footage or met with us at the IFP Market and were now eager to see the completed film.

In the next few weeks I’ll be covering our progress for The Workbook Project, to help demystify the journey, including:

- Booking Park City
- Tying Up Loose Ends
- Locking Picture
- Securing Representation
- Mixing the Film
- Output to Tape
- Attending the Festival

STEP ONE: BOOKING PARK CITY

Immediately after hearing that we’d been selected for the Narrative Competition at Slamdance, I began looking into places to stay. Of course, Park City is expensive, but it is important to have a good presence at the festival. I sat down with my fiancé and we determined our budget and agreed that we would pay for the condo if the actors could pay their own travel. We got a one-bedroom place with a pullout sofa and small kitchen – plenty of floor space for our cast and crew to crash on. We also immediately booked our flights and found that, if we could be flexible with times, the roundtrip from Philly to Salt Lake City would only cost 300 dollars. Not bad. Some of the cast and crew are still working out which days they can make it, but it looks like we’ll have a strong showing at both screenings and a very good time.

Meanwhile, Slamdance was working hard to get the schedule together and to set up this great site with BSide where you can view photos, trailers, and screening times. If you’re going to be in Park City, stop on the BSide site to grab your tickets to THE NEW YEAR PARADE world premiere on Saturday, January 19th at 10AM. It looks like both of our leads will be in attendance so the Q & A should be a lot of fun. Programmer Nicole Arbusto supplied a very kind quote: There is something elegant about a story that feels totally honest and pared down…just a real place and great, truthful performances. It’s great for me to see the performances singled out yet again. Especially after having the actors all travel long distances to Philly this weekend to tie up some loose ends. More on that next week….

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