We have returned from Milwaukee, Wisconsin; a place I never thought I would ever go in my life. My Sexy Fiancé Veronica ™ and I attended the IT CAME FROM LAKE MICHIGAN horror movie festival/convention. I met Uwe Boll, a much nicer man that you would anticipate. This is a guy who took on his critics in a boxing ring and had an email war with a reviewer from WIRED. Uwe was extremely honest, to the point of near-career suicide by describing people like Michael Madsen as a complete drunk and that many people are incompetent. Refreshing and frightening honesty all wrapped into one this was. [url=http://crackle.com/c/Moving_Targets/HOW_TO_DEAL_WITH_TELEMARKETERS/2058901/#ml=fi%3D%26fu%3D2079908][img]http://www.sonnyboo.com/images1/blog/oct07/uwe.jpg[/img][/url]
Meeting Mark Borcardt also surprised me. Mark was very gentle and sincere. I don’t know much about his life after the time period documented in AMERICAN MOVIE, but he was nothing like I thought he’d be. We were in his home town after all and he was one of the coolest, most approachable guys at the convention.
[url=http://crackle.com/c/Moving_Targets/HOW_TO_DEAL_WITH_TELEMARKETERS/2058901/#ml=fi%3D%26fu%3D2079908][img]http://www.sonnyboo.com/images1/blog/oct07/mark.jpg[/img][/url]
Friday night we arrived late and pretty much went to the hotel and crashed. Saturday we spent the day at the Sonnyboo booth and sold some books and DVD’s. The main selling item was the TALES FROM THE FRONT LINE book. I was disappointed more people weren’t into the ILLUSTRATED SCREENPLAY.
Sitting next to us was SOFIYA SMIRNOVA, a model/spokesperson of the type that tends to be very popular at these kinds of events. Hot Asian girls selling signed pictures of them scantily clad…. Can’t figure out what THAT’s popular… She suggested getting a table at the FANGORIA convention in Chicago (her hometown) and I’m now seriously considering the expense. Close to 30,000 people clamoring to get material and stuff, so I might still sell some HORRORS OF WAR material like posters, etc. there.
The screening of HORRORS OF WAR went well. Of course, I did not stay in the room once it started. I came in late since my seminar went overtime, but My Sexy Fiancé Veronica ™ did. I manned the booth and sold some books. I still fail to see why anyone wants my autograph. I am not famous or important, but I sign them anyway. I signed several of the 8.5″x11″ One Sheets for HORRORS OF WAR. That was surreal.
Sunday’s event slowed the pace a bit, but I enjoyed myself and relaxed. We went out to celebrate and then went back to the hotel where My Sexy Fiancé Veronica ™ proceeded to get some drinks. I like it when she gets a little drunk.
[url=http://crackle.com/c/Moving_Targets/HOW_TO_DEAL_WITH_TELEMARKETERS/2058901/#ml=fi%3D%26fu%3D2079908][img]http://www.sonnyboo.com/images1/blog/oct07/sofiya.jpg[/img][/url]
At 3:00AM Sunday night before coming home on Monday, there was a fire in our hotel and we spent about 30 minutes outside before going back to our room to try to resume sleep. We killed some time eating a nice lunch and then heading to the airport to come home. “V” was pleased to see us return to Rossdonia. Unfortunately, the toilet was not happy. It had leaked into the kitchen again and so now we’re going to have to spend a lot of money getting this repaired (again) and get the whole bathroom fixed. Damn.
Life without a lot of DVD’s is weird. I feel a little naked. More so than usual, that is. I don’t like pants almost as much as I don’t like shoes. I have had to Netflix (is this really a verb now?) a bunch of titles I know I want back. I still feel very Zen about my losses of material things. Every time this little black cat hops in front of me, wakes my up, or brings me a rope to play fetch with – I know I didn’t lose anything too important. I don’t know what it’s like to be a father, but I do know how this feels. It feels good.
Now for an update on my marketing strategy on the short(s) HOW TO DEAL WITH TELEMARKETERS. The basic stats for a little more than 1 week are as follows:
[url=http://video.yahoo.com/video/profile?sid=957444]YAHOO [/url] – 35,605 total combined views (25,878 for part 02 alone)
SONY’S [url=http://crackle.com/c/Moving_Targets/HOW_TO_DEAL_WITH_TELEMARKETERS/2058901/#ml=fi%3D%26fu%3D2079908]CRACKLE[/url] – 2,204 total views (it’s already combined as one short)
[url=http://www.youtube.com/user/sonnyboo]YOUTUBE [/url] – 1,196 total combined views (no clear standout)
[url=http://www.metacafe.com/channels/sonnyboo]METACAFE [/url] – 4,237 total combined views (2,883 for part 02 alone)
The rest of the sites really only amount to several hundred views, but these are the biggest ones. It hits about where my expectations were so far. Yahoo Video ™ stands out as being the top dog in terms of getting exposure. Someone in their programming digs Sonnyboo material, but they have made no contact to me directly. Whenever I put something out there, it seems to get some play. I have several shorts with tens of thousands of individual views on their site because they get featured on the main page.
In my research on this project, I discovered something that is a first for SONNYBOO material: Digital plagiarism. I did a Google search on the title and lo and behold, several other users on YouTube and various other sites had uploaded my very own clips and claimed them as their own. Some going so far as to remove the credit of www.sonnyboo.com from the ending! I discovered the video on 3-4 sites I had never been on (IE Microsoft’s MSN VIDEO set, another site called ThatVideoSite.com, and more). Some of the sites with my work have upwards of 15,000 downloads each…and don’t have me credited in any way. One of the users was really cool about adding a disclaimer of text with full credit to me. I have never had to deal with this before. Very odd.
I did some postings on several websites, but I aimed them mostly to the [url=http://crackle.com/c/Moving_Targets/HOW_TO_DEAL_WITH_TELEMARKETERS/2058901/#ml=fi%3D%26fu%3D2079908]CRACKLE[/url] site because it was a complete version of the short and also because of the contest aspects. That means that most of the 2,000+ views came from promotion and emails to friends and family requesting that they view it and vote. Getting featured on the main page of Yahoo Video ™ seemed to make the biggest difference. As I said last time, I think sites like YouTube and MySpace Video are too diluted already and it’s very hard to get noticed on those sites. Fingers crossed on the [url=http://crackle.com/c/Moving_Targets/HOW_TO_DEAL_WITH_TELEMARKETERS/2058901/#ml=fi%3D%26fu%3D2079908]CRACKLE[/url] contest. I found I had 2 shorts I could still upload on their site, so I did. I won the Editor’s Award (not for editing, but an award from the Editor’s of the site’s video content) for the day for that one too.
I guess that means I’m still an award winning filmmaker much to the envy of a select few.
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