Get Involved

This summer is going to be an exciting one!

As a truly independent film, we are personally going about organizing as many events as possible using both Eventbrite and Tugg. If you'd like to bring the film to your town, it's actually pretty easy to do. 

How It Works

Getting things started is easy enough.

First, we talk. Send us an email at [email protected] and let us know what you'd like to do - it doesn't have to be incredibly detailed; Would you like to have a  handful of friends over for a private showing in your home? Are you hoping to see FOR THOUSANDS OF MILES screen at your local theater? Do you want to work together to have a screening of FToM to raise funds for your project or organization? 

Whatever it is, send an email and we'll go from there. 

Next, we'll probably have some questions. Depends on how simple or complex your idea is, but please don't shy away from any idea, big or small, we're excited for the film to bring people together - period - whether it’s 3 or 30 or 300 people at a time. 

Of course, there is a sliding scale in difficulty depending on your idea. If we're planning out a small get-together with you and a few friends, it won't be too much work to get everything in order. If we're working to put together a sold-out showing at your local AMC, there will be a lot of outreach and effort to pull that off, and we can of course help with that. 

We'll make every effort to be upfront about how much work might be required, and we'll do everything we can in terms of support. We want to make sure each of these events is a success - and we want to make sure people have fun with them. 

Most (not all) of the events fall into 1 of these 3 groups: 

1. A small self-hosted event. We're planning a lot of these! These events are great because they are simple and they are flexible. If you and a few friends want to project the film onto the side of our your garage, you can, we’ll even send you a screener of the film for free. Do you have a venue at your disposal and want to sell tickets for a small screening (say, 10-40 people), that would be amazing! You could go all out and put on an event at your local park, encouraging people to ride their bicycles to the screening. Again, these smaller events are great because they are very flexible. 

2. A large co-hosted event. We are currently organizing larger screening events in select cities (starting in L.A., Reno and Detroit). If you or an organization you know is interested in partnering to host one of these screenings, let us know!  These kinds of screenings are more involved - obviously, there is no cut and paste template for larger events, we'll be approaching each on a case-by-case basis. If you're planning an event around 100 people or more, or an event that is offset by sponsorship, we'd love to hear from you.  

3. Help spread-the-word. You don't have to want to take on the responsibilities of self-hosting an event to reach out to us and say hi. If you have an idea on how to help tell people about the film in your town, we'd love to hear it. We could send you a care-package of film posters to pin up at your local bike shop, or a stack of postcards to leave at your favorite coffee house. We have buttons, we have t-shirts... we have all kinds of things. 

A week from now, I'll be sitting down with our wonderfully talented sound-designer, Alexandra Fehrman, to wrap up the final sound mix on FOR THOUSANDS OF MILES; even just writing those words is incredibly exciting for me, I've long-known that sound would be one of the most important aspects of the film -- that there was so much to do with it, so much to say with it, more than could be done visually -- it's been something I've looked forward to even before leaving to film during principal photography. 

So, what's the plan after that? 

That's something I've been working very hard on these last few months, which has involved a lot of picking back up where I last left off in regards to distribution research and outreach. My desk lately has been a mess of festival schedules, TUGG toolkits, VHX forums, IGTM case studies, on and on. It's a lot to keep track of, and it's moments like this when I realize all this hard work I've put into getting the film this far, it's still only half way there. 

This year I've been approaching film festivals very differently, thanks in large part to the advice of Rodrigo Reyes, who has stressed never submitting to festivals cold -- to always find a way to personally reach out to festivals before hand, it helps to start a conversation about why you're sharing the film with that festival, why you believe they are good fit -- those are hard questions to answer sometimes, but it helps knowing that if you can't answer those questions, then that festival might not be a good fit after all. 

Of course, with any festival you're stuck playing a waiting game, and it's best to have a game plan for giving your film a long life after it plays or never-plays at a handful of film fest -- with FTOM my main focus has always been self-releasing the film, to do this we'll be using services like VHX, as well as self-organizing screenings through services like TUGG; meaning that any upcoming festival interest will only strengthen and validate the film. 

Often filmmakers hope to use festivals as leverage when selling their film rights to various distributors... personally, having complete control over how the film is shared, sold, promoted, etc, is invaluable; not simply as a learning experience, but more so as an assurance that the film is not misrepresented.

As an example, every marketing team and conversation we've had about how to represent the film puts all the pressure on "it's a bike movie!", "slap a bicycle on the poster, get Trek to sponsor the film", etc, but all of these things would, personally speaking, present a version of the film that I wouldn't be interested in watching. So, for me, that's a dangerous road to go down - and although I don't know how to market, I do know the film... it is an intimate and personal part of me, and I plan to share the film in a way that is personal and intimate. 

The long, trying experience of making this film has taught me far-more about myself than I ever expected - and, if making the film is only half the process, if the remaining half is giving that film a chance at a life of it's own out in the real world, than I want to be 200% involved in that, I want to understand how to be the best advocate and defender... of something I worked so hard to create.