Production Note #19

Welcome to another Production Note about the making of the Leo “Bud” Welch Documentary.

This week, we did a lot of work on getting our marketing and public appearance on track.

We looked through hundreds of wonderful photos of Leo from difficult great photographers in order to find the perfect photo for our film poster, and, guess what: WE FOUND IT. We have a totally awesome poster now, and even though it’s still a temporary version, we already love it very much. We still don’t have the permission of the photographer to use the photo, but since she’s been a strong supporter of our movie from day one, we’re very optimistic that this will work out.

For a long time, “The journey of Leo “Bud” Welch” was our subtitle, but, seeing it on the film poster, it just didn’t feel right. Luckily, one of Wolfgang’s neighbors is a pretty good author, and she offered to watch the movie again in search of a better subtitle. And, since she’s REALLY good with words, she came up with a better, super simple subtitle that we’ll probably use.

Wolfgang also hired an old friend to work on the the official film website – yes, this currently nice-but-a-little-clumsy website is about to change into something looking way better that gives a lot of room to what’s the center of any movie: Images.

Stefan spent a lot of time talking to Sound Designers, Sound Editors and Colour Graders, and right now, some possible candidates are watching our movie to understand the project.

Wolfgang invested quite some time in researching film festivals. He made a list of possible festivals, mostly based on MovieMaker’s annual list of 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee. He also learned a lot from Chris Holland’s website Filmfestivalsecrets, a really brillant collection of articles and leaflets on the Do’s and Dont’s of film festivals. Chris Holland also wrote a book on the subject, Wolfgang is about to read it asap.

So if you’re – like us – about to finish your movie and are only beginning to understand the whole film festival business, check out this website (the book’s probably pretty good, too) before you waste some money on blindly paying Extended Deadline Fees.

Oh, and another awesome thing happened this week: Our man Leo “Bud” Welch had his 84th birthday! He celebrated his birthday at Smoot’s Grocery in Natchez, MS. Seems like he had fun.

So much for this week. Next week will probably be rather quiet because of the upcoming holidays and a lot of out-of-town business for Wolfgang.