Product placement, crew changes, and in-kind donations/loans

The past week has included relentless e-mailing. Lots of back and forth with the product placement agencies. There are a few leads. Several agencies requested the script. Some have requested that we contact them approximately four weeks from production to see what they can do at that time, once the cast is confirmed.

Most product placement companies only want to deal with movies that have guaranteed distribution and/or have a celebrity attached to the project. Also, the agencies’ agenda does not generally include monetary outlay. They focus on supplying products to movies to defer costs (i.e. free food lowers the budget).

A lot of crew changes happened as well. Leeanna unfortunately had to drop out of the casting director position due to her spring academic program. Ahreum Kim also had to defer the cinematography position due to personal reasons.

I contacted a friend’s sister who was interested in casting, but she was also unable to commit. Not knowing anyone else, national postings for the casting director position came into play. Through trying posting/e-mailing the blurb all over the internet, a few promising responses have started to trickle in, so hopefully we will have the right person on the project by the end of the week.

Also, my talented friend, John Arturo is interested in writing and directing as a career, and he is thinking about collaborating on the project as a cinematographer/camera operator. He has a great personality, an incredible work ethic, and we have a lot of the same sensibilities. The only drawback to his taking the position would be taking a semester off of school, so he has to work out the logistics to see if that would be possible.

A few more professors were kind enough to meet and discuss the movie. Each had a lot of advice on financing that I am pursuing. One suggested avenue was to contact equipment companies to see if they would donate/lend/reduce the price of equipment in return for brand placement in the credits, advertising their arts support in the movie on their company’s website, and possibly pitching their products to the school.

Sennheiser, an audio equipment company has been responsive, so we will see how things turn out. Over the weekend a lot of e-mails went out, so maybe this week some other arrangements will materialize.

Finally, there was a job posting to draft a business plan for a Jewish arts/film project. If it fits into my schedule, it might be a good networking opportunity. I e-mailed requesting more information about it tonight.