I’ve talked about and shopped around the idea of starting a film festival for some time. More recently, in discussions with friends and my wife/secretary, we had been talking about film making workshops for youth. We really like this idea and hope to see it gain even more momentum in months to come.  However, there still remains before me one over arching immediate objective:  the goal to produce a series of short stories from the Friend magazine.

To that end, I have already produced “The Decision” and presented it to representatives at the LDS Church’s media department. I’ve recently resumed work on “A Gift for Kathryn” — the perpetual “pilot” project that was conceived some 6 years ago.  It is my goal to finish it this next year, hopefully within the next 6 months. But this isn’t enough, and to get any sort of momentum behind this series, there need to be more players involved. Why not? If I’m so certain that there is a large enough market for these project, why would there not be other media producers interested in getting on board.

In an effort to expedite production on the series of children’s stories from the Friend magazine, we are working on a process to solicit the involvement from third-party producers.  Combining the idea of a film festival, training workshop and a film making marathon all into one, we are organizing an event which we are calling a “blitz” to produce one of our pending stories.

This is for me an exciting development because in the spirit of a film making marathon, we will have a finished product within two months time. This will also get additional filmmakers on board and increase the exposure of the projects already produced and those in production. Different from a film festival however, we will take into distribution every completed project that meet our moral standards and also adheres to a quality production standard.

One of the potential side effects of this production blitz (though I can’t taut this heavily at this point) is that participating film producers will have the potential to earn a return on their hard work.

While the return on our first short film was very far from profitable, it was also a hard first sell with limited market scope. But important lessons in advertising and promotion were learned and we are excited to be able to repeat these boot-strapping/guerrilla marketing efforts with each new film. Once we reach the critical number of 5 short films, we will also consider distribution via traditional modes such as DVD sales.

So stay tuned for more information and details on the first production blitz. To get official announcements, sign up for Sun Swing updates by email.