Our film festival run with The Sensation of Sight started out with a bang. Within a couple of weeks of having finished post on the film and with DVD screeners in hand, we submitted to several top festivals including Telluride, Toronto, and San Sebastian in Spain–the next big festivals coming up in the early fall.

Within three weeks of submitting, we received an invitation to the 54th San Sebastian International FilmFestival–one of the oldest festivals in the world and generally considered one of the top ten international fests. We were a bit stunned by this and surprised by the speed in which we were selected. We were also very pleased and excited by the news, especially when we found out that our film was selected for their New Directors sidebar, called Zabaltegi, and of the 18 films selected for this sidebar, ours was the only American film.

And then the work began all over again. First, the festival required that a 35mm print be sent to them by the end of August for their late September festival. So we immediately made arrangements with Technicolor for this to happen–an expensive and somewhat complicated process, although everyone at Technicolor was extremely helpful and seemed to take a special interest in our film from the start. When the first print was made we viewed it in a small screening room at the Technicolor complex in Los Angeles. This was a fun afternoon as the print was perfect and for the first time we were able to see the film as we had always envisioned it–a 35mm print projected on a big screen.

At the same time our post production supervisor Geoff Garrett suggested we make contact with Mark Matsuno of Matsuno Design, one of the major movie poster/graphic art designers in the industry. Geoff had worked with him in the past and thought that we’d be a good fit. We didn’t think we could afford someone of Mark’s stature to do our poster art, but immediately hit it off with him and his associate Laura Debole and they offered us a great break on price. They adjusted their schedule so they could join us at the Technicolor screening of the print and later we set about pulling a number of screen grabs–photo stills from the actual movie–that Mark and Laura used in coming up with their many initial versions of the poster art. We finally settled on Mark’s first design (David Strathairn pulling the wagon across the top of the title) and it’s become the signature symbol for the film.

As with everyone else we had worked with up to this point, I can’t stress enough what a pleasure it was to work with Mark and Laura. They truly partnered with us and gave us a vast array of possible designs from which to choose. Again, we were very fortunate to be able to work with top pros who in the process also became friends.

With a 35mm print ready to go and our poster design settled, we next had to have the dialogue translated into Spanish and subtitles lasered onto another print of the film, a complicated and expensive process that took several weeks. At the same time we had to ship over to Spain 1200 press kits that had to arrive by a certain date prior to the festival, another involved process of writing copy, printing covers and inserts, and assembling and FedExing the many boxes of materials to San Sebastian. And then there was the hiring of a European PR firm for the duration of the festival to help us prepare for and manage the onslought of press we were going to face.

Suffice it to say, we were becoming painfully aware that being selected for a major festival in Europe was another mountain to climb for a small indie film company. That’s not a complaint, but it was our reality.

(Next: San Sebastian here we come…)