Saturday was the one year anniversary of starting principal photography for About a Donkey, AND it was our unofficial premiere of the film. We rented the beautiful Anthology Film Archives' 187-seat theater for our cast & crew screening. Seed&Spark supporters who originally contributed $100 got an automatic invite as part of their campaign incentive; and we decided, since we had such a large theater rented and so many friends and family eager to see the film, it'd be a great idea to offer limited tickets to cover the cost of the theater. We didn't advertise to the public, so as to not blow our premiere status, but we offered tickets to family and core supporters. We ended up with 96 total people in attendance and ended up making $764, just over enough to cover our $740 theater rental!
As for the screening itself, it was a success! The audience seemed to really enjoy the film. It looked absolutely beautiful on the big screen. It got laughs at spots we were hoping; and we were so humbled to hear about how certain moments, and especially the ending, made people emotional. We set out to make a timely but hopeful piece about working towards acceptance. It was so lovely hearing comments about how it resonated with people who didn't know what to expect from the film.
Hearing it in a theater setting was a big help and made us realize we need to revisit our audio cleaning and levels a bit to better balance tracks for such a wide space. We'll be doing that over the next week or so. And we'll be submitting to festivals and crossing our fingers. We can't wait to share it again in more theaters and with more audiences!
Thanks everyone who made getting here possible!
