The SANTA CLARITA FILM FESTIVAL (Feb. 19-26) billed as the FAMILY FILM festival in of course Santa Clarita - minutes from MAGIC MOUNTAIN - marks the "The Innocents" WORLD PREMIERE. We were thrilled to be accepted into our first film festival, but suddenly we had a lot of work to do. We didn't yet have a print made for the festival premiere. After frantically going through the color timing process with the lab and making a print - a nightmare of its own, and very costly (click here for the full nightmare in 'Latest News'), we managed to push back the print deadline with the festival until the day before our first screening.

The festival is not as filmmaker friendly as some other festivals. Everything is VERY EXPENSIVE and must be paid for by the filmmaker - Parties, the Awards Gala, even a Pass to the screenings. None of which we would have ever paid for if it wasn't our first festival, being lost in the excitement of it all.

Unfortunately the festival wasn't widely attended. No doubt due to the conflict of scheduling with the AMERICAN FILM MARKET - a bad time to have a festival unless you're right next to the AFM. That combined with the fact that we had little experience with the world of publicity and marketing to distributors and industry made for less than a full house for us as well.

But it's worth mentioning that everyone who did see "The Innocents" was very moved by the film. One woman talked for nearly an hour to us about how strongly it affected her because of its POWERFULL SUBJECT MATTER. All things considered it was a successful premiere. It would have been nice to have a bigger audience, though a stronger marketing campaign would have helped that a bit. Next time.