Alright then, The Last One is off to the races. Today I filled out seven film festival forms, sent them off, then leaned back in my office chair and slowly wept as I saw the total amount debited from my credit card.

And so begins the cycle of press kits and entry forms, of filling out director bios and daily trips to the post office . Submitting to film festivals almost feels like gambling to me- you hurl a massive amount of cash on the table and see if the cards go your way. As much as I'd be happy to just manually burn DVDs and hand them out to friends, common sense (as well as my inner producer) always whacks me on the head on that one. Why take great pains to make a film if you don't make the same effort to show it to the world? Granted, there are a lot of films out there that should never leave the safe circle of biased friends and blinded family. As a former festival director myself I have been subjected to the good, the bad, and the what the fuck were they thinking?

I'd like to think my film is good. Definitely not bad. And even if it was shot more than a year ago, I still think I knew what I was doing. To be honest, I've seen the cut so many times I don't know what to think of it anymore. That's when I knew it was time to just stop over-analyzing, and just get the damn thing out and while people are leaving the theatre and debating amongst themselves whether they liked it or not, I've moved on to the next one. And yes, I do have a next one...and a two...even a three. You always gotta have a 'so what's next?' answer up your sleeve. And I'm pleased to say I have 'em.

Modern Filmmaker Battleplan- use the web more than ever to promote your film. It's cheap (mostly free), and extends to the far reaches of the planet. On occasion some cool site will gladly spare some bandwidth for you. Like so.

*Thanks to Simon de Bruyn from Inside Film for bugging Enzo to make this happen.

So naturally all TLO-related web presence begins with this blog. Hopefully as good news (and what the hell, even the bad, I shouldn't discriminate) trickles in, I shall crow about it here.

Enzo has been bugging me to get on Twitter. To that I say Aaaaaarghhh...is Facebook not enough? I mean, I've just barely completed The Last One's MySpace page and already it's yesterday's news. Or, "so Friendster" as a workmate would say. Yes, everyone in my office is tweeting too. At some point I know I probably will because I'm too much of a techy bandwagon slut to not jump on. But at the moment it's just another thing to get cross-eyed with on my iPhone while I'm riding the train. And it's so much more filmmaker-y to look around, observe people, their looks, their mannerisms, their...goddammit they're all Twittering.