Getting SXSW Coverage

Though it may seem pre­sump­tuous of me (and it is!), I’m going to borrow a page from Michael Tully’s book (and Karina Longworth’s and Jette Kernion’s) and write an entry to any film­makers and pub­li­cists out there who might be reading this and who have a film screening at South by Southwest this year. It’s just a month away, but that’s a pretty good stretch of time to start pro­moting your film. And believe me, that week in Austin flies by before you know it. Even though I’ve already started receiving a number of emails from pub­li­cists pitching their wares, these are gen­eric pitches to the entire press crowd attending the fest­ival. If you want some indi­vidual and spe­cial cov­erage from me, send me an indi­vidual and spe­cial email. You can reach me at “james” at this domain. I can’t make any prom­ises (I’ve got a pretty demanding day job) but giving me five weeks to cover your film is better than just hoping I turn up at the screening in Austin. Screeners are always appre­ci­ated, though you’ll have to pay extra to ship them all the way up here to Canada. But once I’ve written about your film, the border magic­ally dis­ap­pears! Don’t bother sending me links to trailers, though I’m a huge fan of film one-sheets and will almost cer­tainly post those.

To be honest, I’m a little freaked out by the pro­spect of trying to do a good job of cov­ering both the inter­active con­fer­ence (for the day job) and the film fest­ival (for this here site) as well as enjoy a few days of free music after­wards. Any jump I can get on the media mael­strom I’m about to head into would make me happy, or at least slightly less stressed out.