Updates, etc

Lots of little incremental things to report.

I've wanted to keep this blog strictly about Subjectified-related updates, but please join the conversation on twitter or facebook (and myspace, if there's interest) where I've been posting some relevant news articles and links to other related projects. Those are good places to start an actual conversation. Feel free to comment here, as always.

This winter I will be working fellow Subjectified producer Hannah Labaree to develop more comprehensive organizing tools. These should help those of you who are excited to host your own screenings. I've had some emails from people interested in working together on this, and we'd love to have more people. We will try to make it easy for you! The organizing tools will materialize this winter so we can start planning spring screenings in community centers, local cinemas, campuses and maybe even people's homes, in places where that makes more sense.

We are joining up with OpenIndie, a startup website and online tool that will allow people to get mobilized to bring Subjectified (and other partner independent films) to your community. OpenIndie could be a a great tool for anyone interested in independent films. It will be free for fans to sign up, so we hope it'll be an easy and fun way to socially-network our way into cool, independent screenings. More details to come.

I've been super busy on things unrelated to Subjectified, so I've been getting some much-needed help from the intern Paul. Thanks, Paul! On the subject of interns, Paul is a college student and says he may not be able to help out next semester because of his own course load, so please contact me if you'd like to put in a few hours to help me organize the film's strategies moving forward. That can be someone here in New York or remotely. I've had so much wonderful help and partnership while making Subjectified over the course of the past three years. Now that we're in this strategic phase, I'm mostly on my own, so I'd love to get input from others (particularly people with experience in organizing, P.R., advertising and media integration, but really lots of it is just internet research and other things that you're already good at, if you're reading this). Thanks in advance!

I've received a bunch of emails from people who are interested in the movie and want to learn more or get involved. Keep them coming! This phase is about building a group of people who want to get this conversation started.

One of our facebook ads was rejected by their editorial staff. I'm not sure if it was decided by an automated system that looks for words like "sex," or whether it's a real people who found it somehow inappropriate. The ad, composed using tips and guidelines from the facebook advertisers' guidelines, read "Subjectified. 9 Young Women Talk about Sex: A new documentary. Real stories from women around the country. Click to watch the trailer. Become a fan!" Now we're barred from advertising Subjectified at all on facebook. This is sad because we gained many fans through our modest and cheap advertising campaign there. So, please do help spread the word through your own personal network now that we're not advertising there. I'm sure everyone knows one person who would really enjoy this project. Send out a link to the facebook site or to subjectified.com, and suggest that she/he becomes a fan or joins the email list so we can keep track of who's on board. I am a little angry at facebook right now, but I still think it's a valuable tool for us based on the people who have found us that way, so I don't want to boycott it altogether. Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Thanks again as always.
Melissa (info_ a*t _ subjectified.com)