Last night the new trailer for Good Thing screened at The Cary Theater as part of the Rough Cuts Review.

If you’re unfamiliar with it, the Rough Cuts Review is an event organized and hosted by The Cary Theater. It’s a way for filmmakers to share their work on the big screen and get feedback from the audience. It’s a moderated, supportive, and constructive conversation for each artist.

Let me be frank: organizing your own work-in-progress screening can be really stressful.

You’ve got to (a) have your piece ready to show, (b) handle the tech aspects so the video actually plays and people can hear it, (c) organize the event so people will show up on time and in a good mood, (d) find a way to get feedback from the audience and remember what people said once all is said and done, and (e) be in the right frame of mind to receive feedback.

Wow, simply writing all of that out gives me so much anxiety. I speak from experience: organizing a work-in-progress screening is a lot to juggle as an independent filmmaker with limited resources. It’s not impossible, but it’s infinitely more enjoyable with someone else handling a lot of the logistics.

The Rough Cuts Review – to me – is really one of the best things you can do as a filmmaker here in the Triangle.

rough-cuts-slide

After screening the trailer for Good Thing, we got a lot of great comments about it. People seemed interested in the film, want to know when it’s finished, and what we’ve gotta do to get it done. There were suggestions for improvements that are really important to me, too.

Hearing that immediate feedback helps confirm suspicions, reveal things I’ve overlooked, and prioritize what I need to do next. There’s a lot of work to be done with this film in 2017. I’m working hard on it.

Submit Your Work

The next Rough Cuts Review is Tuesday, January 17th, 2017.

If you’re a filmmaker, do your best to share something at the event. Tell all of your friends and family to meet you there, so you can hear their feedback. You won’t regret it.

Sharing your work on the big screen gives you hope, courage, and inspiration. You get to hear people’s reactions to the thing you’ve created, so you can make adjustments and be a better storyteller. You “get out of your head” so you can stop overanalyzing and nitpicking every part of your film, too.

Don’t hesitate. Submit your work now. Meet me there in January.