Hooray For Hollywood——“The American Dream” Debuts in Hollywood
By Blake Laitner
Who said a Portland indie film production company couldn’t get a break in LA?
Portland’s Braunbaer Studios did and here is the backstory.
And along the way, we learned some important life lessons: perseverance pays off and rejection is good for the soul.
It only took Braunbaer Studios 105 film festival Erejections (we coined it, ask permission before you use it) before receiving an acceptance letter.
Note to reader— Email rejections hurt a little bit less than those hard-copy letters do because hitting delete is easier than crumbling up a paper letter and shooting it into the trash.
The 11th Chinese American Film Festival gave us our first break. (At this writing we have already gotten our second acceptance.)
Life lesson #3—This proves that anything is possible with hard work and a little luck.
Willie Wonka’s golden ticket arrives in your Inbox.
After not having be accepted to any film festivals for so long, you start to question your film.
We knew we had a great story and a professional product. But what about these indie judges?
Then we received an email from a market specialist with the 11th Chinese American Film Festival.
Email reads:
Hello,
Congratulations!
This is Rainbow (great name) of the 2015 CAFF committee. I am writing to inform you that your film has been selected by our film festival.
My eye blinked rapidly as I smiled and reread the email.
There would be three events:
- A welcome dinner;
- A Film Summit at Paramount Studios;
- Grand opening ceremony at the Ricardo Montalban (Remember: Fantasy Island “The plane! The plane!”) Theater in Hollywood.
Our little film would be on the big screen in front of a Hollywood audience. They loved it based on the applause meters housed in our ears.
We went. We saw. We lost.
We walked on red carpet.
We met producers from Sony and got some business cards.
There was a number of actors present. Being in the trade we did not ask for autographs.
We had a great time.
Life lesson #4—The road is filled with highs and lows. Enjoy the highs.
Well as they say in Tinseltown: That’s a wrap.
