Category: Promotion

The Future of Fear in Cambodia

Posted by Jim Munroe – March 22, 2013

Credit: Film Noir Studio Phnom Penh

Two weeks ago I did a microtalk while in Phnom Penh at an event called Nerd Night and showed the trailer to GHOSTS. At the break a fellow who runs a small community run cinema booked the feature for its Cambodian premiere. Pretty soon I was being interviewed for the local weekly in town, The Advisor, for the cover story!

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Click the image if you want to read the interview — it was pretty in-depth.

The screening went well, despite a blackout during the trailers (“Welcome to Cambodia!” said the owner to the crowd, who waited patiently for the power to come back on).

But that week was exciting for another reason — we locked another Asian premiere. Maybe our biggest. But you’ll have to wait til next week for that announcement!

GHOSTS Producer’s New Project

Posted by Jim Munroe – February 9, 2013

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You all knew Anthony was funny from his on-set banter, but now he serves it up with a tasty side of snark. GHOSTS producer Anthony Cortese is fundrasing for a new webseries called Table 12 which vents on behalf of all waiters everywhere. Check out his pitch (funny unto itself) on the IndieGoGo site. The first ep, The Modifiers, is up on Funny or Die.

Vancouver Report, iTunes Release

Posted by Jim Munroe – January 15, 2013

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First things first: after a 6 week delay, the movie’s finally out on iTunes and a bunch of other digital platforms and we’re offering Skype Q&As for screening parties to promote it. Please spread the word!

Secondly, the Vancouver screening went fantastic. The Rio was super supportive, we got a great review from the Georgia Straight, and over a hundred people showed up to check out the movie and hear me blather afterwards. Fanny (our sound savior) was there too, which was cool since she moved out before our big Toronto debut, and I met Flick Harrison who contributed a lot of feedback to this blog. Warren Frey did this little interview with me in the afterglow.

Coming up next, I’m heading to the San Francisco Indie Film Fest. Looks like a pretty great lineup — I’m hoping to catch Brandon Cronenberg’s Antiviral there, which I missed somehow at its Fantastic Fest premiere. (I also missed Looper there, but I saw it recently — it’s a tightly constructed little funride with a bit of an emotional payload to boot.)

On the subject of other sci-fi inspiration — I started up a lo-fi sci-fi videoblog. Love it if you submitted something awesome you found/made!

Also, FilmBizarro listed us in their best movies of 2012, saying: “This is just insane, but at same time very lovable.”

International as HELL

Posted by Jim Munroe – November 6, 2012


Our Asian premiere was last month in Seoul Korea, and for everyone who’s asked what Easterners would think of GHOSTS, Tate has the answer:

Basically, they thought we were dead-on. It’s not ‘if’ the US drops off as a world power and China rises–it’s ‘when’. And they were looking forward to it. They were a bit nervous about Korea’s position, because they’re the little country beside the giant, much like us. But at the core, they thought it was a good bet to come to pass–they didn’t think the US would fall as far as the 3rd world, but figured they would become more like 2nd world countries, perhaps like certain European countries that still have some clout, but aren’t as relevant or super-powery as they were.

They were very interested in how we picked all the jobs, and had other unforeseen insight about the Babymakers and Spam. Koreans have a lot of guilt about giving up children for adoption, so it really struck them. They also liked the way the people sat down in the office.

When he wasn’t drinking soju and talking future economics with the fest organizers, Tate also did a workshop on our kind of lo-fi sci-fi community powered filmmaking — see above.

Since our Sci-Fi-London release in May, GHOSTS has screened in Berlin (Moviemento), Toronto (Royal Cinema), Boston (MIT), Poznan, Poland (Transatlantyk), Ann Arbor (Workantile), Ottawa (Mayfair Theatre), Tucson (Arizona Underground Film Fest), & Seoul, Korea (Gwacheon International SF Festival). Next week it’s booked for Miami (O-Cinema) and Tampa (Muvico Ybor) & later this month for Bath, England (Bath Film Festival)!

Not bad for its first six months. We gotta get a world tour t-shirt printed up with all the cities on the back.

Also expanding our international reach are our awesome volunteer subtitlers — thanks to Antonio and Aram we now have subtitles en español!

Asian Premiere, Toronto Screening, Arizona Award

Posted by Jim Munroe – October 9, 2012


The Gwacheon International SF Festival in Seoul, Korea is screening GHOSTS on Saturday, and they’re flying Tate out to do a Q&A! I’m curious to see how people there react to it.

If you or someone you know missed the Toronto screening, the folks running the Monsters and Martians festival are showing it at the Projection Booth in the east end this Friday Oct. 12th at 9pm.

We took the Audience Choice Award at the Arizona Underground Film Festival — me and Anthony went out for it, and they did this little interview with us in front of a weird brick wall facade.

The Austin screening went well too, took place at an awesome Alamo Drafthouse cinema for a receptive crowd of about 50.

Making this Public, Money, & You in Boston?

Posted by Jim Munroe – June 8, 2012

Couple of important things:

  • I’ve moved the blog in preparation to making it a public document of our process. If you have any issues with this — perhaps you made comments that you’d prefer stay private, for whatever reason — just let me know in the next week and we can figure it out.
  • The Kickstarter money is coming in soon. Off the top we’ll be paying back the money that the producers have loaned the project for costs thus far. Then over the next 8 months we’ll use it for the hard costs involved with screening the movie, keeping careful records. After the promotional phase is over in 2013, we will be dividing any remaining money (if any) as per our Time Logging agreement. If you have logged your hours and have not submitted them to me, please do so before the end of June. If you haven’t logged your hours and we know you’ve put more than ten hours into the project, we’ve been making estimates based on how many hours you were on set, plus prep time. This is an experimental method of compensation, and feedback and questions are welcome!

OK, on to the fun stuff!

I’ve posted some pics from the Toronto screening over here.

Here’s a little clipping from the Berlin version of Time Out, Zitty.

(Talking about other languages, we are working on subtitles for GHOSTS. The first step is making English ones so they can be translated, and Dave has transcribed the entire movie — we just need someone to match it up with the timecode. If you want to learn how to do it, get in touch for more details!)

Our next screening and Q&A is in Boston MA: Saturday July 14th at 8pm at MIT. It’s a free screening and open to the public, and I’ve been told they generally get a few hundred students out for the series. A couple of us are going down for the weekend, so if you’d like to see how Massholes react to Shit Jobs and are up for a 10 hr roadtrip, then let me know and we’ll see if we can carpool!

Help! and: Best Feature Award and Spacing Tie-In

Posted by Jim Munroe – May 27, 2012

Hey Ghosties! Pasted the content of a No Media Kings post below — lots of awesome news. But first, a call for help!:

  • Photographer/videographer? We need someone to document the premiere/afterparty on Wednesday!
  • Ticket taker? We need folks to help facilitate the hundreds (!) of people coming to see our movie. And no worries, you’ll get to see it too!
  • Blu-ray burner? If you know of one we’d love to burn our master on it instead of buying a new unit.

Please email me if you have any leads on the above.

Also, keep in mind that 2/3s of the seats are full at the moment, and I don’t know how quickly tickets at the door are going to go, so to avoid disappointment encourage your pals to pre-order.

Oh, and if you can’t make the movie (for some tragic reason) but want to celebrate after, come to the afterparty at The Monarch (12 Clinton St, upstairs) after 9:30pm on Wednesday.


[Original public post here.] It’s been a wild week! Our Kickstarter ended up raising $20,000 (quadruple what we asked for!) and we got the Best Feature award from the awesome Sci-Fi-London fest. The Grid also just posted a great article on the movie with a bunch of tips from me on low budget filmmaking — the writer really got the spirit of the thing, with phrases like “happiness is the only real currency exchanged on an all-volunteer set.”

Next week of course we have our North American premiere in Toronto. (We’re 2/3s full at this point, so you might want to pre-order tickets.) But the day before that is the party for the new issue of Spacing — the Disaster issue. Spacing is one of my favourite magazines both to read and to write for, and I’m delighted to reveal that I wrote a Ghosts With Shit Jobs-inspired spread in this issue — it’s a tour given by Anton Karrento of Toronto in 2040. Plus, the Karrento Brothers are going to be at the magazine launch party, combing the area for spider silk caches in the nooks and crannies of the Evergreen Brick Works. Spacing parties are always fun and the location’s amazing — come on out!

3 Days Left To Kickstart, Toronto Tickets & Reviews

Posted by Jim Munroe – May 14, 2012

Hey guys! Apologies if you’re getting this multiple times: I’m broadcasting on all frequencies!

There’s three days left on our Kickstarter campaign and it looks like we’ll more than double our original $5000 goal. To give it one last push I just released the new (totally wicked) movie delivery system pictured above today.

After the end of the Kickstarter campaign we won’t be selling the $10 digital download any more. For a good reason, though: we’ve partnered with FilmBuff (owned by Cinetic who distroed Supersize Me and Exit Through the Gift Shop) who’s going to be handling the digital downloads from here on out via places like iTunes and Netflix starting in August or so. So if you want to get the word out to your thrifty pals that they’ve got til Friday at 2pm EST to get a DRM-free version of it straight from us. (Needless to say cast and crew will get a comp copy!)

Of course, you’ll want to encourage all your Toronto pals to pick up tickets online  for the North American premiere in two weeks. If you haven’t already, please add your name to the guestlist. Sorry we can’t do +1s for everybody, but every pre-ordered ticket gets a free No Media Kings book, DVD or t-shirt the night of the show.

Reviews! The Guardian called it “sheer delight“, and Creative Applications said “immensely successful… undoubtedly a cause for celebration“. We also had reviews in Eye For Film, Twitch Film, and ArtThreat.

Toast Our Kickstarter Success at Tonight’s Meetup

Posted by Jim Munroe – April 25, 2012

Our Kickstarter hit its goal in three days! If you helped spread the word, nice work! If you had a lot going on last week, no sweat — still lots of promo to do.

Come on by the Rhino in Parkdale between 8-10pm tonight (Wednesday), grab a stack of our newly printed promo, and raise a glass to a campaign well begun. If you can’t make it, just let me know and we’ll arrange to get you some. Business card sized, they’re perfect for handing off to people you meet who want to know what you’ve been up to lately, or leaving in spots as little intrigue bombs. (“GhostsWithWhatnow?”)

Some people have asked about advance tickets for our Toronto premiere: please let folks know they can now buy tickets here. If you’re getting this email you’ve got a free ticket of course: a small thank you for coming with us on this crazy ride. We just ask that you register for the guest list in the next two weeks so we know how many tickets we can sell.

Of course, we’re still taking pledges on the Kickstarter page until May 18th — it’s a great way for people who can’t come to the screening to support us, and to get a copy of the movie in June to boot!

Can you Help Kickstart GHOSTS to the Toronto Screening?

Posted by Jim Munroe – April 18, 2012

It’s GO time, Ghosties! We’re starting our promotional push with a one-month Kickstarter campaign. For as little as $10, people can score a digital download of the entire feature directly from us, but only for the next month. Once a week for the next four weeks I’m going to be suggesting ways that you could help get this crazy movie you helped make happen out into the world.

This week, could you point people directly to http://kck.st/I6uOXa in an email and let them know about it? In addition, on that page beneath the video there are ways to Facebook Like it and Tweet it — that would be terrific. The early days of a campaign are really important. We have worked hard to get across the most interesting stuff about the movie without being total hucksters.

Next week, Wednesday April the 25th, most of the producers are meeting in person at the Rhino in Parkdale at 8pm. I will have the GHOSTS promo piece fresh from the printer with the London/Berlin/Toronto screening dates etc on them. If you can take a few to hand out to people you meet, that’s great, and if you can spend an hour dropping small stacks in cafes and such places in your neighbourhood then even better. If you want to help out but can’t make the date let me know and we’ll arrange something.

And yes, we do finally have a date for the Toronto screening: Wed. May 30th, 7pm at the Royal on College St. W. If you don’t know it, it’s a lovely cinema with amazing audiovisual. I announced it mere minutes ago along with the London and Berlin screenings.

If you need assurance that the final product is in fact worthy of your continued support, you need to watch the first 20 minutes: we have just added the terrific Human Spam introduction.

And as always, if you have suggestions or comments feel free to email me directly.