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Last year I had the pleasure of working with the No Small Matter team to help them create a theatrical release and then pivot during Covid-19 to a national streaming event.   NSM Co-Producer and Impact Producer and I wrote a two part case study for Filmmaker Magazine covering the very practical steps that the NSM team took to lay the groundwork for a very successful release.  Here are the first few paragraphs of the article and you can find the full article here

No Small Matter, Part Two: Four Tips on Releasing an Independent Documentary During a Pandemic

Written by Laura Wilson Fallsgraff and Jon Reiss

Last week, we chronicled the winding but rewarding grassroots impact campaign for our feature documentary on early childhood education, No Small Matter. But we left off at a critical juncture we know many friends and colleagues faced this year — to release or not to release an indie film during a pandemic?

Last winter, our team brought on distribution strategist Jon Reiss to help determine the best way to create a final launch for the film with a theatrical and VOD release to reach beyond our grassroots outreach. With Jon we began working with Abramorama and Passion River to stage one last hurrah for No Small Matter, a film that had already been shown at nearly 1,000 screenings around the country: A 60+ city theatrical release, scheduled for, you guessed it, March 2020, including weeklong runs in New York, Los Angeles, and DC theaters leading into wider release in early April. It would all build up to the VOD release during the national Week of the Young Child, when early education advocates around the country lobby for funding and raise awareness about the importance of this issue.  

Everything was looking up; we worked with Abramorama’s bookers to reach out to local early education organizations in every one of the nearly 70 cities booked to host panels and conversations focused on state or local initiatives that could drive traffic to the theaters. Our national partner organizations were ready to promote the heck out of the runs. But before we hopped on our flight to D.C. for our first press screening… lockdown.

Read the rest of the article here in Filmmaker Magazine.