SEEKING ASIAN FEMALE
·
Introduction: This
report is a documentation of the project this street team undertook to promote
the film Seeking Asian Female. Our team included Ayesha Abouelazm, Mikael
Coleman, Roxanne Crosdale, Bretney Garth, and Abby Guastella. The film was
directed by Debbie Lum and documents the story of a man, Steven, and his search
for an Asian wife. This report will provide all the efforts we as a group made
towards promoting the film, including our accomplishments, failures, and things
we might have done differently if we had the second chance.
·
Film Synopsis: Seeking
Asian Female is a personal documentary following the love story of Steven and
Sandy. Steven, a white man in his early 60’s, has spent 10 years searching for
his Asian wife and finally finds a match, 30 year old Sandy, on an online
dating website. From here, we see the ups and downs of their relationship as
the couple struggles through the language barrier and the obvious differences
in cultural values. Documentarian Debbie Lum acts as the mediator in the
relationship and helps the couple through their first encounter and eventually
their marriage. The question is: will the relationship survive once Debbie’s
help in translations is no longer a part of their daily lives?
·
Filmmakers Bios:
Debbie Lum / director, producer, writer, camera, co-editor
Debbie Lum is a San Francisco-based filmmaker and editor. Seeking Asian Female is her feature-length directing debut. For years she worked as a documentary editor; her editing credits include A.K.A Don Bonus (winner, National Emmy), Kelly Loves Tony (nominee, IDA Best Documentary) which she also co-produced and To You Sweetheart, Aloha (winner, Audience Award, VC LA Film Festival). In the editing room, she has worked with notable directors, Spencer Nakasako, Wayne Wang and Philip Kaufman. She has also written and directed several short comedies, Chinese Beauty, A Great Deal! and One April Morning, which have screened at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival among many other festivals. She has an M.F.A in Cinema from San Francisco State University and a B.A. in Religious Studies from Brown University.
Tina Nguyen / editor, writer, co-producer
Tina Nguyen / editor, writer, co-producer
Tina Nguyen is a documentary and commercial editor. She recently co-edited Holy Warswhich was nominated for Best Feature at IDFA and was an official selection of AFI/Discovery Silverdocs and the IDA’s Docuweeks. Her other documentary credits include editing and associate producing the feature films Bilalian and That All May Be One. Bilalian received awards at the Pan African Film Festival and the Dahlonega International Film Festival. She is based in Los Angeles, where she also works on commercial projects for TV and the Web.
Amy Ferraris / co-editor, co-writer
Amy Ferraris / co-editor, co-writer
Amy Ferraris is a writer, editor and director who works in documentary film and nonfiction television. She edited and co-wrote The Grace Lee Project, which premiered at SXSW in 2005 and aired on the Sundance Channel. She also wrote, directed and edited The Perfect Cappuccino (2008), a first-person documentary about her lifelong obsession with coffee and chain stores. Her broadcast editing credits include work for A&E, Animal Planet, Lifetime, the Discovery Channel and WEtv.
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Community Project:
·
Team Member Duties:
Roxanne
Crosdale – Team leader and Head of
Communications. She focused on making all the phone calls and emails to
communicate with the filmmaker and the festival contacts, and sent emails to
reach out to local Asian and women’s organizations. Along with these efforts,
she assisted in handing out promo cards for both films.
Ayesha
Abouelazm – Co-editor of The
Forgotten Kingdom blog. She reached out to local meet up groups that may have
been interested in attending both a film screening of Seeking Asian Female and
our speed dating event.
Mikael
Coleman – Co-editor of The Forgotten
Kingdom blog. Sent emails to media contacts including blogs, newspapers, and
radio stations. Along with these efforts, he assisted in handing out film cards
for both films.
Bretney
Garth – Co-editor of the Seeking Asian
Female blog. She focused on organizing the community projects for both films.
Along with these efforts, she assisted in handing out film cards for both
films.
Abby
Guastella – Co-editor of the Seeking
Asian Female blog. She also reached out to local meet up groups that may have
been interested in attending both a film screening of Seeking Asian Female and
our speed dating event. Along with these efforts, she assisted in handing out
film cards for both films.
·
Marketing Plan:
Our original market plan was to target the following
groups:
o
Local Asian
Organizations
o
Chinese American
Association of Central Florida
o
Asian Trend
Magazine and Newsletter
o
R.E.A.C.H.: Try
to get listed as an event on their website
o
Local Asian
restaurants and establishments
o
Online Dating
Community
o
Local meet-up
groups for singles that partake in online dating and traveling.
o
Local
Relationship Counselors
o
Emailing counselors
to reach out to their clients.
o
Woman 30+ (TLC
crowd)
o
Meet-up groups
(meetup.com)
o
Local
establishments
o
Documentary
filmmakers/lovers
Our final market plan stuck almost entirely to the
original plan we came up with. The only thing that didn’t work out so well was
reaching out to local relationship counselors and the TLC crowd. Relationship
counselors were a stretch and we didn’t receive any responses. The same thing
goes for the TLC crowd. We believed single women around the age of 30 and over
were our target demographic, so it only seemed right that we try contacting
various meet-up groups. We were able to reach out to this crowd through the
women’s studies groups on campus at UCF, they were actually very excited to
hear about the film, but the emails sent out to meet-up groups didn’t show any
responses. Last, but not least, reaching out to documentary filmmakers/lovers
we but on the backburner. We attempted to reach out to this crowd through
FaceBook postings and handing out promo cards around local indie venues where
the film would be screening.
·
Media Contacts:
We made contact with Shally Wong at Asia Trend
Magazine. Asia Trend runs both a magazine and website that promotes local Asian
culture here in Orlando. They agreed to feature both screenings of the film on
the events calendar shown on their website.
Link to events calendar: http://asiatrendmagazine.com/AT_events.html
We also made contact with Alex from the local blog the
Orlandoan. The blog features post detailing events occurring in the central
Florida area. Alex offered to feature the film’s trailer as one of two trailers
used within a post on the Florida Film Festival.
We also reached out to Orlando Waterhole and Orlando
Nightlife Examiner but received no reply.
·
Calendar of Efforts:
February 21 – First group meeting to watch film.
March 8 – First email sent to contact director Debbie
Lum.
March 13 – Second team
meeting to organize the blog and discuss approach to marketing the film.
March 16 – Second email sent to contact director
Debbie Lum.
March 16 – First contact
with filmmaker Debbie Lum. She offered suggestions for focus groups and
ultimately what audience we should target. She also informed us of the film’s
companion website and told us about the promo cards we can pick up.
March 19 – Third group
meeting to discuss the direction we plan to take in reaching our audience and
we began to take action in reaching out to women’s studies students and other
women’s organizations.
March 21 – An email was sent
to Asian Trend Magazine asking to be added to their events calendar on their
website. Confirmation was received just a few hours later. Emails were also
sent to reach out to the Asian Studies and Women’s Studies departments of UCF
and Rollins.
March 22 – Picked up the 100 promo cards and poster Debbie
sent out for us.
March 25 – Emails were sent
to reach out to local Asian organization including the Asian American Heritage
Council, Greater Orlando Asian American Bar Association, and Chinese American
Association of Tampa Bay. Emails were also sent to UCF Asian organizations
including CASA,VASA, ASA, and KSA.
March 26 – We did some foot
work today, dropping off promo cards at various Asian businesses and
restaurants along the intersection of Colonial and Mills.
March 28 – Emails were sent
to reach out to local women’s organizations including the Women’s Executive
Council, the Junior League of Greater Orlando, and the Orlando Women Runners.
March 29 – Second contact
with director Debbie Lum. She introduced us to Anne Ishii, the director of the
companion site. She also informed us of her upcoming interview on the NPR show
This American Life. Also sent emails to the local blog the Orlandoan.
March 31 – Confirmation was
made that Stardust Video & Coffee will allow us to use their venue for our
Speed-Dating Community Project.
March 27- April1 – Spent time
reaching out to different groups over the internet. These groups include: UCF’s
Asian Student Associations – APAC, ASA, VASA, and CASA via Facebook; emails
were sent out to historically Asian fraternities/sororities – Pi Delta Psi,
Delta Phi Omega, Delta Phi Lambda, and Delta Epsilon Psi. Last but not least,
we contacted a number of relevant “Meet-Up” Group Organizers to promote the
film and our Speed Dating event.
April 2 – Sent emails to
two other local blogs, Orlando Waterhole and Orlando Nightlife Examiner.
April 4 – We received
approval to hand out fortune cookies at the Enzian. We were also notified that
a trailer for our film would be featured in the Orlandoan’s post on the
festival.
April 5 – We hosted our
Speed Dating Community Project at 7pm at Stardust Video & Coffee. The
turnout wasn’t as expected, but we took the opportunity to hand out promo cards
accompanied by fortune cookies to numerous groups at the venue.
April 6 – Spent hours
promoting the film at Lake Eola’s Fiesta in the Park by handing out promo cards
and fortune cookies to the hundreds of attendees. Today also marked the first
screening in Maitland at the Enzian at 7pm. Attendance to the film was
outstanding and we took the opportunity to give promo cards to people at the
Eden Bar and outside of the Regal Winter Park to inform them they could see the
film on Wednesday.
April 9 – The mobile
billboard makes its debut advertising the film’s location, date and time for
Wednesday, April 10 at 3:30pm.
April 10 – The final day
the film will be screening in Maitland at the Regal in Winter Park Village. Group
members canvased the venue, encouraging the people around to attend the film.
April 18 – Group meeting to complete the final
project.
·
Collateral Artwork:
 |
| Promo cards |
 |
| Fortune cookies with custom stickers |
 |
| Mobile billboard |
Our Community Project was organizing a Speed Dating
event that we held at Stardust Video & Coffee. Bretney got in touch with
the venue and scheduled the event for the group. The rest of the group tackled
the task of emailing meet-up groups to attend the event. Overall, the turnout
was very limited, but we were able to market the film to people in the
restaurant/café by handing out promo cards and fortune cookies.
·
Photos from the Festival:
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| Bretney dressed as a bride handing out fortune cookies to people at Eden Bar |
 |
| A quick pause in promoting to fix the bride's hair |
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| A tail view of the line forming for the Saturday night screening |
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Filmmaker Review: We didn’t have much contact with the filmmaker, Debbie Lum, due to her
busy personal life adopting a child. She did give us a lot of information to
work with though, and told us about the partner website for the film that did a
lot of promotion for us. If the filmmaker had been any one of us, under the
same financial and time limitations, we would have done the same exact thing
Debbie Lum did in terms of supporting a street team. It was understandable that
she didn’t have much time to dedicate to helping us out due to her personal
endeavors in adopting a child. The only thing we would have done differently
would be to send out more than 100 promo cards and a few smaller posters rather
than the single large poster we received.
