In the early days of the Internet I was quite skeptical about how all the so-called amazingly monumental ways the Internet was going to change and reshape our world. And even today I still am skeptical about some of them.
But now, one of the things I was previously skeptical about, we are going to test out. By ‘we’ I mean those of us working hard to get our next film project, “One Hand Clapping,” off the ground. I’m talking about creating, nurturing, and mobilizing a community around our film.
Naturally, like anyone else on the planet, before the Internet I had considered a community as an actual group of people you had some type of physical contact, approximation to, and shared interest in. Some of that of course did change with the advent of the telegraph and telephone. But once that world wide web fired up, online communities just had to follow eventually. And nowadays that feature of the Internet has exponentially exploded and morphed into all types of ways to create, interact, and influence virtual communities.
And now with “One Hand Clapping” we are going to see how we can accomplish that around the film. When we shot our previous film “Dreams Awake” we did not have any type of social media presence. It wasn’t until just before we released the film that we even had a Facebook page or Twitter feed, and eventually a YouTube Channel. But here we are about a year from the actual production of “One Hand Clapping”, and at least 6 months later for a release, and we have almost 15,000 fans on our Facebook page. Our plan is to have at least 100,000 by the time we go into production.
Of course, we realize it takes much more than just throwing up pages on all the social media platforms to create an actual community. And that is why I am writing today, to initially lay out what we are trying to do here. Yet, actually more importantly, to ask you for your help and your ideas in putting this together. After all, it can hardly be a community if it is one-sided, unbalanced, or too didactic, or too dialectic.
First, I want to give you a short synopsis of the project: “Set in a small Texas town, this story is a multi-generational family drama that explores how the possibility of reincarnation can help three brothers make peace with their dying father, with the help of his 8-year-old grandson.”
Second, I want to lay out the themes of the story, which has one main underlying theme and several sub-themes. At this point I don’t want to spoil it and tell you what the main theme is, but I will tell you what the themes are. These themes involve: problematic familial relationships, mostly between brothers and between father and son; inner child trauma and healing; meditation as a mechanism for realization and healing; reincarnation as a device and vehicle for both trauma and healing; and multi-generational familial love.
Third, if you are interested and/or intrigued by any of the above I suggest you go here and get more information about how you can be involved with what we are doing. Maybe you could be involved at some stage of the actual production, or our social media world, or more directly in the metaphysical nature of the film, or possibly in the film’s release and marketing, or even as an investor or the crowdfunding program. We would love to have you join our growing community!
JAD