Day in the Park!!!

What a complete SUCCESS! Our film’s promotional booth at Lynchburg’s Day in the Park was a SMASH HIT! I had NO IDEA how popular we would be. I’m so sorry everyone, but we didn’t have TIME to take pictures! I managed to snap one pic while we were setting up… there’s Mike behind the tent there. On the HUMONGOUS 42 inch flat screen we had (man, it was awesome) we showed the teaser trailer for the film and a bunch of cards on screen (yeah yeah, like I did in the ol’ CAS days) showing our web addresses and promotional stuff for the film, like educational “Fast Facts” and “Did you know?” stuff for the kids and parents to read as they were waiting in line. We trimmed it up a lot from what you see here, but when we were done, it looked very professional and very slick and got a TON of attention.

The theme for Day in the Park this year was “It’s a Jungle out here”. Our booth was for “Jungle Face Paint”. I was handling the face paints… Mike also had some jungle animal stamps… kinda like fake tattoos for the ones scared of getting painted and impatient parents (he really helped me out by being the “Express Lane”). It was kinda slow in the beginning of the day… but once those kids started walking around showing off their faces… the line came.

No kidding… We had a line of kids from, say 10:30am STRAIGHT to 3pm. No slow down, no break. In the end, I had to cut it off and tell folks we were closed. One little girl cried and we hooked her up with a stamp tattoo. I’m thinking that everyone had they’re eye on the line and as it got short, they jumped in. We even had a few that tried to break in line and a few ghetto mamas that started yelling. It was ROCKIN. I kinda threw time constraints out the door (even though I thought it was pretty fast) and painted entire faces instead of just cheeks. I really think that’s what made them stand and wait in line, combined with having the TV to watch to pass the time.

Those kids requested a variety of animals to be. The most popular were tigers and jaguars. There were a few monkeys and butterflies. A couple little guys got war paint and some little football players got their team colors painted on them. I even had a few kids who wanted the Heath Ledger Joker face and one little guy who wanted to be Iron Man. I really wish I had taken some pictures… I was really proud of a few of those.

But the goal was to promote the film, and WE DID! We now have the beginnings of an email fan base from our signup sheets, we handed out a lot of brochures and scored some potential donors (we weren’t allowed to actively fundraise in the public park). I think everyone is liking the call for a TEST AUDIENCE. There were a lot of parents who liked the idea of their kids participating in making a cartoon. We were even approached by ANOTHER local museum that wanted to work out programming based on our film!! It was an AVALANCE of success for us. THANK YOU SO MUCH to EVERYONE who stopped by our promotional booth. I apologize for any wait and the hot weather, but I think everyone had a lot of fun.