Momo Chang is an award-winning writer/freelance journalist based in Oakland, California. She is a features editor for Hyphen, a national Asian American magazine focusing on arts, politics and culture.  And she was one of this year’s SFIAAFF Doc Competition Jurors.  Momo shares her reflections on her jury experience on her blog.

Her words about A Lot Like You really resonated with me, because she articulates beautifully some challenges we’ve faced with the marketing of our film:

This film really surprised me because I thought I knew where it was going in the beginning, and it turns out quite differently. The film takes you on a journey, and I found Eliaichi to be a very compelling and trustworthy narrator and guide. Funny thing is, if I were to try to describe this film to someone, I wouldn’t really be able to. It’s about so many things, including culture, insider/outsider status, suffering, family secrets, and human dignity.  I hope this film reaches an even wider audience in the future, like on public television.

~this film takes you somewhere you don’t expect to go: which is great if you are able to attend to the whole film.  but for folks who are making programming/funding decisions based on watching the first 15 minutes…they can’t even begin to predict where the story goes.  we hope to address this as we cut our feature-length film down to an hour for TV broadcast and the educational market.

~our story is hard to sum up in an elevator pitch:  it’s an industry standard.  you need to have a catchy 15-20 second pitch for your film that hooks your audience, and leaves them wanting to know more.  this is my 138th post.  and i still haven’t managed to effectively summarize our film.

maybe i should open this up for suggestions:
How would you pitch our film–in 50 words or less?

ooooh yeah.  i’m going to work on this idea.  the winning submission should get a prize.
i’ll check with our creative team, and get back to you early next week…