This years marketing push involves something a little crazier than normal. I wanted to find a way to become a visual metaphor that represented my new film. For the next year I’ll be using the image above for promotional purposes. Over the years I’ve been a little too shy and quiet about my films. I feel that in some ways I’ve had to become a new person to promote my work properly. Having a costume to put on really helps you become someone new. I’ve created a marketing superhero and his name is Measuring Tape Marco. He’s going to do all the interviews and go to all the film festivals wearing his superhero outfit so that I don’t have to. Measuring Tape Marco will have to perform and act out all talking points that tell people what the film is about. At first it was a bit of a struggle to find a way to promote my new film but in the end the answer was hiding in the meaning of film. In ‘Measuring Tape Girl’ a young woman approaching her thirties turns to online video blogging as a means of expressing her doubts and fears. She creates an alter ego named ‘Measuring Tape Girl’, which she uses as a self-defense mechanism to measure herself against others. A Measuring Tape Blazer will be what I use to become a new person. Someone who stands up and tells everyone about his new film. ‘Measuring Tape Girl’ wishes to create a new mental image of herself by looking within and transferring all of her hopes, dreams and mental anguish from her internal world to an online form where they can take on a life of their own. Maybe I can find a way to do the same thing. I feel awkward and a little out of place when I wear the Measuring Tape Blazer but I’ll get used to it, I hope. Hopefully Measuring Tape Marco can become a part of who I am and when I take the blazer off I can stand up and talk about my films with more confidence and strength than I have in the past. This is a little bit of a crazy experiment in performance art/marketing but in a world where everyone is a filmmaker, you have to do something different. You have to become a visual metaphor, the visual embodiment of your work and of your hopes and dreams.
Special thanks to Sarah Skinner who put in a lot of long hours of hard work to make this measuring tape blazer. It fits perfectly. And a big thank you to Brad Clarke for making the time to take this photograph for me. http://clarkeimages.com/