A Case Study
Narrative | Dramatic Features
Film Name: How Am I Doing?
Genre: Comedy
Date: May 2019
Director: Colleen Davie Janes
Producer: Jennifer Plotzke
Writer: Ken Perlstein
Cinematographer: Toru Nishikubo
Production Company: Cool Blue Glasses
Budget: $25,000
Financing: Investor & Crowdfunding
Shooting Format: Golden Door International Film Festival
Screening Format: NA
World Premiere: NA
Awards: Best Pilot, Best Director, Best Actor (Ken Perlstein): WRPN Global Webisode Competition; Best Long Form Pilot Nominee: Soho Film Festival
Website: www.howamidoingtv.com
indieactivity: What is your film about?
Jennifer Plotzke (FL): How Am I Doing began as a semi-autiobiographical story from writer/creator Ken Perlstein. It touched on themes of family, addiction and divorce and as it developed, it grew into a gritty comedy with a wealth of hilarious and lovable charcacters that everyone can relate to. The story follows Eli Meyer through the ups and downs of middle age, recovery, a blended family and life in New York City.
The Official Trailer for How Am I Doing? produced by Jennifer Plotzke
Tell us about the festival run, marketing and sales?
Jennifer Plotzke (FL): We had a targeted festival strategy intended to forge and foster specific industry connections that would pave the way for the future of this project beyond the pilot. We are are very fortunate to have hit some of our larger festival goals and are now planning for further production of this series. We’ve screened on both coasts, most recently at Soho Film Festival in New York and Hollyshorts in Los Angeles.
Give the full Official Synopsis for your film?
Jennifer Plotzke (FL): How Am I Doing is a serious comic deep dive into the world of recovering alcoholic Eli Meyer, a charming, not quite handsome, forty-something fading actor that everyone seems to recognize from a cancelled series called “Ladder 6.” Working to prove his stability and reconcile with his family, Eli is thrown through a loop when ex-wife Ronda announces her engagement to cardiologist Nick Pappas, aka “Dr. Ventricle.” Temptation and potential failure lurk at every turn and Eli consistently fights to do his best. He will soon realize that progress is anything but linear. It’s a 360 degree view of the conflicts, small victories, unexpected humor and bittersweet joys of middle age, with a gritty, real life perspective of family, addiction and life in New York City.
Development & Financing?
Jennifer Plotzke (FL): The story went through several years of development. When Ken Perlstein wrote the intial draft, it resembled more of a feature film script. Through multiple readings and rewrites, it started to take the shape of a series, as Ken reformatted it into a pilot and broke the story down into episodes. Once we had the pilot script locked, we headed into production. We decided it would be better to focus our beginning efforts on making a really great pilot that could act as a calling card for us and a proof of concept for the entire series. We ran several successful crowdfunding campaigns and also secured a private donor that helped us complete our production budget.
Production?
Jennifer Plotzke (FL): This production had a lot of moving parts and took a great deal of coordination. We had multiple locations and a large cast, including a classroom full of children. We were lucky to have one spacious apartment on the Upper West Side in New York and thanks to our wonderful Production Designer, Mag Gie, we were able to disguise it into multiple locations. We shot this in the spring, and because of the timing of the shoot and the need for a classroom, we had to push back our final shoot day by several weeks in order to secure a classroom when school was not in session. We had multiple locations around New York City and doing a company move several times through NYC traffic is no easy feat! Luckily we had a magnificent crew that made everything run very smoothly. Our production team worked for almost nine months in pre-production to make sure all bases were covered and that we wouldn’t hit any snags on our shoot. We were at our limit on time and budget, so we needed to be very precise. Once we had completed principal photography, we sent it off to our post production house, CoolDaddyGroove, who did a phenomenal job in turning this into a fully realized project!
Festival Preparation & Strategy?
Jennifer Plotzke (FL): We knew we wanted to use this project to attract a network or producers that would be interested in producing the rest of the series. So we were very specific in choosing festivals that screened television pilots, series and episodic content and had industry professionals attached that we could build relationships with and eventually pitch the series to. Having your PR and marketing materials complete and in order is essential to attracting people to your project. Your website, pitch deck and press kit are your calling cards and we took a lot of time and care before launching our festival run to make sure that we had all of these in order and up to industry standards. Once we premiered, all of these things combined helped us facilitate an award winning festival journey!
Advice from the Filmmaker?
FL: Don’t give up when it seems like you don’t have enough money or resources to make your film. Exhaust all avenues. Call in favors. Examine how a certain aspect of the script or location could be altered to fit within the timing or the budget. Above all, hire people that you trust, that you can rely on and that believe in the project as much as you do. If everyone shows up and gives it their all, you can’t fail.
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