Promotional Baby Steps

After about a month away from this blog, I'm back with news about The King is But a Man.

On Tuesday I got permission to return to the venue it premiered in, to take reenact some scenes from the show, and take some publicity stills. It was a bit of a chore for several reasons. I was alone, my camera has only a ten second delay, the lighting was off, and the set for a different show was still there. So my range of motion was somewhat limited. Not to mention that my rechargeable batteries wore out on my digital camera too quickly. (This is only the second set I have ever owned. The first set were fantastic, but the company went out of business!)

Being confined by circumstances beyond my control did, however, force me to work quickly, to think less, and just set up artistic shots as best as I could. As is often the case in creative endeavors, the challenges led to some good results. In one or two shots, it led to excellent results. And since my show has no official set anyway, the set on the stage at the time wasn't an insurmountable issue. I just had to deliver speeches in different parts of the stage than when I performed there.

The result was about 25 usable shots of my performing various sections of the show.

I also took a few movies of my delivering some of the speeches. These also turned out well, if a bit tinny in the sound department. (I have no professional video equipment. Only a basic handheld home movie deal.)

I gathered the video and the photos, put them on computer, and came up with a basic promotional website for the show, using weebly. Please check it out.

You may notice that I haven't purchased my own domain name, opting for now to stay with the address with "weebly" in it. Or, you may not have noticed that at all. I provided you with a link in the above paragraph that took you right to the site. My guess is that three fourths of the time, anybody who wants the link to the site will get it via email, so the address itself is less important. For those who do have to type it in, what can I say? I'm just not ashamed to have "weebly" in the address, if it means it saves me some money. The site looks fine, the information i want is there, and anybody who won't bother to learn about the show because I didn't purchase my own domain name is probably not somebody I'd enjoy performing for anyway.

Five years ago I probably would have bought the domain name. I would have probably researched for weeks, studied other sites, asked questions, and tried to create a more complicated, shiny site with bells and whistles to spare. I would have listened to people implore me to "just hire someone." But I'm an artist on a budget who wants to create, and I've simplified my approach to many things over the last few years. The site, though elementary, does exactly what it needs to do, and I know how to change it when needed. That sounds good to me.

So the next step is to survey some local venues or organizations that might be interested in having me perform the show for them. I don't know how that will go, but I at least know I can sent them a nice link to my site that tells them all about the show, and even provides some samples of the production.

Not bad for 48 hours work, I'd say.