Marketing follows ‘Soon Enough’ world premiere
Published 4:23 pm Wednesday, October 17, 2018
- Luis Abe Jim focuses on outlets for movie (Contributed/Nancy Wilstach)
By NANCY WILSTACH / Community Columnist
Luis Abe Jim is just 20 years old, but his first movie makes its world premiere Oct. 3, and he already is considering scripts for a second production.
The premiere of Three Wolves Pictures’ “Soon Enough” was shot entirely in Montevallo using University of Montevallo students as cast and crew, plus a drone . . . We are talking high quality, but low budget.
Those breath-taking aerials of the UM campus did not require a human photographer, a helicopter or a trained pilot. “We did those with a drone,” Jim said. Pretty cool, eh?
The plot of “Soon Enough” involves a zombie outbreak in a small college town. It already has won awards in its five-minute short version, including Best Technical Award at the Scare My Shorts Off Film Festival in Montevallo and Best Student Film at the Variety International Film Festival in Long Island, New York.
The full-length feature version premieres Oct. 3 in Alexander City’s Playhouse Cinemas. Opening night features a Q-and-A session with Jim, as well as Hugo Medina, photographer; and Keller Makemson, the graphic designer. The movie will be shown again at the same theater on Oct. 4, but after that, your opportunities to see “Soon Enough” will be via streaming.
Marketing the film is Jim’s focus right now, and he is looking for eight streaming sites. The best way to keep up with where it will be available is to “like” Three Wolves Pictures on Facebook and follow “Soonenoughfilm” on Instagram.
Jim would be a sophomore theater major at UM if he had stayed in school. However, the pull of stage and screen were too strong. “I’m taking a break for awhile to work on this.”
You see, just because the filming is finished does not mean the work on it has ended. The way Jim sees it, he is about halfway to the finish line with “Soon Enough,” and he and Medina are already looking around for the next project.
First, he said, he is working for his investors so that they will see a profit from taking a chance on the production.
“Our whole budget was $13,000, and we will be spending twice as much on marketing as on production,” he said.
Everybody involved in the film is from Alabama, Jim said, including the investors.
He and Medina are looking over scripts for their next project right now. “We are thinking Rom-Com (romantic comedy),” Jim said. “We don’t want to get in a genre corner.”
Jim decided he wanted to be an actor at age 9. In Montevallo his first role was in a dark comedy. He played a 7-year-old boy in “Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You.”
He demonstrated how he pitched his voice for the role, but that was not the greatest sacrifice for his art. Raising a jeans pants leg a few inches, Jim indicated his very hairy leg. “For the part, I had to shave my legs.”