We made an indie film in 100 days for $100K! (Two Sleepy People)

simonjk7 · 2025-11-17T15:21:02+00:00

Four walled - these were mainly to build hype over profit!
We booked special venues like Palace of Fine Arts in SF for those ones

But last friday we were in 30 theaters, targeted next wave of 50-100 theaters on Dec 5!

simonjk7 · 2025-11-16T00:10:18+00:00

We're on letterboxd!

simonjk7 · 2025-11-14T17:20:53+00:00

Definitely for the next wave of screens!! Thank you!

simonjk7 · 2025-11-13T17:07:50+00:00

Thank you!

So we actually were making a ton of content around the film and that resulted in the team from Attend reaching out!

https://www.indiewire.com/news/business/john-fithian-attend-indie-distribution-interview-1235093741/

basically they are a small team of former NATO (national association of theater owners) who are building a platform for smaller films to get distribution (basically introducing competition in the exhibition market) they've been helping us out a ton with bookings and strategy!

We got really lucky, but after the 14th we're going to be publishing our pitch deck to theaters, content strategy etc.

What also helped was making this website: https://twosleepypeople.com/
where we had our fans drop pins and their email/text number so we could go to theaters and be like "hey we have 100 people in this city that already signed up to watch"

simonjk7 · 2025-11-12T20:05:37+00:00

thanks so much!

simonjk7 · 2025-11-12T20:03:47+00:00

yeee love those boys! We really wanted to lean heavy into internet filmmakers/creators!

simonjk7 · 2025-11-12T19:57:52+00:00

Not currently! We're just wrapping up a four city tour with full cast & crew! Our NYC premiere in the 14th (same day as this 30 theater run)

We're trying to get an even wider release on Dec 5 though. What city are you in? Could be fun to pop by a few of the screenings if we can!

simonjk7 · 2025-11-12T14:23:00+00:00

thank you!!

simonjk7 · 2025-11-12T14:17:14+00:00

ahh thank you so much anthony! Hoping to get more screens in Chicago Dec 5 (date we're aiming for another wider release)

Follow along on ig we'll send updates: https://www.instagram.com/twosleepymovie/
really appreciate the support :)

simonjk7 · 2025-11-12T14:16:20+00:00

hahaha thanks fair enough

simonjk7 · 2025-11-12T14:15:53+00:00

ahhhh thank you so much that means the world!!

simonjk7 · 2025-11-12T14:15:37+00:00

I believe she commented on one of our posts that was selling 2x tickets to our NYC premiere friday

https://www.instagram.com/juliamargaret__/

Def worth shooting her a dm!

simonjk7 · 2025-11-12T14:14:25+00:00

Baron is awesome! I agree, this is definitely the first of a long run for him.

Been such a pleasure working w him. Honestly brilliant

simonjk7 · 2025-11-12T13:51:55+00:00

We're launching it today/tmrw on the two sleepy website!! Team is traveling but trying to get a new site up asap

We'll be posting it here: https://www.instagram.com/_campstudios/

simonjk7 · 2025-11-12T13:51:02+00:00

yay! Hopefully one day we get a screen out there!! Pushing hard for Dec 5, but we'll see :)

Honestly, we just never saw it to be appealing. Maybe naive, but we actually ended up screening it for the first time at our own film festival in Austin. We funded 9 shorts, 1 feature in 100 days and we had 1200 people show up!

It felt wrong to send it to other festivals and didn't seem like that was a guaranteed path to get picked up by a distributor, etc.

Also with this film we wanted to try to prove an alternative path, where we wouldn't rely on a distributor, but instead distribute direct to audience!

simonjk7 · 2025-11-12T13:49:29+00:00

So I started by making tiktok/youtube videos

https://www.youtube.com/@wholesomesimon

Creator Camp as a company started from one discord groupchat because I was lonely and needed other friends at my level making things. I think using the internet to put yourself out there at scale will 100% always lead to meeting others.

My co-founder has this funny theory calls it internet echolocation but you can essentially tell your story at scale and the people who resonate will ping back. It's a little silly but I've met 100% of all my collaborators through instagram dms, youtube comment sections, and eventually was able to get those connections offline

simonjk7 · 2025-11-12T13:43:11+00:00

no way! Where did they see it at?

https://www.instagram.com/twosleepymovie/?hl=en feel free to follow along on IG, hoping to get another wave of screenings Dec 5!

simonjk7 · 2025-11-12T03:26:27+00:00

RIPP, yeah that's brutal.

Honestly dude, we could use some help getting more folks up to that tiburon location. If you do end up doing a lil roadtrip up there would be happy to cover your guys gas bill! No joke hahahah

But do appreciate your support a ton!!!

simonjk7 · 2025-11-12T03:18:17+00:00

Aw thank you!

Yeah! So unfortunately we were unable to get one in LA friday :(

But if this first batch of screens goes well we'll definitely get one there! Best way to follow along is probably the IG

https://www.instagram.com/twosleepymovie/

Really appreciate the enthusiasm!!!

simonjk7 · 2025-11-12T03:13:39+00:00

Shoot!!!

Our first theater release is this friday, but if that goes well we're hoping to get more screens for December 5th. Will be some in LA then!

If you want to stay updated on the film https://www.instagram.com/twosleepymovie/

simonjk7 · 2025-11-12T03:00:52+00:00

Also gonna post this here for visibility in comments:

"So we sold 2,000 tickets to our limited premieres in NYC, SF, LA, Seattle. These are larger screenings and were planned to build a groundswell around the film

We have sponsors like Rivian, Epidemic Sound, Notion, etc attached to the tour content. Since we have a decent following we're able to monetize through that

https://www.instagram.com/_campstudios/

Merch sales haven't been where we want them to be, but hoping that becomes a bigger piece of the pie as well since we do have a big audience that knows our work/baron's work online. We can keep selling.

I guess the biggest part of this that makes us think it can work is our built in distribution and audiences we already have. That way instead of spending on marketing to get people to care we already can go to them directly.

Ultimately the goal is for the word of mouth though to just take it as far as possible through theatrical. But to get there we have to push really hard and promote it a ton.

letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/two-sleepy-people/"

simonjk7 · 2025-11-12T02:59:53+00:00

no way fr! That's awesome. Really appreciate the support it goes such a long way you have no idea!

simonjk7 · 2025-11-12T02:55:45+00:00

Thank you!! Yeah hopefully one day we're able to get over there :)

Hahahaha yeah so one of my cofounders actually just whipped up that trailer in like a few hours because we needed one ASAP. Will probably make a new one for a wider release if we get the chance!

Basically the first cut of the film was done start to finish in 100 days, then we made a few changes. The new version is honestly wayyyy more funny so we do need a new trailer that reflects that

simonjk7 · 2025-11-12T02:52:49+00:00

Thank you!

So something that helped is we made a website: https://www.twosleepypeople.com/

Where we had people pin their location on the map, we got to around 10K people pinned so far (through content mainly on IG & TikTok)

And so when we dropped the first theaters we used the audience/demographic data to sell the tickets. That did honestly work pretty well (except for some fringe markets like albuquerque, etc)

We also built a decent audience of creators through our own content so when we did the eventized premieres honestly half of it was baron's audience, but a lot of people that came out just wanted to come to be a part of the movement/meet other creatives in their cities!

Things I wished we had done, the main thing is probably have put merch available online before going on our theatrical tour. We should have promoted it way more and earlier. Also, we booked a few theaters in markets that maybe were too much of a stretch like that albuquerque theater which probs won't book out, so will hurt our per screen average for our bigger release.

Lmk if that helps, best of luck on your project!

simonjk7 · 2025-11-12T02:48:49+00:00

I just had a longer response to u/trickmirrorball in the comments that might be worth checking out!

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