Our support is growing and this brings great energy into the entire team. Today Passionfish joins in as a major sponsor of the festival. Other sponsors to date are Oceana, Indian Summer and the Monterey Peninsula Waste Management District. It is terrific to see so much excitement in the community for this - first - film festival in honor of Oceans Day.
A key element of the strategy for the campaign all along has been engaging non-profits and grass-roots organizations who are already working on the dangers of plastics and marine debris. Their access to the community, their "feet on the ground" are really important for the success of the campaign. We could offer excellent outreach materials, film and CDs to support their efforts. So, with these great partners on board, we march towards a great film festival. I hope we get the word out and people attend the event.
As I write about the team, it is important to mention Blaise Douros, our post-production assistant extraordinaire. In the film business post-production assistants do everything: from bringing coffee and making copies, to editing and burning CDs. Not at Sea Studios. Here we treat post-productions with some reverence, because they hold the key to our successful outreach campaigns. They produce all the material that ends in the hands of the public. Blaise came to us with a degree in music and skills in lots of technical areas. He has a great attitude, he is always ready to help, and we ask him to do everything - from producing the outreach CDs, to setting me up with a portable audio system for my keynote presentations, to researching stock footage, to selling stock footage, to creating the music for some of our podcasts, to actually getting sponsors signed up for the festival. And this is just a glimpse at his tasks. This week he did a tour de force along Cannery Row and got quite a few businesses to support he film festival.
