On a quiet street in Woodland Hills, just a stone’s throw from the gated enclaves of Calabasas, Anna Maguire and Kyle Greenberg set out to make a film about suspicion and the strange intimacy of being watched.
“Hi! You Are Currently Being Recorded”follows Anna (Maguire), a visitor to Los Angeles who takes a walk while on a phone call. When she loses reception, she lights up a joint under a Neighborwood Watch sign. She then becomes increasingly paranoid as she passes Ring doorbells, security cameras, and other hidden eyes documenting her movements. Is she experiencing weed-induced paranoia? Or something more insidious?
It’s never been easy to find a big audience for short films, but Maguire and Greenberg have turned their lo-fi, seven-and-a-half-minute story into a case study in getting attention for a small DIY production.
Greenberg’s day job is head of Marketing Distribution for Utopia Distribution, which is known for daring titles like Red Rooms and The Line. He and Maguire looked at “Hi!” as an experiment in taking a project directly to potential fans.
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“Hi!” was shot with several different cameras — from a Sony digital to a VHS camcorder — which made aesthetic and narrative sense for a film about a woman being surveilled from various homes.
“It was really an exercise in using what we had and making something for fun,” she says.
When the film was finished, rather than moving through traditional short film channels — like praying for a festival breakthrough, or hoping to become a Vimeo Staff Pick – they posted the film on their own website, hiyouarecurrentlybeingrecorded.com, where it plays on an endless loop.
Miss the beginning? No problem: there are 192 chances to catch the film in full each day.
“The film is about perception and being perceived, so expanding that idea through the website felt natural,” says Greenberg.
The filmmakers played up the weed connection by releasing the film on April 20, aka 420 — code for cannabis consumption.
Direct Contact for ‘Hi! You Are Currently Being Recorded’
With “Hi!” readily available to anyone with an internet connection, Maguire and Greenberg began trying to get the word out. When publicists suggested that the short might not have much press potential, they decide to go straight to audiences.
They spent hours researching Substack newsletters, Letterboxd accounts, and bloggers who wrote about film, weed, or surveillance.
Then they reached out, one by one.
“About 95% of our coverage came from cold outreach to people we didn’t know,” says Greenberg.
They gained traction with influencers like writer and filmmaker Max Cea, author of the Nothing Bogus Substack, and cannabis content creator Canna Christiana. On Letterboxd, the film sparked a wide range of opinions, but even people who didn’t care for it agreed that the film’s promotional campaign was clever and stood out.
The website racked up 10,000 visits and 40,000 views in its first weeks.
Maguire and Greenberg see their approach as a triumph of the power of community.
“We need to strive for more than the bare minimum that is provided by the landscape distribution-wise,” says Greenberg. “Sometimes if we don’t see the reality we want, we need to build it.”
That meant saying yes to every festival invitation, and demystifying the process for other filmmakers. A traditional distributor is typically responsible for packaging a film, creating marketing assets, devising a release strategy, and taking it to market with publicity and paid advertising for festivals, theaters, physical media, digital/streaming, airplane screenings and beyond.
“Many filmmakers don’t really understand distribution because it’s often kept away from them,” says Maguire. “At festivals, filmmakers often say, ‘I need a distributor,’ but there’s a feeding frenzy and constant fear.”
Maguire and Greenberg embraced transparency and directness about their more direct approach, hosting an Ask Me Anything on Reddit and a screening on Discord. They learned that the best audience is one you can communicate with directly.
They also learned the importance of having a unique angle when seeking media coverage.
“Sometimes PR messages are so distilled that journalists can’t cover your project. ‘Person made a movie’ isn’t a story. The best way to share a film’s story is to talk directly to a journalist, writer, or influencer,” says Greenberg.
By reaching out personally, they invited viewers into the process, and made the film’s distribution part of its story.
“We might have been disappointed if the film had no conversation around it, but it wouldn’t be a failure,” says Greenberg. “We still made it, trained our muscles, and created.”
They hope their direct-to-audience approach can be a model for other filmmakers who don’t want to wait in line, hoping someone else decides to advocate for them.
“We want to inspire people to do it themselves,” says Maguire. “It’s not about gatekeeping. There’s space for everyone.”
You can watch “Hi! You Are Currently Being Recorded” at this very moment at hiyouarecurrentlybeingrecorded.com.
Main image: “Hi! You Are Currently Being Recorded,” by Anna Maguire and Kyle Greenberg. Courtesy of Stupid Co.