Portland (March 6)
A riders paradise, Oregon’s rainy, artsy, and green metropolis offered great views for Covino and Marvin to keep things weird. As part of the Portland International Film Festival, The Climb packed classic art-house theater Cinema 21. By now, social distancing was starting to become part of the norm, but people still filled every seat. Their work was one of the last to screen at the festival before it was cancelled. Although they didn’t know it then, this would be the last film festival where they screened.
Portland: The last film festival on the tour.
Shifting Gears
Covino and Marvin have been writing their next project while hopping around festivals in Europe and North America. It’s been tough for them to shift gears and put their minds in a place where they can be creative, but they make an effort to find a couple hours as often as possible, put their phones away, and just write. Their main distraction had been the large amount of time spent on problem-solving details around the movie’s theatrical release.
“The nature of independent filmmaking now is you’re tasked with making a film, but then you have to figure out how to sell it and engage with your audience, what the messaging is or how you’re communicating about it on social media. It was unexpected for me how much work would be required in that process. But it’s just necessary because you want to convey the same voice and you want it to feel organic and like an extension of the film. We care deeply about that, so it inevitably became just an extra job that we had to do,” said Covino.
“Since we’re not known entities to the world, there’s an extra level in this tour of us in terms of having to put in a little more work than directors or actors would traditionally have to put in, because no one knows who we are. We may need to do a little bit more legwork to get people to be aware of the film or engage with us in different places where we’re going,” added Marvin.
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