For the third year in a row, Creemore Springs Brewery is looking for consumer-generated content. But rather than a fan-made 30-second ad, the Ontario brewery wants entire movies.
Creemore is asking budding filmmakers to create mockumentaries—or mock documentaries—about travelling to the small town of Creemore, Ont.
Entries will be shown at the third annual Creemore Mocks film festival.
The company is slowly expanding the festival, and this year it will include filmmaking workshops to help would-be directors hone their craft. And in conjunction with Humber College in Toronto, the festival is offering a $500 student film prize.
The festival’s founder, Karen Gaudino, Creemore’s director of sales and marketing, said the brewer plans to put an advertising campaign behind the effort next year.
“We haven’t done [mass marketing] to take it to the next step,” she said. “What we’ve been trying to do is grow the foundation to make sure we’ve got everything set up to handle it logistically.”
Current marketing for the festival includes media outreach and a web page, CreemoreSprings.com/creemore-mocks.
The tongue-in-cheek festival began as a community-based tourism initiative spearheaded by the town’s business improvement association. The brewery funded the first year’s festival, taking it over last year. Gaudino got the idea for the project after watching Sideways, the Oscar-winning 2004 film about two friends touring California’s wine country. Creemore is owned by Molson Coors.
