In August of 2020, filmmaker Sarah Kambe Holland posted a 1-minute pitch video for Egghead & Twinkie on the popular social media app, TikTok. The video blew up, growing our account from 0 to 100K followers overnight.
While you could say this lightning-in-a-bottle moment was just luck, one thing was obvious. There was a HUNGRY audience for a lesbian roadtrip comedy, especially one made by young people with a fresh perspective on coming of age.
So we took our newfound TikTok fame and ran with it. Our team made a Seed&Spark crowdfunding page and channeled our audience to it via a targeted TikTok marketing campaign. We did livestreams, giveaways, flash sales, you name it. And somehow, we scraped together $22,000, making us the first feature film to successfully crowdfund through TikTok (that we know of, anyway).
When we combined that $22,000 with private donations and grant money, we had just enough to launch into production. Egghead & Twinkie was shot during 45 days from December of 2020 to December of 2021. Over 100 people worked on the production, with many crew members rotating out to accommodate for individual schedules.
It was a Herculean effort, especially given that we were filming during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our COVID Safety Team, lead by producer Valerie Starks, was essential to keeping everyone safe. We're especially proud that across four phases of shooting, we didn't have a single COVID outbreak.
With over 20 terabytes of footage in the can (sheesh!), we launched into post-production in September of 2021. Editors Anna DeFinis, Kristi League, and Sarah Kambe Holland tackled the movie in pieces, each taking on a different section of the cut at a time. Lead animator, Jill Cefalo-Sanders, simultaneously dove into the 2D animated portions of the film.
Following picture lock in May of 2022, our VFX team, sound designer, composer, music supervisor, and colorists began their work in earnest. The entire post-production process was remote, with our team spread out all over the country from Brooklyn, NY to Cleveland, OH. Believe it or not, there are over 200 VFX shots in Egghead & Twinkie!
In October of 2022, we finally finished the film, and in 2023, we shared Egghead & Twinkie with the world. From selling out three screenings at the British Film Institute in London to our Canadian premiere at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, our festival run was so much more than we ever dreamed it could be.
That brings us to now... 2024. We're looking for the right film distributor to release Egghead & Twinkie publicly. It's a tough landscape for indie films, but we're not giving up. This little-engine-that-could will keep on chugging, until we find the right home. Stay tuned!
