I spent much of the weekend redesigning the poster with a new title. I redesigned everything with COVID Conscious as the title. Conscious to me meant aware, so it made sense. In the designs I made the word Conscious partially transparent as if it were fading away. I planned to literally have Conscious fade away in the trailer.
As I was doing those designs I then considered Conscience, which is more about a moral awareness. I also thought Con-Science could have the meaning of science denial. I was at an inroads and tossed between the two options. I asked Pam her opinion and she offered other options like COVID Collateral, as in Collateral Damage. I thought collateral could however also be interpreted from a financial standpoint.
Since it is October we spent the evening flipping through horror movies on our streaming service. As Pam scrolled. I considered each horror title with COVID inserted. It was a fun game to rename every horror film with COVID themed titles.
As I went to bed, I was still blurting our COVID titles and with each absurd option Pam would simply say NOPE. As I woke up the next morning it hit me. The end credits of the film end with a definition of Apocalypse which is based on an early Greek meaning of the word. The definition is… “A revelation, a disclosure of truth in an age of falsehood and misconception.” Of course!
When working at Disney Feature Animation I remember there was a time when they considered renaming the film Brother Bear.It turned out there was a TV show that also had the title Brother Bear. The Disney lawyers managed to the the rights to the title despite the fact that the TV Show had been around for years.
If I do an online search of COVID there are thousands of new articles that pop up from the past 4 years. But in the future if I search COVID Apocalypse, I will find my film and articles related to it. Thankfully I will not get tied in with the COVID feature film that is being released in December 2023. I beat them to the punch with the title but I’m not hiring lawyers to defend the film title of COVID. Such a title will be lost in a sea of information and misinformation.
If folks search for COVID Film they might get information about my film and the feature film. If the feature film is a success, then it might not hurt my film’s exposure.