Who is my audience? Intro Part 2

In today's digital market you can self distribute, but I think it is a massive amount of work marketing instead of working to make features.   I'm much more interested in a sale of this project to someone because; a) to have a film purchased for distribution means something in this business -- most films made don't get sold or are sold off at a loss, and b) I don't want to be in the film distribution business. 

I want to make films and let others sell them.  I'll gladly give a percentage away for not having to deal with that.  It does mean I risk getting screwed by the distribution company, but the risk of screwing myself doing it all myself is fairly high, especially for a first timer.

So you need an attorney.  Attorneys run the film business, not creatives -- which is to say, bottom line -- if you don't have the paper to show you legally own every sound, every image of actors, locations, everything, they will not be interested in purchasing your product.  And if you self-distribute without same said paperwork, you open yourself up for lawsuits.  For example, did you know your DP owns the copyright to the images in your project?

More on all this later, but for now, find yourself two simple, one page contracts:
1) what's called a Work For Hire deal -- will do just fine for everyone who does not have percentage points from actors to crew
2) a location release
Templates for both these are easily found with a web search.  Your deals with people where you are going to share profits needs a more complex contract and you will need an attorney to look over anything you do.

But download these templates now.  You will need them before you shoot your first official frames.

The downstream consequences of not having your paperwork done can be disastrous

Who is my auidence? Intro

Who am I going to sell this project to?

I've covered this question last, but my no means should you be waiting until the end of your project to search for an answer.  In fact, as you begin shooting your test shots of the world around you, get this question answered.  It will control what story you tell and how you tell it.

At a budget of $4k, even if it is your cash, you will make the feature you can make, not the feature you want to make.  You must maximize what shows up for your camera that day -- every day -- and what shows up may or may not be what you had in mind.

So figure out what you can make, based on what is around you, who is around you, and when you can get the people you need in same place at the same time, ready to shoot.  If you have begun taking shots of your world -- what sort of story could you see happening in those locations?  A rom-com?  A thriller?  A caper?  A drama?  You need to know this before you begin answering the "first" question -- What is your story?

Ask yourself who will pay to see what I'm making -- who is my audience?
And, at least as far as I'm concerned, who will pay to distribute my film?

Know your genre audience.  This is generally covered in commentary on what emotional moments audiences expect in particular genres (if you need help with this, Truby is a great resource).  If you don't give the audience those moments, you better have a good reason why.

I intentionally undermined the core emotion audiences want out of a revenge thriller.  But I got to comment in a way that will not be available to me in the future -- I hope anyway.  I mean, let's say I get lucky and next direct a film at the $3M level.  It won't be my $3M and there's where it all comes down to.  Other than now, when else am I going to get to do exactly what I want ever again?

I chose a very narrow market segment; the sort that used to frequent art house cinemas and like to be challenged.  Maybe not a wide return potential, but then I didn't spend that much to begin with.  Interestingly, it has been appealing to a wider market -- how wide remains to be seen.  I'm writing as I complete the project, so I don't know what the sale is going to look like.

However, it is my contention that now  you can saturate whatever market there is for your product because my product is referenced in their social media messages and available on the the phone in their hand instead of at odd times in the run-down art house movie theater half-way across town.  Which is not to say I'll be putting my project up on line myself -- I hope.

How to record your story? Scoring

6) scoring -- in the current feature market, you must have music either original or recordings

Scores are like automobiles -- you can DIY a go-cart or purchase an Aston-Martin.  What will help you determine how you should go is the response you get from others about the project.  If it seems worth investing more, go ahead -- you've only spent $4k so far so you can afford to splurge a little at the end if it seems worth it.

Since Holiday worked as well as it did, we went beyond our $4k budget by attracting our first investor who was interested in what I was looking for: an original percussion driven score.  This got me a room full of percussion instruments:

Which meant me spending most of two months sitting in this chair:

Which seems really awesome, and I got a lot of what I was looking for, but it was an arduous journey I'll get into later that did not go the way I planned.

But you don't need to spend any money.  At one point, my co-producer and I were going to just sit down with my Alesis QS 8 and a guitar to create the score for free.  You'll have a range of options, but you will need music if you want to be competitive in the feature market.

How to record your story? Editing

5) editing -- logging, trimming, selecting in and outs, match cuts, edls, credits, final mix, mastering, color grade, digital fx

This is the place you begin answering the question of how.  When you have your story plotted and characters set, before you shoot any scene, imagine yourself in the editing room looking at the footage from the shoot.   What do you want to see?  What is important -- the location, the actor, a prop?  What shots do you want to cut from/to?  How do you plan to edit the scene?  You have to imagine the scene already shot and edited in your head so you either know what to shoot or know what to tell your DP you want shot.

My life for the last two-and-a-half years:

I was here at the end of every shoot day transferring, logging, backing up, rendering, then a year editing picture and a year editing sound -- that's just the way it went.

Set up a place you can work every day.  Plan your shoots from the edit room.  What do you want to see on the monitor?

Obviously, much more on this topic later.

How to record your story? Sound

4) sound -- microphones, production sound, ADR, sound libraries, ambient layers

Smartphones now shoot 4K, but the sound recording still stinks.  But even if it gets really good somewhere down the line, you will still, most certainly be creating your sound in post on a $4k budget.  The main reason for this is that the sound where you are recording most likely with stink.  So it doesn't matter how hi-fi the wi-fi camera sound gets, if the sound at recording time is terrible, you will be replacing it in post.

All of it -- ambient sound, location sounds, foley, dialogue.  This means you need your actors to come back much later after you have an edit and do their dialogue to the edit.  Either that or replace them all with other actors.

But there are many cheats.  The actors speaking Russian in Holiday were not speaking Russian on camera.  With careful editing, however, it works.  In other locations, like the Venice boardwalk, the wind was always peaking out the sound at some point in every take, so those had to be created from a mixture of actual camera sound and layers of other ambient crowd tracks usually about six tracks deep.  More on all this later.

How to record your story? Behind the camera

3) what's behind the camera --  director, camera person, shoot/equipment logistics, catering, equipment upkeep, data storage, production notes

This only concerns what is directly behind the camera to make sure the shoot works.  There are other issues like legal and business, but I'll address those independently in the "Who" part of "What, How, Who?".

As part of answering the question "How do I record my story?" you will need to choose a director.  I'm guessing if you are following this blog you intend to be the director whether you also choose to run camera or act in front of the camera (it will almost certainly be one or the other).  On a $4k budget, you will be doing more than one job.  How you and your group split up accountabilities depends on what skills each bring to the table.  And I can assure you on this budget, that group will be small so look for people with lots of skills.

On Holiday, I was director and cinematographer.  That both solved and created its own issues.  Your project may or may not split that way.  I liked it because from a director's POV it was about as close to "pure film making" as you can get -- just me, a camera, and an actor.  I knew my co-producer/actor quite well as thus was able to often anticipate how he would move.  That's always the trick in documentary film making or live sports events: anticipating your subject rather than following it.  Often we did only one take and moved on.  Many of the shots were long takes we knew we would chop up in post later.  So know your lead actor or if you are the lead actor, make sure your DP knows you and can anticipate your choices.

A quick thought on this before I move on: from my experience in making films, both as a director and in working for other directors, choose one person to be the director and don't change.  If you are the one buying, it most likely should be you and you alone.  That is, unless either you have a unique relationship with someone or you know two people who do and they are both willing to take your project on, put yourself in the director's chair.  There have been teams that have been successful, but they are rare, not the norm for a reason and the last thing you want to do is generate additional challenges for yourself.

How to record your story? Camera

2) the camera -- lenses, exposure, framing, angles, movement, supports, lighting, hard drives, monitors

Feature story telling is a visual medium, first.

I will spend very little time on the techie side of this camera v. that camera.  There are certain challenges working with a fixed focal length lens which is currently the case with most cell phone cameras -- digital zoom and add on lenses don't count -- I've used both, to very limited usable results.  Also auto exposure and auto focus are awesome sometimes and awful at others.

But there are hardware/software solutions on the horizon: The Light camera, and new, beyond 2-D possibilities: The Lytro 360 camera. 

The point being, many of these techie issues will go away, even on a budget of $4k.  If you are relying on technology to save your project, use the $4k you have to go on vacation.

I shot my project at 1080HD almost exclusively, even though I could have recorded at higher resolutions -- more on that later.

There are some very hard facts about what happens when you do a Fourier transform on reality, the result being a two-dimensional sequence of images your eyes mistake for continuous and your emotions mistake for reality.

For example, as to lenses on Holiday, I'll get into why about 25% of the shots are wide angle:

 about 74 % were medium shots:

and about 1% long shots:

Of course, no matter how good your lenses are, your lighting is critical.  More on all this later.

How to record your story? Front of camera

1) what's in front of the camera -- casting, acting, locations, props, vehicles, logistics

It doesn't matter how good a DP you have, if you don't have anything interesting in front of the camera all you have is unusable footage and wasted time.  Every time you cheat here -- and you will have to many times, trust me -- you risk finding yourself with serious problems downstream.

During production, my co-producer and I pretty much split the duties between us using the camera as the dividing line.  He handled most of the issues in front of the camera, I handled stuff behind the camera.  And I mean everything in front of the camera.  Here is the Topanga Caynon location before he added the green bus and landscaping:

Which became this:

He also did all the casting, including his co-star, seen here in a test shoot inside the green bus:

Which became this:

He came up with a bunch more stuff I'll get into later.  Locations, props, transportation, casting, everything in front of the camera all need attention.  Corollary: Anything outside the field of view of the camera does not exist in the character's world.  Only show the audience what you want them to see and make sure what they see is interesting.  Much more on this later.

Have you begun working on your story by shooting images?  This will begin to answer questions of what and where you might have available for a story.

How to record your story? Intro

Question Two:  How do I create a motion picture feature?

A feature these days is 84 minutes minimum.  AND if your $4k feature is longer than 90 minutes, you need to go back to the editing room.  A fast edit pace and snappy plot pace will get you a long ways, but that means lots of shots, which take time.

To get started, break this down into six categories:
1) what's in front of the camera -- casting, acting, locations, props, vehicles
2) the camera -- lenses, exposure, framing, angles, movement, supports, lighting, hard drives, monitors
3) what's behind the camera --  director, camera person, shoot/equipment logistics, catering, equipment upkeep, data storage, production notes
4) sound -- microphones, production sound, ADR, sound libraries, ambient layers
5) editing -- the place where you begin when answering this second question -- logging, trimming, selecting in and outs, match cuts, edls, credits, final mix, mastering, color grade, digital fx
6) scoring -- in the current feature market, you must have music either original or recordings

You will spend the most time and most of your $4k answering this question, so make yourself familiar with its component parts.

A suggestion for surviving Question Two:
Find a partner.

You will run out of money, or energy, or concern about the project multiple times (if you don't you aren't trying hard enough) so consider finding a partner who does something you don't.  In my case, the least likely thing that will ever happen is that I will act on camera, so my partner was an actor.  Worse case scenario I still had me, a camera, and an actor to shoot, no matter what.  Fortunately for me, he also knows a lot more about film making

More things to consider from a friend who makes a lot of studio pictures:

a) It's a marathon, not a sprint, so deal with that if you want to keep control of your project all the way to the end.

b) Make sure the audience knows where your characters are.

c) If your opening doesn't grab the audience, your f***ed.

d) Begin the shooting process from the editing room.

What is Your Story? Part Four

Moving Image Storytelling

Feature projects ultimately are about moving images.  At this level, if you are not planning, creating, working with, or selling, moving images you are wasting money/time you don't have.  You need to be making images, not figuring out the most elegant way of conveying the emotional state of the character without saying too much, and what should she say here, at this moment?  I mean . . .  Forget all that.

Write the minimum you need--you are a feature film producer/director, not a writer.  You will need to work on your story so you know how to record it.  Even if you think you have everything you need, at this level losing locations and just-in-time dialogue writing is common, so know your story.  Map it out.  Map out the territory with whatever plot and character markers you want.

The result is not a screenplay, but a well-structured story via a detailed outline and character rubric.  More on this later.
 
For today, start with what you see right in front of you, right now (beyond the screen you are reading this on--get in the world).  Get present to the present.  Not what would be cool to have, or cool to build, or cool to shoot in.  You have access to none of that.  What can you count on?  I am going to repeat this phrase often:  Maximize what shows up in front of the camera each day.

I knew, for example, that every April in Venice, California moisture builds in the air near the coast.  As June approaches the mists become heavier and eventually we get "June Gloom"--the locals name for a thick marine layer that rolls in almost every afternoon until late July.  So I knew I could shoot April through May and get the same afternoon sun for weeks.  On top of that, the light was diffused by the moisture in the air.  This meant I could shoot outdoors without serious over-exposure issues.  Even when my highlights did flare out, the light was soft and flattering on the actors' faces.  I also used a February storm and the June marine layer for contrasting looks.  All three of these were very predictable, just not certain.

Start with what you see everyday--especially what you see everyday--predictability is the key.  Build your story from there.

Stop reading and turn on your camera.

What is Your Story? Part Three

To complete the screenplay scenarios to avoid:

2)  If you have a minimal dialogue, action heavy script--
Most of the things you thought of to put in your script, like cool locations and tight dialogue, mean nothing unless you have unlimited access to those very specific props, places, and characters.  At this level, many times you will not know what your location looks like until you get there.

And without a doubt you'll need to be able to come back six months later to your one of your main locations in order to shoot those two connecting shots you didn't think of and need to include for your edit to make sense.  Can you be sure of that for all locations and characters in your script?

Maybe, maybe you could get away with your action script if you can visit and shoot a picture of every location you need for the entire story within the next three days.  If you can't get access to every place you need just to shoot a photograph, you are setting up downstream problems for yourself. And remember action stories require lots and lots of shots.  Which take time and money--two things you don't have any of to spare.

3) Most importantly, don't sit down and write a screenplay.  Why?  No one is going to read it or care about it if they do, and it's a lot of work.  Don't bother writing scenes you will never shoot.  You don't get paid until your project is sold.  Can you afford six weeks to six months mulling over nouns and verbs?

A screenplay is a communication of visuals and performed words translated into written form which is then translated back into images during pre-production.  All I'm suggesting is skip the translation into words step.  You're still not off the hook for story development, even if you are not writing a formal screenplay.

You should already be thinking in terms of how to visualize your story.  Start making an image catalog of locations you would like to use and could get access to.  What sort of story begins to emerge from those images?

On Holiday, since I was directing and shooting not having a screenplay was not a disadvantage.  The only people I had to communicate with was the actors and they only needed to know who they needed to be in that moment.  We did write out dialogue for all the scenes where characters speak, but none of it was written until the part was cast and we knew what we were dealing with on camera.

So don't start with a script.  If you have one already, if it's that good, you can sell it for good money once you make your $4k movie and get noticed.  Otherwise, to make a $4k movie:

Start with an outline.  Preferably, images.

What is Your Story? Part Two (more still)

Your role in the project

You should choose early which side of the camera you want to be on, then dance with the one that brung ya for the duration.  No matter how bad things get, resist the temptation to take over the other side and thus avoid a mutiny before you even finish shooting--incomplete projects do not sell.

If you choose to be in front of the camera, you can work until you give your best performance, but you cede a massive amount of creative control to the person holding the camera.  How much do you trust the person behind the camera to know if you are ready to move on to the next shot?  If you give a great performance, but all the shots are out of focus . . . all there is in $4k film making is what the camera records.

If you choose to be behind the camera, even if you can shoot great angles you only have available what shows up in front of your camera.  Can you create a two minute scene that plays?  Try it.  You can never shoot too much--hard drive space is cheap.  If you are going to direct and shoot--which is very likely at this level--do you shoot interesting shots?

What is Your Story? Part Two (more)

You and the camera

If you've never acted on camera, take an acting class while prepping your $4k project.  I worked with a producer once who would not let me direct her project until I took an acting class.  It was humiliating because I was terrible.  But it forever changed how I related to actors as a director and how/what I wrote for them to say.  Before you get behind a camera and start telling actors what to do you need to stand on stage in their shoes.

And if you are good on camera--if you've never directed someone else on camera, try shooting a scene between two other actors you imagine might be part of your story.  Giving a good on-camera performance has little to do with eliciting a good on-camera performance out of someone else.  My experience has been, the less direction you give your actors, the more natural their performance will be.

Unless you hang with an entourage of actors who will put up with your $4k production, you should shelve your dialogue heavy script, even if it all takes place one afternoon in a living room.

What is Your Story? Part Two

Last post I suggested you not bother writing a screenplay and/or toss your already written script.  Here's the first scenario of why:

If you have written a single location dialogue heavy script--
Bad acting will kill your project.  You do not have access to and/or cannot afford actors who can deliver dialogue in a convincing manner.  Unless you hang with movie stars (which if you do, why do you only have $4k to spend on your feature?), unless you are part of a posse, an entourage of those few who are really good in front of a camera--this has nothing to do with theater acting--unless you are hanging with those folks, you need to focus on a story you can tell in images, not actors talking.  And I don't mean using lots of long, filling-time-because-you-didn't-write-enough-story shots of actors gazing into the distance.

Delivering dialogue on camera and not looking like you're acting is really, really hard for a lot of reasons, but mainly because a camera is relentless.  Some people photograph well, others don't, regardless of how stunning they may be in person.  But even if you have someone who looks good on camera, what happens when they open their mouths?  Can they speak naturally?  Can they deliver scripted dialogue naturally?

In my experience, some actors are good at being on camera, but most are not much better than non-actors no matter how famous they are.  Let me repeat: Bad acting will kill your project.  But you really only need one actor to follow around.  You can fill in the rest with non-actors, or semi-professionals.

If you covered yourself shooting you can edit around a modest performance.  But you can't do that with your hero(ine)--the person your camera will follow the most.  Find the best on-camera person you can--it may be a professional actor or it may not--the question is, can they look natural on camera?  Once you identify that actor, talk them into doing the lead and find out what they are planning for the next year--no kidding.  You need a lot of access to the actor you make your lead.  And don't take for granted what they are bringing to the project.

What is Your Story? Part One

So a few posts on generalities of question one:

What is the story you want to tell?

At first this can be very brief--"a revenge abduction story" is where I started and built from there.  But as I said, you need macro and micro answers so you'll eventually develop a detailed, structured outline of your plot--that is, your hero's actions.  This plot in all its details will not be truly complete until you actually have picture lock at the end of the editing process.  Start big, then drill down "What sort of revenge abduction story?", "Where does it take place?", "Who is involved?", etc.

To know how/what your characters might do in any given situation, you need a rubric, guidelines, and nothing more.  If you try to define the characters too much--especially with specific locations and dialogue--your project's success will depend on factors that may or may not be in your control.  Using a rubric allows you as director to make the most out of what is going on in front of your camera and make adjustments without interrupting the flow of the scene for the actor (especially important when using non-actors).

In Holiday, I developed a detailed plot outline and character rubric based on my co-producer's thoughts on the core characters and various plot points.  We also wrote dialogue--on the page, on the spot, and in post.  All of the dialogue was re-recorded in post because on-set sound recording will not be your friend on a $4k project.  More on all this later.

What you want, in as much detail as possible, is a plot outline, and a character rubric.  If you create/write anything more, you are most likely wasting your time.

What I'm saying is that if you are going to direct/produce a $4k feature do not write a screenplay.  And if even/especially if your brilliant screenplay you already have is perfect--dump your screenplay.  I hold a MFA in Screenwriting, so I'm allowed to say that.

However, this doesn't mean you won't need to write--quite the contrary.

First, a few thoughts on this no screenplay mandate.

What is your Story? Intro (more)

What do you want to say?

I believe that instead of justice, revenge leads to the death of innocents and collateral damage.  That, however, is not a particularly popular position.  There is an empathetic charge we all experience watching a story of revenge as justice served up hot and vicious by someone wronged (Liam in Taken(s), Bronson in Death Wish(es), Stallone in everything . . .).

All of those franchises were built on "Revenge over a woman lost", a myth as old as the abduction of Helen.  But unlike the Greek stories, our modern day revenge stories catharsis depend on clear knowledge by the end of the story of who was good and who was evil.  In the Greek myth good and evil were not defined as such and thus revenge as justice often remained ambiguous.

The ambiguity of good and evil in the old Greek myth undermines the catharsis we've come to expect from modern day versions--A man's daughter is kidnapped to be sold into the sex trade forcing him to kick ass and kill with impunity until his little girl is free.  Awesome.

Helen, in the Greek myth, it turns out, was either abducted and/or was a willing accomplice depending on who tells the tale.  Furthermore, Helen was collateral damage herself, a prize given Paris by the goddess Athena as a bribe to ensure he picked Athena as the most beautiful goddess in Olympus.

And never mind Helen was already married to someone else (well, okay someone else purchased her from her father for more gold than anyone else could offer--this is the heritage of the institution of marriage, mind you).  Truthfully, Helen's abduction was simply an excuse for the Greeks to tell the story of a glorious ten year war.

In the end (spoiler alert), the king seeking revenge tricks Helen's abductor with a ruse, a gift, a Trojan Horse, literally, as it were.  Holiday is an updated version of Helen's abduction with all its ambiguity.  More on that another time.

What is Your Story? Intro

All you need to make a movie is a guy, a girl, and a machete

I believe this, as a general rule--yes . . . that and a smartphone, laptop, and $4k, but you get the point.  Gender is not relevant--I just like saying "a guy, a girl, and a machete" because it has a better rhythm than "two humans and a large knife".  Bottom line: it's all about the triangulation of desire (based on either a lack or excess, doesn't really matter).  If you can't make a plot out of two humans and a deadly weapon, you need to work on your story basics.  Anytime two humans desire the same thing, especially something dangerous, you have the opportunity for conflict that can be dramatized.

And believe me, at this level you need as much conflict that can be visually dramatized as possible.

What kind of guy, girl, machete, story is it?

Now, although Holiday is a movie about a guy, a girl and a machete, the actual story, as I mentioned earlier, is one of revenge.  With a guy a girl and a machete you could write a rom-com, a thriller, a love story, a slasher story, almost anything.

I chose revenge for reasons I'll get into later.  The action is driven by the abductor, Graham, and his conflict with The Russian.  The young abducted girl, Anne, and the phantasma Helen, the Tattooed Woman the men dream of, are both only collateral damage in a conflict between The Russian and Graham.  Yet I use the emotional state of the abducted girl to control the style of the storytelling: at first her world is sunny and beautiful, then foggy, druggy, and frightening, then finally real, brutal, and horrifying.

The point is, there are infinite stories within any genre, so don't get caught up in the "uniqueness of your vision"--that's just annoying to everyone around you.  Try working on these questions: Do you know how you want to visually tell your story?  What is readily available to you?  Do you know what the end result of editing those images together might be?  What do you want to say?

What, How, Who?

If you want to complete a feature project for $4k you need to answer these three questions on a macro and micro level:

What is the story you want to tell?
How are you going to record your story?
Who are you making this for?

You shouldn't start until you have answers to all three AND be aware your answers will/should change, be refined, or jettisoned, as the project moves forward.

From the Holiday project, here's but one macro answer for each question (keep in mind there are many macro and micro answers you will develop--not just one):

What is the story?
A revenge story turned on its head
How to record the story?
iphone 4S at locations near my home
Who is this for?
Cinephiles interested in a challenging story

I'll gloss each of these questions for a few posts, then give some down and dirty advice using specific examples.  I'm not suggesting anything new or radical, these are simply questions designed to cover three basic feature project areas: development, production, business.

Although question one concerning story might seem the obvious place to begin, you can, in fact, enter your project from any of those questions.

I entered Holiday via question two.  I was curious if moving image technology had moved far enough along to allow anyone with a cell phone, laptop, and $4k to make a marketable feature that would play on mobile devices and movie theaters.  An aesthetic experiment asking in the digital age and its ability to target market, how narrow can you make your target audience and still turn a profit to support your existence as a filmmaker?  I'll let you know when I sell this project.

You could also come at it from question three--I want to make a horror film, or a love story, or whatever.  It doesn't make any difference.  No one question is easier to begin with than any other and they all must be clear in your head before you begin monopolizing other people's time shooting scenes.

And again, you must treat all three with equal importance.  If you drop the ball in any of those three areas, downstream you will find your film difficult to sell to distributors.

Introduction

I’m about to complete my first feature length motion picture project, Holiday (project website).  It sits at the nexus of a major disruption in the history of motion picture creation and distribution, and an explosion in potential narratives.  Although Holiday is but one example of numerous projects completed at this nexus, it is the one I know intimately.  This blog will be a discussion of that project from its inception to its sale--an event I'm trying to make happen sooner, rather than later--and then whatever might come after.  I did learn a few things on the way and the intention here is to create a resource for current and future no-budget directors and producers.

The shift in creation/distribution

In the last 24 months smartphones have gone from recording at 1080HD to 4K.  At this point anyone with a cellphone can shoot a feature that can be projected in a theater without noticeable loss in production value.  Indeed, studios have been producing and releasing feature projects shot on 4K for years.  Furthermore, with rise in use of mobile media devices, 4K resolution is more than adequate.  Holiday was shot in 2013 with an iphone 4S (1,100 shots), both a GoPro 2 and a GoPro 3 (375 shots), and a Canon 5D (100 shots) and posted at 1080HD with the intention of up-resing the image to 4K for theatrical distribution.

The shift in narrative

This new technical paradigm creates an opening for the creation and dissemination of alternative narrative structures, micro-narratives, petit récits—a John Cassavetes nirvana of narrative possibilities.   But Cassavetes had to take well-paying studio acting gigs to feed his independent film habit.  Shooting on 16mm was, and still is very expensive.  Yet today, you can buy a smartphone for $300 or less.  Then you need a $1,000 laptop, a $250 external superfast drive, and a $100 slower backup drive.  Never have feature projects been potentially so inexpensive and thus open up the potential availability of alternative narratives, other stories, not economically profitable in a system where production is much more expensive.  But to be clear, this doesn’t mean everyone will make a feature, it just means anyone can.  Thank goodness.  Of course, that creates its own set of issues.

Awesome, but also, not so awesome

On the flip side of this tremendous creative potential is the certainty of a glut of product available which will drive the selling price of projects down to where it could become impossible to make a living as a director/producer.  Is there a way around that rather sad prospect?  Sort-of, but overall, I remain pessimistic.

Of course, one way to “make money” in this new system of exchange would be to mass-produce.  But getting a hundred minutes of motion picture story to hang together enough to engage an audience is not trivial and thus, not conducive to mass production (ask any studio or television exec).  Much of what has happened in the music industry (and commercial photography) since the turn of the century—where a few artists earn 90% of the income—I fear will be the fate of feature length story telling.  The three-television network universe I was born into is about to explode into galaxies of digital content providers (currently referred to as “websites”).  So there will be great demand, but for very specific content, and the selling price point will stay low for most producers.

Another way to “make money”, however, is to do a project so inexpensively that you can’t help but turn a profit.  This blog will address this potential path which is not without limitations.

The project

My co-producer and I completed Holiday for less than $4,500 cash out the door.  We’ve chosen to spend a little more to create an original score and there are deferred contracts, but the project was shot and edited for less than $4,500.  To make a feature length project that is a marketable product is challenging enough—it’s simple to string together 100 minutes no one but you is interested in—but to do it for $4,500, now that’s a bit of a hat trick.  And Holiday is not yet completed, nor is the project sold--an important fact if we are talking about making a living.  So although I don't recommend using this as a day-to-day business model, it might serve as a pathway to something bigger. 

I’ll be back soon with more.