It's not the gear, it's your friends.

Every few months a camera or some other piece of gear comes out and the Internet says "There's no excuse now" for you to not make your movie.
Furthermore: "There's all kinds of open-source software. There are books out about screenwriting -- books that actually make sense!" (Insert subliminal message about Blake Snyder's Save the Cat here.) "All it takes is your time and focused effort (a lot of focused effort) and you too can make a feature film. Or two. Or three!"
Well it's not true.
Your gear doesn't matter. Hell, if 35mm film were still the only way to go you'd find a way to come up with the six or seven hundred dollars it takes (gulp!) to shoot every 11 minutes of the stuff. You could edit on a movieola or a flatbed. Really. You could. People did that for a long long time. Indy producers did that. That's not what's keeping you from making your movie.

The Earthkiller gang - Nat Cassidy, Maduka Steady, Tom Rowen, Lucy Rayner, Alaina Hammond, and Robin Kurtz. Photo by Joe Chapman

No, rather the reason you're not making a feature film is because you need to be surrounded by people who actually want you to succeed.
Now it's true that the primary person in your life who doesn't want you to succeed may be you. I can't help you there.  But in many cases, in many times in life, you're surrounded by people who actually feel bad if you were to do something awesome. Because to them, you doing something cool makes them feel less cool. It took me a long long time to realize that.
Let me digress with my favorite exception to the people in the world who have negative energy.
Lucky for me I have a friend from childhood (or at least "teenager-hood"). His name is Ed McNamee and he wasn't born with the "keep friends down" circuit in his brain. In fact, he wants everyone to succeed. He wants me to succeed. He wants you to succeed. Heck, he probably wants you to be successful more than you want to be successful. And he doesn't even know who you are.

Robin Kurtz as Helen in Earthkiller. Photo by Joe Chapman.

Dozens of playwrights, probably hundreds of actors, and scores of other people have had their dreams realized with Ed's help. And it's not even that he necessarily has to actually do anything to be of help. It's just that positive energy that's there which makes everything easier.
And that positive energy is contagious. It's what built Manhattan Theatre Source. (Hmm... now that I think about it, there's kind of an interesting correlation between how Theatresource has taken a turn for the worse while Ed's been away from it... interesting.)
In any case, Ed isn't really a film guy. He doesn't even really like science fiction that much. He doesn't actually work on Pandora Machine movies. But he'll come to every single premiere of one of my pictures. He's sat through my first two completely unwatchable films. Now that's a friend.
But I don't see him for months at a time. He doesn't work on set or help with post-production. He would if I asked him, but that's not really his bag. My point is that it's not so much what he does but where his energy is.
And that's what's important.
Our usual gang, Maduka, David Lee, David Frey, Tom Rowen, the Queen of Mars, and many more, actually want these movies to get made. There's nothing in it for them that the movies don't get made. Sometimes they don't even care what part they play in making sure it comes to fruition, as long as it does. My man Mitchell Riggs is like that all the way, same with our other partner here in the studio -- Blair Johnson. It's all about the positive energy.
Sometimes they just want to help me with whatever bizarre thing I have in my head which I want to do (which is very humbling). But in all cases it's the positive energy which makes it work.
I used to joke back in the beginning of Theatresource that instead of the usual backstabbing you see in New York theaters we had the situation that everyone was hoping someone else would go on to fame and fortune so we could ride their coattails to success.
Now, how does that apply to filmmaking?
Well, if you're sitting there with a Panasonic (or Canon, or Flip, or phone) camera in one hand and a cheap computer based editing system in the other and would love to be making movies but just don't seem to be able to get one off the ground then look around you. Are your friends making jokes instead of giving you real help? Are they making snarky remarks about how they could do it better than you could? Are they just telling you what you can't do?
Get new friends.
You don't have to dump your old friends forever. But you do have to get some distance so you can get some creative work going. And you have to find people who genuinely want you to have a smashing success (whatever that means) in whatever you do.
And no matter how wishy-washy hippy-dippy it all sounds, that positive energy is the difference between you getting things done or not. Especially big things. Like making feature films.
So surround yourself with positive energy.
Peace. Out.

Where in the Heck?

Clare Stevenson as Aurora in Millennium Crisis.

All of a sudden I'm inundated with writers sending me (unsolicited) treatments. Who/what/where did all these guys suddenly get my name?

We need monster movies anyway. Not... whatever these movies are.

New Mic

So we discovered the other day that our backup microphone is dead. We'd had trouble with it ever since we got it. Maybe we should have sent it back for repair but we never did. And now c'est mort.

We use these Oktava mics (the working one I still have is silver). And we only get them from the Sound Room. They're $249 now. I think back in the olden days they were under two hundred bucks.

I discovered that the dead one's problem was in its preamp (by swapping capsules I determined that the capsule with it was OK.) But the capsule on further inspection was just a cardioid pattern, not the hypercardioid which is a bit better at rejecting off-axis noises.

This isn't the first Oktava I've lost. Another one was lost in a mishap a while ago. And man -- looking at my working one -- it's pretty well beat up. But the mics sound great. They're arguably flatter and smoother sounding that the Schoeps (whether that's good or bad for dialog is a matter of taste). And Schoeps can get busted too -- and cost a heck of a lot more when they do.

So I ordered a new one. And I'm complaining because I sure could have used that money to put to a guitar amplifier... ;-) But it would really really really suck if the one working one went down during a shoot and we had no replacement.

I do have a small pile of those -10dB pads which screw in-between the capsule and the preamp body. Well, OK. I have three of them. Soon I'll have four.

P.S. That picture looks like the capsule is only cardioid, doesn't it? Well, when we get the new one we'll see if the response is the same as my silver one -- which has a picture of a hypercardioid response on the side of the capsule.

Business Plan

So remember Video On Demand (VOD)? That was the thing which was supposed to completely change the movie industry. That's why the price of DVD's plummeted (apparently an actual decision by some guy who thought he could see the future from Warner Brothers.)

Instead, the DVD part of the industry plummeted and VOD never took off -- except for porn in hotel rooms.

Part of this is that the VOD interface that most cable companies have is horribly obtuse. I mean, I can (with a bit of frustration) figure out how to get it to work, but my parents will simply never ever order a movie on demand through their digital cable provider.

But today I heard of a plan which might actually work. It's the first good idea for a business plan in this pathetic movie economy I've heard which doesn't involve convincing someone to pre-buy movies before you shoot them (and there are fewer and fewer of those kinds of buyers anymore anyway.)

That is to take advantage of the low ad rates which are happening right now due to the advertising slump and buy ad time on the same cable systems which have your movie on VOD. Run ads on shows and channels which might have similar demographics to those who might actually watch your picture on VOD.

And then here's the kicker -- the cable company can put a little tag at the end of the ad: "To rent this movie now, click '2' on your remote" or whatever. The advertisement itself serves as what would normally be the difficult part of the interface.

They: but in 9 months this market will be totally saturated if this works.

We: yeah, but our movies are so much cooler than theirs are.

They: that's true.

Television advertising does indeed work. It's direct-to-consumer. And in the case of VOD it's measurable. Yes. Like real numbers.

You know, like science.

Ahh... science.

So this will be an interesting experiment. And it's finally realizing the dream of cutting out the other arbiters like Netflix or Blockbuster.

Monsters

According to our sources, monsters and giant bugs are in. Robots are out. Well pththth on that! We're going to have monsters AND giant robots.

Should our next movie be: Earthwar -- Soldiers from the future return through time to save us from alien monster invasion, only to find that they're too late?

Probably. But it means I gotta have a script in hand like nowsy.

Here are other monster movies coming up. Via SF Signal.

skyline
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Movie City Indie Clonehunter Review

Movie City Indie reviews Clonehunter. You have to scooch all the way to the bottom of the page.

I can’t imagine Clone Hunter costing more than $100,000 and it very easily could have been made for a tenth of that.

"Easily?" Easily!? There was nuthin' easy about it buster!

I have no idea what to make of the last paragraph of that review. What would have changed his mind about what he liked about the movie after seeing the interview?

Fun fact: Nadia Dassouki (the "Plasticoat girl" in Clonehunter) is also in "Multiple Sarcasms" which is also reviewed on the same page!

It does seem odd to me that where nominally we live in a world so starved for sci-fi, all we get is a lot of snark about actually making sci-fi. Oh well.
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Brian Schiavo in his robot suit with Maduka Steady.

io9 on Clonehunter

io9 snarks about Clonehunter. My favorite comment is from Briareosdx who writes:

Also, I gotta love the website. It's like "Yeah, this is the pinnacle of 90's web design, and yeah, those are spray painted nerf guns. Deal with it."

Oh, I just discovered something interesting. io9 didn't get this from our press release. Or at least not just from our press release. That's the overseas version of the trailer they've posted. No wonder the commenters are confused by the "Living forever takes less time than you think." tagline.

Also: we're not available on Netflix. Netflix ain't big fans of indy films.

If Mac Rogers hadn't sent this to me I'd never have caught it.

Update: I loved this back-and-forth so much I had to screen capture it.

Earthkiller Adventures

Nat Cassidy, Tana Sartinoranont, and Alaina Hammond in Earthkiller.

I probably totally forgot to mention the adventure in movie-making that last Saturday was. Firstly, a huge gang of people ended up being late, either because of mistakes or mechanical trouble. Second-wise, we'd ordered blue jumpsuits from Lab Safety Supply and they sent us... ladies lunch-service smocks. Yeah, thanks guys!

Also from LSS are these long-sleeve shirts which might come in handy if they actually send them to us when we order them. They're probably cheaper than the Under Armour we usually get.

Japanese Clonehunter Art

The Japanese distributor has done it again. Here's the artwork for the Transformer release. I don't have the exact date of their release, I presume September or October. We'll keep you up to date on that. In the meantime, enjoy.

More Clonehunter PR

Here's the Clone Hunter press release.

GH1 Hacked Experience (so far)

So nowadays we're shooting on the Panasonic GH-1. It's a cool little camera, and it's right this minute the only one of the DSLR's which can autofocus effectively while shooting in movie mode.

We set that bad boy to "nostalgic" film mode to cut out all the detail processing the camera will do. And the camera has been hacked to shoot Earthkiller (it was just a straight-up stock GH1 on Day 2 though.)

So we're shooting at... uh... 32Mb/s or some such. Actually, as far as I can tell the bit rate is variable. But we're shooting at the level of what the Internet (and the DVXuser folks) think of as the "safe hack" data rate.

We're using Neoscene to turn the footage from those weird .mts files into ProRes Quicktimes.

Now question number one is: can I tell a difference between the hacked GH1 and the stock GH1?

And the answer is: uh... not really. I see the countdown of remaining minutes and seconds go a lot faster. And... that's about it. I'm sure it's somehow better, and we might find that some composites and such go a lot quicker and smoother. Maybe my blacks are more solid? I don't know. There's certainly little I can say negative about the hack. I mean, except that it sure uses more space on the SD cards.

But the complaining from pro circles about the GH1 has certainly been reduced with the increase of the data rate. The two issues with the camera now are the "jellocam" and the fact the stock lens is an f4.0 at best. Yeah, I'd love that lens to be at least a 2.0 for all focal lengths. But I also want a unicorn with wings and all the ice cream I can eat without making me fat.

But getting back to the "jellocam". I've shot a lot of handheld with the GH1. I'm halfway through my second feature and we're doing well over 90% hand held. I should probably go into how we're doing that on another post. But the jellocam hasn't been a problem with handheld fight scenes, running up and down roads and corridors, whip pans, nowhere.

Yup. I just don't have jellocam problems... except...

Except when shooting outside, hand held, in the wind. Oddly enough, this has been Maduka's experience with the camera too. When you're doing hand-held and you're being buffeted by wind, the top and bottom of the frame smear like crazy, baby.

Now most of those shots where you get blown sideways by the wind are really not good for picture anyway. But the image turning to jelly is not that awesome a thing to look at. It kind of sucks actually. Not only do you lose the level-ness of your horizon, but the whole world smears like you're mixing scotch and lysergic acid.

So if you're outside in the wind, get some sticks.

Script Savvy?

I got an "invitation" to be a "sponsor" for the Script Savvy Contest. I declined. I'm sort of under the impression that Script Savvy is kind of useless. Basically, writers pay $40 to enter their contest and the carrot for them is that production companies are "sponsoring" the contest. So that means that maybe their script will be read by someone who could make the screenplay they send in into a movie.

It can't be.

Well, honestly InkTip.com seems to work. I've gotten a couple things off of there. But the reality out there is that what we (and by "we" I really mean The Asylum and the like) really need are screenwriters who can turn a screenplay around from logline through a finished draft in about 30 days.

So if you want to be a screenwriter, practice writing screenplays really freakin' fast. And read Save the Cat. Use the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet.

Because what we really need is the ability to come up with a screenplay based on our distributor's needs and we need it very quickly. A contest isn't likely to produce the particular script we happen to need right now.

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Katie Hannigan as Mina in Earthkiller.

A Bit More of Clonehunter PR

A little press release from InkTip. I saw the synopsis for Eric's new picture, it's a horror movie and it looks pretty dynamite!

Ooh look!

An interview with Eric Steele, the writer of Clone Hunter.

Here's my favorite quote: "Some of the scenes I'd written would give James Cameron a headache. Pursuits on hoverbikes, floating casinos, talking gorillas - no sane individual would even think of tackling such a project without a studio budget."