Posts
Hello, Sixty, My Old Friend
8 years ago
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Order yours today!
Monday, August 16, 2010
Want Some More Real Numbers?
I don't have 'em. But I do have some more "word on the street".
So apparently Netflix wants a "backlog" of a thousand "orders" (or people queuing) a particular title in order to stock (drum roll please) 200 of that title. Now, of course there's not way for them to actually get a backlog of 1000 people queuing a picture they don't actually carry so they apparently measure that by seeing what kind of press/blog interest there is in a given picture. Not exactly a science, more of an art to that.
Netflix has no real pressure to carry indy titles, so they tend not to. I mean, are you really going to quit Netflix if they don't have a copy of Clonehunter? I wish you would, but you won't.
So Netflix gets paid every month, in perpetuity, by its subscribers. And although you should belong to Blockbuster's competing service -- which still carries indy titles -- we/you/I aren't.
And 200 titles... that's what? $1400 or thereabouts? You're not paying your visual effects people out of that. Heck, you're not buying lunch for twelve days out of that.
So yeah. When your friends ask if your movie will be on Netflix, say "NO F&*^%&'IN WAY!
I mean, unless Netflix offers to buy your movie. Then yeah.
Update: be sure to check out Kangas' post about Netflix - it's downright scary.
So apparently Netflix wants a "backlog" of a thousand "orders" (or people queuing) a particular title in order to stock (drum roll please) 200 of that title. Now, of course there's not way for them to actually get a backlog of 1000 people queuing a picture they don't actually carry so they apparently measure that by seeing what kind of press/blog interest there is in a given picture. Not exactly a science, more of an art to that.
Netflix has no real pressure to carry indy titles, so they tend not to. I mean, are you really going to quit Netflix if they don't have a copy of Clonehunter? I wish you would, but you won't.
So Netflix gets paid every month, in perpetuity, by its subscribers. And although you should belong to Blockbuster's competing service -- which still carries indy titles -- we/you/I aren't.
And 200 titles... that's what? $1400 or thereabouts? You're not paying your visual effects people out of that. Heck, you're not buying lunch for twelve days out of that.
So yeah. When your friends ask if your movie will be on Netflix, say "NO F&*^%&'IN WAY!
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| The art to the Japanese version of Solar Vengeance. The movie is called "Terminator Planet" in Japan. |
Update: be sure to check out Kangas' post about Netflix - it's downright scary.
Color
Cracked takes a relatively sophisticated look at feature color correction in 5 Annoying Trends That Make Every Movie Look the Same.
Personally I'm a bit tired of over-color correction -- but mostly in my movies I'm tired of it. Perhaps that's because I have to do it on my own pictures. Or maybe that I fall in love with the original color in our frames*. Sometimes I like heavy color correction. I'm very fickle about it and so I tend to do tests and check with other people before committing.
We haven't done the teal/orange thing yet. And I don't know if a couple blog-posts really means that any of our buyers care. On Clonehunter we actually got complaints that it was too green. Meh. So we desaturated the whole movie a bit.
Desaturation I tend to like the look of. It certainly doesn't make your eyes as tired as too much color. And it does seem to make the movie look... a bit more... better. Or so it seems.
*I'm not saying that's a good thing, mind you.
Personally I'm a bit tired of over-color correction -- but mostly in my movies I'm tired of it. Perhaps that's because I have to do it on my own pictures. Or maybe that I fall in love with the original color in our frames*. Sometimes I like heavy color correction. I'm very fickle about it and so I tend to do tests and check with other people before committing.
We haven't done the teal/orange thing yet. And I don't know if a couple blog-posts really means that any of our buyers care. On Clonehunter we actually got complaints that it was too green. Meh. So we desaturated the whole movie a bit.
 |
| A still from Clonehunter. Trying to keep skin tones in the right place while making stuff green. I kinda liked it. |
*I'm not saying that's a good thing, mind you.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Making a Business Plan pt 2 (How Much Do Other People Cost?)
2. How much do other people cost?
Let's look at how much it really costs to pay cast and crew. Now, for the complete cast and crew on a feature you're looking at what? At least 100 man/days? That is you have on average a bit more than 8 people on set (including cast and crew) for about 12 days.
Let's say those are 12-hour days and that you're paying (egads!) minimum wage at, what, about $7.50/hour to each person. When you include the employer side of taxes and unemployment and disability and the like you're at a cost per hour of $9.15. For a 12-hour day that's a cost of 109.80.
So that's $10,980 of cost for the wages of a feature film where you're only paying minimum wage on 100 man-days. Ha! These calculations are absolutely at the rock bottom of possibility (which I say even though right now we aren't paying anything but I know that eventually we're going to have to.)
What about post-production costs? Can you realistically get away with yet another 100 12-hour days at minimum wage for visual effects, picture edit, dialog edit, foley, color-correction, music, sound effects edit, and mix?
Let's pretend the answer is "yes". If so, the total costs of wages is around $22,000. That's incredibly low and based upon deranged assumptions of how little people can work for yet still live in the New York City area.
What isn't included is other costs which these folks incur. First-wise is food. For a hundred man-days on set you gotta figure $1500 at minimum. I probably go through $75 in seltzer alone [no, I don't.] Then transportation... well I think we'd have to budget $3000 for transportation and food.
We're looking at $25,000 per picture and that's only if we can keep it down to 100 man/days for the actual shoot. That number goes up to (say) 250 man/days and you find you have to pay $100/day (which costs you $122/day) and you add your post-production staff and you're easily breaking through the $35,000 barrier on cast and crew.
And, as we know in this market, that would make it impossible to make your investment back.
But let's pretend we can keep the costs to $25,000* and we'll see what we can do with increasing our revenue on each picture.
_____
*We make our pictures for about 1/3 of that in cash right now. We don't even expect to be able to gross that now. Both of those numbers are going to eventually have to change.
Let's look at how much it really costs to pay cast and crew. Now, for the complete cast and crew on a feature you're looking at what? At least 100 man/days? That is you have on average a bit more than 8 people on set (including cast and crew) for about 12 days.
Let's say those are 12-hour days and that you're paying (egads!) minimum wage at, what, about $7.50/hour to each person. When you include the employer side of taxes and unemployment and disability and the like you're at a cost per hour of $9.15. For a 12-hour day that's a cost of 109.80.
So that's $10,980 of cost for the wages of a feature film where you're only paying minimum wage on 100 man-days. Ha! These calculations are absolutely at the rock bottom of possibility (which I say even though right now we aren't paying anything but I know that eventually we're going to have to.)
What about post-production costs? Can you realistically get away with yet another 100 12-hour days at minimum wage for visual effects, picture edit, dialog edit, foley, color-correction, music, sound effects edit, and mix?
Let's pretend the answer is "yes". If so, the total costs of wages is around $22,000. That's incredibly low and based upon deranged assumptions of how little people can work for yet still live in the New York City area.
We're looking at $25,000 per picture and that's only if we can keep it down to 100 man/days for the actual shoot. That number goes up to (say) 250 man/days and you find you have to pay $100/day (which costs you $122/day) and you add your post-production staff and you're easily breaking through the $35,000 barrier on cast and crew.
And, as we know in this market, that would make it impossible to make your investment back.
But let's pretend we can keep the costs to $25,000* and we'll see what we can do with increasing our revenue on each picture.
_____
*We make our pictures for about 1/3 of that in cash right now. We don't even expect to be able to gross that now. Both of those numbers are going to eventually have to change.
PluralEyes
So PluralEyes seems to work for a lot of people. It doesn't work for us. This sort of thing comes up regularly with us. We make 90-minute projects out of something on the order of 1200 takes, some of which have sync sound. Very few people actually do that with any sort of regularity.
So some things, like for instance Adobe Premiere, come well recommended because you can do some fabulous things with it. Like for instance you can cut and paste between Premiere and AfterEffects. And you sure can do that -- if you have a short or maybe a commercial. But with a feature? Not so much. Some segments simply do not come over in the AfterEffects version of the project (and relying on something that might do that can be very dangerous for your post-production path).
I do understand the companies which make this software have a problem -- where the heck are they going to get the data just to stress-test their products under actual feature conditions? They'd have to bring a 2TB drive to my studio (or to someone's studio who happens to have a feature on a drive with unsynced dual-system audio in a Final Cut Pro project.) It just ain't a-gonna happen.
I have the same issue with my favorite audio editing/mixing platform Samplitude. After version 8 of the software they suddenly had terrible problems dealing with very large projects with very large numbers of edits. And of course they have no way of replicating the problem in-house because the only people doing the number of edits are... well me and (I think) three other guys. Or, at least we're the only ones who have complained.
So... meh. PluralEyes seems nice and all but after 6 hours of it analyzing data we could have synced all the takes by hand and been 5 hours into an edit. Which is what we're going to do.
So some things, like for instance Adobe Premiere, come well recommended because you can do some fabulous things with it. Like for instance you can cut and paste between Premiere and AfterEffects. And you sure can do that -- if you have a short or maybe a commercial. But with a feature? Not so much. Some segments simply do not come over in the AfterEffects version of the project (and relying on something that might do that can be very dangerous for your post-production path).
I do understand the companies which make this software have a problem -- where the heck are they going to get the data just to stress-test their products under actual feature conditions? They'd have to bring a 2TB drive to my studio (or to someone's studio who happens to have a feature on a drive with unsynced dual-system audio in a Final Cut Pro project.) It just ain't a-gonna happen.
 |
| Rebecca Kush as Lt. Dunn in Alien Uprising. |
So... meh. PluralEyes seems nice and all but after 6 hours of it analyzing data we could have synced all the takes by hand and been 5 hours into an edit. Which is what we're going to do.
Making a Business Plan pt 1 (How Much Do I Cost?)
In doing so, I tend to work from the denominator first, rather than the numerator. That is about the most obtuse way I can think of putting it. But here goes. Prepare for Too Much Information.
1. How much do I cost?
OK, so my rent is $893 a month. Let's pretend that doesn't go up. And let's go ahead and figure that in order to afford $893/month I have to grossly earn 1.3 times that in order to pay myself and pay taxes. So my rent actually ends up costing me 1160.90/month or $13,930.80 a year. But that's not all! For my company to pay me enough for rent I should multiply the final number by 1.22 for the company's side of taxes and so forth (or I end up being self-employed and I don't have a thumbnail calculation for that.) It would cost the company $16,995.78 to pay me enough just to make my rent.
Now obviously I have other expenses than rent. Back in the olden times your accountant would tell you that rent should be a quarter of your salary. You're in pretty good shape if you live in the NYC area and rent is only a quarter of your salary so let's pretend I can live in my present apartment for... $30,000 a year (right now that would be an awfully good year for me. I'm hobbling at maybe half that for the time being.)
That means that paying for me would cost the company $36,600 a year.
1. How much do I cost?
OK, so my rent is $893 a month. Let's pretend that doesn't go up. And let's go ahead and figure that in order to afford $893/month I have to grossly earn 1.3 times that in order to pay myself and pay taxes. So my rent actually ends up costing me 1160.90/month or $13,930.80 a year. But that's not all! For my company to pay me enough for rent I should multiply the final number by 1.22 for the company's side of taxes and so forth (or I end up being self-employed and I don't have a thumbnail calculation for that.) It would cost the company $16,995.78 to pay me enough just to make my rent.
Now obviously I have other expenses than rent. Back in the olden times your accountant would tell you that rent should be a quarter of your salary. You're in pretty good shape if you live in the NYC area and rent is only a quarter of your salary so let's pretend I can live in my present apartment for... $30,000 a year (right now that would be an awfully good year for me. I'm hobbling at maybe half that for the time being.)
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| The Russian version of Solar Vengeance. |
Why Structure Matters
Friday, August 13, 2010
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.
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.
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.
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 |
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. |
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?
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| Clare Stevenson as Aurora in Millennium Crisis. |
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.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
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
Uploaded by blankytwo. - Classic TV and last night's shows, online.
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
Uploaded by blankytwo. - Classic TV and last night's shows, online.
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.
_____
Brian Schiavo in his robot suit with Maduka Steady.
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