Anyone Made A $250,000 Film?

jls4 said:
The reason why most indie movies fail is the same reason why most Hollywood movies fail. The movie SUCKS!
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This is perhaps the most widely misunderstood fact in all of the arts as a whole. The movie business is no exception.

According to most industry insiders at the time, "Star Wars" was a guaranteed bomb. Too many sci-fi movies had tanked at around that time, so they figured the genre was dead. But those other movies almost certainly tanked because they weren't especially good (at best), and Star Wars went ballistic because it was *great*. It's happened time and time again.

The perceptual/object lesson problem is all the bad low budget movies that come out and tank are *invisible to the public*. Their failure assures that. The public *only* knows about successful films, big budget and small, and big budget flops. Most unfortunate to the perspective is that low budget indies that succeed big, like "Blair Witch" and many others, get *huge* publicity from it, fueled heavily by the fact that they were made so cheaply.

The other 500 films made at the same time for cheap tha tanked because they weren't very good/sucked are *never* publicized. Never *ever*. They just disappear into the cold night of cinematic irrelevance. Sadly, many of those films are made by people very much like those of us who participate in forums like this. Unfortunately, too many of us will have that exact experience.

What it points to with undeniable truth to me is the overwhelming importance of *the quality of the work*. You will *have* to have a great story, great script, and great acting to rise to the top. Fail there, and your film becomes a trivia question that no one will ever know the answer to.

If you have all the above, and production values are at least tolerable, you could be quite successful. But it's failure to do those things that explains 99% of the indie films that never see the light of day.

Stepping off the soap box now...
 
Ted Spencer said:
This is perhaps the most widely misunderstood fact in all of the arts as a whole. The movie business is no exception.

According to most industry insiders at the time, "Star Wars" was a guaranteed bomb. Too many sci-fi movies had tanked at around that time, so they figured the genre was dead. But those other movies almost certainly tanked because they weren't especially good (at best), and Star Wars went ballistic because it was *great*. It's happened time and time again.

The perceptual/object lesson problem is all the bad low budget movies that come out and tank are *invisible to the public*. Their failure assures that. The public *only* knows about successful films, big budget and small, and big budget flops. Most unfortunate to the perspective is that low budget indies that succeed big, like "Blair Witch" and many others, get *huge* publicity from it, fueled heavily by the fact that they were made so cheaply.

The other 500 films made at the same time for cheap tha tanked because they weren't very good/sucked are *never* publicized. Never *ever*. They just disappear into the cold night of cinematic irrelevance. Sadly, many of those films are made by people very much like those of us who participate in forums like this. Unfortunately, too many of us will have that exact experience.

What it points to with undeniable truth to me is the overwhelming importance of *the quality of the work*. You will *have* to have a great story, great script, and great acting to rise to the top. Fail there, and your film becomes a trivia question that no one will ever know the answer to.

If you have all the above, and production values are at least tolerable, you could be quite successful. But it's failure to do those things that explains 99% of the indie films that never see the light of day.

Stepping off the soap box now...
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Wow, you said a lot.. but it was evident that you didn't really understand what I was trying to say, you didn't read my full posts, or maybe I wasn't clear.

The movie sucks because the story is bad. The number 1 thing is the story. Screenwriters don't get paid enough (esepcially when they are good). Without story you have nothing.

But even with a good story - you have people that will butcher and idea. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

But without repeating everything I've already said, I'll just give you this example. How many movies have you rented from your local rental store that you had never heard of that were actally good? I can almost count them on my hands. Unfortunately most people make bad movies. Hollywood does it. I can't tell you how many movies that "sucked" that came from big multi-million dollar movies. They had all the production value, the actors, etc - but they forgot the story or the production team (director/producer) killed the movie.

It's easy to hide behind "the public is upset", "the economy is bad", but when you see Batman come out and in 10 days makes 300 million dollars, maybe the problem is that Hollywood has forgotten how to make good movies. Juno at over 100 million! (An excellent movie!) Good movies draw crowds, bad ones don't. Marketing can get hollywood over their hump, and smart business can make it last. But it does boil down to, is the movie actually good OR how can we fool the public.

The indie world many times takes a hit, but you remember as an indie you're competing with 5000 films shot with DVXs with no lighting, a radio shack mic piped into the camera and a person who after the editing has no idea of what Color Correction is, what Foley is, and thinks music score is a band that has a cool song. Most of indie movies are bad, that's just what they are. My last movie was bad. I tell everybody it was - because it was! But I was smart enough to handle the business side, so my "loss" was only marginal and the "gain" for me was to get another project and to learn. (BTW my budget was $15K, I lost about $400 on the deal - but my crappy movie is in Blockbuster Video.)

---EDIT---

I went back and read my posts and I didn't say anything about production value. so if that was the confusing part - then I'm sorry for that. I'm assuming good prod value.

As for Star Wars, it's like anything. I check out many sci-fi / fantasy movies through rental and most of them again, are bad. The reason Star Wars made money is simple - it's good. Over 6 Billion Dollars in Theaters/Video/Toys says so. Many people are true fans of star wars and I think it is because it was done well. LOTR (Lord of the Rings) is another Fantasy based (most fantasy movies are bad) movie that did well - why - it's good. Why did the first HULK fail and the Second one do well? I've seen both. The second one is good, the first one is bad. Ang Lee even said (he directed the first one) that he didn't like the idea of the Hulk. This is the person they put over the movie, apid him almost $20 mill from what I heard. Eddie Murphy said they kept pressuring him to shoot Norbit, but he didn't think the screenplay/story was ready. This IS Hollywood. business men that want money. They destroy ideas even from good people by pushing before it's ready, or indirectly sabotaging by putting people over films that hate the idea or don't want to do the movie anyway.
 
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Kevin McCallister said:
What was the name of your movie?
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I'm keeping that a secret until my next movie comes out! :laugh::Drogar-SunGlass(DBG

No offense, but I'm not proud of it, so I don't want people seeing it and judging me by it. I made it 3 years ago and before that I really hadn't done anything. I shot it alone and made HUGE mistakes in Audio (40 to 50% of the movie experience) and in Lighting (The Polish for the shot). I had 2 reviews. The first guy totally trashed me. The second, trashed me but said that he basically saw creativity and style in the movie and was eager to see my next attempt.

Since then I've been studying and trying not to be ignorrant or innocent about the true nature and work of filmmaking. Since I've started my new project, I've been asked to shoot 2 commercials and right now someone is talking of paying me to do a small project for them. Everyone who has seen footage of my current film wants to attach themselves to me. And that's what I want - that type of attention.

When I get the new website up, I'll post some scenes and you can check out the new movie.

thanks
 
Maybe I wasn't clear enough myself, because I was agreeing with your previous post completely, as I do with this one. When I said "widely misunderstood", I didn't mean by you. You get it. It's other folks that don't.

So...are we on the same page now?

: )

jls4 said:
Wow, you said a lot.. but it was evident that you didn't really understand what I was trying to say, you didn't read my full posts, or maybe I wasn't clear.

The movie sucks because the story is bad. The number 1 thing is the story. Screenwriters don't get paid enough (esepcially when they are good). Without story you have nothing.

But even with a good story - you have people that will butcher and idea. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

But without repeating everything I've already said, I'll just give you this example. How many movies have you rented from your local rental store that you had never heard of that were actally good? I can almost count them on my hands. Unfortunately most people make bad movies. Hollywood does it. I can't tell you how many movies that "sucked" that came from big multi-million dollar movies. They had all the production value, the actors, etc - but they forgot the story or the production team (director/producer) killed the movie.

It's easy to hide behind "the public is upset", "the economy is bad", but when you see Batman come out and in 10 days makes 300 million dollars, maybe the problem is that Hollywood has forgotten how to make good movies. Juno at over 100 million! (An excellent movie!) Good movies draw crowds, bad ones don't. Marketing can get hollywood over their hump, and smart business can make it last. But it does boil down to, is the movie actually good OR how can we fool the public.

The indie world many times takes a hit, but you remember as an indie you're competing with 5000 films shot with DVXs with no lighting, a radio shack mic piped into the camera and a person who after the editing has no idea of what Color Correction is, what Foley is, and thinks music score is a band that has a cool song. Most of indie movies are bad, that's just what they are. My last movie was bad. I tell everybody it was - because it was! But I was smart enough to handle the business side, so my "loss" was only marginal and the "gain" for me was to get another project and to learn. (BTW my budget was $15K, I lost about $400 on the deal - but my crappy movie is in Blockbuster Video.)

---EDIT---

I went back and read my posts and I didn't say anything about production value. so if that was the confusing part - then I'm sorry for that. I'm assuming good prod value.

As for Star Wars, it's like anything. I check out many sci-fi / fantasy movies through rental and most of them again, are bad. The reason Star Wars made money is simple - it's good. Over 6 Billion Dollars in Theaters/Video/Toys says so. Many people are true fans of star wars and I think it is because it was done well. LOTR (Lord of the Rings) is another Fantasy based (most fantasy movies are bad) movie that did well - why - it's good. Why did the first HULK fail and the Second one do well? I've seen both. The second one is good, the first one is bad. Ang Lee even said (he directed the first one) that he didn't like the idea of the Hulk. This is the person they put over the movie, apid him almost $20 mill from what I heard. Eddie Murphy said they kept pressuring him to shoot Norbit, but he didn't think the screenplay/story was ready. This IS Hollywood. business men that want money. They destroy ideas even from good people by pushing before it's ready, or indirectly sabotaging by putting people over films that hate the idea or don't want to do the movie anyway.
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Thanks for the links of those two articles. They are from different perspectives, to be sure, but I liked the DVD Premiere concept :-) We will no doubt soon be seeing Cell Phone Premiere, or iPod Worldwide Premiere.

But seriously it looks like the Internet is finally going to level the playing field, so indie filmmakers will be able to make some money. Although I don't agree with the philosophy of spending $250,000 as a learning experience or as a way to break into horror films or whatever genre you may choose.

There's just no need to take a hit like that, when an indie filmmaker can just as well make a film that he or she believes in.

However, I learned a lot from this thread with respect to different SAG contracts and technical details of digital cameras.

Thanks for sharing.
 
Well, I would by no means make a horror feature that I wasn't fully prepared to do. When I shoot my feature, it will be good. It won't be shot on anything less than the RED One. I will have fully professional gear. I'll be using a DP who has DPed several features before with budgets $2 million and up, I'm hoping to attach a UPM who has worked on many of those same features, and of course the rest of the crew will be fully professional.

I will not even do it until I've practiced further with narrative filmmaking on several shorts, though I'm not concerned about my ability to go through the process, I've done my share of directing work already, I just need more work on the working with actors bit, which is so important to a feature. I have lots of opportunity for that in the next 18 months.

I would prefer a straight-to-DVD premiere for my film, that's what I was shooting for all along, but I guess you never know, we'll see. If it has a name star or two, maybe it gets a limited theatrical release, but to my understanding they are so expensive and so hard to make your money back on for smaller films, I just don't see the point. I think it's better to put your marketing bucks into DVD, if I was a distributor anyway, and really focus on that market.

The first American Pie straight-to-DVD movie I thought was good, it wasn't even close to the three theatrical films, which I think are all great comedies, I love them, but it was still good. The next one, The Naked Mile, totally sucked hardcore. It was terrible. Beta House, which I also bought, was an improvement. It was not good, but it was not bad either. It was just ok.
 
Ted Spencer said:
Maybe I wasn't clear enough myself, because I was agreeing with your previous post completely, as I do with this one. When I said "widely misunderstood", I didn't mean by you. You get it. It's other folks that don't.

So...are we on the same page now?

: )
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Yes we're good. sorry for the confusion. :)
 
JonathanLB said:
Well, I would by no means make a horror feature that I wasn't fully prepared to do. When I shoot my feature, it will be good. It won't be shot on anything less than the RED One. I will have fully professional gear. I'll be using a DP who has DPed several features before with budgets $2 million and up, I'm hoping to attach a UPM who has worked on many of those same features, and of course the rest of the crew will be fully professional.

I will not even do it until I've practiced further with narrative filmmaking on several shorts, though I'm not concerned about my ability to go through the process, I've done my share of directing work already, I just need more work on the working with actors bit, which is so important to a feature. I have lots of opportunity for that in the next 18 months.

...
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Well I guess we finally disagree on something, JonLB. I prefer to build my crew from the ground up. Most of the people I've run into that have done "hollywood" or have a certain amount of "experience" tend to wield it like a sword over a person's head. I'm looking for other people like myself, who are up and coming, but take this craft seriously, maturely, and with a lot of spirit. Luckily I've met a few already.

Because of the hustle of these people, we can learn to make movies cheaper, easier, and like a marriage grow together. I don't want someone who's been married 3 times before and still has problems talking about their feelings. :grin:

If someone does come in from outside, I want them to be open to new ideas and a new way of doing business. While I'm not going to outline my plan for the company I'm trying to build over the Internet. I'll say that I personally think that the Average Hollywood Studio uses luck and a 80% success rate to do business. I'd rather pay attention to markets, understand the true nature of movies, allow filmmakers to fully create without rush and gain a better perspective and raise the 80% success rate closer to 95%, which I think is fully possible.
 
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I saw Jls4's film. And it is has a lot of rookie mistakes. No more than mine does. And I will go the same distribution route that he did. I will break even and that is fine with me.
 
slimchrisp said:
just curious, how did you swing distribution with blockbuster?
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It's not hard to get distribution, or not as hard as many people think. The key is two things:

Easy to Sell Genre
Cheap Movie

If you make your movie over $125K, it better be good, real good. This is where most people make the biggest mistake. It's easier to sell a bad $30K film than an okay $125K film. Why? Distributors will pay $50K sometimes for a crappy movie and put a new cover on the box, and put no pictures of the movie on the back. So the person renting, doesn't know what to expect. They take a chance. Well when people do that - and we call do "Curiosity" the distributor makes money. But when you make a $125K movie and you go to sell, you have to make at least $160K.

If you pick a bad genre then the distributor has to figure out "how" to sell your movie. Easy Genres mean people look at the cover and know something. This is why I don't encouage Artsy-Films, make those when you have a budget and a celebrity.
 
filthrich said:
I saw Jls4's film. And it is has a lot of rookie mistakes. No more than mine does. And I will go the same distribution route that he did. I will break even and that is fine with me.
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Well I'm touched... And I feel violated :Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)

Yep. I made a lot of mistakes, but if you guys can learn from them (because I sure did). Then it's okay.

What did you think about the mirror scene and the car scene?
 
On the blockbuster distribution question

On the blockbuster distribution question

Heya jls

Can you elaborate a bit more on how you approached distributors with your movie, what you negotiated, and so on?

On my way to do a feature, that is a drama/thriller
with budget of 17k

Very curious

Charlie
 
hehe

hehe

I have no idea how a feature is made for $15,000 or $25,000, it's amazing to me. I guess I just can't imagine the idea, like how the logistics work out. I spent $10,000 on a one-day music video shoot and couldn't afford to hire a wardrobe person or a production designer (I was both), and we got some amazing deals on equipment rentals plus we didn't have to rent any camera or camera support, I had two HVX200s, a dolly, jib, and some additional lights, a pro reference monitor, etc. So in other words, really, it was more like a $15,000 shoot done for $10,000.

I was trying to figure out how to make my feature for about $6,000/day, not including costs later for sound design and editing, but the cost would still be not far off $10,000 per shooting day and that's with the equipment and the location completely free! I just don't see how you can make anything professional for much less than that, I mean with a feature.
 
heheh

heheh

Well

we're shooting it with two xh a1's
have most equipment steadicam jib, working on dolly
Producers are friends with a good amount of people who have the locations (bar, gym, office space and such)
moneys going mostly on food and tapes besides some audio gear
:crybaby::undecided
 
That's tight, yeah you need those free or cheap location hookups. Honestly locations are a pain, they can cost the most and be the hardest to find. Equipment is a big issue. And then there's labor. So if you can find cheap or free locations, and you can get good labor to work for cheap because they are your friends, or they believe in your project, etc., that's another great plus. Then if you own most of the equipment you'll need that's definitely awesome.

What's funny is I told my friend that I was planning a feature with a max budget of $150,000, and really looking to spend about $125,000, and shoot in 18 days. I have the location free. He was like, "Wow, that's a lot of money!" and he's a filmmaker. I was like, uhh, no, not really. Then he tells me that I can get a production designer, which I'll need, fairly cheap but that to get someone good they'll care more about the budget they are given than their pay, so they'll want like $1,000 a day for their budget, not including what they get paid. I'm like dude, you just spent easily $20,000 of my budget right there, on production design. And you said $125,000 is a lot of money? You also know I want to get a B-lister for $20,000 or so for a week. It's funny someone thinks oh my god, wow, spending $6K, $7K, $10K per day is a lot of money, but it's really nothing when you figure that if you're doing things professionally you're going to need 20 people on the cast and crew, that's minimum, and even at a really pathetic average rate of $200/day you're looking at $4,000 right there. Plus food. Plus equipment rentals you might not have. Plus if you have to pay for a location. Plus production designer's budget. Then none of that includes great post sound, an editor, and a musician. Money goes so fast on a feature.
 
Time to read Rebel without a Crew one more time. If your story takes place in a cheap hell hole (empty waste land or cheap run down areas) and you grab the audience with a hero they care about, and the adversity increasingly gets worse for the hero, so much so that the audience wonders what's going to happen next ... you might find the audience you're looking ($) for at an affordable manufacturing price.

Go CHEAP and be Creative. That's the only ace up your sleeve you've got. Sun too bright?- that's how it's suppose to be, gritty & ugly. Crappy old buildings? - that's where the hero starts out and where he faces his adversity. All of us have far better gear than what RR borrowed to shoot his 1st film. He used a Radio Shack microphone and recorded it wild after they shot each scene.... can any of us get more primitive than that?

All this crap about originating on film is basically BS. Yes distributors want it and assume it sets you apart as a real film maker, but they really don't know what they're talking about. What they're doing is, they're trying to weasel a low price and act as they are experts on stuff that the paying audience doesn't give a hoot about. Don't believe me? worried about producing a real movie on film? Do this: Shoot your video correctly [avoid high contrast and other video weak points] and then take your 1080p HD footage to a transfer house. Print 3 minutes of it to 35 and have them soup it and see how it magically looks like 35 on their theatre screen... because it now is 35 and 99% of the audience won't know nor care about the less than 1% difference you and your film friends see. In fact if you don't tell any one they won't know. 720p actually looks better in some cases because it blurs more like many film stocks. 1080p is very clean looking. Red, I imagine would be over the top.

Half of, There will be Blood was a cheap desolete location, basically an actor digging in some ground... same with No Country for Old Men, ... these sort of films could be produced for a low cost because they don't require lots of set. Obviously a period piece runs the costs up for costumes etc... but the same basic idea could apply to current "CHEAP" fashion/design.

Be cheap, be creative & Hollywood will love you, because they're are much more interested in money than movies. The end game is selling tickets, DVDs and popcorn. It's a business, that means it's about $$$$$. Aim at teenage males and you'll make the movies the majors want. I know becuase the execs told me this to my face. 14 to 21 year old males....that's your target.
 
Absolutely. That's because the male audience from about 13 to 25 sees a HUGE number of movies in theaters compared to any other demographic. There is a market for the women in their 40s and 50s, but it's nothing compared to the teenage male demographic that drives pictures like Tomb Raider (which I like, to be fair, the second film blew chunks), Hancock, even The Dark Knight, etc. That's your bread and butter. And not weird indie crap. Honestly most of my friends wouldn't even watch indie movies. I can't say I blame them. I don't watch indie movies either. Not true indie movies, anyway. Sure, I watch indie movies that were made for $7, $8 million, but how indie is that honestly? The rest of us making real indie movies are never given budgets like that.

I honestly mainly have time for the films that I believe have the most chance of being actually good, and that's mainstream Hollywood films. I could watch 20 indie features and I'll probably hate 15 of them, think 2 of them are pretty bad, 2 more are ok, and one is actually pretty good. Those are the odds. Or I could see 20 mainstream Hollywood releases and think 2-3 suck hardcore, another 6-8 are pretty average, blah, 5 more are quite good or at least entertaining, and the remaining films are very good to great. It's just better odds, that's all.

If it weren't so, I'd watch more indie movies. I think most audiences feel that way, too. It's one reason I watch a lot of indie music videos I see users post on DVX User -- because they are actually really GOOD much of the time. I've seen amazing work done on here, work that is ten times more creative than stupid crap that plays on MTV like I Kissed A Girl, which is one of the stupidest, most pointless videos I've seen in a long time. Not to assault the big music video directors or whatever, but these guys are hacks half of the time. Britney's last video was a pile of crap, that guy was a first time director and he didn't do anything, she basically came up with the idea and he made a turd. Then you have nonsense like I Kissed A Girl, really boring location, no originality, no story, I could easily have made that video interesting, but I guess that isn't what they were going for. It's called I KISSED A GIRL and I didn't even see two girls kissing, which shouldn't be too intense to play on Fuse, MTV2, or wherever else that video airs. Come on. Then the song Starlight by Muse, what a great song, and the video is completely horribly edited. The idea is so obvious anyone could have thought of it. Oh wow ok it talks about a ship so let's film it on a ship, yay, and Mark Romanek had a really great Audioslave video with fireworks so let's just turn the ship scenes into night and light off some fireworks! No idea why we're doing this but it's cool and we have the money. Whatever. The band performance footage was godawful. Whatever they spent on that I could have given them a video ten times better for half the cost. Again, awful directing. This is why I watch a lot of what DVX User members post because I've seen some amazing, creative work here that is just much better than what's going on MTV, even for way bigger budgets.

Unfortunately I don't think features have caught up to that point. Most of what comes out of a budget less than $1 million ends up being kinda lame. Not all, by any means, but there's still too much crap. At least Hollywood's crap usually has something great about it. Even the worst Hollywood blockbusters, I can still find 5 things that were amazing -- the makeup, maybe, or the cinematography was actually quite good, or a supporting actor turned in a great performance despite a mostly stupid script, or there were some great effects, or I loved these locations, etc. But in a bad indie film, there's nothing to like because there's no budget. It lives or dies on the script. If it has a great script I can probably forgive quite a lot else, but if it has a decent script I start to notice the shoddy production values. Whereas a Hollywood film only needs a decent script with solid pacing and that is plenty enough to deliver a good, entertaining film.
 
After...

After...

reading these forums for 2 months I believe (since the corrado thread had 15 pages I think) Those were the 2 most informative posts I've found.
:)!!!!


Btw. I hope the "SINCE corrado had 15 PAGES" deal doesn't catch on, and you start saying "When did the Dark Knight come out?" "around page 127 in the corrado thread"

hehehe.
 
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