"Berlin" - A Norm Sanders Film - DVD NOW AVAILABLE

WINNER of "Best Historical Film" - Route 66 Film Festival

WINNER of "Best Historical Film" - Route 66 Film Festival

Cool that apparently there was an award for this! :) It's been a week+ since I logged into WithoutABox.com, and just found this message from the coordinator of the Route 66 Film Festival (this is their 7th Annual Festival):

Congratulations! Your film BERLIN has been awarded Best Historical Film for the 2008 Route 66 Film Festival to be held in Springfield, Illinois on September 20-21, 2008. After being named one of the 25 festivals worth the fee in Moviemaker Magazine, we received more than six times the usual number of entries. Making our selections this year was extremely difficult and we had to pass up many excellent films. You have a right to be proud of your film.
 
Hey Norm. Nice work. Sorry, got caught up in the release of my DVD but I finally ordered a copy of Berlin and can't wait to check it out. Looking forward to seeing it in my mailbox.
Greg
 
Can you post the link of yours here, or PM it to me, if the DVD's available? I'd like to support you right back, but more importantly, I think you'll have some SUPER value in there with regards to recipes for families, bonding, etc. :)
 
Thanks Norm.
http://www.chefandfather.com
I just released Vol. 1 which is baby food but Vol. 2 is in Post production and that is all about family food and has tons of tips etc. about cooking for young kids and yourself.
Vol. 1 makes a great gift for new parents out there as well.
Thanks.
Greg
 
Berlin dvd

Berlin dvd

Hi Norm,

Just wanted to ask, when you did your initial DVD run, how many DVDs did you order?

Could you also tell us how much it works out per DVD and finally how are sales going?

Thanks
 
Hi pekar1876, I did a 1K run on the DVD's. It ended up only being a few hundred dollars more than 500, which I KNEW I would eventually run out of, so I thought why not ... gives me a solid buffer to ensure I didn't run out any time soon.

Because of the size of cast & crew (the free DVD's to give away), and then the marketing on MySpace and here (which I still haven't hit heavily enough on yet - just personal time constraints), and then the cast & crew members telling family/friends, and finally festival submissions, I knew 500 would get eaten up pretty quickly.

Sales are going well, considering how little I've put into marketing it.

I think the cost per DVD was roughly around $1.69/each, as I THINK the final number was around $1,649 or so for 1,000 of them, but it's also because I upgraded some things and went with full bleed, four color offset press instead of spot silkscreen, to retain the quality of the graphic work Jeremy Tuttle did on it, etc. My goal is to net at least $10/DVD, after the cost of the DVD, as well as shipping (international orders eat up shipping quickly).

I would also highly recommend, if you can afford it, to take advantage of some of the extra's they offer at steep discounts at time of ordering your DVD's (i.e. postcards - GREAT for festivals, posters - CAST & CREW love these, etc.). I got 300 full color AMAZING 18"x24" posters for only $199. SUCH a NICE gift to be able to give cast & crew, and then also nice to be able to send to a festival (mounting & shipping is EXPENSIVE, however) for advertising.
 
Norm, got my dvd yesterday and watched it all at 2:00 a.m. (kept me up) Great job, it was fun to watch all the BTS and green screen. Nice author on the dvd.
Good luck with selling the 1K....I am in the same boat.
Greg
 
Hey Tom, you should have rec'd it by now. :) Greg, thanks for the feedback, and glad you enjoyed not only the film, but also all the BTS. Thanks for the props on the DVD author as well ... that was something I put a lot of extra work into, and was proud of the result.

I'll be looking to pick up your 2nd of the DVD series, as we're past the baby stage, and ain't going back. :)



UPDATE on "Berlin": I'm wondering if it's the content that polarizes festivals? I find it interesting that of the festivals it's accepted at, it's VERY well rec'd and either WINS awards, or is nominated for several in various categories ... or it just flat out is rejected. :( Just rec'd a letter from the Heartland Film Festival that it wasn't accepted, as well as Raindance (UK), and the 1st rejection being Hermosa. So it's go 3 fests so far that have said no thanks to it. What gives? Think it's the content, the fact that it deals with Nazi's? I mean, it really doesn't even "deal" with them perse, and certainly doesn't sensationalize them ... it's just the time/setting that the story takes place in.

Hmm....
 
You're KIDDING! :( I'll see what I can find ... I'm sure it'd be on the receipt, because even all international orders have a tracking of some kind. Sorry for the massive delay, Michael.

Worse comes to worse, I'll ship you out another one, if you don't have it by end of week.
 
Norm Sanders said:
You're KIDDING! :( I'll see what I can find ... I'm sure it'd be on the receipt, because even all international orders have a tracking of some kind. Sorry for the massive delay, Michael.

Worse comes to worse, I'll ship you out another one, if you don't have it by end of week.
Click to expand...
No problem. These things happen. Shoot me a PM when you have a tracking number or something.

Thanks,

Mike
 
Norm Sanders said:
Hey Tom, you should have rec'd it by now. :) Greg, thanks for the feedback, and glad you enjoyed not only the film, but also all the BTS. Thanks for the props on the DVD author as well ... that was something I put a lot of extra work into, and was proud of the result.

I'll be looking to pick up your 2nd of the DVD series, as we're past the baby stage, and ain't going back. :)



UPDATE on "Berlin": I'm wondering if it's the content that polarizes festivals? I find it interesting that of the festivals it's accepted at, it's VERY well rec'd and either WINS awards, or is nominated for several in various categories ... or it just flat out is rejected. :( Just rec'd a letter from the Heartland Film Festival that it wasn't accepted, as well as Raindance (UK), and the 1st rejection being Hermosa. So it's go 3 fests so far that have said no thanks to it. What gives? Think it's the content, the fact that it deals with Nazi's? I mean, it really doesn't even "deal" with them perse, and certainly doesn't sensationalize them ... it's just the time/setting that the story takes place in.

Hmm....
Click to expand...


I live in London and Raindance is not that good a festival. Don't get me started on the guy who runs it Elliot Grove...

Quick question - How would I go about embedding a flash player into my website and what programme do you use to convert you video into flash video, cause it looked really good.

Thanks
 
Thanks, pekar1876, that makes me feel better. :) Seems to be getting about 50% of the fest, as far as lineup, and the ones it DOES get into is very well rec'd & recognized, so again ... I'm left to wonder if it's a polarization thing, based on content in the film.

I believe her name is Eugenia ... here's her profile: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/member.php?u=27386

Send her a PM, or do a search on the forums for her posts. She's really quite amazing at the tools & info she's got for embedding flash, and more importantly in encoding to flash. I used her tools mostly for encoding the flash, and doubled the bit rate from her suggestion so that it'd still look really good when blown up to full screen for near HD quality. Though it can take longer to view, and sometimes bottleneck a tad while streaming. If you use her default bit rates, you'll have NO bottlenecks. From her site, I then went to another site that she lists to figure out how to really trick out the flash player for everything I wanted. Took me a day or two to perfect how I wanted everything.

Michael, again my sincerest apologies on that DVD apparently getting lost in the mail! :( I rec'd your PM with address again (thank you!), and will get it out to you this week & will PM you the tracking number when I do.
 
Michael, finally got your other copy out today, just PM'd you the tracking number.


Should hear from Chicago Underground Film Fest, as well as St. Louis International (Academy Award Qualifying - kind of cool, not that I'm getting hopes up) ... announcements were due yesterday, though I'm noticing a lot of festivals have been slow with announcements lately, Bend Film Fest being the worst of them for timeliness.
 
Norm Sanders said:
Michael, finally got your other copy out today, just PM'd you the tracking number.
Click to expand...
Received it today and just finished watching it. Very polished work.

I would like to say more but I don't want to spoil it for anyone. I will say this. Good acting, interesting story, and a great score. The cinematography was also very good.

Congratulations!

Cheers,

Mike
 
Thanks, Mike!

Funny, I was JUST logging on so that I could tell you I rec'd back today the original DVD that I mailed out to you on August 8th. I was going to go to the post office on Monday to see what's up, but glad to hear you finally rec'd the second copy. The original was finally returned to me saying "moved/unknown", even though it was the SAME exact address I sent the 2nd one.

Glad you liked it, and even more glad you finally got it! :)
 
Rec'd Trophy for Best Historical Film

Rec'd Trophy for Best Historical Film

A couple of weeks ago I rec'd a large envelope from the Route 66 Film Festival, with a simple certificate that said "Best Historical Film" on it. Yippee, I thought, and was fairly unimpressed with the recognition.

Today, however, I rec'd a rather large box, and in it was a pretty classy laser etched glass trophy from them! Sweet. :thumbsup:

Thanks, Route 66!!
 
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