Blood Runs Cold ($5,000 indie)

snowleopard

snowleopard

Well-known member
With all the talk about shooting DSLRs in feature films for no money, I thought I'd add one. I'm wondering if anyone saw or heard of this slasher film? It was shot in Sweden in the dead of winter on a Canon 7D with only two stock lenses and a total budget of about $5,000 for everything. The director said they just had the persistence and wherewithal to see the project through, that was the real key. Lot of practice, lots of takes, and some reshoots. It may not be a great movie, but Horrortalk.com gave it a pretty good review, and it looks like they accomplished a lot, with very little:

 
I haven't heard of this one, but it looks interesting.

I'm debating on whether or not I should save for a dedicated HD movie camera (AF100 or FS100 style camera), or stick with DSLR's/GH2 camera gear. I suppose NAB might hold some surprises beyond all the out of my budget 4K stuff from Canon.

I'm now curious to see Blood Runs Cold. Both because it looks like it might be a fun over-the-top slasher flick, and to see what they were able to do with a minimal budget.
 
Well, you can watch it on YouTube, the entire film, by clicking the link below. I have to say though I'm trying to track down the filmmakers to encourage them to write to YouTube to get them to remove all full copies of it there, as I'm pretty sure none are by them. At the very least they could put their own version on there, and a link to donations in the description. But right now I can't even find them, so for now, here it is. I'll leave it to your discretion if you wish to watch it here, or try to find it elsewhere, or both.

 
Meh. I'm kind of tired of these films that advertise the fact that they're 'zero budget' as a means for attracting an audience. I'm not even sure what it means anymore. For a bit of time when the internet came out, it was a sort of 'stick it to the man' attitude, where kids with cameras could mimic what hollywood does for close to nothing.

However now it doesn't mean as much anymore, IMO. We know there are cheap cameras that can mimic 'film' quality, and we know you can make a film with sandwiches and not paying anyone... but that doesn't impress me.

The film doesn't look like anything special.

Maybe if it had a very clever story, with an amazing hook...
 
You bring up a good point. The whole "no budget" is really just a talking point. We already know these cameras are great, and films like this can be made on the cheap. So to advertise it as a tag line isn't necessary. It's almost a distraction when done that way.

I guess what struck me more perhaps is that they shot it on the 7D with mostly with a stock zoom lens and no external anything. No monitor, no Zacuta, no matte box, no focus puller, no Zeiss prime lenses. One shotgun mic into an external recorder. We techies seem to get caught up in needing all these peripherals, as if the only true way to use these cameras it to have a set filled with pro-gear. When these guys didn't shoot like that, and their movie looks good.

As to story, yes, its looks like a basic straight-forward slasher. But it does look to me like they tapped themselves out creatively pretty well within that confined.
 
Jon Starr said:
Meh. I'm kind of tired of these films that advertise the fact that they're 'zero budget' as a means for attracting an audience.
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I totally agree in terms of marketing a film to the public but in terms of a filmmaking forum it is good to know because I like to see what someone has achieved on a budget I can afford. It provides a baseline/target to aim for depending on your own level of development as a filmmaker. It becomes a film you can watch primarily for research (perhaps we starting out filmmakers are an exploitable market) with the aim of learning to do better with less. Although I am torn as to whether it makes me more or less resentful that these films when found on DVD are often the same price or even significantly more than a $100m production (as if you can recover the cost of production by pricing yourself out of the market...better to make a loss but sell copies surely?).

Of course if the film can try to take the path less taken, it automatically has more merit than a derivative genre piece. Even if it sucks it will have some value because you can analyse how they failed to deliver the unique element and maybe avoid the same pitfall yourself.
 
You're right Egg, it can be great for a learning experience.

Snow, good point about lots of gear vs little. It's just hard to go from working with a lot of gear to working with very little. A friend of mine said it well. When you get used to working with everything, it's hard to go back to working with nothing. However wouldn't the lack of this gear at times slow them down? Especially no monitor. Was the director just really confident in his DP? I feel like I'd need to step back and review the footage after almost every shot just to check everything. Not to mention an actor plays different on a screen than through your eyes. Though I doubt a film like this really needs top notch acting.
 
I get what Jon was responding to: the trailer featuring "Shot on 5,000 USD" is quite a strange choice to make. It's one thing if it's a documentary or a blog post or just for getting it to film blogs, publicity, but advertising it in the trailer is definitely odd.

At the same time, own what you have, use what you can. If it's getting them attention or helped, well, you can only exploit things for so long. I don't blame them.
 
Jon Starr said:
It's just hard to go from working with a lot of gear to working with very little.
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Tell me about it. I work in local TV. I can walk 50' from here to a fairly large studio, with grid lighting, 5k's, 2ks, HMIs, Kinoflos, moles, every light, reflector, filter, scrim, flag, etc. you can imagine, green screen, cyclorama, etc. HD cams, jibs, tracks, etc. etc. etc. I'm not producing anything great at my job, it's mostly just ENG crap. And I can't use the studio for whatever I want, no. But I get spoiled by this, used to "professionalism", and used to having access to to the gear and shooting that way. This gives you hesitation before deciding you're going to go out with a 5D with a mic run into a Juicedlink and that's it. In the back of my mind I know I should do that. I really should be shooting zero budget stuff of my own all the time, as much as possible. A lot of it will be garbage, but some won't be, and I'd learn a lot. But making that leap isn't the easiest jump, by far. My pride is getting in the way, a fear of failure, or something.

:embarasse

As to Blood Runs Cold, I'm pretty sure the bulk of production was handled by only two guys, that's it. I also got the impression that before going into production they scheduled extra days for re-shoots, knowing beforehand they were likely to need it. Sounds pretty smart if you ask me.
 
2 questions. How are these full length films getting up there? I thought it was a 15 minute limit. Are they just encoding 360p and keeping it under the data limit.

There seems to be a bunch of older mainstream titles up there, surely not uploaded by producers, how are they bypassing the copyright controls that are supposed to be in place? Most bigger titles have songs that would be tagged if that is how the bots typically identify stuff.

If this is what it is coming to, maybe it is best to just go straight to youtube yourself and hope to make some advertising money. Torrents never seemed all that big, more of a secret society, but once things hit youtube uncontrolled, how can anyone hope to profit from copyright? Easier than ever to make a movie, harder than ever to make any money from it, I fear that is the sad reality.
 
I have an account that allows long times. I didn't do anything special to get it. They just let me know one day. I have since uploaded two really old films that are long ago out of print and you can't find anywhere, and I mean anywhere (Shoot, and White Rock). I was not involved in either film - they were made when I was a boy - but I'm not worried about copyright. I assume the bots may find them, and tag them, and either take them down, or put ads on them and the money will go somewhere other than me. I'm cool with either.

How people put new feature length films on there is the same. But why they aren't quickly taken down I do not know. I finally was able to track down the director of the film and sent him a note telling him about it, and he seemed frustrated, as this had apparently happened before, and said he would write to YouTube about it.
 
dop16mm said:
2 questions. How are these full length films getting up there? I thought it was a 15 minute limit. Are they just encoding 360p and keeping it under the data limit.

There seems to be a bunch of older mainstream titles up there, surely not uploaded by producers, how are they bypassing the copyright controls that are supposed to be in place? Most bigger titles have songs that would be tagged if that is how the bots typically identify stuff.

If this is what it is coming to, maybe it is best to just go straight to youtube yourself and hope to make some advertising money. Torrents never seemed all that big, more of a secret society, but once things hit youtube uncontrolled, how can anyone hope to profit from copyright? Easier than ever to make a movie, harder than ever to make any money from it, I fear that is the sad reality.
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It is easier than ever to make a movie, and easier than ever to make money from it.

Just study/research more. It's not as abysmal as people (even myself) make it out to be. But, if you aren't delivering something masses want, then self distro won't work out much for you either.

Be mindful of what you're going for and what your goals are, you'll turn out fine.
 
I would agree with that. If you can produce something decent on a low budget, and hit a target, niche audience (like these guys are trying with the slasher genre) you can make a buck. No, you aren't likely to hit the Blair Witch lottery, but if you spent $5k, and it makes $10k, that's $5,000 in your pocket.
 
snowleopard said:
I would agree with that. If you can produce something decent on a low budget, and hit a target, niche audience (like these guys are trying with the slasher genre) you can make a buck. No, you aren't likely to hit the Blair Witch lottery, but if you spent $5k, and it makes $10k, that's $5,000 in your pocket.
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But the problem is -- how is your target market going to even know your movie exists? My feature "Tangled Web" has been on Amazon for a good long time, and it's doing nothing. Why? Because I have no money to advertise, and all my efforts at self-promotion via any kind of free outlet have been fruitless. Promotion is the key.
 
Having something that a niche wants to watch at this level is key; the niche will promote it for you. Then you roll whatever that money is back into advertising, create a cycle. There's also the FREE promotion of hard work getting it to reviewers for free, to watch and say a few good things about it.

Horror is too VAST a niche to try and get someone to promote it for you, unless it's supremely good, and if it's supremely good you're probably already handling some small distro deals, anyway.

Which goes back to the original point: be mindful of what your goals are. When you are, you'll investigate whether or not your property has niche appeal or real market value. Very swiftly will you realize what you may or may not want to do.
 
Yes, that's the balancing act. If you make just another "indie" drama or comedy, there is no niche. The niche is "indie films". Horror is almost as big of genre, though the slasher sub-genre hasn't seen many films of late, and that's probably what they're trying to latch onto.
 
There are niche's within horror, ones that you really can't ever "kill", pun intended.

Vampires, that's one. For some reason torture porn is still pretty big on a niche level, don't ask me why. Rob Zombie rips, I mean.

I don't think you can go wrong with a decently done supernatural horror, or .JP horror style feature. That stuff still has a decent sized niche following.

I've said this before, I think, but one of our users here has already proven it: I could spend 10K making a feature about a horse in the big city and I would probably sale BOATLOADS to horse lovers, as long as I studied up and really learned about horses, stayed true to the material. I'm not a horse fan, but one of our DVXusers is a huge ferret fan and her feature is doing REALLY well within the animal lovers community.

I wish I could remember the name of her movie, I'll post it if I find it.

If you want to make ANY money doing this stuff, you really need to think like you want to make money. You can land in it, maybe, by doing a decent feature in general, but planning can help your odds.
 
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