FEATURE: DEUCE OF SPADES - How I made a period full feature film all by myself on ZERO budget

:) I know you are all trying to be helpful, my problem is that I needed to call back my Teeshirt guy to have him change the line ASAP because the tees are being produced. So I just needed a simple use this one or use that one answer.

The tees are worned by hotrodders at car shows. and around car related activities, whee they interact with more car people.

The purpose of the line under the logo is so that any other car guy talking to the person wearing the tee will now be able to know what the spade is about. They will read "A hot rod period film" and get two important points across:

1- There is a new hot rod film out (or coming)

2- It is not a film about modern hotrods, such as the fast and the furious (which they are kinda sick of) but rather, a film about the old days, hence the word "Period"

The word "Period" is very powerful in my market. It means the hot rods are from the 40's / 50's / 60's.

Anytime I talk to hotrodders about my film, they are interested about hearing I made a hotrod film, but always first assume it is a modern day film, with modern day hotrods, like all the other hot rod related videos on the market today. When they hear "period' and "drama" they suddenly get extremely excited, ask for the website address, where they can buy it etc etc.

So as you see, I am making wise use of the few words I have to sell the idea to my public, the car people, no the general public.

Cause it is the car people who buy my tees.

So there, now I have explained the reasons why I selected these specific word.

For exemple the slogan: "A hot rod film, period". Would absolutely not do the job

It might be a cute play on words, but not efficient in clearly relating the message to the hotrodders.

I personally would have prefered A HOT ROD PERIOD DRAMA but Jerry thought drama could be confused with theater (I am not really convinced he is right but to be on the safe side, I used the word film.

I prefer drama, because by definition a DRAMA is a film that should be taken seriously, as opposed to the many fluff hot rod films that came out in the wake of American Graffiti, which was not the deepest film itself to begin with ;).

So currently I am leaning towards:

A HOT ROD PERIOD FILM

or

A HOT ROD PERIOD DRAMA
 
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I feel like Period Drama is more commonly used than Period Film, so I would go with Period Drama. I think it's pretty clear it's not a play, since hot rods in a play would be a pretty unusual sight.
 
No one in America will confuse your movie with the fast and furious or modern day rice burners (when they see the poster). LOL

Good luck to you with using the word PERIOD here in the usa before or after or anywhere in your sentence.

Overseas might be different tho.
 
ChipG said:
No one in America will confuse your movie with the fast and furious or modern day rice burners
Click to expand...

Right. The phrase "Hot Rod" itself pretty much exclusively indicates the 50s era souped-up/customized car trend (which of course largely consisted of American cars from the 30s and 40s), not the more recent trend that consists almost entirely of small Japanese cars. Those are generally referred to as Rice Rockets, Rice Burners (as Chip said), etc. As far as I know, and I'm a pretty big car buff myself, nobody ever calls them Hot Rods.

The two are about as different as...um...1932 Fords and 2005 Hondas... : )
 
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Isn't the term "hot rod" a vintage bit of verbiage in the first place? I'd say you could suggest "period" and "fast cars" with just the term "hot rod." I'd think using "period" and "hot rod" would be redundant.

Nobody uses the term "hot rod" anymore unless they're talking about 40's or 50's era cars. Do an image search for "hot rod" and see what shows.

.
 
Agreed - if the choice is between those two:

"A HOT ROD PERIOD DRAMA" gets my vote.

Kegan

EDITED TO ADD: I strongly believe that the word "period" is not only unnecessary, but sounds very awkward. People understand the term "hot rod" means cars of that era.
 
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Jumping on the bandwagon with almost everyone else on here. Get rid of the word "period".

I worked as a mechanic for 8 years before I ended up getting into the film industry and the term "hot rod" is exclusively used for cars from the 40's and 50's. From the 60's until current day, big block or modified small block v8 cars are referred to as "muscle cars". So the word "period" is completely redundant and sounds really awkward.

From your posts, it is apparent that you are set on using the term "period" in your tag line, but this may be one of those instances when you should consider the overwhelming amount of negative feedback that you are getting here on this forum.
 
ya ... less is more ... keep it simple ....

"The Hot Rod Film"

drop the word "period" and use "The" instead of "A"
 
Ted Spencer said:
Right. The phrase "Hot Rod" itself pretty much exclusively indicates the 50s era souped-up/customized car trend (which of course largely consisted of American cars from the 30s and 40s), not the more recent trend that consists almost entirely of small Japanese cars. Those are generally referred to as Rice Rockets, Rice Burners (as Chip said), etc. As far as I know, and I'm a pretty big car buff myself, nobody ever calls them Hot Rods.

The two are about as different as...um...1932 Fords and 2005 Hondas... : )
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WRONG! Many people refer to japanese and modern cars souped up as HOT RODS. which pisses us old school hot rodders off by the way. LOL Many films descrived as hot rod films are modern day films with modern day cars. We are always talking about this in the car circles. Anyways, no worries, these are just TEES, not like I a am doing a national TV campaign wiht this tag line or anything. It will be just fine.
 
Now on a much more exciting front some GREAT NEWS:

I just got Sponsored by Sony Creative Software !!! :)

How cool is that???

SONY's monthly newsletter reaching one million SONY customers comes out today and guess who's the featured Sony Vegas Pro and Sony ACid Pro User ? ;)

I am very happy.

The buzz about DEUCE OF SPADES continues to spread...

Oh yeah....
 
Congrats Faith! This will be really good PR, you should try to find a way to keep them interested in Deuce of Spades for future marketing. Maybe send them testimonials from you (about using the software) every month or so

EDIT: Maybe even make a short 3-5 min promo video with clips from your movie and you sitting in an edit suite cutting on Vegas talking about the process, if it's good I'd bet they would put it on the Sony Vegas website where millions would see it over and over again.
 
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Deuceofspades said:
Now on a much more exciting front some GREAT NEWS:

I just got Sponsored by Sony Creative Software !!! :)

How cool is that???

SONY's monthly newsletter reaching one million SONY customers comes out today and guess who's the featured Sony Vegas Pro and Sony ACid Pro User ? ;)

I am very happy.

The buzz about DEUCE OF SPADES continues to spread...

Oh yeah....
Click to expand...

WOW. That's a fantastic coup! Congrats!

-M
 
Here is a link to the SONY NEWS section with story about the film and my use of Sony Creative software to edit and score.

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/news/article.asp?articleid=96#cont


Yesterday I visited this high end post production facility where they do transfers from digital to 35 mm and visa versa. Those guys have worked on EVERY BIG STUDIO FILM EVER MADE (I think) LOL... the endless corridors were covered with posters of super known films. I was like a kid at the candy store, with wide open eyes... Wow.

Some of their machines costs (I quote) "This one is a million dollars... And this one is 1.5 million dollars"

DANG!

Must be nice to have dough to make films. HAHA!
 
Congratulations :beer:



Are you starting/done on the extras (like the actor interviews) for the DVD :laugh: ?


How did you finance (just curious)? You had a bunch of savings?
 
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