filmman launches GOLD DIGGERS on KickStarter.com

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El Director said:
Actually, the Bible mentions unicorns. They're real, just not a horse with a horn like we think. lol. Just saying....
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LOL. You better explain that unicorn in the Bible means horned animal before everyone freaks out. LOL.

taormina said:
Needs to be made for a good enough budget to attract cast unless you know them personally and they will work for free. That fable you hear about...."He loved the story so much he did it for scale" is exactly that - a fable - up there with unicorns and pots 'o gold. Nothing attracts cast like cubic dollars.
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You may be able to get Courtney Cox for $12,000 for a day or two if she's got nothing better to do. LOL.

-Nate
 
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taormina said:
Vic's advice is still pretty relevant. Let me add to that.

Make a genre pic. Genre pic means just what it sounds like. An easily definable genre. Acceptable genres you can sell are Horror, Thriller, Comedy and Action. That's basically it. Someone asked me on another forum...I have a "Thriller Suspense Family Drama". I plainly told him that wasn't a genre! You can hyphenate two of the genres, but not more. If you need more than two genres to describe your movie - it's either not genre or you don't know what genre your own movie is. Stick with this if you want to sell.

The film must have cast. You won't ever execute a presale without a well known cast member. No one will finance your film without cast. You will never achieve conventional distribution without cast. You can debate this and give me the ten examples you know of films that "made it" (blair witch, paranormal activity....blah blah) but those are exceptions, not rules. No cast = no appreciable sales.

Minimum capture spec: You must at a minimum capture in HD, Super 16, or 35. You will not sell a standard def pic anymore unless it has A listers in it or you are famous.

Cast must be internationally appealing. Play to the foreign market as well as domestic. A good sales agent will confirm the value of names for you.

Budget is important. Needs to be made for a good enough budget to attract cast unless you know them personally and they will work for free. That fable you hear about...."He loved the story so much he did it for scale" is exactly that - a fable - up there with unicorns and pots 'o gold. Nothing attracts cast like cubic dollars.

Hook up with a reputable sales agent. You cannot expect to pre sell your own film without knowing about how this is done. You have no contacts, and you need someone that does. A good sales agent will rep your picture throughout the year, not just at the big markets.

That's basically it. I may have forgotten a thing or two, but that's the big stuff.
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Oh I wasn't saying his advice wasn't relevent. I just wasn't specifically talking about anything I personally was filming because it matters very little what I am doing. I was just trying to shed some light on why he can't garner any interest on his film. There's many reasons for that. We all know that there is a standard and then there are exceptions, thats with anything. I wasn't telling him to make a genre film, he obviously dislikes them. I was just saying that if what your concerned with is sales and marketability, then that might be why your having a hard time getting anyone interested in your film. Before I came here I had no idea what fellinesque (sp) even was. Maybe thats a direction you should take. Explain to the audience what it is, and why its your choice to make these types of films. Should work the same as me saying why I chose to shoot horror films. For me, its because thats what I grew up watching and its those kinds of films that get my imagination turning. In know way would I ever say to shoot something you dislike, unfortunately if you want to make a whole lot of money its pretty common to have to do something thats popular vs. something that isn't.. if thats your only goal. I used to play music for about 12 years, and we never played anything that was mainstream... and we had the hardest time getting anywhere on a national level. We had our niche group of fans, and that was fine with us.. but we had to come to terms with not ever getting a wide spread fanbase because our music was just too niche.
 
Azmyth wrote: I was just saying that if what your concerned with is sales and marketability, then that might be why your having a hard time getting anyone interested in your film. Before I came here I had no idea what felliniesque even was.
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Both points are valid. As Nathyn also expounded on this point before on this thread; I've done a bad job on marketing.

Also, felliniesque, as much as I love this style of filmmaking, it's not something that caught on in the US, except for film students ... and even that was a 60's and 70's phenomenon. Felliniesque was in full force when Maestro was in his element, making such films as La Dolce Vita, 8 &1/2, Roma, Amarcord, Satyricon, And the Ship Sails On.

I appreciate your critique, even though we make different styles of film, because we are working in the same medium, therefore, we are members of the same brotherhood of celluloid ... er -- well, we're adding ferrous oxide ... and silicon! LOL Well, you know what I mean. I've done a little more work on my Kickstarter project:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/felliniesque/gold-diggers
 
taormina wrote: Vic's advice is still pretty relevant. Let me add to that.

Make a genre pic. Genre pic means just what it sounds like. An easily definable genre. Acceptable genres you can sell are Horror, Thriller, Comedy and Action. That's basically it. Someone asked me on another forum...I have a "Thriller Suspense Family Drama". I plainly told him that wasn't a genre! You can hyphenate two of the genres, but not more. If you need more than two genres to describe your movie - it's either not genre or you don't know what genre your own movie is. Stick with this if you want to sell.

The film must have cast. You won't ever execute a presale without a well known cast member. No one will finance your film without cast. You will never achieve conventional distribution without cast. You can debate this and give me the ten examples you know of films that "made it" (blair witch, paranormal activity....blah blah) but those are exceptions, not rules. No cast = no appreciable sales.

Minimum capture spec: You must at a minimum capture in HD, Super 16, or 35. You will not sell a standard def pic anymore unless it has A listers in it or you are famous.

Cast must be internationally appealing. Play to the foreign market as well as domestic. A good sales agent will confirm the value of names for you.

Budget is important. Needs to be made for a good enough budget to attract cast unless you know them personally and they will work for free. That fable you hear about...."He loved the story so much he did it for scale" is exactly that - a fable - up there with unicorns and pots 'o gold. Nothing attracts cast like cubic dollars.

Hook up with a reputable sales agent. You cannot expect to pre sell your own film without knowing about how this is done. You have no contacts, and you need someone that does. A good sales agent will rep your picture throughout the year, not just at the big markets.

That's basically it. I may have forgotten a thing or two, but that's the big stuff
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Adam, you have done an excellent job of summarizing the post research available on the Internet (and you have tested these statement in the last AFM market as you indicated); I'm afraid it's all true. This is how it works.

Thanks for sharing it here. This is the reality indies have to deal with nowadays.
 
i still have no idea what this project is about..

you can talk about selling a film.. and how to do it.. etc.. until you are blue in the face... but if you have nothing to sell.. well..
 
Loki said:
i still have no idea what this project is about..
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It's like the Jerry Seinfeld show: about nothing. :violin: Well, it's about: the story of the woman at the well. The Samaritan woman has five boyfriends, and the fifth one is about to leave her too. Jesus asks her to give him some water to drink. She says that Jews aren't supposed to ask Samaritans for water.... Jesus says to her if she knew who was speaking to her, she'd be the one asking him for the water; but she's skeptical and says, "You don't even have a bucket to draw water with."

Jesus answers her, "Whoever drinks of this water (indicating the well) will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I give will never thirst again."

The Samaritan woman says, "Give me of this water always, my Lord!"

I always thought this would make a great scene in a movie. So I thought, if there is an audience for Christian movies out there, perhaps people would fund this project.

It's not a difficult project to make, because all it requires is a well in a desert and a few actors. Even costumes aren't difficult to make.

I appreciate your critique because it allowed me to see what was missing in my presentation of the project. So, then, this is what this movie is about.

Now, from a creative point of view, I have to tell you that even this little movie can be done in a felliniesque style; you see everything can be done in a felliniesque style.

Another thing is that I can't seem to figure out how to do a felliniesque poster for this movie. But I'm working on some ideas now.

Loki said:
you can talk about selling a film.. and how to do it.. etc.. until you are blue in the face... but if you have nothing to sell.. well..
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Well, that's why I'm asking for funding. I can't sell something before it's been produced.

How do you mean: "but if you have nothing to sell..."? You mean the pitch isn't convincing? Perhaps you'd care to suggest how to pitch this story? Thanks in advance for any contribution you can make ... ideas are a contribution too.
 
do we have the "head against the wall" smiley on these boards? Just wondering, because it seems appropriate.
 
filmman said:
Well, that's why I'm asking for funding. I can't sell something before it's been produced.

How do you mean: "but if you have nothing to sell..."? You mean the pitch isn't convincing? Perhaps you'd care to suggest how to pitch this story? Thanks in advance for any contribution you can make ... ideas are a contribution too.
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Why not? That's what pre-sales are. Vaporware.

Name + poster= pre-sale.
 
Well, it's about: the story of the woman at the well. The Samaritan woman has five boyfriends, and the fifth one is about to leave her too. Jesus asks her to give him some water to drink. She says that Jews aren't supposed to ask Samaritans for water.... Jesus says to her if she knew who was speaking to her, she'd be the one asking him for the water; but she's skeptical and says, "You don't even have a bucket to draw water with."

Jesus answers her, "Whoever drinks of this water (indicating the well) will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I give will never thirst again."

The Samaritan woman says, "Give me of this water always, my Lord!"

I always thought this would make a great scene in a movie. So I thought, if there is an audience for Christian movies out there, perhaps people would fund this project.

It's not a difficult project to make, because all it requires is a well in a desert and a few actors. Even costumes aren't difficult to make.

I appreciate your critique because it allowed me to see what was missing in my presentation of the project. So, then, this is what this movie is about.
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Wow.... I am so confused now...
 
filmman said:
It's like the Jerry Seinfeld show: about nothing. :violin: Well, it's about: the story of the woman at the well. The Samaritan woman has five boyfriends, and the fifth one is about to leave her too. Jesus asks her to give him some water to drink. She says that Jews aren't supposed to ask Samaritans for water.... Jesus says to her if she knew who was speaking to her, she'd be the one asking him for the water; but she's skeptical and says, "You don't even have a bucket to draw water with."

Jesus answers her, "Whoever drinks of this water (indicating the well) will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I give will never thirst again."

The Samaritan woman says, "Give me of this water always, my Lord!"

I always thought this would make a great scene in a movie. So I thought, if there is an audience for Christian movies out there, perhaps people would fund this project.

It's not a difficult project to make, because all it requires is a well in a desert and a few actors. Even costumes aren't difficult to make.

I appreciate your critique because it allowed me to see what was missing in my presentation of the project. So, then, this is what this movie is about.

Now, from a creative point of view, I have to tell you that even this little movie can be done in a felliniesque style; you see everything can be done in a felliniesque style.

Another thing is that I can't seem to figure out how to do a felliniesque poster for this movie. But I'm working on some ideas now.

Well, that's why I'm asking for funding. I can't sell something before it's been produced.

How do you mean: "but if you have nothing to sell..."? You mean the pitch isn't convincing? Perhaps you'd care to suggest how to pitch this story? Thanks in advance for any contribution you can make ... ideas are a contribution too.
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Just so I am clear... You need $25 000 to film a scene that according to you, isn't very hard..?

You are correct, I think the pitch is not convincing. You don't have a movie, you have a scene. Nobody is responding to your kickstarter page because there is zero incentive and because it looks like amateur hour.

Your kickstarter page is pointless IMO, you don't need $25k to do what you described above. Instead of the video clip you have up there now, which has nothing to do with your project, go out and shoot this scene and post that instead.

Begs the question, do you have a script? for this? or is that scene.. it.. is that all there is to this?
 
I was under the impression that the woman at the well was like one conversation. Trying to see how this is going to turn into a film, even a short one.
 
I think it depends on how he runs with it. If it's intended to be a Christian film, he could easily expand on it by including the woman telling her friends/family about Jesus, as well as following Jesus on some more of his ministry during that time.
 
excellent point El Director! Thats one of the things we are trying to get him to see. All the page suggests he needs to film is one scene, which is "easy to do" according to him. I want to see a fleshed out movie idea with a complete breakdown of what the film is about and why I should donate and how that will in turn make me feel like I invested wisely. His page looks exactly the same as it did a few days ago, short a few minor word changes that don't really help anymore than what he already had. He really needs to comb kickstarter and look at tons of successful projects, because us telling him what he needs to do isn't sinking in, and I don't think its going to.
 
They don't call him El Director for nothing!

They don't call him El Director for nothing!

El Director said:
I think it depends on how he runs with it. If it's intended to be a Christian film, he could easily expand on it by including the woman telling her friends/family about Jesus, as well as following Jesus on some more of his ministry during that time.
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The Woman at the Well is not a one scene movie. It begins with the woman coming to the well to draw water; however, the scene goes on. This is one of those stories about Jesus that has fascinated me for a long time. I think the story of the woman will make a very good feature film.

The opening scene is the most important one. Then the disciples come and find him speaking to the woman. They are amazed, because the implications, since Jesus stays pretty much within the Jewish circle during his ministry.

Then the woman goes over to her village in Samaria and tells her friends. They all come and speak to Jesus. They also believe in him.

Then there is the conclusion about what the movie is all about.

I'm not going to shoot any scenes from the movie for the kickstarter funding. I won't be able to do the movie for so little if I go out and blow a lot of money on a teaser.
 
felliniesque doesn't mean improv

felliniesque doesn't mean improv

Loki said:
well according to definitions I found by googling..

http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_1861610911/felliniesque.html

This would imply that even a 'Felliniesque' movie does indeed need a script. I haven't found a definition that says this type of 'film' is all improv.
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It's a one sentence definition by somebody.

Fellini shot 8 and 1/2 without a script. In fact, the movie is about a director without a script.
 
This is really becoming laughable... dude... go shoot some stuff... why do you need money for this? And if you REALLY do... pitch a script to us, or shoot a teaser like they're doing for "Survivor" (another thread here on DVXuser)
 
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