HERITAGE - Geoff Reisner

Some people asked earlier for a high-rez version of the film; I did a few very minor corrections to the film and rendered out a 720p H.264 file which can be found here.

http://www.rawimagefilms.com/qtmovies/heritage/720p_heritage.mov

The file is about 210 MB and contains 'new bedroom' scene ;)

Beware, the new bedroom scene might not be suitable for young viewers....

ok, I'm kidding, there's nothing like that at all....it's just been slightly recut.
 
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Geoff_R said:
Of course! but I have no idea whom would want to buy it or how they'd make any money from it. The 'business' of film is still a big mystery to me :)
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Not sure he meant selling it as in selling it to a distributor (although you SHOULD look to see if there are those that distribut blocks of shorts, which yours could be included in), but I think he meant more along the lines of you personally selling the DVD's, like BROKEN, THE ORE, SPARROW, etc.

If you can design up some nice packaging, and PACK out the DVD with all kinds of extras, cool menus, etc. ... you'll have a market right here on DVXuser alone, let alone wherever else you can drum up sales from.
 
Norm, you've brought up something I've spent a lot of time thinking about...

I have a few projects in my head that are more ambitious and could be packaged and sold, somewhat like the team behind 'Broken' did...but I don't think I'd want to sell the DVD. I haven't seen 'Broken' and I probably never will unless someone I know has a copy on DVD. It looks interesting, but not interesting enough for me to buy it. I wonder how many people are thinking the same thing.

Now, they might have sold 1,000 copies...or for the sake of discussion, let's say they sold 10,000 copies...minus the cost of making the DVDs, let's say they're making $10 a pop, so that's 100k. Let's just forget about the money they'd need to keep promoting the film and more importantly, all the 'time' involved in promoting the film. So they've made 100k and 10,000 people have seen the film.

What if they had released the film for free available via download on a website? How many people would have seen it then? If 10,000 people paid to see it, would 1 million watch it for free and send links to their friends, "check this film out!"...

Personally, I'd rather have the 1 million people watching my film for free than 10,000 people paying for it. If you're truly talented, that 100k is going to be chump change compared to what you'll make in the future.

This isn't meant to be a 'crack' at people whom sell their DVDs or anything like that but if you sell 10,000 copies of your independent film it doesn't mean the film is good or bad, it means is that you know how to 'sell' and 'promote' something...it took me a while to get that through my head when I first started thinking about this stuff. I had to ask myself, do I want to be a filmmaker or do I want to be in the business of film? I faced it again the last time I was in LA, I passed up a job on a studio lot to come back to Chicago and make some short films. I realized that if I took the studio job, I'd end up working the business/promotion/producing side of film. I wouldn't be writing and directing in the future... I'd be packaging other peoples films, coming up with one-sheets and getting DVDs on the shelves of some store.

I know this has turned into a long post...but it's something I feel very strongly about and no one has ever directly brought up the point to my attention.

For any short I make, even perhaps one of the more ambitious projects that require me to spend a few thousand to make...I'll put it up for free because I'd rather have 10,000 people watch it than only 1,000 paying for it.

I'm interested in hearing other peoples thoughts on this...

EDIT: One more small thought...

Most of the people on this site whom are making films are trying to 'break in' and get somewhere in the film industry. Sure, there are probably some whom already have an agent or have sold a film but the majority of us are still looking for that 'big break'.

I feel the best way to get there is through maximum exposure; getting a good film in front of the eyes of as many people as possible. Anything to contradict that is only delaying a potentional 'break'.
 
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Hi Geoff, good to read your opinion about filmmaking and the 'film world', we share the same opinion! Trying to get into that 'narrow' path to the traditional film world, where you also can share your work with millions of people using internet. And if your work is good in the eyes of many people, no doubt your next steps will expose them to you.
In a time where David Lynch has filmed his latest feature movie on DV and is doing his own distribution in the USA, thinking in the conventional way of getting films out is not very smart anymore.
Keep up this approach, I have Fade... eh Fate in it! ;-)

I've bought and have seen Broken, it looks and sounds great, the dvd is packed with good bonus material, but story-wise it's not good enough. Too much building up to expose a lot of gun flashing and action/fighting.
 
Hi Geoff,

I will not step foot in Hollywood or LA if I can help it. Some people say that to make it you have to go there and get a job slinging coffee on a set and then work your way up. That is a load of crap in my opinion.

It is a little known fact that the LA movie scene got started by a bunch of independents because the major movie city at the time was New York and it was getting too hard to do it there. I am all about taking down Hollywood just like they took down New York.

My brother and I are with you in the respect that we would rather have 10,000 people view our stuff for free and get exposure instead of selling it to a few people and gaining little if no benefit from it. The internet brings a whole new world to us up and comings. We can have millions viewing or product were others would only have a few.

What is really cool is the digital technology. I am a big fan of trying to get rid of the old film projectors in theaters. I love film and it would be my choice as a shooting medium but imagine the day we can upload our movies, shot on film, digitally straight to theaters. No distribution costs, no major studio fees to distribute, no crappy contracts.

It is a exciting time for film makers. I think we can really revolutionize the way the film industry works. That is my rant. Take it for what you will. Great topic.
 
jontuttle said:
...I love film and it would be my choice as a shooting medium but imagine the day we can upload our movies, shot on film, digitally straight to theaters. No distribution costs, no major studio fees to distribute, no crappy contracts.

It is a exciting time for film makers. I think we can really revolutionize the way the film industry works. That is my rant. Take it for what you will. Great topic.
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I think we're close to that very day when what you're talking about is possible. I also believe Hollywood/LA will cease to exist in the way we see it now. I think we'll still have big blockbuster scale films, but they'll be financed through wealthy independent producers or groups of producers, almost in a venture capitalist way. This all hinges on distribution for the most part. We can already shoot our movies digitally, master out and upload high quality 1080p or 720p downloadable versions but distribution is still a problem.

Once we solve the technical issues of putting the film in front of peoples eyes, we'll still have the marketing/promotional aspect of a film. I think the average P&A budget on a studio film is something like 20-30 million right now. Anyone looking to self-distro will still have to pay a good sum of money to advertise the film but all in all, it's much more appealing to an investor. They could put 500k into the production of a digitally shot film and then hire a marketing / PR film to handle the promoting and advertising. They could either send digitally copies to theaters or have a website set up for people to pay and download the film; bypassing the studios for the most part.

I don't know if Hollywood/LA will ever collapse, but I do believe it will be changing tremendously over the next 20 years.
 
Geoff_R said:
I don't know if Hollywood/LA will ever collapse, but I do believe it will be changing tremendously over the next 20 years.
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I sure hope so. I have been toying with the idea of starting a small theater of sorts. Have film makers submit their films of what ever length and have showings. Get them 720p in QT and show them on a HD projector and pipe it through a sound system. We have been toying with 5.1 surround so we would probably offer that too. Charge $5 bucks for people to watch a feature or a couple of shorts and then distribute the money back to the film makers. It would kind of be a independent theater for film makers to check out and support other film makers. A monthly film fest of sorts. Get some cash back in the film makers pocket and have an outlet to get there work shown in an enviroment with a bigger image than a couple of pixels on a PC monitor. I don't know how many people would come, San Diego is kind of dead for this kind of thing, but I think it would be a cool thing.
 
jontuttle said:
I sure hope so. I have been toying with the idea of starting a small theater of sorts. Have film makers submit their films of what ever length and have showings.
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That'd be awesome :)
 
I started an art project to try and unite filmmakers and get word of mouth exposure, by collecting short films and putting them on DVDs that would be passed around and copied for free by anyone. No one here was interested though.
 
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