How do you judge a low-budget short film (or feature)?

[craigbowman]

It's a bad habit, haha.

I sincerely hope that my neutral posting position didn't come off as negative, ...

Not at all. Look at all of the discussion that has sprung up and I'm sure that lots of people who have recently come on board are discovering that someone from here actually made a low/no budget feature that's actually entertaining and is making a profit. Everyone benefits!

 

[Kholi]

I think the world has pretty loudly spoken and they'd much rather watch 30 seconds of "piano cat" than 90 minutes of some mumblecore angst horsecrap drama shot on a DSLR for $500.

Sorry, I had to go back to this, devil's advocate: Ed Burns apparently still does pretty well with Mumblecore Angst Dramas shot on DSLRs. xDDDD

Not at all. Look at all of the discussion that has sprung up and I'm sure that lots of people who have recently come on board are discovering that someone from here actually made a low/no budget feature that's actually entertaining and is making a profit. Everyone benefits!

Indeed. I benefited as well, that one post made me go "aaahhh Okay now I can see it". And, well, it's far better than discussing cameras...

As far as Avery and Pete goes (name got changed already xD) literally on the tail end of VFX after so long, and then finishing score. It looks like late June/early July completion. Long long journey...

 

[Barry_Green]

And even moreso, sometimes you need to come to terms with the fact that you might not get paid on a particular venture, so you may as well get seen.

That's what the "ink" guys tried to do. They were screwed over six ways from Sunday when their film was pirated before it was even released, so they tried to put the best face on it they could, they tried to point out how glad they were that hundreds of thousands of people were watching it, and they tried to figure out some way to monetize it to salvage their ability to pay off the $250,000 debt they went into to make the film. They set up a donation page so that people who had pirated it could donate. Last I heard, the total donations added up to $400.

I bought one of their blu-ray/t-shirt bundles for $30 to try to help 'em out, but there's only so much one guy can do.

Still, if it led to Jamin Winans getting some big-film directing gig, maybe it wouldn't have been too terrible. Looks like he has a UTA agent, and that's no small accomplishment, but it doesn't look like he's done any more film work in the last three years other than one short.

As it is, it looks to me like they lost their shorts. They don't even have the paypal donate button up anymore, probably gave up on that, and when you go to the "how do I see it" button, there's pointers to netflix and amazon and their own store, but certainly no mention of "go pirate it", etc...

But, if it led to Jamin getting a UTA agent and some huge directing jobs, it might still prove worth it. I don't know. Would be interesting to know how that all turned out.

 

[Kholi]

I've never heard the story behind INK before. Sawr it on netflix, but didn't realize it cost that much or that it got pirated. How did that happen?

That's pretty tough, hope something did come of it (UTA is definitely pretty big).

 

[Barry_Green]

Sorry, I had to go back to this, devil's advocate: Ed Burns apparently still does pretty well with Mumblecore Angst Dramas shot on DSLRs. xDDDD

Never quite understood why people would want to be a devil's advocate -- do you really want to take that guy's side?

Anyway, so let's examine it -- does Ed Burns still do pretty well with mumblecore angst dramas shot on DSLRs? Let's look at his most recent film, last year's "Newlyweds" -- it had a $9,000 budget. Its total box office gross? $4,584. Oooh. Ouch.

No, I reiterate -- the world has enough angsty mumblecore whining bullcrap DSLR films, they're not crying out for more. Even if they're from celebrated and known talent like Ed Burns. And they most definitely don't want any from some no-name first-time filmmaker... That's Ed Burns, a guy with ~45,000 twitter followers, a legend in indie filmmaking, and an IMDB starmeter of less than 1,000 (814 at the time of this writing).

As far as Avery and Pete goes (name got changed already xD) literally on the tail end of VFX after so long, and then finishing score. It looks like late June/early July completion. Long long journey...

Can't wait.

 

[Barry_Green]

I've never heard the story behind INK before. Sawr it on netflix, but didn't realize it cost that much or that it got pirated. How did that happen?

Nutshell: two filmmakers mortgaged their house and sold all they had to make their breakthrough film, toured around the country promoting it and raising awareness, and right before it got released it was pirated. They were screwed, completely. So they put on a brave face and said "well, let's make the best of this" and so they challenged the "download community" to show that they were a real audience and not just a bunch of takers. Their film shot up to #16 on IMDB in terms of awareness, it got pirated 400,000 times. That told them there was a lot of interest and a big potential market -- or so they thought.

Here we are two years later, they still don't have a distributor, they're still selling blu-rays one by one. No follow-up even though it's been three years. Did they ever make a profit? Did they ever make their money back? Probably not, but who knows. Only they know for sure.

And it's a pretty good film too. Way, way better than most first-timers.

Maybe that's how they got seen by UTA and got an agent, I don't know. I just hope that leads to something for them.

 

[Kholi]

Never quite understood why people would want to be a devil's advocate -- do you really want to take that guy's side?

Definitely gonna use this line one day, credited. LoL

Anyway, so let's examine it -- does Ed Burns still do pretty well with mumblecore angst dramas shot on DSLRs? Let's look at his most recent film, last year's "Newlyweds" -- it had a $9,000 budget. Its total box office gross? $4,584. Oooh. Ouch.

Box office was pretty low, apparently iTunes was the real kicker. Last time I sawr a number it was in excess of 300K as well. I'll have to dig up the comments on an article, but he was able to cover his back end after the iTunes release.

xD I can definitely wait on Avery and Pete. Pretty terrifying to have to put it out there to get ripped apart.

Nutshell: two filmmakers mortgaged their house and sold all they had to make their breakthrough film, toured around the country promoting it and raising awareness, and right before it got released it was pirated. They were screwed, completely. So they put on a brave face and said "well, let's make the best of this" and so they challenged the "download community" to show that they were a real audience and not just a bunch of takers. Their film shot up to #16 on IMDB in terms of awareness, it got pirated 400,000 times. That told them there was a lot of interest and a big potential market -- or so they thought.

Here we are two years later, they still don't have a distributor, they're still selling blu-rays one by one. No follow-up even though it's been three years. Did they ever make a profit? Did they ever make their money back? Probably not, but who knows. Only they know for sure.

And it's a pretty good film too. Way, way better than most first-timers.

Maybe that's how they got seen by UTA and got an agent, I don't know. I just hope that leads to something for them.

Yikes... that's tough.

 

[Barry_Green]

So put A&P out on iTunes then...

 

[LbSand]

I guess I wouldn't look at independent film as your model, which was the point I was getting at with the "narrow view" comment. I would look at other web-based content models to understand how to monetize the material - ie selling direct or selling attach. Faith avoided needing to this at some level by doing this in meatspace, by being involved with her audience.

I would say that most miss this. Not every film that *we* are going to make is going to be our personal niche - ie we are going to have to "manufacture" our audience.

As a complete noob to the arena this is how would I start this -

Early Script / Pre-production phase - as this is being worked on identify key target sites and begin interacting with the community. This is not a promotional period, it is a connection / understanding phase. I would say if this was a big / important project this should be a 6 month to a year investment with ideally input from multiple members of the team. Goals: Understand the group, build some level of credibility, build a relationship with "key" members. These people should be brought in as a resource to create buy in. Make it their project too in spirit. Faith did this due to her background, but also as she brought in the various groups with vehicles if I recall. I would suggest investing time / cash into understanding any physical meet ups for the group. If we are doing a comic book based film - you should have at least attended a few of the major conventions. Scout before you jump.

Late Script / Pre-production phase - at this point you should have developed a complete understanding of the group's interest (hopefully incorporating them) and have some level of standing. This knowledge should assist in creating your web site / presence to match their interests. This means doing keyword research to find good things to target. You ideally want a set of keywords that are relevant (ie if someone wanted to see my film they would search for x) that you can easily get on the front page of google that totals upwards of 50,000 monthly impressions (this might be 1 keyword it might be 100 - total qualified traffic is the goal). These are low competition keywords so they are easy to rank, ie you won't be able to get Super hero on page one but you might get masked vigilante etc. There are lots of articles on SEO out there. They are worth reading if your primary contact point is the interwebs.

At this point we should have introduced the effort to the community and begun an open BTS type model. Find some way to include fan input, don't care what it is, just something. Do a poster contest or whatever. We should have also identified related niches (if we're doing a comic book film, anime forums may be a target) to begin the process we started with our main targets. Spending time interacting and then introducing the project.

A key thought that is missed about things like kickstarter. It is two things - pre-sales and digital distributed patronage - instead of a Roman senator keeping the artist on retainer there is a network doing it. Research the ransom model - Greg Stolze would be the name to look at - it is a different approach that requires an existing audience, but tends to be more effective. The point here is you need to create a spectacle - lots of information behind the scenes and interaction. If you don't need the funds, I may not crowdfund yet if I was looking to go that way. This would be a judgement call on interest. If there is alot of interest, then maybe.

Production / Post Phase - Obviously, there is a primary focus here, but there needs to be a way to keep the audience involved. Faith had members of the community providing vehicles and interaction. In the digital space it could come from meetups, free roles in the film, have a comic drawing contest, whatever - keep momentum. The goal is much like earlier - make it their film too, in spirit. In the middle, when I had some level of output, would be the time to crowdfund. Rough trailer, some extra interviews, etc. I wouldn't necessarily choose to crowdfund

***Random thought - I would film a short prelude type video at the front of production to include in the effort. Background, origin story type stuff. Just something to keep people involved and show the product.

Distribution - You should already have an audience. You've been creating a BTS blog that is frequently updated using intelligent keywords, so you are well-indexed and come up high in search results. You now need to go to where your audience is. Faith went to car shows. If I was doing a comic movie, I'd block off x amount of dollars for a booth at the major ones and the most local. This is better than a film festival - you KNOW that this is what they want to see. Bring a tv, plug it in, play the movie. Maybe use our community contacts generated above to do an after hours screening? Buy pizza, give away swag. Film the interaction at these things and send it as a download to everyone who bought the dvd already, and make an expanded cut / doc for more money for future buyers.

I also would have 2 more films in the same genre-sphere lined up and ready to go. Assuming it wasn't utter crap you now have an existing fan base.

So again, complete neophyte, but I think that is how I will be approaching it. I'm sure there is a level of pleasant fiction in my thoughts currently.

I don't understand asking for money, then filming a movie, and then building an audience.

 

[LbSand]

As far as Avery and Pete goes (name got changed already xD) literally on the tail end of VFX after so long, and then finishing score. It looks like late June/early July completion. Long long journey...

This is good news, I've been excited for this to come out. I still go back and watch the trailer when I see one of your posts pop up.

 

[Kholi]

I guess I wouldn't look at independent film as your model, which was the point I was getting at with the "narrow view" comment. I would look at other web-based content models to understand how to monetize the material - ie selling direct or selling attach. Faith avoided needing to this at some level by doing this in meatspace, by being involved with her audience.

I would say that most miss this. Not every film that *we* are going to make is going to be our personal niche - ie we are going to have to "manufacture" our audience.

As a complete noob to the arena this is how would I start this -

Early Script / Pre-production phase - as this is being worked on identify key target sites and begin interacting with the community. This is not a promotional period, it is a connection / understanding phase. I would say if this was a big / important project this should be a 6 month to a year investment with ideally input from multiple members of the team. Goals: Understand the group, build some level of credibility, build a relationship with "key" members. These people should be brought in as a resource to create buy in. Make it their project too in spirit. Faith did this due to her background, but also as she brought in the various groups with vehicles if I recall. I would suggest investing time / cash into understanding any physical meet ups for the group. If we are doing a comic book based film - you should have at least attended a few of the major conventions. Scout before you jump.

Late Script / Pre-production phase - at this point you should have developed a complete understanding of the group's interest (hopefully incorporating them) and have some level of standing. This knowledge should assist in creating your web site / presence to match their interests. This means doing keyword research to find good things to target. You ideally want a set of keywords that are relevant (ie if someone wanted to see my film they would search for x) that you can easily get on the front page of google that totals upwards of 50,000 monthly impressions (this might be 1 keyword it might be 100 - total qualified traffic is the goal). These are low competition keywords so they are easy to rank, ie you won't be able to get Super hero on page one but you might get masked vigilante etc. There are lots of articles on SEO out there. They are worth reading if your primary contact point is the interwebs.

At this point we should have introduced the effort to the community and begun an open BTS type model. Find some way to include fan input, don't care what it is, just something. Do a poster contest or whatever. We should have also identified related niches (if we're doing a comic book film, anime forums may be a target) to begin the process we started with our main targets. Spending time interacting and then introducing the project.

A key thought that is missed about things like kickstarter. It is two things - pre-sales and digital distributed patronage - instead of a Roman senator keeping the artist on retainer there is a network doing it. Research the ransom model - Greg Stolze would be the name to look at - it is a different approach that requires an existing audience, but tends to be more effective. The point here is you need to create a spectacle - lots of information behind the scenes and interaction. If you don't need the funds, I may not crowdfund yet if I was looking to go that way. This would be a judgement call on interest. If there is alot of interest, then maybe.

Production / Post Phase - Obviously, there is a primary focus here, but there needs to be a way to keep the audience involved. Faith had members of the community providing vehicles and interaction. In the digital space it could come from meetups, free roles in the film, have a comic drawing contest, whatever - keep momentum. The goal is much like earlier - make it their film too, in spirit. In the middle, when I had some level of output, would be the time to crowdfund. Rough trailer, some extra interviews, etc. I wouldn't necessarily choose to crowdfund

***Random thought - I would film a short prelude type video at the front of production to include in the effort. Background, origin story type stuff. Just something to keep people involved and show the product.

Distribution - You should already have an audience. You've been creating a BTS blog that is frequently updated using intelligent keywords, so you are well-indexed and come up high in search results. You now need to go to where your audience is. Faith went to car shows. If I was doing a comic movie, I'd block off x amount of dollars for a booth at the major ones and the most local. This is better than a film festival - you KNOW that this is what they want to see. Bring a tv, plug it in, play the movie. Maybe use our community contacts generated above to do an after hours screening? Buy pizza, give away swag. Film the interaction at these things and send it as a download to everyone who bought the dvd already, and make an expanded cut / doc for more money for future buyers.

I also would have 2 more films in the same genre-sphere lined up and ready to go. Assuming it wasn't utter crap you now have an existing fan base.

So again, complete neophyte, but I think that is how I will be approaching it. I'm sure there is a level of pleasant fiction in my thoughts currently.

I don't understand asking for money, then filming a movie, and then building an audience.

I hope a few people read this, that are interested in creating something soon, and take it to heart. It's the kind of stuff I know now, but wish I had known two or three years ago.

Great post, man.

Especially about engaging your target audience before production even starts.

 

[Patryk_Rebisz]

I never really asked myself what makes me check out people's work here on this forum, but the question of what films and why i watch them is really dear to me.

Some answers are obvious. Here is the rundown of what it is that attract ME:
The title ("Casablanca") or poster ("Ink") have to have something intriguing.
Start power matters but not so much - in a way often it's a disadvantage as then i know that the film follows some kind of cliche to make its money back. That said though start power matters for older films on Netflix.
Logline - 1 or 2 sentences describing the film matter tremendously. I like either an interesting spin on things i have seen many, many times before or a research for one of the films i'm in development of.
Experience of the filmmaker - how cliché-filled the first 10 min of the film is, what action or formal formulas the filmmaker references.
The director matters. But here i don't give out free points. Antonioni's first film got ditched after just 15 minutes just like Godad's latest one was abandoned (though with understanding that Godard still did something unique).
References of peers and friends matter less and less (especially after "Social Network" and "Drive" that i've seen recently and both were awful).
Traditional entertainment doesn't matter to me. I get my entertainment from watching new ideas (or the ideas the film generates in my head). So the traditional "let me be taken on a ride" doesn't matter to me anymore (if anything it's a define of a film i definitely will NOT watch).

Films in general bore me to tears. I start watching a lot of films only to abandon those 10-15 minutes later. That's why i value documentaries so much more then narratives as with docs at least i'm might learn something new.

 

[iamWZA]

I just realized, this went SUPER far off topic... maybe it should go to the Cafe?

I think of the title of this thread is very misleading now!

 

[sonofaresiii]

hey, don't blame me! YOU guys dragged the thread to a completely different place (though pretty interesting and definitely a worthwhile read).

While we're on the topic though-- wasn't Ed Burns already famous-- and had made a couple $1mil+ dollar movies-- before making the move to ultra-low budget?

 

[nycineaste]

hey, don't blame me! YOU guys dragged the thread to a completely different place (though pretty interesting and definitely a worthwhile read).

While we're on the topic though-- wasn't Ed Burns already famous-- and had made a couple $1mil+ dollar movies-- before making the move to ultra-low budget?

Famous doesn't mean rich. A sustained career in the arts has lots of ups and downs. Ed Burns works ultra-low budget so he can make movies.

 

[sonofaresiii]

Famous doesn't mean rich. A sustained career in the arts has lots of ups and downs. Ed Burns works ultra-low budget so he can make movies.

sorry for not being clear, but that wasn't the point i was getting at-- he was already a known figure, which is enormously helpful in getting funding, getting talent/crew (and talented crew), and getting an audience.

just think it's not really analogous in a discussion on whether or not a green filmmaker should go out and make their movie instead of waiting and learning.