FEATURE: MARIANNE - a Swedish psychological horror film, shot on 7D

Well, it's finally time to premiere the first teaser for MARIANNE.

I hate it that the render didn't come out as well as it could have. It just looks compressed to death.
But I've been sitting with this for over a week. I need to publish this now and move on with the other work.
It's like Douglas Adams said. "I love deadlines. I love the wooshing sound they make as they pass by."


There'll be more and better trailers up ahead, but in the meantime, here you go:


Special thanks goes out to MattinSTL for helping me out with some really good feedback.
Hearing the thoughts from someone who's not involved in the production is invaluable.
 
Hello from Canada!!! Hey looks very great, I like the low light shots. Did you try to stay over 50mm lens with your shooting, did you find that difficult? Can you give quick idea of lighting (not detailed equipment list or anything), just whether you stayed with ambient/natural light and used bounce - or - did you compliment ambient when it was available with some additional fill....

Cheers once again, looks GREAT!
 
starcentral said:
Hello from Canada!!! Hey looks very great, I like the low light shots. Did you try to stay over 50mm lens with your shooting, did you find that difficult? Can you give quick idea of lighting (not detailed equipment list or anything), just whether you stayed with ambient/natural light and used bounce - or - did you compliment ambient when it was available with some additional fill....

Cheers once again, looks GREAT!
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Thanks!

We used three lenses for the whole movie.
50mm 1.2L, 85mm 1.2L II, 16-35mm 2.8L II.

I would say 95-100% of the film is natural lighting.
The closeup in the trailer of Marianne driving the car is done with the 50mm lens at 1.2, me sitting in the passanger seat holding the camera in one hand and a cheap work LED lamp in the other luminating her face. We used an iPod's flash light for one scene (not in the trailer), and for another shot we used two large 350W lamps to light up a bridge.
But almost all of it was natural lighting.


I'm glad you guys like it.
 
Congrats on the movie and the news you are getting! In one article it said you spent $150,000 on the film. Would you mind breaking down the budget? Just trying to learn! Thanks!
 
Why4009 said:
Congrats on the movie and the news you are getting! In one article it said you spent $150,000 on the film. Would you mind breaking down the budget? Just trying to learn! Thanks!
Click to expand...

Interested as well. 150K is a large number.
 
Why4009 said:
Congrats on the movie and the news you are getting! In one article it said you spent $150,000 on the film. Would you mind breaking down the budget? Just trying to learn! Thanks!
Click to expand...
Yeah sure.

Thanks for reading the articles btw, there's been a ton of them but those from Switch the Shift really summed everything up well.

It's hard to say the budget for sure at this point because all my reciepts are at my accountants, so all I have to go on is the preliminary budget and that could have been calculated a lot better if we had more time and experience.
But the film had to be shot in the summer so we only had so much time to do that.

I'd say maybe 1/3 for salaries, 1/3 for living, eating and traveling (a lot of the crew were from out of town) and then maybe 1/3 for all the other expenses.

But this is like a VERY rough estimate just looking over it now.
I won't know for sure until I after the project is completely finished and we still have a few more weeks left.

We're rendering out the film Feb 20th, and if everything works out we'll do our first closed test screening on the 23rd.
That'll be for cast, crew, partners and press. 177 seats on the biggest screen in a 120 mile radius so that'll be awesome.

Yeah this is a small, isolated town.
 
Jawa Ex Machina said:
Yeah sure.

Thanks for reading the articles btw, there's been a ton of them but those from Switch the Shift really summed everything up well.
Click to expand...

Thanks for being willing to share with us and let us learn from your experience. Not to be terribly nosy but have you had any success with lining up distribution? I am sure you are eager to get your money back!
 
Why4009 said:
Thanks for being willing to share with us and let us learn from your experience. Not to be terribly nosy but have you had any success with lining up distribution? I am sure you are eager to get your money back!
Click to expand...
I'm negotiating with a few distributors, but we had to go back and re-edit the film just when we were about to render it out, which means my sound technicians, my composer and grader had to work extra.
I'll pick up negotiations after the 23rd.
 
Well we've finally got both poster and trailer up on IMDb. Things are shaping up!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1756615/

You'd think for 35 bucks + tax, it'd take faster than 72 hours for IMDb to add a poster, but at least their customer service is great.

I also made a contact yesterday that might boost awareness of this film considderably next week.
 
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So now we've got an official Facebook page too.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/MarianneMovie/153992181321833?sk=wall

The reason it's taken so long is that I don't have a Facebook account so someone else is handling it for me.

We're also doing a closed test screening of the film soon to the team, partners and press in a theater.
I'm getting the music delivered tonight and that's being mixed next week.

It'll be great finally seeing the film finished after two years of intense hard work.


 
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I'd love to hear some comments on the new teaser, because the response hasn't been as good as on the first.
Personally, I thought the second one gave away more, but that's not what the feedback tells me.
 
Well I really wanted to post this a lot earlier, but preparing for Cannes really took up 500% of my time the past month or so.

http://twitchfilm.com/news/2011/05/second-marianne-teaser-poster.php

We have a second poster and a sales agent, DC Medias, and we showed the film to buyers at the Cannes Film Market on Saturday.

It was a pretty good screening I thought (it's the only market screening I've been to though). A handfull of people stayed the whole film through,, but I'm told that it's always that way on these things. We got some great reactions from the crowd too.
 
Cool poster. Liked the old one too but this looks more evil.
(Though I think the Phenomena/Carrie-style logo would look sweet on the new one too)
 
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