super low budget comedy horror

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pirate40

Well-known member
I have begun my first horror movie. This will be my third movie over all but first horror. We have started a facebook page that we plan to update often with behind the scene type stuff. I just posted how we intend to suck a young lady into Hell. Some of you big budget guys might get a kick out of it. And it might give low budget guys ideas. We would love for all to like our page and follow along as a bunch of friends put together what we hope will be a super fun movie to watch.

Hell Phone on facebook Or here is the link https://www.facebook.com/HellPhone2015?pnref=story
 
how did you convince people to be in your movie? are you just using friends?

what drives you to persevere if you shoot something and it turns out to be not as good as you were hoping for?
 
Scantily clad blonde, falling down, running around, etc... How could you not lose...

The shots in general looked over exposed. The lighting was obvious inside the house, some shadowing as the young woman approached the door. Outside, very bright, didn't really lend to 'horror' for me.
 
It always amazed me that people kept making "comedy horror", because that's a very difficult genre to pull off. It tends to fall terribly flat, because the scares are not there, and the 'comedy' is lame - to get this combo to work is exceptionally difficult. Yes, it can be done, but it's rarely done well. And then while seeing one being made, I understood why people kept "making" this combo - the sad truth is that people try to make a horror, and the results are so super lame that mid-stream, the producer or director gets the 'bright' idea "hey, what if we made this into a comedy, since we're already laughing at how lame this is!", basically trying to make lemonade from the lemons. Except the vast majority of time, the lameness is funny only in the context of the serious attempt at horror, and when you try to actually make it work, you're only left with lameness all-around. So now when I see "comedy horror!", I am immediately prepared for failure - this rule rarely fails. I wish people understood that bad technique is not funny in and of itself - if you're doing "comedy horror" you still need, like in any film, to actually do good filmmaking - writing, acting, lighting, sound, editing etc.; it's not enough to be lame, to be funny.
 
ANSWERING EVERYONE

UGAFAN This is our third film, in our first two which were family adventure comedies. We found most of our actors through local theater groups and it worked out great. By most peoples standards on this board we would probably be considered failures, but we feel quite successful. Our first two films did not find distribution, but through local showings and DVD sales between the two movies we invested about $11,000 and when all was said and done we made about $35,000. I'm sure we can at least do that with this one, but with horror and half dressed women running around throughout the film, we are optimistic about getting a distribution. So that is what kind of drives us.

J1CLARK We haven't done any work on correcting anything in post yet so I'm hoping to improve the overall look a little. I believe in trying to get it right during the shoot but I have very limited time with that actress and was trying to get as much done in a hurry as I could while I had her. I think her wardrobe also threw me off my game too. Lighting has never been my strong point and I am not happy about the shadows on the door, but to be honest I don't think me or my two man crew was looking at the door. Shame on us. We have six more girls we have to kill in the same state of dress. We will try to do better but, I'm not making any promises.

OLDCORPSE We are having a great time making our little film. I'm sorry you have such a depressing outlook on things. I believe if you are willing to try something whether it is considered difficult or not, if you do your best and everyone has fun doing it, I think that will show through in the finished product, and the audience will see that and enjoy themselves. This is our third movie and that was kind of how things worked out in the first two. I know most people on this board take things pretty seriously, I don't, should this become difficult, hard, stressful, or non profitable, I will stop. Until then, relax, wish us well, and save your amazement for better things in life then some goofball (like myself) making a comedy horror movie.
 
pirate40 said:
Lighting has never been my strong point and I am not happy about the shadows on the door, but to be honest I don't think me or my two man crew was looking at the door. Shame on us. We have six more girls we have to kill in the same state of dress. We will try to do better but, I'm not making any promises.
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I would practice with people, in more 'tame' attire...

Also, given the attire... I would make sure that the actresses are over the age of 18, and that you have their acting releases with the wording 'for any and all purposes, in perpetuity'...

The reason for this, is if someone gets 'embarrassed' by their performance in such attire, you have your contract/release to defend you. Even though they are as dressed (who knows maybe even more dressed...) than if they were on the beach in a thong bikini.

Some times 'guilt' strikes in wyrd ways. It has happened to my wife, who has never shot an 'untward' shot in her life, but some people decide later that somehow their image is not to their liking, and try to stop the photographer from using the image as they see fit.
 
pirate40 said:
through local showings and DVD sales between the two movies we invested about $11,000 and when all was said and done we made about $35,000.
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that is a lot better than most people and gives me hope. could you give me some tips on how you arranged the local showings and did the marketing to sell that much?
 
Our biggest event we did was our premier, we rented one screen at a local theater. I managed to get two local radio stations and three newspapers to interview me during the couple of weeks leading up to the weekend. I had the premier on a Friday evening then two showings Saturday and one Saturday night. We had several local businesses get on board as sponsors. For each sponsor I shot a 30 second spot to run on a loop on the theater screen before each showing. I think we had somewhere around 10 and I charged them $300 each. They also became ticket outlets for our movie, and afterwards they sold our DVD, a couple of them, I even sat at their stores a few weeks later and did autograph sessions with myself and one of our "stars".

Our biggest sponsor for our first movie which had a couple of bikers in it, was a local Harley Davidson dealership, so for our Friday night premier we had all our main actors ride up on the back of motorcycles to the theater. Our two movies were very family friendly, so the Friday night show was pretty funny to see a three hundred seat theater half full of families with young children and the other half full of leather clad bikers. Here is the link to the trailer just to give you an idea of what this movie was like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsH4AaiFL9M

We had some pretty cool music in our movie provided by local bands, so the Saturday night showing started with a mini concert of three of the bands preforming a couple of their songs on the stage of the theater before the movie played. This pretty much sold out the Saturday night showing with friends and fans of the bands. The two day shows I went to local churches, schools and other youth groups and passed our flyers with a group rate and if they had twenty or more in their group we gave them a discount would announced their group before the movie showed. We didn't sell our those two shows but we had respectable turnout to both.

This was not a simple feat to pull off and it took a lot of time and planning leading up to it, but after all expenses the biggest being renting the theater which I think was $900.00 we had something like eight to nine thousand dollars at the end of the weekend. I also had two tables set up in the theater lobby selling DVD's after each show with one or two of the main actors at each table. So we had income from ticket sales, DVD sales and sponsors.

Afterwards we did a lot of smaller showings at schools, churches, boy scout troop meeting and any place else they would let me set up a screen. If I thought I could walk with $100 dollars in ticket sales, I would be there, and usually walk with another one or two hundred in DVD sales, this was easier with the second movie because I had two DVD to sell instead of just one of the movie they just saw.

Sorry to be long winded but this is just the tip of the iceberg so to speak. We are really shooting for distributions with our new movie Hell Phone because it is NOT kid friendly and I will loose a lot of the places I showed the first two. BUT this only gives us opportunities to try some new things, if a distributor don't come through. I may be the only guy on here that don't really care if get distribution or not because I like creating things myself even if it is an event to show our movie or a plan to set up and sell our DVD directly to the public. Don't get me wrong distribution would be great and I could jump right on to movie number four, but if it don't happen, we are prepared.
Hope this helps and I didn't bore you to death, best of luck ugafan, Don't hold it against me but we are in central Florida, Go Gators.
 
pirate40 said:
This was not a simple feat to pull off and it took a lot of time and planning leading up to it, but after all expenses the biggest being renting the theater which I think was $900.00 we had something like eight to nine thousand dollars at the end of the weekend. I also had two tables set up in the theater lobby selling DVD's after each show with one or two of the main actors at each table. So we had income from ticket sales, DVD sales and sponsors.
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this is good info. how much did the dvds cost and how much did you sell them for?


Don't hold it against me but we are in central Florida, Go Gators.
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:badputer:
 
What can I say - I hope the film is all that you wanted it to be. I hope my outlook is not depressing, I just thought the mix of genres "horror" + "comedy" is very difficult... but hey, maybe you'll prove me wrong, so all I can do is wish you the best success. Making a film is a lot of work, effort and expense, so if you're having fun, at least that's immediate return on all that effort. Best of luck - and I mean that sincerely!
 
We used a company I found on line, I think if was called disk makers, they did a fine job and I am sure there are others out there just as good. The DVDs and the cases looked very professional just like you would see on the shelve at Walmart or Target. I was buy 1000 at a time and I think they came out to around seventy-five or eighty-five cents each. The more you order the cheaper they are that's why I always got a thousand at a time. We sold them for ten buck or two for eighteen.
 
Until then, relax, wish us well, and save your amazement for better things in life then some goofball (like myself) making a comedy horror movie.
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I had a quick look at this a few days ago and I had a laugh. Seems like a rare breed these days....the people who don't take everything and themselves so seriously.
 
Thanks Oldcorpse, would love to send you a free DVD when were done. Just have no idea when that might be.

Happy to have made you smile Scott F. It's nice to be called a 'rare breed' instead of a weirdo for a change.

Could someone explain to me how you take a piece of someone's post and put it in your own in the little dark blue box like Scott F did above. You'd think a guy directing his third movie could figure that out, but I can't.
 
pirate40 said:
Could someone explain to me how you take a piece of someone's post and put it in your own in the little dark blue box like Scott F did above. You'd think a guy directing his third movie could figure that out, but I can't.
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Two ways:

Next to the "reply" button is a "quote" button. That will open the window to enter a reply post, but with the other post as a quote complete with the other member's username and a hotlink to that original post (as I just did).

Or, you can select and copy the text you want to use, and paste it within the quote HTML code for the forum (the quick way to do this is using the "dialog bubble" icon at the top of the post editor, which generates the open and close codes for the quote).
 
Alex H. said:
Two ways:

Next to the "reply" button is a "quote" button. That will open the window to enter a reply post, but with the other post as a quote complete with the other member's username and a hotlink to that original post (as I just did).

My first attempt at using to Quote button like Alex H. suggested. If this works, thank you Alex. If it don't, what the heck is wrong with me! It don't feel right but I gonna hit reply.
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pirate40 said:
My first attempt at using to Quote button like Alex H. suggested. If this works, thank you Alex. If it don't, what the heck is wrong with me! It don't feel right but I gonna hit reply.
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When you deleted the second part of my post, you deleted the close-quote code that looks like this: [/QUOTE]

Every time you open an HTML code, you have to close it as well for it to apply, and then it only affects the content between the open and the close. The close always starts with a forward slash.
 
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