No Man's Land

At festivals, talking with other filmmakers and audience members, the question of the day is usually, "What are you hoping is going to happen with your movie?" Nine out of ten times the answer is some sort of distribution deal. Over the last few years, ever since Robert Rodriguez busted open the indie dream with a $7,000 film, there's been an surge of low, micro, and no budget films all competing for that grand distribution prize. But I believe that well has run dry. Big budget films are having a hard enough time competing with one another, along with video games and video on demand, and are given just over a week before being yanked away to DVD. Why in the world would studios take a risk on some low budget independent film? Speed Racer is losing money. George Clooney's Leatherheads was a whisp of smoke, here one second, gone in an instant. What hope do the little films have?

Here's more proof, via Indiepix blog:

• ThinkFilm, in a financial crises having overpaid for films that it can’t make money on in distribution, sells its catalog to a Canadian investor/speculator.
• New Line Cinema, respected for its having pioneered “edgy” films into the mass market, is closed by Warner Bros; 450 jobs in NY and LA lost.
• Picturehouse, run by top indie film distributor Bob Berney, is closed by Warner and titles folded into the studio.
• Warner Independent, the so-called “independent” arm of Warner managed by a former studio exec, Polly Cohen, is closed and folded into the studio.
• Cablevision, owner of the IFC channel, successfully bids an estimated $500 million for the Sundance Channel, now controls all cable presentation of independent film.
• Discovery Networks, after purchasing rights to and then declining to show “Taxi to the Dark Side“, Discovery is rumoured to be closing their independent film activity and may cut back on their support of Silver Docs.

Another example. Let's look at two projects.

Captain Blasto. Took three years to make. Cost $7,000, an additional $2,000 to have DVD's pressed, and roughly $1000 in advertising. To submit to a single film festival costs approx. $45, and we've easily spent hundreds on entering countless fests. If you're not accepted, that money just disappears. If you are accepted you now pay airfare, hotel, food, transportation, etc. A successful screening ends up being approx. 100 - 200 people. Often times that number lingers more around 40, and I've seen as low as 12. All that money for a few dozen people? Well, maybe there's a producer/distributor on the hunt at least. At Sundance sure, to bid on that William H. Macy movie he heard great things about, but they're not at the other eight zillion festivals looking for that goofy film from Munhall. In total, I estimate that approx. 3,000 - 5,000 people have seen Blasto in it's entirety.

Luigi Story. Made in just over two weeks. Cost $100 for some overalls and fake mustaches. Posted to YouTube and advertised the link on a handful of video game blogs. Currently the short has been seen on various sites by over one million people.

Times are changing. The new distribution model, whether it is video on demand or internet, has not solidified itself. We're entering a new season where people are going to be trying all sorts of stuff. Some will work, most won't. I know I've been giving my next project A LOT of thought. What is the best end product? Direct to DVD? Digital download? Web series?

Welcome to no man's land.

Heinz Contest Article

Mike Holohan sent me a link to this article about the Heinz contest. Thought you might enjoy the read.

Accepted

I got an e-mail that our Heinz entry was accepted this time around. So now we know that if we don't make it's because they just didn't like it. But let's be honest here folks, there's thousands of entries. Winning this would be pretty close to winning the lottery.

Heinz - Take 2

Several months ago we submitted a film into the Heinz Top This TV Challenge. For reasons unknown to this day it was never accepted. Apparently that happened to a lot of people because only 1/3 of the films submitted were accepted into the contest. To make up for their mistake, Heinz is running the contest for a second time. Therefore we're submitting again. For those of you that missed it the first time around, here she is again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR6ycZfS9r8

Wrapping Up

Now that I've had a week or so of screenings and feedback, I'm in the final week of post-production on The Mercury Men. Along with some mild editing and contrast changes, I've been cleaning up a lot of the effects. The most drastic of these changes, as seen below, is the Invader lightning.I originally created the Invader's attack as a single simple bolt, but after a couple repeat viewings it just didn't really sell it for me. It just wasn't intimidating enough. The updated version features a more realistic bolt, which acts much closer to actual lightning. The final cut of the film will be completed within 2-3 days.

Fable: Book Two

I posted a Fable "animation" here several months back. Thought I'd share another.

The Mercury Men Logo

Here's a gander at The Mercury Men logo. As you can see, very classic sci-fi B-movie.

The film for the most part is completed. I'm going to screen it a few times this month to see if there's any changes to make. Unfortunately I cannot post the video online, as much as I would love to. Film festivals aren't too keen on screening films that people can see online for free.

For those of you in Pittsburgh, I've got the film on DVD and iPod and will gladly show it to ya if asked. Perhaps I can do something for the consistent readers and post a link for only a few hours on a pre-determined date.

Mercury Men Stills Pt. 2

And your first look at one of the Mercury Men themselves...

Mercury Men Stills

Here's a few stills from the upcoming short:

The film should be completed by the end of the month. The effects and contrast correction are coming along very nicely, but take a VERY LONG time, especially when you're not working on a very fast computer. After another wave of corrupted projects and random crashes, I vow that if it's within my power I will never edit another film on a PC again.

I'll have more stills (and possibly some rough footage) soon.

Shots from the Mercury Shoot

Here's some behind-the-scenes shots taken by Kati, Lindsey, and Evan during yesterdays FIFTEEN HOUR shoot. (No, that's not a typo. Fifteen hours.) If you've seen Captain Blasto, you notice some pretty big similarity in Mark Tierno's character.

League Concept Art

Here's another shot of concept art for the upcoming short:
This is a member of the league, responsible for protecting "the battery," which you'll see in later posts.

The Mercury Men

Got another short film I'm lining up and thought y'all might enjoy a peek at some concept art I did for it.On a side note, Google Analytics tells me there's a couple hundred of you reading this each week, from varying countries. That's pretty freakin' crazy. I honestly thought I was just writing for the heck of it. Now that gives me some incentive to write a bit more often. And now that you've all been outed by the good folks at Google, you don't need to continue to lurk in the shadows. You can actually comment on stuff.

Fables

A year and a half ago I did a series of short animated "fables" for my church. I use the word animation lightly because there's not much movement. They're more a combination of character art, music, and sometimes text.

Beyond the obvious influences (Samurai Jack, The Legend of Zelda), the idea of doing this style of picture stories ultimately comes from older video games. Before they were able to do full 3D characters, environments, and audible dialogue, video games were limited to showing still images with music and captions. Even with these limitations they were able to tell some great stories.

Below is one of them, the fourth in a series of five. And the rest can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/CPreksta. I will leave each of their meanings to your own interpretation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_X-_9wvbDTg

Assassin's Creed Video Online

Our entry into the IFC/Ubisoft Assassin's Creed short film contest is now on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5L3Fb-sE3Y

Unfortunately we didn't make the final 10. Regretfully (and unknown to me), the contest was open to ANY video that featured murder/assassination, regardless of when it was created. Therefore, while they may be impressive, 7 out of the final 10 are videos that were not created for this contest, have been finished for months, many with budgets even greater than the prize money offered, and have little or no connection to the game on which this contest was based.

Regardless of the results, it was great experience. Thanks to all involved.

Problems at IFC.com

Well, today was the day we were to find out about the Assassin's Creed contest. I checked the site (IFC.com) this morning and discovered that instead of IFC posting ONLY the top ten finalists, they posted EVERY ENTRY. This includes a lot of videos that violate a lot of rules/guidelines, and many other videos where somebody just took the official trailer to the game and replaced the soundtrack with a popular band (Nickelback oddly enough.) There's even a video where they include footage from a completely different game.

Clearly somebody messed up. This is reinforced by the fact that all of the entries mysteriously disappeared a few short hours later and have yet to return.

I was a little bit disappointed to see that the majority of the entries were videos that have been on IFC's website for months (if not longer) and weren't created for the contest/game. They were just entered for the heck of it. Some of them are videos with budgets even larger then the prize money.

But the biggest disappointment of all is IFC's video player. Not only is it really slow, choppy, and pixelated, but it downgrades the quality of the original video GREATLY. There were a lot of videos shot on very good cameras (including our own) that don't look nearly as good. I even noticed several videos where the audio/video is out of sync. I highly doubt that's how the video was submitted.

Why create website for films if you're going to showcase them in poor quality?

Assassin Pictures

Here's some photos from the production:

Storyboards

Prop swords

The assassin costume made by Ricky Lyle

Part of the cast (L to R): Shawn Smith, Bobby Zinsmeister, Sam Nicotero, Chris Young, Curt Wootton. Not Pictured: Mark Tierno, Devin Reilly.

Film Still: The assassin surrounded.

Film Still: The dead Viscount.

Assassin's Creed Contest

Finally finished and submitted our entry into the IFC/Ubisoft Assassin's Creed video contest. The contest was to create a six minute film inspired by the upcoming game, Assassin's Creed, which follows a 12th century middle-eastern assassin.

All I can say is that it was a pretty intense two weeks and I'm pleased with the final product. It was a nice challenge to try something in a period genre I don't have much experience in. It was also nice to work with Curt, Mark, and Sam again.

Unfortunately I can't post the video because it could potentially disqualify us. I can post pictures, so expect them soon. As soon as voting opens I'll let y'all know. We'd appreciate you taking a few minutes to vote for our entry once the video goes live.

Heinz Commercial

Last week I saw an ad for a contest on the back of a Heinz Ketchup bottle. Make a 30 second commercial and win $57,000. I had some free time while visiting family in Florida. One hour of filming, two hours of video editing, another hour of music editing, and here she is, my entry in the contest. Enjoy.

The Nintendo Office

Vote for our video, "The Nintendo Office"

If you've got a second, please head over to http://www.nintendoshortcuts.com and vote for The Nintendo Office, out entry into the Nintendo Short Cuts Showcase contest.

Thanks!