Everything is Possible but Nothing is Real

So I was in Vegas recently, and while I was there I was stopped not once, but twice by strangers who wanted to comment on the shirt I was wearing.  I happened to be sporting my Black Country Communion t-shirt.

Who are Black Country Communion you say?

Shame... Shame on you for not knowing.  Well, actually it's not that surprising.

Black Country Communion are a super-group of sorts, fronted by Joe Bonamassa, who just happens to be the best blues-rock guitarist on the planet.  It also includes industry stalwarts Jason Bonham (yes, son of the GREAT John Bonham, Glenn Hughes (Deep Purple, Black Sabbath), and Derek Sherinian (Dream Theater).  Not that you should actually care or anything, but they happen to be making the best true rock sounds since Bad Company and Led Zeppelin.

But that's not the point.

The point is that while talking with one of the folks who felt the need to comment on my shirt (a drummer who supposedly knew Joe B. when he was just a wee lad), he made the comment, "Man, it's too bad he can't make it in the music scene today..."  I said, "What do you mean - he HAS made it."

The rules of success in the music industry have just radically changed from where they were twenty years ago or so.

Joe Bonamassa has a loyal following who buy all his records.  He tours all over the world.  He even got to play with Eric Clapton at the Royal Albert Hall. That's success in today's music biz.  Is he a household name?  No, but he's not a 15-year old pop star kid either.  The music biz is now even more divided between the 5 or 6 mega stars who are heavily marketed (Lady Gaga, Black Eyed Peas, Justin Bieber, etc.), and everyone else.  It used to be you made money off sales of your CDs, but that's long gone.  Now the CD (er... digital download I mean) is a loss-leader just to get people excited about your live shows.  Cashflow is based mostly on ticket sales and merchandising revenue.

The time when an artist could make a living off the intellectual property of their art may be coming to an end.  And it's all your fault.


Yep, it's your dang fault for having an insatiable need to consume music and movies and not want to pay anything for them.  Once something can be digitized and transmitted as zeroes and ones on the net, it inevitably spirals down to a value of zero.  Folks just don't wanna pay if they don't have to.

And this is the sad future for filmmakers as well.


Thanks to Netflix, the assumption is that at any time I can click on a box and instantly watch great entertainment in the comfort of my home.  For free.  Or nearly free. As a consumer, this is amazing.  As a film buff I can now watch all sorts of titles I never would have been exposed to before.  I know so many more directors and their visions.  But are those filmmakers, really being compensated for all this?

Not really.

The indie film I edited and co-produced, The Commune, was offered a deal by Netflix for their Watch Instantly streaming service.  Do you know what they offered us?

$7500.

And that was before the distributor took their 30% cut.

So, let's see, our meager budget was under $100,000.  Hardly anyone got paid.  And now, Netflix wants to own it and allow anyone in the world to watch it for free in the comfort of their own home.  And for all that, we'll be compensated around $5000.

Now I'm not knocking 5 grand.  Hey, that's better than nothing.  Many filmmakers would love to be offered a Netflix deal.

But, do the math.  It's not rocket science.  There is no sustainable business model there.

Now, musicians have a way to get around this dilemma.  They no longer expect to make money off their art.  They can make money off their live performances.  And so now they are always on the road - like a hamster on a treadmill - keeping the machine running.

Live to rock and rock to live!

But filmmakers don't have this revenue stream.  We don't get paid for live performances.  Our films are our live performances.  Unless you're Kevin Smith, no one really gives a s#!+ about hearing or seeing the director - they just wanna see the movie.

So how will the indie filmmaker survive in this climate?

I don't know.  I really can't see it.


The only business model I can see working is to crowd-source the funding of your film.  Spread the risk.  Let your true fans feel like they are part of the process. Set up a kickstarter campaign and raise just enough money to hopefully cover costs.  Maybe pad it a little so you can actually pay your rent while making the film.  Then at least any scraps of revenue that are generated will be profit.

Do not go into debt and take out a mortgage on your home to make your next indie feature film kiddos.  It ain't worth it.

Welcome to the future.  Everything is possible but nothing is real.*



*(Living Colour - Type)

Exclusive Interview with Chauntal Lewis, Star of Toolbox Murders 2

You probably haven't heard of Chauntal Lewis yet.  Hopefully, that will soon change. I was lucky enough to work with her on the indie film, The Commune. She recently took some time off her busy schedule to do this interview with me for Horror Society.  Take a sec to read about her inspirational story:

Enter the Dark - Updates

The latest greatest happenings of my little bundle of spooky goodness known as Enter the Dark:

First, a couple of recent reviews:

Scary Film Review:  … a very surreal, scary and realistic depiction of a universal fear that all of us have... a sonic achievement of style and horror, but in a very psychological way.

Killer Reviews:  ...one of those short cool films that is efficiently produced and directed, well written and acted and a damn good use of a spare 17 minutes.

Be sure to check out these websites as they offer great insights and content on all things horror.

In other news, we were excited to find out that Enter the Dark received an Award of Merit from IndieFest!

From their website:  "Indie awards go to those filmmakers who produce fresh, standout entertainment, animation and compelling documentaries. The Indie is a showcase for cinematic gems and unique voices."

Woo Hoo!  While we're stoked to have received the recognition, I think we'll hold off on getting the actual trophy you see on the left.  You see, that little baby would set me back another $350 bucks, and while it would be nice to see it up on my mantle, I can live with the JPEG image just fine.

Also, congrats and a shout-out to my friend Elisabeth Fies for taking home an Award of Excellence at the same awards for Sound Overall Impact for The Commune.  Elisabeth and I, along with sound-recordist and mixer, Winter, spent a lot of time and effort on the sound design of that movie to really set mood, create tension, and emphasize plot points.  I learned a lot, which definitely paid off when it came time to think about sound for Enter the Dark.

No new screenings or festivals at the moment, but hopefully that will soon change as many of the festivals I have submitted to will be making their selections any day now.  Most of the recent submissions have been to short film festivals, or indie film festivals, so it will be interesting to see how the movie is received by a non horror-specific audience.  I hope it will do well, as folks who have seen it already who don't normally like horror movies (my wife included) have so far responded well to it. 

We shall see...

The Commune - a Netflix Success Story... sort of

Welcome to the exciting new world of indie film distribution - where everything is possible but nothing is real.  Where millions of people worldwide can view your cinematic vision, but very few will actually pay for it.  You can get lots of attention, your name splattered all over google search results, your efforts discussed on multiple websites - a sort of psuedo-celebrity, while you continually struggle to pay your bills and figure out how you can possibly justify the expense of making your next movie.

And that's if you're lucky...

The Commune, a fearless, original, and thought-provoking film made by my friend, Elisabeth Fies, and one that I edited and helped to produce was recently fortunate to be picked up by Netflix.  This, in and of itself is a huge accomplishment.  Most indie movies will never get this far. It took over a year of herculean effort by Lis and many others to get this done.  We first had to sign on with IndieFlix to act as our digital distributor.  They posted a page on their website that offers our movie as a DVD or a digital stream.  They also act as a liaison between us and Netflix, iTunes, Amazon and others.  If you submit your award-winning indie film to Netflix directly, too bad, they will just ignore it.  You have to go through a distributor - Netflix doesn't want to have to deal with hoards of indie filmmakers and their (mostly unmarketable) pet projects.  I can't say that I blame them.

So, IndieFlix makes their pitch to Netflix on your behalf and hopefully, if you're lucky, Netflix will say yes - well... sort of.  What happens is, if you're lucky enough to get chosen, Netflix sets up a dummy page on their site for your movie.  It lists the name, director, artwork, synopsis, etc - just like any other movie.  The only difference is that is will say "Availability Date Unknown".  You'll see this a lot on Netflix.

This is a kind of distribution purgatory.  You're in - but you're not.   You see, Netflix wants you to prove that there are enough interested folks out there just dying to see your movie before they will actually buy it from you.  You have to write-up your marketing strategy.  You have to show all your great reviews and how many people have "liked" you on your facebook page.  Most importantly you have to urge, plead and beg everyone you know (and everyone they know) to go to that Netflix page and put your movie in their queue.  And it would also be really cool if they could rate it (at least 3 stars - 4 is better).  And oh yeah, could you post a review as well.  And while you're there, please mark other people's reviews as "helpful".  Sounds like a lot of hoops to jump through?  It is.

And how many people must put your film in their queue before Netflix will buy it?

Beats me...

I never actually knew.  They would never give us a clear figure.  I can tell you that we were in the hundreds for months and nothing happened.  Until about a month ago when we hit some milestone, or we just came up on their list of available movies to purchase - I don't know, but we got that magic email that WE WERE IN!!!  They were going to buy from us, not their usual request of 50 DVDs, but an almost unheard of (for a little-known indie flick) 200 DVDs!  This was incredible.  This meant that all of our friends and fans had done a tremendous job of mercilessly banging on that Netflix page like a raving mob of fans rushing the gates at a Led Zeppelin concert.  A huge win for all of us.  This meant that anyone who wanted to see our film could now easily bop on over to Netflix, put that baby in their queue, and wait for the mailman to deliver our little bundle of cult-thriller joy right into their mailbox.

What a world we live in!

What is that you say?  How much money did we actually make in our Netflix deal?  Well...  that's where reality kinda smacks you in the face.  Let's just say that after IndieFlix gets their cut (they are acting as our distributor, so of course they get their take), Elisabeth was paid back just about enough to cover the costs of her original order of 1000 DVDs that she had replicated, printed and shrink-wrapped -  200 of which eventually found their way to Netflix.  So you could say that she got 800 DVDs for free.

As for return on investment of her production costs of actually making the movie...  Uh...

Here's where you can actually help.  Yes, you can go over to Netflix and put The Commune in your queue.  Eventually we will get some money from the amount of people who actually rent or stream it.  If you are even more interested in the movie however, an even better way to support indie filmmaking would be to go to our site www.thecommunemovie.com and buy a DVD from Lis directly. That s%@! is pure profit for her at this point and would start to make a dent in her considerable debt.

And that would mean that she could actually go out and make her next movie, providing even more though-provoking entertainment for us all.

And what a world that would be!

Spook Hunt Scene 5 Notes - an unwelcome late night visitor

We recently shot scene 5 from my indie short movie, Spook Hunt.  The usual suspects were there to make the evening happen - actors Rob Sandusky & Charles Yoakum, Director of Photography Rob Weiner (with his Canon 7D) and Ben Weiner recording audio.  Oh yeah, and me running around like a goofball trying to do too much as usual.

(Charles pleads his case)

We only had a couple of hours to shoot so I had picked a fairly easy section of scene 5 to cover.  Charles discovers another piece of ghostly "evidence" and tries to convince Rob of it's validity.  Rob is not only not convinced, he's now convinced that Charles is just messing with him, gets pissed off and storms out of the room.  Pretty simple. The boys did a great job of building up the scene and hitting their emotional marks.

(Rob is not impressed)

After the shoot wrapped, I spent the usual hour or so transferring and checking the video and audio files.  Of course, when I finally tried to go to sleep, my head was still swimming with ideas and questions and recapping the evening.  I started thinking about upcoming scenes that we need to shoot and ways to make them better.  Can I make this part scarier, can I build more tension, a better payoff - what if this happened... or they saw this... or heard this...??  So I'm laying in bed at around 1:30 am, filling my head with the scariest shit I can think of to see if it will work in my movie.  I am now in that weird half-sleep state where part of my consciousness has drifted off, while the other part keeps chugging along working on the movie, like a computer that won't shut down.

I change positions in bed so I'm now facing the side of the bed closest to me and I see this staring at me:

 (please leave me alone and kindly visit my neighbors, m'kay)

Well, actually it wasn't exactly that (that is the demon from the Exorcist), it was actually a lot scarier than that and I could hop over to Photoshop and render a more accurate version for you but I really have no desire to force myself to remember that image with any level of detail.

As soon as I see this demon I literally levitate off the bed and propel myself to the opposite side of the bed whereupon I crash into my wife while uttering a totally pathetic shriek.  She is not too happy with me.  I dare not tell her what I've just seen.

I look back to the side of the bed and of course it is no longer there.  I try to convince myself that it was just a trick of my mind.  A left-over spectre from my strange sleep-state.  You think about ghosts, demons and scary shit for long enough and of course your dreams will be filled with them.

This is not the first time my dreams have been plagued by haunted images.  The thing about making horror movies is that they live in your head for years at a time.  You are constantly thinking about the most violent, horrific and terrifying things.  When Lis and I were putting finishing touches on The Commune, I had some horribly messed-up dreams.  Now as I'm trying to wrap up Spook Hunt, I am getting visited again.

However, the thing about this last vision was - it really wasn't a dream.  I did not dream I woke up, rolled over and saw a demon staring at me.  I actually did wake up, roll over and see a demon staring at me.  Now obviously, in my ghostly-obsessed state, my tortured mind must have simply conjured a demonic image where there were only abstract patterns of light and shadow.

Right?

That's what I continue to tell myself every night as I try to doze off to sleep - always keeping one eye on the watch for my unwanted late night visitor.


(... by the way next time, remind me to make a comedy - or at least not shoot a horror film in MY FREAKING HOUSE!!)

The Commune's Elisabeth Fies Interview

Speaking of courageous independent filmmakers, The Vault of Horror just posted an audio interview with writer/director Elisabeth Fies wherin she brilliantly discusses her horror/thriller The Commune, her take on genre films with a feminist point of view, and the process of indie filmmaking.

(FULL DISCLOSURE:  I am of course the editor and a producer of The Commune so I have a completely biased opinion of the movie - so there.  However, unbiased opinions can be found here, here, and oh yeah, here.)

The Commune DVD is here!

My first foray into the indy film market is done!



A labor of love for over 2 years, The Commune is now available for everyone to enjoy. We worked really hard on the DVD to pack it with many extra features including deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes interviews and not one but TWO entire commentary tracks that take you deep inside the making of the movie and the process of developing the story, themes and symbolism hidden within The Commune.

---

OK, enough hyperbole for now.

Allow me to fill you in on the backstory of The Commune.

Almost three years ago, my good friend and brilliant screenwriter, Elisabeth Fies started working on pre-production on her first feature film, Pistoleras. Now, her screenplay for Pistoleras had already won a couple of awards and everyone who read it instantly recognized not only its smart mashup of Spaghetti western and teen flick genres, but its instant marketability.

While Lis started casting the movie, my other good friend, comic book artist Charles Yoakum begin work in the graphic novel version of the movie.

I concentrated on the production and post-production workflow. At the time, affordable HD camcorders were just hitting the market, and the Panasonic HVX200was getting lots of buzz due to it's ability to shoot 1080p at 24fps - in other words, produce a convincing film-look for under $6000. Add to that, the new 35mm adapters that were coming out like the Brevis and the Red Rock Micro which allow for true 35mm depth of field just like the big boys in Hollywood, and this combo looked to me to be the perfect way to enter the feature film market with a microbudget.

We started to do some screen tests but soon realized that the scope of the project was just too big for the resources that we had available. The script just had too many characters, too many locations, too much action choreography and to be honest, we had too little experience to do the script justice. Although Lis and I both had filmschool backgrounds, and I had over 15 years experience as a professional editor (mostly documentaries and corporate videos), this would be our first feature film. We decided that it would be best of we got our feet wet on a smaller-scale project that had fewer locations and actors, and that we could shoot in a matter of weeks.

Lis happened to have a screenplay that she had been working on that was almost ready to go, so she emailed it to me. I was blown away. Again, this was a genre mashup but this time a classic 70's style thriller mixed with a coming of age drama, all wrapped up inside the creepy Patchouli oil drenched commune. It was a slow-burn kind of story where you get lost in the intrigue and the amazingly honest love story and then BLAMMO you get blindsided at the end and realize that what you thought the story was about was far, far from the awful truth.

This was The Commune.

(To be continued...)