Fri Dec 15, 2017 2:18 pm
Thanks guys, that was encouraging and some hilarious. Particularly your comments Chris.
John, you are right. Creative effort. It is why I discourage people, who are not making a regular living doing good stuff, from doing more on a crowded market, but instead, to concentrate and refine it while they work on other things.
I wanted to do a near zero budget feature myself (equipment and electricity). Maybe I could rush out and do it all today winging it, it would not really be worth watching, let alone pay to watch. But for experiment and refinement, we should still do stuff for ourselves (shorts). I actually like the flow of John's sample clips for the pocket. That camera had a lovely expanded image. I would be testing each shot and tecnique over months for my micro feature. Like the old days, where the camera man would know from a good eye and experience, what the image would look like on film with nothing but a optical viewfinder. Plus rehearse, so it flows out. Not to hit points, but to "flow" through them is about the biggest tip I can think of with my limited experience.
Anyway, I'm more of the mind at the micro low end, to prepare and do it, and see if it is really good enough for people to watch and for it to be picked up, then invest more in and polish enough to show that you have something worth picking up, and then seek money to complete the post steps. Having to have $10k insurance from day one before a distributor/investor will pick it up, is a major pain to doing this. But, look at it this way. Clerks was said to be this cheap film, but I've heard many times more money was spent on it in post, to get it to where it was for screening. People say, oh, it wasn't that $25k or whatever (this was film too in the 80/90's I think) it was whatever amount. But the reality was really, they did it for the $25k to such a level that it was picked up, because the studio saw the value in what had been done so far, and obviously what could be done with the raw product. In a micro budget you might spend thousands to do what turns out to be a real stinker, and either drop it there, or reshoot for thousands more. No great loss, chalk it up to practice (however, the cast, presumably, might want to reshoot, as not to waste their opportunity). A test. But when you know you really have something, then go through the process of getting someone to spend the tens of thousands completing it. The problem in today's market, is getting it in cinemas. The cinemas are much booked with the high earning features, and dross, of major studios. So, apart from some opportunities (like independent cinemas), or being adopted by a major distributor/studio, where do you go? I would like to say something like YouTube, but unless you get something like a hundred million views a year, you probably aren't going to make much on microbudget even just from that, and who gets a hundred million views? The issue with online, is that they have over advertised and killed the consumer attention value of advertising, and the revenue, plus, not enough if the revenue goes to the content hoster of the advertisements. So, where do you go for a better deal for online distribution. Your own hosting and advertising is one avenue, if you can line up a higher return advertising around the world. But something occured to me the other night. Amazon does electronic books, and you pretty much rock up with your content formatted the right way, and book ID number arranged etc, and publish, and hope you get more than you and your five family and friends to buy your book. One of our writers have seen their books skyrocket up the ranks with meager sales, which tells you a lot of self published stuff might not sell well. But one of my friends has a best seller on there. She is still doing her primary job I believe, but is making money. So, good stuff, does sell. Which made me think, if they did that for film and video that would be a distribution model. We don't have prime here, from what I know, but is it possible to self publish video on there like they do the books?
From the writing side, there is another lesson I can share. It is very hard to get a publisher, plus there are many little publishers and a number with unusual tactics, where you pay them to publish, and it takes up heaps of time doing the rounds. A number of us have concluded, to publish on Amazon, and if it is good and gets around you can make some money, but if it is good and gets around, you maybe more likely to be noticed by a publisher and get a deal. So, who are they more likely to publish, somebody with 6 sales in a year, or somebody outselling 90% of the ebooks above 1000 in sales. It is a potential way to get published for people with good readable content, but not much for bad content (I put "much" in there because sometimes rubbish gets picked up and actually sells).
aIf you are not truthfully progressive, maybe you shouldn't say anything
bTruthful side topics in-line with or related to, the discussion accepted
cOften people deceive themselves so much they do not understand, even when the truth is explained to them