Category Archive

Well it finally happened, after a long wait iTunes finally pushed the big red button and put Satellites & Meteorites live on their US, Canadian and New Zealand stores.  Why these 3? Who knows.  Their logic is sometimes an enigma.  Have we got any sales yet? Yes, actually.  The first sale was made very shortly after the film went live, which is great, and no, we don’t have access to the film yet in Ireland so it wasn’t any of us who bought it (we most certainly would have).

US link here and Canadian link here.

Screenshot below, thanks to everyone at Indieflix (especially Afi):

Its in full swing over at www.facebook.com/dublininpieces

You can see photos like the one below and other info.  Check it out!

so off we go again, spending more time and money making a film that very few people will see, right? WRONG.  we’ll make virtually no money out of this latest venture (the title of which we be shortly revealed) but it will find a huge audience through film festivals, online and self distribution channels.  it will likely not end up in the cinema or on tv.  it will likely never be front and centre at hmv.  but it will make people smile, lurch, cry and vomit (well, hopefully not vomit) all across the world, in many different languages.  it has been great fun making it and it will be great fun finishing it.  everybody wins.

on this the day that Hulu told our US distributor that they do not want Satellites and Meteorites on their service and were hence passing on it.  This irks us quite a bit, not because of the lost revenue (virtually zero) but because there is a tremendous amount of crap on Hulu, and our film is much better than a lot of it, its done better both critically and commercially, but it seems that Hulu still only add a very small amount of real indie content (i.e. content that is not marketed as indie film by huge distribution companies).  down with hulu for this kind of thing, really.  we’re glad that over 15 million people disagree with their decision (that’s the cumulative audience figure for the film from 10 territories).

It seems from reading the news this morning that DVD is dead.  Everyone from Sony to Google to Amazon are planning to launch a VoD service in the next few months, all to try and catch up to iTunes, which has quietly made itself a massive all conquering media giant while the others were asleep at the wheel.

This almost undoubtedly is the beginning of the end for DVD and that is a great thing for filmmakers.  Personally, we have to admit to loving the idea of DVD’s, the look of them stacked neatly, the genuine pleasure of ripping open the plastic and shoving it into the player, waiting for that joy of cinema that is so unique to erupt on the screen.  We felt the same way about film and then we used a RED camera and got the hell over it.

DVD disappearing is great because it means the very last cost barrier to entry for filmmakers will be destroyed.  First it was production, then post production and now distribution.  Slowly but surely it is becoming insanely cheap to make a film and success now depends more and more on story and a filmmakers ingenuity when it comes to finding an audience.  So go celebrate and start coming up with ideas as to how to market your film to an ever expanding online audience.

One idea we heard of recently (which we think is great) is a guy who projected his film (illegally) on to the side of a large industrial building in the middle of his town.  Over a thousand people turned up to watch it.  Maybe he didn’t make anything out of it, but a butt load of people saw it.  Get your thinking cap on!

quite happy to report today that upon opening my personal email account I received this:

You will notice that our little indie film is front and center, which is nice! We didn’t have to pay for this and can only assume that the suggestions are based on previous purchases of mine (I didn’t purchase Satellites & Meteorites from Amazon, in case you’re wondering, because as described earlier the royalties aren’t great).

Hopefully thousands of others received the same email this morning and will head in their droves to make a purchase.  Safe to assume its fairly unlikely, but still, we hope.  Anyway, thanks Amazon.com for getting your finger out and trying to sell some indie stock.  Good to see somebody is trying!

Thought we’d give you another pic from filming of the new project.

So we finished filming at the end of July, well the first part of filming anyway, have another bunch to do this coming Autumn.  Suggestions welcome.

In other news, we put Satellites & Meteorites up on IndieFlix, it went live yesterday.  You can rent the film there for $5 or pay $9 a month for unlimited access.  We get a cut, but obviously, the amount is pretty small given the pricing structure.  They seem like a good group who are well motivated, so we’ll see where it goes.  More importantly, they are a content distributor for iTunes – which is great news.  We can now at least submit our film to iTunes (and Hulu for that matter) and see if they are willing to spare the bandwith for it.  Now, Apple and Hulu both shaft you in terms of royalties, but they do so in the nicest possible manner.  You don’t earn much but between those two platforms you get access to literally millions of potential viewers, far more than any other service can offer you, so if its exposure you’re after, they are your man.  Plus, if you make a great film and people do like it you’ll still make a butt load of cash.  Don’t be greedy.  We’re not.

We certainly hope the information on here is of some use! We can see from the stats that more and more people are reading this blog, which is odd, because we assumed until yesterday that nobody was.  If any of you mystery readers have questions, just let us know, we’d be happy to share with you our small level of mostly useless expertise Until then, make sure to go here and here.

So last week we essentially wrote saying short films were a bullshit waste of money.

This week, we’re saying the opposite.  Why the change of heart? A legitimate question. We haven’t actually changed my mind, but in instead neglected to mention in the last post that our next project is actually a BUCKET LOAD of short films about our home town, Dublin.

The films will be cut into a feature, though each is a narrative in itself and all will run concurrently, i.e. won’t be chopped in a million pieces and made into a cheap version of Crash.  It will not, however, be anything like Paris, Je t’aime, which although made up of short films, were by all different directors and in all different styles.  These films are by the same writer/director/dp/editor/music man and have an eclectic mix of actors and actresses, all of whom are awesome.

More on that later, but if you really can’t wait, check out www.facebook.com/iwirefilms where there are some images and really no other information.

short films are great for students trying to learn their craft, or animators trying to prove their worth, but largely, from a commercial point of view, they are pretty useless.

personally, i love watching short films, there are some great ones out there, vimeo is full of them, but most ordinary, non-film people aren’t exposed to shorts (unless they attend a film festival) and so don’t have a huge appreciation for them/aren’t willing to pay a red cent to watch them.

what am I on about? the above isn’t particularly insightful is it? you’re right, its not.  im making the point that if you are going to the hassle of making a short film, why not try and go to the slightly more hassle of making a longer film.  the principles are the same in terms of production, and if you’re making it with little or no money, it doesn’t really make any difference that you’re going to spend 5 days or 15 days shooting.  get a good story and get it done.  then you at least have something you can market, and you become a bit more marketable as you make it to the slightly more exclusive club of having made a feature film.

the only caveat is, don’t make a crap feature and then try and push it hard with people, you won’t be taken seriously and you’ll burn up whatever good will is out there with people.  take your time, line up your ducks and get it right first time, as best you can.  if its a disaster, learn from the mistakes and try again.  stephen king got rejected 7 times before he got a book published.  believe.

okay, so you’ve seen the poster and the trailer to our film.  now lets talk about how it all went down.  ill keep it short and sweet.

1. production

we shot the film on super 16mm film in summer 2008.  it took 18 shooting days to film 120 pages of script, with roughly 8 actors playing 14 parts (you gotta see the film to understand it) in multiple locations.  we had a full complement of crew, though many of them were not massively experienced, they did amazing work, for low pay and really did hold the entire project together.  this section of production cost roughly $150,000 including all the salaries of the cast/crew and location fees.  as writer/director i did not take a fee, neither did the producers who waived their fee to profit participation.  headline participants like the director and producer must defer their fees on a project like this if it is to have any chance.  it is also unfair, in my opinion, for a director/producer to get more than the rest of the crew considering they benefit the most if the film does well.

2. post-production

we did a deal with a post-house in dublin to do the sound and picture work but not before we applied to the irish film board for finishing finance.  well, we didn’t apply, we went in for a meeting with an assembly edit and they basically told us not to apply.  i have a beef with the film board over this, since, again in my opinion, they have given funding to a large amount of films which have had large budgets, poor stories and have done very poorly in terms of sales afterwards.  we were looking for approximately $50,000 (im keeping it in dollars for you Americans ) out of a total post budget of $100,000 and we got a polite no.  post production took approximately 18 weeks, we had to re-shoot one scene because of a camera problem (shooting on film is difficult AVOID IT), there was some adr and a lot of foley work.  we mastered to HD and SD and got 4 digibeta tapes under our arm.  its a little deflating to see $250,000 sitting as 4 tapes in a small box in the back of your car.

3. cannes cannes cannes

in europe, when you make a film, you can either send dvd’s out on spec until your blue in the face or you can get on your bike and go to a market.  we chose cannes, because lets face it, its the biggest and its in the south of france which is pretty nice even if you have nothing to do.  we booked 2 screenings for the film at the market (that cost about $2k) and bought ourselves passes (another $1k for me and a producer).  the market is huge and attended by about 20,000 delegates, most of whom (as far as I could see) were also trying to sell their films.  it was great fun, but ultimately, we were pretty disappointed by the whole experience, meeting after meeting after meeting and you hand over the dvd never expecting to hear anything again.  the big surprise came on the last day when we got a phonecall (while in another screening) from a sales agent who wanted to meet us having seen a lot of the film.  we ran (literally) all the way down the croisette to their office and listened as they blasted us with rhetoric about wanting to take on the film for TV sales (they said it wouldn’t run well theatrically).  it was the only offer on the table at that point, which was a pity because one of the other distribs later offered us a $25,000 advance for TV sales, when we signed with who we signed with for $0 and 75% of the take.

4. distribution

i won’t name names directly, its not fair to do that, but suffice to say, we did a deal on the basis of the above.  its a pretty standard deal, sales agent takes 25% of the revenue, gives you the rest.  what you have to know is that before you get ‘the rest’ the sales agent has to spend money marketing the film.  in our case, since we were with a package of other films going to MIPCOM (that’s a big tv market, also in Cannes) our marketing costs were close to $15,000.  so that has to come back in in revenue before they’ll pay you anything at all.  let me tell you something, unless you have leonardo di caprio in your film to sell it quickly to big tv networks, it will take A LONG TIME to get even the marketing costs back.  our sales agent, in fairness to them, managed to do a good level of sales with the film and its worked out okay for us but i can see how it majorly wouldn’t given a small bit of bad luck.

more to follow, im going to see shrek now.