Horror

So, we've been told that "indy" horror movies are making a glut right now in the marketplace. They aren't selling because there are just too many of them.

Of all the low-budget indy product out there, Sci-fi has a bit of an advantage because there's so much less of it. Our sales rep is very unhappy about the horror market.

He's happy we're focusing on Sci-Fi.

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So we think we should be focussing on Sci-Fi. Sci-fi but with an eye toward this sort of thinking.

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The trick is, of course, that sci-fi is much harder to do well than other things. But we're getting better at it.

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Up till now (or rather, up 'till 0701) we've been self-financing our pictures. My new model is such that we'd use investor(s) for each picture:

Each picture has a gross budget of $20K. But the cash budget for making the movie is $12.5K. I use the extra $7,500 to live on in the meantime (although that can easily be thought of as a "rental" for all the equipment we're using).

The investor(s) get 50% of the revenue. I figure we can pretty reliably make between $40K and $50K in revenue worldwide on a picture, most of the money coming in about 18 months after the start of principal photography. There's an upside, of course, we could make much more. And the downside is that 100% of the investment is at risk.

Lastly, we must make 5 pictures in 2 years. This means we expend $100K and receive $250K in a 2-year period (well, there's an 18-month delay but I think you know what I mean.)

My thinking is that this plan is realistic. It's all a matter of having scripts as good as possible before we start. And, of course, a lot of creative people willing to work for free (or until we break $50,000 in revenue and start paying people out.)

As long as we're having fun it'll all be good.