In the Money

Tyrannosaurus Mouse is making money hand-over-fist. Or paw-over-claw. Or something.
Okay, so I get ten bucks. But I think CD Baby only cost $35, so this is a substantial return.
(Notice that $5.80 of the $9.46 is coming from iTunes UK.  I'm gonna guess that's a single sale of the entire T-Mouse album.)

The following is from an email CD Baby sent me today:

On 06.28.2015 CD Baby sent you a Paypal payment of $9.46. It was CD Baby payment #VPV02742566.

NOTE: It takes 5 days to transfer funds from our bank to our PayPal account to pay you. PayPal will email you when it arrives.

The Paypal deposit was to pay you:
$0.02 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Beats Music
$0.06 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through MediaNet
$0.04 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Google Music Store
$0.01 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through JB Hi-Fi
$0.01 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through JB Hi-Fi
$0.64 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Amazon MP3
$0.02 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through MediaNet
$0.02 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through MediaNet
$0.01 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Deezer
$0.64 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Apple iTunes
$5.80 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through iTunes-UK
$0.01 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Spotify
$0.06 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Spotify
$0.11 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Spotify
$1.91 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Amazon MP3
$0.02 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through MediaNet
$0.06 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Google Music Store
$0.25 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Spotify
$1.27 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Apple iTunes
NOTE: A $1.50 Payment Fee was deducted from this payment.

Mousalicious Notions

I'm struggling with the notion that I could put all the Prague Spring CDs on CDBaby. That would cost a couple hundred bucks.
Of course, all Prague Spring is up at Bandcamp.
CDBaby has a very thorough FAQ. It's pretty useful for all the details surrounding a record release.
I'm getting a bit chompy at the bit to play my new SG with a band.

Are we allowed to talk about the electric guitar sound at the end of Solsbury Hill? According to Wikipedia both Robert Fripp and Steve Hunter played guitar on that track. Now look. The acoustic guitar sound fantastic, and that electric is just added at the end to lift up the hook.
But that sound is one of the most amazing hard-rock guitar sounds ever made. I mean it's just a Townshend-esque slide down to an open... er.. D?
It's tougher than the darkest Jethro Tull. It's got more testosterone than War Pigs. It does a third, unnamable thing, to your soul. And it's just at the end of this Peter Gabriel song.
+++++
I'm a tad afrighted to put humbucking P90's in my SG though, because the routing might not be deep enough. And there's only a 5mm distance between the bottoms of the screws and the back of the guitar. Apparently. As far as I can tell.

Marche du Ugh

So it's going to cost you 4,460 Euros to get a booth at the Marche du Cannes. Did you want a DVD player with a video screen and speakers? Just go ahead and add another 1,000 Euros. I'm not entirely certain you even get a chair and a little table, to put your 1-sheets and such on, at these rates.

Plus you gotta get there and have somewhere to stay.

Revenue Stream

It may have already happened.

I've had a healthy skeptical "wait and see" attitude about making money doing "media" on the webernets of which Bill Cunningham is a big proponent. I keep reading and seeing stuff like "Dr. Horrible" and thinking to myself "But has he really made back his investment?" (probably not.)

Well, Bill offers this evidence from the venerable New York Times. What he's been predicting all this while may be what's going to finally come down.

“hundreds of YouTube partners are making thousands of dollars a month.”

Now does that mean they're grossing $48,000 or more a year? If so, your organization will have to be pretty small. One guy purports to $10K to $20K a month. If you can gross $125K or more you can have a full-time office. You will be making minimum wage yourself (if you're lucky), and there will be others who make more than you who work for you but that's life running a company.

The way we work is to increase quality by working with a small number of multi-"threats". Actor/Editor/Writer/Gaffer/Director (like Maduka), or Actor/Editor/sound recordist/producer (like Blair), Editor/Writer/Producer/AD/2ndAD/Script Supervisor (like Laura), or Everything/everything else (like Mitchell).

That's the only way we can afford to make these movies. Geez, with Google AdSense-type Partner Program one might be able to make a living. We'd have to serialize the kinds of scripts we make and we'd have a huge advantage over TV in that we aren't married to exact act lengths.

Alien Uprising would make a good sequel which could work that way. I'm scared to experiment, of course, but depending on our North American sales, we might have no choice! ;-)

And as long as we make a mockbuster once in a while, we'll have enough diversity. The problem with the short form of the web is it leads one to doing comedy, which I don't want to do. So we should do something Cowboy Bebop-ish...

C'mon kids, let's do a vampire series in modern-day New York. The Federal V-Marshals are in charge of keeping the vampire population in line... Who's gonna write that? Read Saving the Cat and then we'll start making that series... We'll shoot in-between our features.

Research

I've been doing a bit of research in a local Blockbuster. Basically, my interest is in finding independent distributors which get their non-theatrically-released DVD's into Blockbuster.

Obviously Lion's Gate gets their titles in. But they are (I believe) the largest "indy" distributor in the world (maybe that's only North America, who knows? India might have a larger distributor.)

The Asylum regularly gets their "mockbusters" into Blockbuster. The Asylum released our movie Pandora Machine. I think we sold almost 8000 DVD's to Blockbuster and whatever other retailers there were before they all went bankrupt. Ahh... the good old days.

Terra Entertainment had at least one title in Blockbuster...

Now there are some distributors which I don't quite understand. Obviously Weinstein Entertainment has a special deal with Blockbuster. But Summit Entertainment handles some pretty big pictures -- with theatrical distribution. They seem to go through Universal or Weinstein in the US. Also, Peace Arch Entertainment is a pretty big film/tv producer and distributor. And there's MTI Video (which has the Fangoria label). There certainly are a lot fewer names out there than the last time I checked at Blockbuster a number of years ago.

Buying Underwear

I think we're going to end up buying a bit of underwear for this picture, The Uprising. We have a lot of soldiers who need to wake up from hypersleep. I guess I'm goin' to KMart for some white (preferably grey) boxers. Better sew up the flys...

We aren't actually cast. Heck, we won't be done casting 'till a couple days before we shoot. And then again a week or so after that. Ha! Welcome to the world of no-budget.

As far as uniforms go, I think we're going to have some helmets and then some... sleeveless T-shirts? I dunno. I'd love all mock-turtle "compression" shirts, both sleeveless and sleeveful. We might need some insignia. I have no idea how we'd make them and attach them though. I'm going to ask around.

Dov talks in more detail about windows. His article is a bit out of date, it refers to Hollywood Video as though it still exists. And his low-end numbers are a bit high for free cable. But his bottom-of-the-barrel numbers for direct-to-DVD seem about right.

News You Can Use

According to our distributor (when asked about what is selling in the current marketplace) --
"Blockbuster said Sci Fi is underserved, but Best Buy will gamble on zombie pictures."

In Stores Soon

Millennium Crisis comes out on the 29th of this month. It will be in Best Buy and Hastings and a variety of 1-stop distributors.

The movie will not be at Blockbuster or Hollywood Video. Both of those chains are havin' their troubles and we fell below their needs.

Also, got some real numbers: for "indy" product Netflix orders about 30 to 60 copies at best. We haven't got an order from them yet but apparently retailers and such get their orders in fairly late anymore so it's not surprising.

Sundance Betty

The beautiful and talented Betty Ouyang, who was in our movie Pandora Machine, is in a movie at Sundance this year.

And Lanie Zipoy got the Russian Chamber Chorus a 4 inch column in the New York Daily News today. Laura wrote the press release.

Back to Betty's movie: it's called Frozen River (not the 1929 Rin Tin Tin movie linked in this New York Times article).

Interestingly, the article alludes to one of the deep dark secrets about Sundance:
"Sundance, both a pre-eminent showcase for American cinema and a freewheeling bazaar for movie executives, tries to cope with the annual deluge of films by tracking scores of potential submissions throughout the year. But more than half of the 2008 lineup emerged “from the pile,” Mr. Gilmore said, meaning without the benefit of advance buzz from the festival’s network of talent and sales agents, established filmmakers and other scouts."

This means that even this year, with all those movies graciously selected by Mr. Gilmore's staff "from the pile", half the movies at Sundance are "pre-selected" (by the act of someone who knows Gilmore making a phone call to him).

I love it that all of us without someone to make that fateful phone call are lumped together as being "from the pile".

Unlike

I don't like it when the makeup base on a (typically) actress' face is much lighter than on their neck.

I'm not talking about this image however. Makeup is perfect.

But in more interesting news:

From Variety:
"In 2006, After Dark Horrorfest became the first film festival in history to break into the top 10 at the national box office, grossing over 2.5 million dollars, on only a quarter of the screens of any other film in the top ten that weekend. The “8 Films to Die For” package, released on DVD by partner Lionsgate Films, has reached great success with over 1.8 million DVDs in circulation."

OK, so there's some weasel words there like "in circulation". But otherwise that's interesting. What do you think Lion's Gate gets for each DVD? $7.25 or so? I dunno. Maybe more? Maybe less because they're a box set?

Now oddly, Boxoffice Mojo does not have stats for Horrorfest 1 (the 2006 Horrorfest) but they do have stats for After Dark's other releases including Horrorfest 2. They say that Horrorfest 2 made $450K over its first weekend. Those are estimates. Bloody Disgusting says they made just over $500K.

Ahh... OK. Let's --

Have some data! Or at least some noise. Enough that I'd want to have at least one ear in the down position.

Here is the fantasy world of estimates for the purchase of all rights to a picture.

Via Bill Cunningham and the Hollywood Reporter:

(For a "theatrical" film with a budget of $750K-$1M)

EUROPE: France $30-60K
Germany/Austria $30 - 75K
Greece $5-10K
Italy $30-60K
Netherlands $10-25K
Portugal $5-10K
Scandinavia $30-60K
Spain $30-60K UK $40-80
ASIA / PACIFIC RIM:
Australia/New Zealand $15-30K
Hong Kong $3-5K
Indonesia $5-10K
Japan $40-80K
Malaysia $3-5K Philippines $3-5K
Singapore $3-5K South Korea $20-50K Taiwan $5-15K
LATIN AMERICA:
Argentina/Paraguay/Uruguay $2-5K Boliva/Ecuador/Peru $1-3K
Brazil $15-30K Chile $2-5K Colombia $2-5K
Mexico $15-30K Venezuela $2-5K
EASTERN EUROPE: Czech Republic/Slovakia $5-10K
Former Yugoslavia $2-5K Hungary $10-20K
Poland $5-10K Russia $20-50K
OTHERS: China $3-5K India $5-10K
Israel $2-5K Middle East $2-5K South Africa $5-10K Turkey $10-20K

So, on the low side that's about $400K. But it's also delusional. I've yet to see an estimate of sales to territories which came to within a factor of 4 of what the actual sales were. In other words, the best I've seen is a picture with a "low" of a little over a million dollars getting just over $200K. Maybe sometime in, say, 1998, these kinds of numbers had some grasp on reality, but in my short experience so far that simply hasn't been the case.
That being said it is virtually impossible to get any real numbers out of anyone. This is, of course, one of the most frustrating parts of this business. Most people won't give you any real numbers, and those who give you any numbers, are encouraged to lie!
Full disclosure: Pandora Machine made us about $12,000* with its domestic release. Problem was it cost about $18K. But we made the mistake on that picture of letting our rep at the time also handle North American, so even though we got the sale to North America, they took their piece of it. We would have broke even otherwise. So far Millennium Crisis (if the German sale goes through) will net us about $40K, and it cost $40K to make. I calculated once that we were about $700 in the black on it. It's theoretically possible that we might make more with MC eventually.

*Update -- I think I'm wrong and it actually made nigh on $16K once Hollywood Video sold off all their copies. We only got one overseas release and it made us zero (0) dollars.

Mars Needs Women, Drew Needs Pancakes

It's been a long week, but now we can welcome Emi Macuaga to the post-production team! Emi is editing Angry Planet. I know most directors seem to enjoy editing. I absolutely hate looking at the same footage over and over again. Hate. It. And I've edited four features and it's my least-favorite thing to do. Thanks goodness for Emi. Yay!

We delivered a new computer to her yesterday with a 500GB hard drive marked "0701 Emi Edit". I have a drive with identical data marked "0701 Drew Edit". All we must needs do is update projects and any new footage on both machines and off we go!

And that frees me to work on the teaser. Today is October 14 and the American Film Market starts on the 31st and Halcyon needs a teaser by then. Sheesh!

Wrap party on Thursday. Many Zombies will be had at the Zombie hut. Have I mentioned my pledge that "Never again shall I shoot a feature in 10 days"?

As far as I can tell the only advantage to Vista is that there's a little screen capture cut and paste application which comes with it which can be amusing. In other words, even with the extra RAM my big brother* bought for me, it's still not too great. The computer we got for Emi has Vista and Premiere isn't entirely happy with it. The scroll bars don't work well and the check boxes to show you only exactly named files in the "find" dialog have to be toggled off and then back on when finding multiple items.

And don't get me started about folder and file permissions. Oy vey. I finally figured out how to turn that off. I hate it when Microsoft tries to emulate the things that Apple does which suck (like file permissions). I guess the advantage with MS is that it is in fact possible to globally turn that crap off. (OK, here's a weird thing -- blogger won't let my make a link to: http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2006/09/20/763275.aspx -- it would be funny to say that's because it won't like to msdn blogs but I think it's because of the .aspx).

I am amused by this war-like rabbit. I don't remember where I got it but likely icanhascheezburger.com.

* David -- what is up with your website dude? You have no default index page?

Pictures of Relevance

I've been doing a crappity job of taking stills on Angry Planet. I used to be so good at it. But now that our shoot is down to 10 days (from 20), I just haven't had the time. Yet still we've got some of the best stills we've ever had. Jef Betz and Brian Schiavo have really done a bang up job.

Just yesterday I was saying that the stills are the most important part of the shoot. I say that all the time. Everyone thinks I'm joking.

I'm not.

Channelling Sci-Fi

This pretty well sums up our script notes on any screenplay we're working on. Well, that, and robot fights.

I'm still on the lookout for lenses. And a follow-focus unit. Bleh. It's going to cost us a lot of dough.



Bill Cunningham has an interesting thing about the Sci-Fi Channel doing a direct-to-Internet series (in this case Farscape). That's interesting that they're doing that. Things are weird over at the SF-Channel and obviously this is a new move for them.

Ebay actually shut down my account. I suspect it was because I was using a sniping service. Which is too bad because sniping is so much more convenient than bidding normally. Pleh.

Cash Black

We got a German sale for, um, some amount of USD (I wish they were Euros). This puts us in the "cash black" by $700. Drunkenness ensues.
Bengal cats say "yay".

June Moon Bloon

Here's some armor from Nightmare Armor Studios. Today Nochnoi Dnevnoy or Dnevnoy Dozor or whatever ("Day Watch") comes out in theaters.
It looks like I'll be designing the sound for Ground Up Productions' "The People VS Mona" at the Abingdon theater.
Yesterday I had to remove a rheostat from a circuit at Theatresource. I really don't like working with high-voltage. Microphone level is about the most I can handle.
I just signed and had notarized some paperwork so that China might give us a ($4000) deal. Not much money but to see Millennium Crisis in Mandarin with Chinese subtitles might be fun.

So, You've Seen This Movie Before

So, I'm talking to Brian McNulty, the chief editor at EI Cinema, on the telephone and he's going through Millennium Crisis doing a quality control check. He was looking for something and I said "It's right after the robot fight." And he said to me: "Oh, you've seen this movie before."
I laughed for a really long time.

Neu Kontrakt

Many important things this week: I saw 300, I saw Grindhouse, I signed the contract for our North American Home video deal for Millennium Crisis.

For some reason, lawyers seem to use the shorthand "K" to refer to contracts. I guess they're bad spellers. In any case, we signed with Pop Cinema.

Now we're on the same label as Dinosaur Girls on Bikini Planet! Or no, that's not it...

This is our second sale with Millennium Crisis. Hopefully we'll get lots more! Halcyon is taking the movie to the Cannes Film Market in May...

Three Major Markets

So, look. This hedgehog says to spend the money and get Ted Chalmer's Movieplan.

There are three major markets each year. The AFM in Santa Monica in the Fall, the Cannes Film Market (during the Cannes Film Festival), and MIFED in Milan (typically earlier in the Fall than the AFM, I believe).

Boy do I wish I were making this movie. But the fact is, Chance would do a better job with it than me. At least, that's what the hedgehog tells me.

Here are the distribution windows. I keep getting confused about the order, so I've written them down (as per Ted Chalmers):
Theatrical
Airline/Hotel
Home Video
Pay Per View (I'd always thought this went before home video)
Pay TV
Free TV/Basic Cable.

Theatrical Distribution (numbers)

OK, so if your brain is much bigger than mine, read this fellow's blog:

http://kronemyer.blogspot.com/

I can't understand 3/4 of what he writes about, but in this post he does some numbers regarding theatrical distribution on a feature film:

From (http://kronemyer.blogspot.com/2007/02/worst-reviewed-movie-ever.html)

"...the movie grossed $13,122,865 on its opening weekend, and to date has grossed $26,387,390 (per the on-line site, boxofficemojo.com). While not stellar, this isn’t all that bad, either. It opened in 2,526 theaters, which is way too many; the cost of the ad campaign surely was high. [Interestingly, none of the second-week ads quote any of the reviews, as newspaper ads for movies are wont to do!]

If the negative cost was around $25 million, and P&A was around $10 million, then it still has a ways to go, in order to recoup. Keep in mind the exhibitors typically retain around 50% of gross, and Universal’s distribution fee probably is around 15%, which means total domestic remittances are more like $11.2 million. Foreign will be poor, as romantic comedies typically are culturally-specific; they don’t “travel well,” to use the jargon of the industry. There will be some domestic video activity, HBO probably will kick in around $500K for a pay cable window, and there will be modest revenue from other TV sources (pay-per-view, basic cable, free TV, syndication). But that’s it."