Some More Real Numbers

We got our producer's report for the movie Millennium Crisis -- for our North American deal. Unfortunately, our distributor kinda took a bath on the picture. We feel bad for them.

This report is for July through December of 2009. The movie originally came out in what? 2006? 2007? I don't remember.

Our gross sales were $80.31 in this recent period. But the returns and fees were $84.48.

Yikes! It was more expensive for the movie to be available than not. At least in this 6-month period. And although we wouldn't be expecting to be making any money, we weren't expecting to continue to "lose" money (at least on paper -- we don't actually owe any money, we just aren't going to be seeing any checks coming our way.)

And this is for a picture with a star -- the immortal Ted Raimi.

Of course, the movie came out a couple years ago and we've known that we've already seen all the money we'll see from it. Our company got $10K upfront (which is now a total win for an indy producer, but at the time was on the low side.) But we way overspent in time and money on the picture. I forget exactly how much we spent and since it's not in a spreadsheet right in front of me I won't conjecture. I think that with overseas sales we just about broke even cash-wise. I think in the US we only sold 500 units.

*****
Which brings me to this New York Times article from last week. "Sweat Equity, the Movie." It's about an art-house movie which was made for $15,000, paid actors $100/day, did a bunch of film festivals, and got a $40,000 advance from IFC.

I don't believe a single number quoted in the article. Well, maybe one.

The SAG contract, back in the olden days, allowed $225 for three days. I don't think it does anymore. But it also used to insist on getting a theatrical showing before being bought by TV or home video (which was just absurd) -- glad to see SAG dropped that silliness. But remember you have to pay like regular ol' payroll (no 1099'ing) which means you should probably think more like $122/day in cost per performer when you include the employer's share of taxes and accounting fees/payroll service fees.

Oh and note that SAG doesn't enforce any kind of prevailing wage here -- they only insist that SAG actors on the picture be paid, not other actors. Back in the day when I actually thought it was a good idea to blow a few thousand dollars on paying actors rather than, say, actually making deliverables, I just gave everyone the same rate.*

Anyway --

Now, it's very very difficult to actually deliver a motion picture for distribution for $15,000. We can do it but that's because lucky for us I'm able to create DM&E mixes in my studio. I suspect the $15,000 number is a bit made-up and has to do with how much it cost to put the picture "in the can" as they say.

What $15,000 certainly doesn't cover is getting the picture to all those film festivals. Normally that's fairly prohibitive -- even for an art-house picture.

And if they had to create a film print, well that's going to cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $30K to $50K.

But what I'm really interested in knowing the details about is this $40,000 "advance" the producers got from IFC. That sounds to me to be off by a factor of... what? 20? Since when is the IFC paying forty K on a picture it can pick up for a couple thousand? Something smells... fishy here.

Sure, it's a fluff article. There's no real due diligence involved. And hey, I'd love it if art-house pictures without names can get $40K upfront from distributors. Just not if they have to four-wall their own theatrical release with it (the article is very vague about the picture screening in theaters in LA and San Francisco -- is that in IFC theaters?). Perhaps the $40K is the marketing budget the IFC committed to. Who knows?

*We still give actors the same rate, which is nothing. Up-front at least. If we break $50K we'll start paying. We'll change this policy just as soon as we can break $50K in revenue to the producer a couple times in a row. At $100K we'll even be able to pay for locations. Somebody gimme a hundred thou for a movie.

Patrick Stewart, Clowns, and the Decade

Katie West, photographer. With an unhealthy Patrick Stewart obsession. It's OK, she's Canadian.

This dude, David Kronemyer, has a lot of esoteric interests. But many of them I share with him. This blog post is about AC power in recording studios.

Fear of Clowns is number 12. And with Lion's Gate. This post explains why (to both issues.)

Hmm... Lion's Gate and Sony aren't in a bidding war for any of my pictures. Gotta do something to rectify that...

Chance Shirley reviews the decade.

I want to go somewhere cool to make a movie. We had a lot of fun in the California desert when shooting Millennium Crisis. And hopefully I'll have a couple sales coming up soon which I can talk about (effectively there's an embargo on outstanding deals so I just won't talk about 'em 'till they're "actual" deals and then I'll just say how awesome they are because there is no profit in badmouthing anyone -- besides, what am I going to say? "They didn't use my 5.1 mix or my commentary track in the Urdu version of the movie!!!"? C'mon.)

Streaming

Apparently you can watch all of Millennium Crisis on YouTube. I doubt many people will. This must be that illegal streaming video the kids are talking about these days.

Noets

Following some blogs now, at the fault of Bill Cunningham, Christopher Sharpe is a horror filmmaker and apparently the other person who uses an Ambient slate, Brea Grant is an actor, also from Texas.*

The latest news on movies we've made and are making:

• Presumably there are "catalog" sales in the works of Millennium Crisis, Solar Vengeance, and Alien Uprising
• Presumably we have another Alien Uprising sale in another market we've yet to sell to
• The main data drive for Alien Uprising up and died. It was an Iomega drive. Kaput. No warning. I keep a backup in another state (no kidding) so we ordered another drive for a hundred bucks and made a copy this week. For a 100% drive failure the whole episode wasn't nearly as gut wrenching as one would expect.
• We have a surprising amount of Clonehunter edited. Maduka wants to have a whole cut complete by the time he leaves for vacation in July. I think that's too ambitious 'cause I see him falling asleep at his computer. Somebody get him a cat.**
• I have pictures like this to show me what stuff in space actually looks like. Am fighting the great fight to make all the CG look photo real in Clonehunter. That's part of the reason we stay inside the ship mostly...
• If I never had to compose the score for a film again it wouldn't be too soon.
  

*You know, a sentence this convoluted really would tend to indicate that I am not a terribly great editor. But the fact is I'm a pretty good editor and that 1. these blog posts are unedited and 2. I actually talk like this.
**If Maduka had a cat he'd be worse than my dad as far as treating it like it were a guest. My dad can't even check his email anymore because the cat has decided that my dad's office chair is his favorite place to sleep.

Darth is going Down

While rendering, I went and googled myself and found a good review of Millennium Crisis.* Our distributor for Millennium Crisis did a good job of getting the picture out to reviewers.

Here's a site which tracks Obama's campaign promises.

Yes, that's an Obama doll. I don't understand it either. But Darth doesn't stand a chance.

*The review actually says the movie isn't good, but it's a good review nonetheless.

Thai Millennium Crisis

The Thai version of Millennium Crisis has been out for a while. Be sure to order your copy or pick one up the next time you're in Thailand.

I ordered from eThaiCD.com. They sell via mail order to the US.

I love their cover art. The colors punch in a way which I like.

One thing which is interesting to me is that they sell the movie as a two-CD set of VCD's. All the nudity is blurred out.

I have here two very brief clips to give you a feel for the Thai language. Here's the "2nd scene":



And here is the scene on the space station:

Bad Crisis

So we had our meeting with our distributor on Friday regarding Millennium Crisis. Oof -- the news for North American sales ain't good. The problem is that the title is really a "rental" - type title. And apparently Blockbuster (the largest N. American rental chain) made every indication up to, but obviously not including, an actual sales order that they were going to stock the picture. But then they didn't. 

And that hurt distribution badly.

The picture was in brick-and-mortar stores at Best Buy. (It is still available online).  And it lasted on shelves for between 3 and 4 months. Best Buy ordered a thousand copies. They sold a little over 500 copies. I think it was 535 actually. I believe they pay 50% of the "retail price" with a "discount" of $.75. So if the picture had a "manufacturer's retail price" of $19.95 then they pay $9.975 per unit, minus seventy-five cents per unit, or $9.225 per unit. Times 535 units that's $4935.38.

That means our distributor grossed less than $5K in Best Buy sales. I know their total N. American sales (after returns) are about $11K so far.

Overall that puts the picture in the red in North America (the distributor paid us an advance, which I fear they regret having done now!)

We got a hundred sales from Netflix, plus sales at various other types of places. That $11K I mentioned earlier might become lower if there are a lot of returns.

Our N. American distributor is trying to make a package deal for a cable channel -- if they do, then Millennium Crisis might go into the black for them.

For us, the producers, we will be at "cash" break-even with Millennium Crisis just as soon as our German sale comes through. Actually, we'll be a couple thousand dollars in the black. The overseas sales saved us. That doesn't help our N. American distributor any, but it makes us feel a little bit better.

-------------

North American distributors have a lot of trouble with "indy" pictures in the Direct-to-DVD market. And it looks like it's going to stay that way for a while, perhaps permanently.

And here's why:

Blockbuster has almost completely stopped buying "indy" product. Basically, our old distributor, The Asylum, can still get their stuff in Blockbuster. But remember, they make a lot of "mockbusters" or "tie-in" pictures (something our sales rep has STRONGLY reccomended we do). Lion's Gate, the largest independent producer, can get their movies into Blockbuster too. Some Anchor Bay movies are being bought, but Anchor Bay is owned by Starz so they're basically just the distribution arm for Starz.

All this means that for all intents and purposes, direct-to-dvd in North America is all but dead.

And nobody knows how to make money with the Internet.

--------------------------

What's the good news?

1. Well, looking back at The Asylum's model, there are obviously opportunities with pictures which are able to "tie in" to a major studio's picture. 

We'll be trying that. (We need to make a couple Terminator type movies. But on a spaceship.)

2. Also, there seem to be some opportunites with non-traditional TV sales. There are things like Fear Net and other channels specializing in HD - fare (which means they have to be shot and available in HD), and free "on demand". Ghost House produces for Fear Net (which is partly owned by Comcast). And The Asylum has produced for the Sci-Fi Channel (which we thought was dead for indy producers -- maybe it's coming back?)

So TV might just save us all. We shall see.

Putting it to Bed

Today, apparently, our sales rep got paid for both Millennium Crisis and Solar Vengeance from the distributor in Russia. This is good news, seeing as how I'm broke.

It also means we're puttin' this puppy to bed. I'm done with mixing and with tweaking. I'm rolling off the "flattened" version of the movie -- the pan-and-scan (non-letterboxed) version of the picture which they seem to insist so much on overseas. They also only want a stereo mix, none of this 5.1 mixing which I spend so much time on.

We're sending the movie to the lab next week -- where they're going to make DigiBeta copies. And we'll try to figure out what we're doing for North American distribution (where we have a little more ability to insist on widescreen letterboxed version with 5.1 mix.

Here is a better version of "I Love Sarah Jane". Spencer Susser is the director, apparently he is a commercial director and editor.

What I love most about this short is how the kids interact. Man, I knew all those kids growing up. Plus, we had a zombie in the backyard too. I don't remember what my dad did with it though...

First Sales

We got our first offers from Cannes.

Solar Vengeance will be in Japan, Russia, Germany, and Thailand.

Millennium Crisis picked up a small sale in Russia.

My (new) favorite review quote

"You can see the plastic coverings on the walls on one set, but it’s OK, it’s a space station under construction."

Because that's what I kept telling everyone on set! ;-)

They weren't buying it either.

German Review

Our first look at the Thai version of Millennium Crisis. I would have expected to see more on what I believe to be the distributor's site, but I can't find anything.

We got a review in German. It's not such a bad review, actually. They try to be kind at least!

The movie hasn't come out in Germany yet. It's supposed to... sometime. In any case, this seems to be a review of the American version.

It's interesting when we see blurbs about the movie on sites. This site has this little thing:

Eons after a violent race of aliens known as the Kluduthu caused an intergalactic war, they begin seeking out the descendant of a chameleonic humanoid to help them destroy the universe. But when a young woman realizes that the extraterrestrial warlords are looking for her, she must prevent them from using her in their diabolical plans. Clare Stevenson, Olja Hrustic, Ted Raimi star. 86 min. Soundtrack: English.

I know we didn't write that! Believe you me -- I would have wanted to write "chameleonic" but if I had I'd have been suppressed (that is, stuffed in a sack and sat upon).

Did I post this review from Bum's Corner? "The sets are minimal--some are even, well, subliminal--"

I'm still laughing at that...

Deadpit Horror Reviews has a little review. Oddly, they criticize the plot by saying it isn't complicated. Which pretty well is the opposite of what all the other reviews say.

Daryl Boling in MC

I found another review today -- again, not a good one but they spelled most of the names right.

But then, oh man, I hit the mother lode. In this Argentine blog of pictures of naked men in movies, there are screenshots of Daryl Boling in Millennium Crisis!

Yes!

My work on your earth is almost done [insert maniacal laugh]...

Things to See

So, you can actually see Millennium Crisis, is all it's Flash-enabled glory, and in its entirety, as a streaming download on the Interwebs.
http://66stage.com/movies.php?pl=goo&url=-5307409887822463155

Man, somebody got right on ripping this DVD and putting it up there. And for some reason, it's in two parts. I wonder how many people actually sit and watch it on the web like that. I hate watching long-form stuff on the computer. Cat videos and hampsterwithagrape.com, sure, but a feature-length movie? Bleh.


Brian was in the city today, we did some more auditions, spoke to some makeup people. Here's the spaceship. We may have something close to a locked cut of Solar Vengeance. There's still things to insert (like this spaceship) and lots of force fields to rotoscope, but we're close to having picture...

A Page

This is Alternative Cinema's Millennium Crisis page.

I think... well I'm not too sure... Alternative Cinema is owned by our distributor. Actually, I don't really know -- perhaps AC is the mail-order distribution arm. They have a number of labels. I gets confused.

The website for Millennium Crisis has taken a lot of hits since the movie came out in North America last week. I've had to reset the bandwidth quota twice (I'd never had to do that before.) And consequently, more hits on this blog too. Welcome!

Wow, it feels like we shot that movie a long long time ago. In the interim we've shot another movie and are prepping yet another one. Sheesh!

Now I just gotta get over this dumb cold/flu thing I have...

In Stores Now

Millennium Crisis

... well, a check of the Best Buy website says it's in "most stores" but looking around on the website it seems that it's only available in some stores. I dunno. But it was available in the store in Woodbridge, NJ and I went to visit.

There it is -- right between "Matrix Revolutions" and "The Mothman Prophecies".

This store only had three copies. Now they have two. I wonder if that'll be the tipping point at which Best Buy will order more?

When I got my copy and brought it home I noticed that although Ted Raimi and Ato Essandoh are both listed above the title on the cover; Clare, Ted and Olja are listed in the plastic thing you peel off the top of the DVD to open it.

Shock-O-Rama did a nice job of the packaging on the inside with a clear plastic case so you could see through to the inside artwork.

P.S. Yes that's my dad's Sudoku on the table. He finished it a little while later. I think it was a 5 - star.

Time on my Hands.

The following text is a great example of how this blog is really just my notebook in which I write stuff, some of which I may want to see later.

A little birdie told me that the web series Sanctuary is getting picked up by the SciFi Channel. That's certainly one way to actually make money with webcasting. Actually, it's the only way I've heard of as I can recall...

I still haven't gone to Best Buy to visit Millennium Crisis. It's still not available in Manhattan -- I suspect they get new shipments on a different schedule than everyone else. So we're going to Woodbridge later to find it. We've had a screener copy for a while, and we're getting a big load of copies from the distributor, we just ain't seen one yet.

I'm rendering robots for Solar Vengeance. Gives me lots of time to blog.

YAN (Yet Another Review)

Dave Campfield, the director of Dark Chamber, a picture which is coming out on POP Cinema roughly at the time our movie is coming out, forwarded me another review of Millennium Crisis. I gotta say, it's fair to say that about our bland commentary -- I was really tired when we recorded it. Next time I promise to get enough sleep before I record a commentary.

I like Dark Chamber, it's well written and a good little horror/thriller picture. I'm friends with one of the cameramen and one of the actresses and I was aware of the picture (and had actually seen little bits of the picture because it's on their reels) long before I met Dave.

What's the funniest quote from the above-linked review of Dark Chamber? "The lack of gore/nudity is inexcusable."

I'm still laughing.

Cities of the Future

You know, we got quite a few complaints about our alien city from Millennium Crisis (which is available at most Best Buy stores but right not is not available yet in Manhattan -- you have to go to Jersey or Staten Island to get it) and my response was "Well, I thought it looked as good as the city in the title sequence of Battlestar Galactica" to which I'd get a "yeah, I guess it does."

And that brings me to 1. Today's Theory and 2. Why Today's Theory is wrong.

Today's Theory:
Fake cities always look fake because real cities look fake. Real cityscapes look painted because of the occlusion of the atmosphere between you and the city. Looking at Manhattan from Brooklyn is a classic example of how... the city... looks fake. They look like a matte painting.

And not necessarily a good matte painting.

And the weirder the buildings -- the faker it looks.

When I was in High School my dad took me down to Florida during my Spring Break to a jobsite -- the building of Epcot Center at Disney World. It was pretty amazing to look at -- all those huge and crazy buildings all going up at once. And from a distance, they looked fake.

So: real buildings look fake, of course fake buildings look fake.

Why Today's Theory is Wrong:
Ian, who made our robot for us, disproves my theory. The image above is from his latest feature.

The image not only comes off as totally photo-real, but it also looks real. Which are two different things.

The lighting and the texture are perfect. Perhaps the real and photographed foreground helps the image be more real? Perhaps the matched atmospheric occlusion (yes, I've started talking that way) between the background of the photographed image matches the composite?

I have no idea.

But it just looks right. And therefore my theory is wrong. (Furthermore, CGI in the daytime is the hardest though. Because you can see everything.)

One day we're going to throw enough money at Ian and get him on visual effects on a Pandora Machine picture...

Street Date

Today Millennium Crisis is on the streets. Specifically, in North America, at Best Buy.

This is our second picture to be released. And, of course, it's already available in Japan. It just feels like we shot it so long ago. We shot another picture in the interim.

Here's keeping our fingers crossed and hoping it does well!

Our First (Good) Review(s)

From Video Business:

"Cobbling together plot elements from Blade Runner, The Fifth Element and Underworld, this low-budget sci-fi/action picture concerns a woman with chameleonic powers who is recruited by aliens to become a secret weapon in their war against another race. The plot isn’t exactly lucid, but Millennium succeeds on the strength of its flashy, stylish imagery and intriguing characterizations. Director/co-scripter Andrew Bellware keeps the proceedings moving along at a steady pace, so viewers won’t dote on the story line and instead enjoy the flow of action—and the female cast members’ form-fitting outfits.
Shelf Talk: Though Xena’s Ted Raimi is the only “name” here, the film should attract sci-fi fans and gamers looking for something outside of the Hollywood mainstream. It also deserves a push to aficionados of babe-centric fantasy series (Underworld, Resident Evil)."

And from BumsCorner:

"The best part of the movie for me is the Lucretia character. Olja Hrustic is a looker who plays the ages-old android with a cool, cynical detachment and air of mystery and superiority over everyone else. Lucretia's most startling feature is a long, metallic tentacle that springs from I-don't-know-where and can either mess you up, suck your life force, or just screw around with you. That, in addition to a cool chain-mail headdress and tight green bodysuit, helps to make Lucretia one of the most enjoyable visual aspects of the film."

I also thought it was interesting that the reviewer saw the Alice in Wonderland-ness of the movie (which is what I kept saying about Clare's part when we were shooting it.)

I'm impressed with POP Cinema and their PR. We could actually put together a press kit out of this. Hmm...

Just as a reminder:
http://www.cinematical.com/2007/12/10/killer-bs-on-dvd-millenium-crisis/

http://www.moviesmademe.com/show_mov.php?d=1576

And our first (we think) Japanese Review:

Http://jacuzzi.jugem.jp/trackback/600