Tyler Purcell

'There will be blood' was snuffed by "no country for old men", which is a hard bargain. I love both movies, so it's hard to pick which one is better. I just feel the academy in that case, simply picks the filmmaker with the most previous nominations and goes with them for the "tie breaker" so to speak. 'The Master' is an art film, the academy would never give it best picture. It's too slow for American audiences and it's too politically charged. If it had magically done well in the box office, well maybe. But people don't go to see those kinds of movies because they're too dark. People go to the theater to see entertainment, most of which is stupid superhero fodder. Remember, 'La La Land' breaks the mold because it's a story about Hollywood and it's a musical. These are two things that are death traps for movies today, yet the movie is a success. The Oscars have always been an "entertainment" award, more then anything else.

Well, things are very different here in Hollywood then most other places on the planet. People who dream of being actors, they struggle big time because auditions generally happen mid-day and with a very random schedule. If you don't take auditions, you will never work as an actor. Furthermore, spending time at industry parties and hobnobbing with the elite, is also critical. So you can't necessarily work "nights", or you'll never be able to attend those events either. So most actors have part-time food service jobs and they're always coming and going. So what you saw in the movie was, straight up truth. It was stereotypical truth, but it was truth. It's the reason I took a 10 year hiatus from the industry. It became impossible to work full-time and visit clients for potential work. It's not like you leave your office on lunch, say hi and go back. It takes hours to get across town from your work and hours to get back, thanks to the never-ending traffic jam that's LA. Ohh and trying to find a "good" job with flexible hours, good luck, they just don't exist. WOOAHHH Hold the horses. If you're part of a famous group on tour, you're gonna have a lot of money. His goal was to start a jazz club and remember, when we return to the story after they split up, it's been 5 years. So he raked in the cash since he didn't need a place to live on tour and he had enough to start a club. This is 100% realistic to me, there are clubs just like that all over LA (not jazz, but other forms of music) and a lot of them were started by famous musicians. One could argue that 5 years isn't enough time for that to happen, but if you're focused on it, then why not? Sometimes the right deal happens and you jump. I think it's pretty realistic, though them not talking in 5 years isn't. With social media, they'd be talking to one another for sure. It's called "split opinion syndrome", where the negative buzz drives even more people to like it. This movie isn't purposely crafted that way, it's just that a lot of people can't buy into something so magical and truthful - truth may not be the best form of entertainment. People who don't live in L.A. who aren't in the industry, they may think it's bullshit so they just write it off. Maybe they don't want to see some "hollywood" person struggle through life, thinking they've got it made. Most people don't have any clue the struggles us hollywood types go through on an hourly basis to make our dreams come true. I also didn't think the goal of the film was to bring back musical's. I think the story holds it's own without the dance numbers. La La Land is good ol' hollywood entertainment and ya know, it's much needed in this world of serious drama's. I've seen almost all of the best picture nods and ya know, they're all ok, but none of them are as downright entertaining as La La Land. Some of the competition this year was downright boring... 'Moonlight' being the top of that pile. I don't go to the movies to see something boring, I go to see something entertaining. I want to be moved, emotionally involved and "care" about the characters. Maybe that's why I liked La La Land so much, because I understood first hand what the characters were going through. Maybe it's that association that drives so many people to like it and others, well they simply can't associate with the idea of people wanting to have success in hollywood, it goes right over their head. When you're struggling to put food on your own table, why would you like a movie that shows two hollywood star's "struggle", its like some sick joke.

Well, they played the story "truthful". What you see in La La Land is pretty much the truth straight up. To play it as a happy love story, would NOT be the truth and it would defy the point of making it. In a world full of falsehoods on screen, FINALLY we see the truth. It's the problem with Hollywood and getting involved with someone who has a similar career path, in this case stage music and acting. They're both very similar professions, both require travel, both require prep and long hours, both are make it or break it careers. Living in Hollywood, it gives you an appreciation of how representative the film is of the hardships and sacrifices people make for their "art". I could go on all day on the sacrifices I've made, but they PAIL in comparison to some of my friends. I've physically seen very similar stories to that of La La Land, unfold in front of my eyes. Needless to say, La La Land's staying power is that Hollywood simply doesn't make movies like it anymore. So, to see such a production coming from Hollywood, is pretty amazing and it IS a very entertaining movie, which is the whole point. I left the theater really enjoying La La Land because of these points above. I didn't think of the historical aspects at all, I simply went in and loved what I saw on screen. I even got teared up a few times due to the masterful filmmaking, mixing visuals with music and the somewhat somber ending. I mean what's better then something that MOVES you, right? You want to FEEL that emotion and I believe the movie does a good job. Is it the best movie of 2017? Probably not, but it's the best movie that came out of HOLLYWOOD and that's the important piece of context. If you look at the rest of the world, there are probably better made and more interesting movies out there.

And I bet NONE of those Alexa films were upresed to 4k for finishing. I bet they were all finished in 2k, which is a real shame. It's funny because 4k is truly a buzz word, it really "means" nothing to most people. They either request "alexa" or they request a "4k camera", not fully understanding what any of that means.

It was a real "cinematographers" movie. La La Land was more "powerful" with it's imagery though. So over-all, it takes the cake in my view.

So disappointed in the nominations this year. Some movies simply don't belong on any of those lists and others like 'Jackie' have been snuffed. 'Hell or Highwater' gets a best picture and best screenplay nod? Are you kidding me? For cinematography, I'm stoked Bradford Young got recognized. The rest were shoe-in's, but I was concerned Bradford would be on the sidelines. Sadly, I don't think he'll win. :( La La Land is going to clean up. They'll sweep everything they're nominated for, which is pretty much everything. The other movie that was snuffed at the Golden Globes was Kubo. BY FAR the best Animation film in 2016, arguably the best animation film made in years. :sigh:

Technically "indy" means, the finances have nothing to do with distribution. They are "independent" and the filmmakers can go wherever they want to go.

You forget Richard, I'm not talking about an award winning feature-film director with successes under their belt. This ENTIRE DISCUSSION is about someone making their first movie. Everything I'm talking about is "in context" with that, even if I don't mention it every time I write something. Plus... you aren't making indy's Richard. If you're getting paid in advance by a distributor to make a movie, you've exited "indy" and moved on to another league. That's a positive thing, it means your successful enough to make a product and sell it, so bravo. Save the "indy" title for a bloke trying to make a feature with a crate of ramen noodles, fifty bux and an iPhone. :P You're right, my IMDB is horrible because I don't track people down and force them to put my name on the movies I've consulted on. I have a problem with those things and ya know what, I completely acknowledge it. It's the reason I don't have a great demo reel, because I forget to ask for a finished product for the movies I've worked on and loose the contact info for the client. I've worked on dozens of features and short subjects that aren't even on IMDB for one reason or another. I started 20 years ago and was out of the industry for 10 years! So yea... the credit list kinda sucks and I apologize for that. Maybe someday I'll have to re-trace my steps back in Boston and track down the people I worked with to get copies and credit for my work. Until then... my IMDB and demo reel... well, it makes me look like an idiot. :(

We just did a film with recognizable talent and we paid them a "day rate" because they liked the project. The documentary I did 3 years ago was stars from front to back and we paid them $150/day. They basically worked for free. When you live blocks from the stars, anything is possible. If you write "bit rolls" for your A- cast, maybe a 2 - 3 day shoot situation, you can get people to show up IF there is a good producer on board. You budget $1200/day for a A- actor and $500/day for a B+ actor. Anything over 5 days and/or A- actor being the "lead" and your screwed. Things get complicated very fast and actors will want distribution-crushing back end deals that can end a movie before it even begins. The key is to taylor your script for those bit rolls. This way you have "star power" on your poster, even if they're bit rolls. Again, you need ONE A- actor and ONE B+ actor in any project you do. You can get A'sh talent for SAG schedule F rate of $64k, but it's more complicated then that. It actually costs around $72k to have a top cast member on set for the entire length of production. You don't NEED greater then A-, but I've heard of A+ actors, working for less then $64k, with complete back-end deals. If they like your script, if they want to help you out, they will come. For sure not something you can bank on, but it does happen. Distribution advance? They don't exist for indy's. Earlier I said, you don't want a distributor to have any contract with you prior to the film being made. You want an "agreement" that the distributor will take your movie on IF it's made, but no more. The moment you sign advance agreements, prior to the film being made, you're screwed. Nobody is getting money for their movie up front. What you get is a distributor willing to risk $100k or so on P&A and hope for the best. On a $350k movie, you will need to make back $500k in order to break even. This includes paying off investors percentages, paying off key crew back-ends (deferred pools) and paying off P&A/E&O costs. $500k is a lot of money, but it's a lot easier to recoup. There are a dozen distribution methods available, each of which will whittle away at that number until it's gone. If your movie is a total, utter, gross failure, it will take years to get it all back, but it's doable. I can't imagine helming a multi-million dollar INDY movie, where the recoup is 3M or something like that. Making that back is very difficult and at that point, luck plays a MUCH bigger roll.

Ohh, 500k? HA! Yea, that's a tough market to be in. For indy's, you NEED to be in the SUB $250k market. The vast majority are made for under $150k and then fundraise another $50k or so for finishing, making the total amount under $250. Also, you wouldn't borrow money from banks, you would have private people put in money for X% returns on receipts. Most of the time you can secure money on cast deal memo's. You also need a distributor who can sign off and say they'd take the movie. Doesn't need to be a financial agreement, just something really basic. A top producer also needs to be on-board pre-financial agreement being made. Deal memo's for your crew also helps, again this is all part of a well made business plan. I'm talking about making stuff at the $250 - $350k budget range. If you go much over $350, the risk factor for investors goes through the roof and I fret their interest will wane. Crowd funding solves these problems, but you need to hire a full-time person to "produce" the crowd funding project, whilst you the filmmaker are focused on getting the movie prepared. I also don't think you can raise $250 - $350k via crowd funding without some huge pre-arranged donors. If you had $150k in the pot, that helps greatly. The script I'm writing now could be made for $250k, but I'm budgeting more like $350k.

The 5,1 mac pro's hold up really well to the trashcan. The biggest problem with them is the lack of support for modern processors. So they're stuck using the older series of proc's, which aren't bad, but CAN be very limiting. I'm a pretty huge fan of the 5,1's for post production and have been setting them up all around Hollywood and they work well. The great thing is that today, you can install something like a M5000 graphics card and get FAR better results with transcoding then the trashcan will ever get. Most people with trashcan's wind up doing external chassis and Titan-X graphics cards. 5,1 vs 4,1 is limited. There is a memory speed difference, but it's negligible in the grand scheme of things. I'd buy a low-power 2 proc 5,1 on ebay and upgrade the processors to the 3.43Ghz ones, which are the max you can do. You can start with a Titan X 12gb graphics card and see if it works for ya, it may. I personally like the 10,000RPM boot drives because they have less issues with cache's and swap files, which are a problem with SSD's. You can get 1tb, 10k boot drives for around $275 today. In terms of configuring the machine, the boot drive can go in the 2nd optical drive slot and you can put 4, 8tb drives into the 4 main drive slots. Titan-X 12gb in replace of the stock graphics card. Then above that, throw a blackmagic card for DaVinci output and a USB3.1 card, which just hit the market. If you're working with RED material, graphics card and CPU speeds are everything. I actually have a Red Rocket in my tower because I need to decode Red stuff on the fly in real time at 6k and you can't do that without some sort of hardware. That leads me to answering the big question. 4k Red Code? No problem with the Titan X 12Gb card. Red Code 5k? It's not flawless with the Titan X, it will jump around during playback in DaVinci in real-time render. 6k with Red Code won't playback in real time without a Red Rocket card, it just doesn't work. So I mean you COULD invest in a lower profile graphics card for the 2nd slot and put the Red Rocket X into the 12X slot, since it's a double hight card. The problem of course is finding a graphics cards that are half height that work well. Anyway, there are a lot of options, if you have any specific questions outside of those, I can do some tests on my bay to figure out stuff.

Fo' Sho! Some of them, but the project I'm writing now, is something that COULD be crowd funded very easily because it already has a built-in audience. So for ME it may work, but for others who don't follow the "formula" it may NOT work. I personally would rather find the money through one or two sources, then deal with crowd funding.

Failure is life tho... I mean, if you have a family and mortgage, this industry may not be the right one for you to begin with. Those of us who are lucky enough to be single and not a lot of overhead, we can focus more on creative works like a potential feature. Honestly, I have the resources to make a feature right now. If I had a script I loved in my hand that was fully developed, I could be in production this summer easily. The problem is, I'm just not happy with what I've written YET. I spent the latter half of 2015 and most of 2016 developing two scrips that I simply don't like. So I dropped them and started from scratch late last year and here I am a few months later with a whole new idea that I love. Maybe when the script is done I'll hate it, but for the time being, I'm completely infatuated with this new story. It's got some awesome legs and it's a semi-taboo subject that I've never seen anyone make a movie about. So I'm exploring some new ground which is always fun. I also have my short web series that I want to produce, so there is always something on the stove smoking. Ya know, I've had jobs for most of my life and the freedom of working freelance and being involved in the industry at the level I'm currently at, has been great. It takes a lot of skill and dedication to be here. I could be living in Boston where I'm from and not be "in" the industry at all. I've always wanted to work in the industry and here I am, living 2500 miles away from my family and friends, is hard. I will succeed (like many others) through sheer perseverance and when I have successfully written and directed a narrative feature that's in the theater, I may simply stop and do something else. I think like may others, that's my goal and I will pretty much die trying.

Quite right Phil. I'm kind of on the fence about the whole feature film thing. Part of me says it's stupid, like if you're a newbie with no connections, you'll fail no matter what. The other part of me says, if you're already in the industry, if you're already busy working around people who could easily help you put something together, then why not TRY. Humans are naturally storytellers. We WANT to tell stories and likewise, we want people to listen. The problem is, humans are also very visual-minded and what they have in their head, sometimes is difficult to put onto a visual medium, requiring all sorts of expensive tools and people. Plus, just because you CAN put your vision into a visual medium, doesn't mean anyone else wants to watch it. I struggle with that all the time when writing, I'll get a few treatments done of a story and realize, what the F.... nobody is going to watch this but me! LOL :) So if you have a story that IS worth telling, why not break it down in to bite sized chunks that are much easier to digest as a newbie filmmaker and simply make them on your spare time. If they're too complex, then maybe your vision needs to be toned back a bit to fall in line with something you CAN achieve. This is why I suggested much earlier, to have several scripts, one of which is simpler to make, so at least you can make SOMETHING. Those bite sized chunks you can give away, show people you've got the skills to make stuff and maybe over time you garnish work from your efforts, which eventually leads you to the right people and things start happening. I do think there is money to be had in the world of feature filmmaking, even for "Indy" filmmakers. It's just, you can't be living in some squat somewhere in the middle of nowhere. You've gotta be in NYC or LA, you've gotta spend years in the industry, getting to know people and them getting to TRUST you. A lot of being successful is EARNED TRUST and your connections that lead you down the right path. People just expect others to join their bandwagon on FAITH and the industry has better thing to do then waste it's time with that.

If you re-read, you'll notice I said "own the rights" which means, I would be the distributor. If you "sell" your asset to a distributor, you have no rights.

Video the problem, I think you'll see it right away. I think your issue is related to the height of the main sprocket. I bet it's slightly off and the film is following the guides and falling off the sprocket.

Yea, but, again they wouldn't have watched it otherwise... as in, the "filmmaker" or "studio" would have never seen their money. It's one thing to have someone very excited to watch something and download a handycam torrent of a theater capture way before the movie is even available on home video. It's another for someone to be intrigued about something, download it after it's been amortized and wind up enjoying it. Think of it a different way. I use to buy and sell used laserdisc's, right when DVD's first hit the market. I'd buy low and sell high. I made a profit off of the video's I sold and not a penny went back to the distributor/studio, yet it was 100% legal because I had a physical asset. If that asset changed hands 20 times before it was thrown away, each one of it's owners will have had the asset in hand and recouped their investment, meaning they watched the asset for free, without a penny going to the filmmakers. Think of it a different way. I rent a red box DVD and have 5 friends over to watch the movie. They aren't paying me for the viewing, yet 6 of us watched it. That's completely legal and only the viewing for ONE PERSON went back to the filmmaker... which is like 15 cents. Think of it a different way. For 30+ years, theaters would string one print through multiple theaters in order to avoid paying distribution fee's on multiple prints of the same movies. This was such a widely done thing, most projection booths had permanent rollers/guides in the ceiling. The studio's didn't make a DIME on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th or even 5th screening from that ONE print. I could go on all night about people "cheating" the system and it's NOT DIFFERENT then downloading online. Ohh and P.S. Richard... when I become a more successful filmmaker and control the rights to my work. I will personally put my movies on the torrents AFTER they've been amortized. Why? Because I know a lot of people wouldn't see my movies otherwise and I'd rather them SEE IT, then not. To me movies are more then just entertainment, they should move people and reveal something about themselves. This is more important to me then the simple financial aspects. As long as my investors aren't hurt, I'm cool with giving it away to a small group of people for free.

You'd think so... but that's only if the content they wish to watch is on Netflix... most of which is NOT. Not an excuse... but it's the reason many people steal.

Which is absolutely true. I've had lots of clips stolen from my videos and re-arranged to make other videos. I've been upset and peeved they'd do that, but the internet is out of control and I get that. I understand the benefits and detractors. Generally I won't put anything online, I'm not scared will be stolen and re-purposed. Right, but it doesn't matter. When Blockbuster had 9000 stores, it DID matter. That was close to a million dollars in revenue just from those stores. Since the early 2000's, there has been a steady decline as content has become worse and the big blockbusters, stealing all the limelight. Instead of there being 50 movies a year worth watching, there are now more like 5 - 10. So the revenue for all the little guys, just doesn't exist anymore. So the thought that someone who buys a $3.00 bootleg is taking $3.00 profits away from the asset owner, is a fallacy. If that $3.00 bootleg never existed, they would simply not see the movie. No, it was demolished by porn websites. I'm one of those strange guys who's not at all into porn. However, from what I've read, the industry died because of the internet and computers make the perfect porn watching devices. Ya don't really need a plot line... LOL Meh... you'd be surprised. I'm not going to incriminate myself or my friends, but I have reason for what I say. :)

What if they don't have basic cable services? People with money, don't bootleg. They have no reason to.

I'm in charge of a very heavily stolen archive of documentary films. We deal with people using the material from my archive in other projects on a DAILY basis. This includes, illegal DVD duplication, youtube/vimeo and even within videos they made. Does it hurt our bottom line? NO it doesn't do anything to our bottom line. In fact, we have garnished quite a lot of sales from poop being out there. Since we only sell direct to consumers, we talk to each of them and we always ask how they've heard of our products. More then 50% of the time, it's from a video they saw online that WE didn't post. My boss still fights to get the stuff taken down, but he wastes so much time doing so, he COULD be out making more movies. He doesn't see the benefit in the sales numbers that I do. Now... I'm disgusted with people making money illegally of other's copyrighted works. Those are called "bootlegs" and it's an entirely different business because now you've got physical assets that the police can use against you in a court of law. But people copy everything from books to paintings, from music to movies. The Chinese and Russians have no recourse, so it's a heavily popular thing to do in those nations and it trickles down to us. So yes, "bootleggers" need to be stopped, but cops turn a blind eye to a lot of them. It costs the state A LOT of money to fight them and even if they do, it doesn't stop anything. Another person will pickup right where they left off. I have physically seen this first hand, cops walking up to bootleggers and not taking them into custody. Literally turning a blind eye to the business because they know, there is nothing they can do. If people stopped killing each other, stopped running their vehicles into one anther, stopped hitting and causing domestic abuse, the cops may crack down on bootleggers. Until then, they've got more important things to do then worry about a poor guy who makes $20 bux a day off selling stolen movies. Think of it another way, do you honestly think that person spending $3.00 on a bootleg version of your movie, from the streets of NEW YORK, would buy your $19.99 DVD/BluRay? No, they wouldn't. Do you honestly think the fat kid eating a bag of cheeto's and drinking coke as he plays computer games, is really going to get off his ass and watch your movie in the theater? No he won't. So again... how do YOU loose? Your movie is watched by more people then it ever would be. Not saying those actions are "right" what so ever, they are WRONG, completely and utterly wrong. But THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT! Piracy and Bootlegging will ALWAYS be an issue and it always HAS been an issue. Lock'em up, throw away the key, but a good hacker will always win in the long run.

Honestly, I'm pretty up to speed on the piracy situation. If piracy does play a role in the decimation of the DVD/BluRay market (which I don't think it does at all), it's a very small percentile. One fun fact that people don't realize is; the piracy community is built upon laziness. These aren't people who would leave their house and watch your movie anyway. These aren't people who have netflix or Amazon video and choose NOT to watch content on those sites. These are people who separate themselves from the system entirely. The "industry" wants you to think piracy is a huge problem, but it's very tricky to pirate these days. Internet providers have gotten smarter about what ports torrent files use. Most on-demand pirate sites are full of add's and look like crap. The VAST majority of people who watch content, aren't going to deal with those issues in order to get it. They're going to go through the proper channels and they will pay for it. The fact 2016 was the highest box office receipts for decades, really shows piracy has zero effect on theatrical. The big problem is just availability of content. Most people simply want to watch something, they WILL PAY if it's available. The problem is, due to fighting in the industry (especially telco/cable/satellite), content accessibility has become difficult around the world. This is an environment where piracy can grow and it's the industries own damn fault. If they want to stop piracy dead in it's tracks, they would band together and put their fighting/differences aside and have a pay service that offered everything. Consumers would pay a flat rate per month for access. There would be commercials prior and post the show that were not stoppable or forward-able. It would insure people WERE actually watching those commercials instead of fast forwarding through them on their DVR. If they charged $30 - $50/month, people could cut their satellite and cable, only have internet and not need anything else. Thus, the total cost of watching content for the consumer would drop tremendously AND there would be FAR greater viewership. Imagine if 150 million people paid $30/month. That's 4.5 billion a month, thats 54 BILLION a year! That's less then HALF the population of the US and that's A LOT of money. Put add revenue in there and the revenue from buying set-top boxes designed for the service, you've got 60 - 70 billion dollar business. If only companies would work together... it's a pipe dream, but it's the ONLY WAY to stop piracy.

I personally don't see the Indy content being any worse then it was in previous years. I just see MORE Indy content being made, making it harder for the good one's to stick out. I would love to share with you the industry data I have, but I can't seem to find a site with it all laid out in a way that isn't so easy to punch holes through. Currently the data is supposition, rather then facts with graphics and charts. As 2017 moves along, the industry will release it's data for sure, it just takes time to organize everything. I've traveled the country in the last two years for projects and I've seen the devastation in the physical asset home video market. The only thing keeping it alive are the more rural areas where people don't use internet, satellite or telco for their movies.

Actually I got the data from outside of the production/distribution part of the industry. I got the data from the people who SELL DVD/Bluray. Obviously the TOP movies always sell, but the DVD/BluRay market use to be a great place for INDY's, which is what we're talking about here.

And get bombarded with haters? Safe to say, posting it would be a huge negative for me. Also, I threw it together very fast based on notes I took over the years. So I would like the opportunity to go through it and smooth things out, maybe update it a bit to 2017 data as the DVD/BluRay market tanked in 2016, something not referenced in the document. Maybe I'll make a youtube video and do it as a dialog and text based presentation.