Tyler Purcell

You really think a director wants to be doing paperwork? That's the job of the producer and if you have a shitty producer, you aren't going to make a good movie. Directors should be focused on creative side, not the business side.

Well, the F5 decked out is around $20k and the FS7 decked out is around $10k. So yes, the FS7 is lacking a few of the features you like about the F5 no doubt, but it's less of an investment for run and gun where the likelihood of it getting damaged is a lot higher. Plus the FS7 is already designed from the box to be hand held. When I mean run and gun, I literally mean camera on your shoulder with a nice classic broadcast zoom lens. I'd run all the audio wirelessly into the FS7 anyway, there is no reason for run and gun to have separate audio. When you're on sticks and you've got someone talking to the camera, then the F5 works fine. The URSA Mini is missing the filter wheel. It's an awesome feature to have for run and gun, but if you have the time to setup sticks, you have the time to shove a filter in the mattebox. It takes 10 seconds and it's not a pain at all. I have two ND's loaded in my mattebox filter holders all the time. Shove them in the mattebox and go to town. We've had the ol' pro res argument before. I do a lot of coloring with i-frame MPEG material and it's still nasty mess. If you want messed up blacks, if you want clipped highlights, if you want limited dynamic range, go ahead and shot your fancy "modern" codec's. For those of us who want quality, we shoot Pro Res XQ which is a 12 bit 444 codec OR Raw. Not great for a talking heads show, but then again, who knows what you'll be shooting and having the ability to fix problems in post is hyper critical. I can't imagine what I'd be doing if I didn't have RAW capture in my camera, I'd be so screwed.

Which is the scary part. That's why in my responses, I've given the ol' tried and true method, which is far more time consuming, but more likely to work. There is an absolutely formula to this and I've learned it from some of the top people in the industry, To me success is having a satisfying life living off your art. You can't do that however, if nobody wants to buy your art. Well, that's not exactly how it works. Again... it's all about connections. You sit at the dinner table across from someone who is in a higher position then you are. You get to know these people (especially on syndicated TV shows) and likewise, you will slowly move up the ladder. First its PA, next it's working in the grip team, then you move up into the lighting department and so on. As you do these moves, you make friends with lots of people, you go to their parties, you connect on linked in and facebook. Next thing you know, when it's time to make YOUR project, you've got all these great connections to help you out. One of your laundry list of people knows a financier, one of them knows a great publicist, another knows a sales agent, etc. Since this fictional character has been making shorts and music video's for fun in between gigs, they've got a portfolio that their facebook friends can share with others. People like the work, they see the filmmaker is talented and next thing you know stuff starts happening. This, by the way, is how MOST of the people got into the industry. Yes, even Spielberg was a set PA at one point. This is also not the 60's and 70's where you could climb over a fence and hang out on a studio lot all day, bumping into top people and them offering you a job. Doesn't work that way anymore. You don't need to be a major blockbuster to be successful. Selling a movie for more then it cost to make, getting a theatrical run, getting top billing VOD/DVD distribution and being able to secure financing for your next project as a result, that's a great definition of success. Yes, the film has to perform in the box office, but it doesn't need to be a "blockbuster" in any way. If it makes back what the distributor bought it for plus their expenses and some profit to boot, that's a huge win. There are three major festivals in the US, Sundance, Tribeca and South By Southwest. Those are really the only one's with qualified buyers. Getting into those festivals requires a sales agent. If you fill out the paperwork and submit it, you will be rejected. That's not hearsay, that's absolute fact. Getting a sales agent in the first place who is willing to talk with a no-name filmmaker with a $25,000 movie shot on a green screen, is the first hurtle. They have to truly believe your project will be vital to those festivals to put their neck on the line for you. A sheer bet film like 'Whiplash' or 'Beasts of No Nation', that sales agent doesn't have much to say and probably won't cost that much. Typical agents start at $5k and the bigger shows spend upwards of $50. Here is the worst part, if your sales agent fails to get your film into one festival, you don't get your money back and a lot of times, the word gets around about your rejection. Once your rejected from any one of those majors, it's hard to get into one of the other one's. Also, if your film gets in, but doesn't play well, you might as well throw it away. Now what about smaller US festivals? Well, they may not have qualified sales agents at them. So where you still need an agent for most of them, the likelihood you have a qualified buyer watching, is very slim. Most buyers will be intersected by sales agents to help promote your film to them, but it's up to them to sit down and watch. Again, if they stand up and walk away, throw your film in the trash and start over. The best thing that can happen is you spend the money on the agent, you get into one of the smaller festivals, the film is reviewed well and you leave unscathed. Winning awards with a feature film at a big festival, is the biggest pipe dream I've ever heard from a young filmmaker. It's like that 13 year old kid who's lost in life and says; "I wanna become president when I grow up", yea, yea kid likely story. Now, winning awards at a super small festival like one your home town puts on, well... that's a different story. I know many, not so great films that won awards because they were made by the local guy. In fact, I won an award for a little piece of poop I shat out 10 years ago called 'Baglady Dairies'. We submitted it to a small festival in New England (forgot the name) and it won best comedy because the actress was from there. She submitted the film without me even knowing, but I bet only a few people watched it. So if you're the big fish in the small pond, maybe you can win something. However, finding a buyer at those festivals is not going to happen. The worst part is, the US market may not be the right one for your film. There are HUGE festivals in other countries which may suit your project more, but the cost of dealing with them is astronomical. If you take the festival route, you can easily spend tens of thousands dealing with it, for what? In my eyes, festivals are a complete waste of time for an ultra low budget feature. They're great for decent budget films where the filmmakers have a lot left over to hire the right people to make it worth while. Even my $500k feature budget, doesn't cover festivals... that's because I think it's crazy to do so unless you've got the next big hit under your belt. Dude, I was just like you when I was 16. I was like screw hollywood, I hate that place. I wanted to make all my movies in Boston, which by the way back then, had a thriving filmmaking community. This was pre internet, pre digital, pre all of that crap and we had a great time producing stuff. Yet it took me moving here 8 years later to realize I was wrong all that time. I actually made a huge mistake thinking I could make stuff on my own, without real actors, without a real crew, without some help on the script, without excellent post production. I learned a huge lesson and it took me what, 10 years of living here to figure poop out and make it work. I wish all those years ago I had just been willing to start at the ground level and take any film set work because THAT's where you grow. I was too naive and full of myself to accept it and I look back on that as being a huge mistake. The most humble people on a film set are the people who are eventually successful. At least playing the lottery isn't very expensive. Making a feature film is not just expensive cost wise, but also time wise. I learned years ago that time is money. So if you spend 5 years making something that you only sell for $50k... you've lost A LOT of money. So even if you you pass all these tests. Your film is made and it's good. You get into a top festival, you get awards. You find a buyer who will give you 2x it's value and throws it in the theaters. That doesn't guarantee you anything really. In fact, from my experience working with some pretty heavy hitters, you're most likely going to be successful outside of your own small, self funded productions. Why? Because the industry is fickle and what's in vogue, may not be the next and that includes you. Industry people don't like outsiders, even if they made a good product. You're still considered an outsider unless you somehow are connected to tinsel town. Says you... I did it. A lot of the guys on this forum have done it. I said what you need to do, but you simply refuse to believe it, even though most of the top filmmakers have used my methods to be successful. Just start typing names and doing research, you will find their short films and you will find out a lot of them worked at PA's. Well, you aren't going to be a PA for long if you're smart, but I understand your point. A backup plan is huge, but a backup plan which is bigger then your A plan, isn't wise because you can get stuck doing it like I did. Getting months away from work to make a movie is very hard, especially with so many qualified people who can fill your shoes. So it's something to think about. If you want a job in hollywood I've worked on many shows with kids, the paperwork isn't a big deal. Parents fill it out in advance and you write a check to the parents. Not only that, but you don't have to shoot in down town Los Angeles. There are so many areas that nobody cares about, it's actually pretty damn easy to make something here once you know how. The benefits of shooting in a small urban town are pretty nice, no doubt about it. If you aren't flying in big actors and lots of crew members, then who cares. However, once you add the expense of a real crew and decent cast, which are necessary items for selling your movie, then the logistics become very complicated and costly. So from my experience, it's far better to shoot where the actors live, so they can get in their car, drive to set and home again every day. If it means I'm limited to my locations in order to have better actors, then so be it. Actors are #1, they are what people watch and if you can make a film with decent actors in Los Angeles vs no-names in Ohio, for the same money... which one would YOU choose?

If you have the money, you can't go wrong with the F5, it's a fantastic looking camera that doesn't have the issues of it's little brothers. I shot some interviews with one few years ago and was very happy with the results. Where I wouldn't use one for run and gun, for more static stuff it's perfect. For run and gun, it's nice to have something made for that kind of shooting. As much as I completely dislike the FS7's recoding formats and highlight clipping issues, it's a better camera for run and gun then the F5. I will also mention the Blackmagic Ursa Mini 4.6k. The only thing it's missing is the filter wheel, which in my opinion is only worth while on run and gun. If you're shooting in a controlled environment, you can use a mattebox and filters no problem. Now I know I'm MR Blackmagic, but the camera does look amazing and if you can save money on the body, so you can buy better glass, it's worth while. I'm also from the camp that in todays world, a camera should shoot two formats; RAW and Pro Res. What flavor of raw is up to the manufacturer as; Red Code, Cinema DNG and arriraw have their pro's and con's. But Pro Res in my view is a necessity and the F5 can record RAW and Pro Res with an expensive add on. I guess my point is, why spend all that money on a camera body as a compete F5 package is VERY expensive.

ROFL!!! Yea, I do like typing... keeps me busy between renders! Tho I must admit, not much rendering today! Waiting for client approval. YEAY!

Yes, I think the one thing we can ALL agree on, is there are many ways to make and release a product. The difference in my philosophy and yours, is that you depend on a strike of lighting to be successful. Everyone who sells DVD's, sells Criterion today, our film will absolutely be sold at Target and Walmart on the shelf in the eye line of the consumer passing by. My earlier point was that those lower-end DVD distributors don't get that placement. Their films are generally located in a different place like the $4.99 bin. Besides, Criterion are releasing it on VOD as well, so that's iTunes and Netflix as well. You aren't going to make much money off a DVD sitting in the $4.99 bin. Well it sounds like you've got some VFX experience. I don't understand why you'd make s $25,000 film with all that experience. You could be making 6 figure salary here in Los Angeles doing VFX work. If you know the main programs fluently; Nuke, Maya, Cinema 4D and After Effects, you can get HUGE bank living here. But wait... you said you're not doing any modeling work. So is the only thing your doing adjusting pre-made models, compositing them in AE with green screen elements? Umm... Yea, but you say that now and the difference will be night and day. Your movie will look like a video game and in the top guy's movie, you won't be able to tell the difference. Dude, GPU's are fast for ray tracing, but when you add global illumination, GPU's can't deal with the processing due to the lack of memory. Even the 12GB memory cards like the Titan X and Z, are still very limited compared to a bunch of CPU's. I've done the tests as I've built 3 render farms for clients who make product that's on broadcast television. A good render engine, extremely fast multi-threaded CPU's, with gobs of memory, can process complex tasks at a speed a few GPU's can only dream of. If all you do is simple ray tracing like video games, then GPU's are WAY faster then CPU's. This is why ALL of the effects houses use CPU based render farms. You mention 4k and 6k, but even for 2k to make the lighting/grading look realistic, requires much more processing time then you let on. Most of the work I've been involved with was all done at 1920x1080. Right, but who said anything about millions of dollars. How about recouping $500k, which is a reasonable budget for a feature that COULD get some serious attention if done right. Yes it's true that many films never get distribution, some of them are very good. At the same time, I think you'll find those filmmakers worked forwards not backwards. As many of us have said during this and other threads, you have to work backwards first. Find a sales agent first, find out what they want and what they'd do with it. How much money can they get for XYZ property. Once you learn those things, then you can write a script around what they want AND the kind of actors you can afford. Keep the agent in the loop the whole time and sell the product to investors as already having some sort of distribution. Plus, the market changes yearly, so what people want in 2015, isn't necessarily what people want in 2017. You have to predict the future and you also have to be able to make a film FAST. It's also good to make something that directly competes with another property, 'Miles Ahead' and 'Born to be Blue', both films about extremely similar topics, releasing this year. THAT's how you think a head, that's how you get your film released because you can build on the buzz of another film. The low-budget community has been doing that forever and it honestly works. The other way is to make a passion project that nobody will see. Far better to take your passion and make it into a short film that could lead to something bigger. Just look at 'Whiplash', it's a perfect example of this. Non filmmakers, started with a great short and next thing they know, nominated for oscars. In my eyes, that's not "luck", that's just something done right and those guys DIDN'T have any money. They just knew the story they had was unique and could work well. Networks won't talk with you, I'm sorry, but they won't. The only way for a no-name to get a product on television these days is to start with a high-budget web series that you fund with your high paying job. You bring in some top hollywood crew people to make it, including writers and a producer. They get all excited and into the series, share it with all their industry friends and the next thing you know, you're off on a roll. What happens is one of those people on your top crew, is someone way high on the food chain. They take 5 minutes out of their day to watch a few seconds of your show because they saw it on facebook and if they like it, you may have something worth while. The problem is, making a killer multi-episode youtube series like the ones that were picked up, is hardly easy. The examples you gave earlier were ALL from people who were industry insiders already and spent millions on those series. Giving them away for a year or two and then finally getting broadcast distribution. What you don't understand about ANY of this stuff is that your crew... they don't have connections man. They are going to bodies, turning knobs and doing what you say. Do you think top industry people are on their facebook, linked in or twitter pages? I don't think so man. You pay for the good crew as marketing man. I'm facebook friends with a top cinematographer who posts constantly about his projects, his rate is worth it's weight in gold because his facebook friends are ALL the other people he's worked with. Meaning... HUGE filmmakers who will see your little project on his feed. I mean that sort of promotion is invaluable and again, IMPOSSIBLE to get if you aren't in the industry so to speak. I've been prepping a feature film for most of 2015 and our cast decision was based solely on facebook and twitter followers. One of the actresses had 15 million subscribers and the other had 50 million. Sure, the one with 50 million was going to be more expensive, but dude... 50 million people will hear about your little movie. Again, this is the power of working in Los Angeles. You'd have to import everyone to Ohio to even get close to making those kinds of connections and frankly with a low budget, how can you do that? Talking about a $25,000 indy movie vs a multi-million dollar hollywood movie. Nobody is going to press more then a few thousand of an indy movie. So lets say they press 5,000 total, that's a pretty reasonable number. That means only 5,000 people will ever see your movie, right? How is that worth while in the grand scheme of things? Even if they pressed a million disks, if your show is good and you can promote it somehow, you could have millions of hits online right? Sure, its lower paying, but you'll have more viewership. This goes back to my point above about marketing and advertising. If all your money goes into making your product and you don't have high end crew who have connections to help your project succeed, if the only way of seeing your product is in the $4.99 bin mixed with with top hollywood films... umm, starting to see the picture? How can you give ANY advice about living in Los Angeles? It's like me giving advice on sky diving. I know a lot about it, I've watched videos, met people who dive constantly, been in the planes, done everything BUT actually jump out of one. Until you jump... and I mean by yourself, not tethered to someone, you don't know jack poop about it. All your advice is based on "book knowledge", so my analogy is spot on. Landon, to truly know what it's like here and what it's like to work in the film industry, you have to take that jump. You've gotta leave your home town, you've gotta get a place here and you've gotta figure out how to make it work. Now earlier in this thread I did say, it's a smart idea to come here with some products under your belt. I also said you've gotta move here with A LOT of money. I don't recall how much I said then, but bare minimal $10k. You've also gotta have a job right when you land, which is tricky, but absolutely doable if you work hard to make it happen. If you can barely afford to pay rent and survive, living in a non-industry town, you aren't going to be a successful filmmaker. As someone pointed out above, why are you going to school if you wanna make movies? They are two polar opposite things to be doing and frankly, pieces of paper don't mean jack poop in the entertainment industry. Your resume will be a one sheet with all the shows you've worked on. Even if all those shows are short subjects; commercials, promo's, trailers, educational, narrative/documentary, it doesn't matter. Nobody is going to be watching them, all they want to see is your IMDB has some credits and if you're applying for a creative position, what your demo reel looks like. So... what do you really wanna do? Teach business or make movies?

Right, on his midi keyboard. Just what audiences want to hear. Royalty free music has one caveat, it's not "free" if you're selling the product that it's associated with. I've worked with almost all the music houses; Mega Tracks, Freeplay Music, Premium beat, etc... These guys charge a lot of money if you SELL the movie to someone else. If you self distribute on Youtube, the licensing is very different. Once you hit a permanent media format or any theater, the pricing will skyrocket. This is why most people do their own score, but for $2500 that's really hard to do outside of a midi keyboard and samples.

Looks like the books you read are out of date. I don't believe any of these movies did better on DVD then theatrical. http://www.the-numbers.com/home-market/dvd-sales/2015 Plus the one thing you keep failing to realize is that those numbers mean jack poop. Disney spent almost 200 million advertising Inside Out. So yes no poop it's going to sell a lot of disks. The measly return they made on DVD's is NOTHING compared to the 856M they've done so far world wide. No movie is going to do well on DVD without a huge advertising campaign and a DVD-only distributor isn't going to invest much. It's already changed dramatically. The big retail/rental companies are out of business (yes Red box and Netflix are still moving along). Most of the big duplication houses I use to a lot of business with (media distributors in Chicago) closed their doors. In fact, the house I'm using now was so happy to get our little DVD run because he said "We're going to have to blow dust off our dvd glass mastering machine". Big multi-million disk releases, they have huge contracts with the biggest duplicator houses and resellers already in place. They get top row placement on the extremely limited "home video" section of the stores. I've been to Walmart, Target, Best Buy and many other stores looking for DVD's since they came out in the late 90's. What I see is a collapsing market both in the stores and from the people I talk to who make disks. Yes, there are still some speciality stores who have tens of thousands of titles, but the vast majority of standard retail establishments, only carry first-run releases today; TV, Documentary and narrative. Our Walmart and Target stores have maybe a few hundred disks + a box somewhere in an isle full of $4.99 disks. It's funny because sometimes you catch a jem in that box, an old movie that hasn't been remastered, the distributor just clearing inventory. Having been on the ground level during the demise of VHS and Laser Disk, I can say once more, DVD is dying fast. It's dying so fast, every time I go to the store looking for a disk, the home video section gets smaller and smaller. Mind you, that's here in LA... which is one of the biggest markets in the US. I'm sure in smaller towns, especially not media rich ones, things will be different. The distributors will place product where they think it will sell. So bravo, your movie will be at Walmart in your home town, but will it be anywhere else? I have made a feature that got distributed and no, it will never be in the $4.99 bin because Criterion doesn't go that low. I also work with people every day who have made features that got distributed (so to quite a few people on this forum). So does it make me more qualified then Richard? No... of course not and I listen to him. But it sure as hell makes me more qualified then someone who hasn't even made ANYTHING from start to finish. Wanna know a little trick I learned years ago... if you're reading books, you aren't making movies. ;) Better to just go out and make product, doesn't matter what it is, then to claim you CAN make product. IMDB is a bit confusing. We did one week releases in those countries you see online, plus a few more that weren't listed. So the film festival got us in the door and we just stayed there and 4 walled for a week. The NYC and LA screenings were a joke in comparison, our film doesn't hit the US market well, it's very much a european film. We've done more screenings in France and Germany then we've done in english speaking countries, literally dozens of them. So yes, we've had A LOT of people see it. Heck, the BBC reviewed it on national television for gosh sakes! In terms of numbers, it's a rough guess based on the audience figures per week. In Europe we paid for screenings, had great advertising through the theater and got our money back. Here in the states it was a bit harder, theaters don't go to bat for smaller films like they use to. So when you 4 wall here, you've gotta do a lot more advertising, which is costly. We tired, but unfortunately the screenings here haven't been good. We may have received a few thousand over the two weeks in NYC/LA and the other random screenings. We've also shown the movie to sold-out screenings at many film schools, those numbers were factored in to that "few hundred thousand" final number. Now that Criterion is distributing it on disk and VOD, we should finally be seeing some money coming back after spending everything we had. I'll be honest, I wasn't in love with our final product. It has good moments, it has a great story that flows well, but like most films, we ran out of money and had to go with what we had. What saved us in the long run was the all-star cast and the subject matter, (history of a famous filmmaker) which hits home for some people who know his work. I personally wouldn't do another doc like this again, especially without more money. I don't know the final figure, but I think we spent around $90k. I can't imagine how any of those statements are accurate. I'm not an idiot, it costs tens of thousands of dollars for software and more then a few years of book reading to learn how to do things properly. It also takes a massive amount of computing power, not one CPU with a few GPU's. Most of the facilities I've set up have huge render farms and even lower resolution jobs can take upwards of 10 minutes per frame to render. The complexity of each frame makes a huge difference and it can take 100's of re-renders to get a shot perfect. This is why people hire visual effects houses to do the work because those people have invested in not only render farms, but people who have done high-end visual effects work for years. I've also seen a lot of "do it myself" VFX projects and some of them are very good. But when you back track and read what those filmmakers have made in the past, you realize they've been at it for decades and most of them use the rendering resources at their VFX jobs. Biggest thing I've learned in my few years doing this is that betting on a "technology" as your distribution method isn't smart. DVD is a last resort, not a number one distribution method. Why is that? Because in todays modern world, if you aren't shoving content in people's faces, they aren't going to find it. How many people really buy stuff out of that $4.99 bin? If you sell to the lowest grade audience, who finds your product passively, how in any way is that going to help? If your film was good, you could put it on youtube and maybe get a million views. I doubt any distributor will press more then a few thousand DVD's for someone's first feature. Well again, people won't tell you the truth online or news sites. They don't want you to know the nitty gritty, that's what they get paid for, why would they tell you? Books are also suspicious because things change so fast in this industry, you read a book written a few years ago, even if it's published now, things are very different today then they were back then. People even try to amend their books prior to publication because everything is so in flux, but a lot of times they don't bother. Remember, all people want to do is take your money. They could care less if the "education" they're giving is accurate. It's not their job to give you accurate information, if they did, you could do everything on your own and bypass them.

I assume they can... as I know many people who do. Helps to have a significant other you can share the rent with. Otherwise, you can find cheap places all around L.A, it's just a matter of living in crappy neighborhoods. Some people don't mind as they've dedicated themselves to their work, others... well, I couldn't do it. I'll say this much, I'm not one of those start from the ground level up kinda guys either. That's because I had too many opportunities to do other positions when I came here, like be a cinematographer on a feature film. If you've listened to the podcast, you'll hear about the truth behind his success, which again doesn't mirror what you're doing. It's a very good discussion and straight up truthful, especially about him shooting 35mm on his first feature to separate it from the digital films and how he bumped into people who helped him get things rolling. It's one of the many things Richard did right on his first feature, he made it simple. Once you start adding green screen and visual effects, the budget is more and more seen on screen. For example, a movie made entirely in camera may have a few photographic elements that are lower-budget, but if the cast is good and the script isn't bad, you can polish it pretty good and make it look like a movie with much higher value. Once you add a great deal of FX, things become much harder to cover up. Your lack of budget can't be covered up anymore. Sure, walmart 4.99 buyer may offer you a few thousand dollars, but most people will walk away. How are you affording music or sound effects licenses? I mean, the last feature I finished, we spent more then $25k on music and licensing clearances alone. Well, there are a few things you should know about that. First off, I've been doing this for 25 years and 15 years ago, IMDB wasn't really the place it is today. People didn't post stuff on there and to get things posted as "completed", you must have proof they existed. So it's hard to find a tape or film print and get it on a computer in order to prove it's existence to IMDB. Since I left my Boston production job 14 years ago, I don't have copies of those projects I did there. Sure, I have a few of the one's I was more attached to, but most of them are lost to the sands of time unfortunately. Today things are very different and most stuff is posted on IMDB. Not to say any of those credits are features, because it's mostly TV work, but still my IMDB doesn't reflect half of what I've done, including TWO documentary features that I started and were finished by the financiers. Second... "A Fuller Life" was very much MY film from start to finish, yet I didn't get producer credit. Why? Because the director, one of my best friends, hired someone to help produce and part of her contract said nobody else could get that credit. So even though she left the film the moment it was finished, leaving us to deal with securing distribution, she got the credit and I didn't. Welcome to the reality of the film industry, just because you do a certain job, doesn't mean you'll be credited for it. Third, I haven't made a feature narrative yet because unlike you, I refuse to make one with no money. Having worked on dozens of no-low budget films, I just refuse to do it that way. I'm going to use my sales agent friends, we're going to produce a script together, something they know is sellable and we're going to find the money and make the movie. It's a long road, but it's one that I will get back to later this year. In the meanwhile, I'm busy making money and enjoying myself here in LA. Here is the difference Landon, I make money doing what I love to do which is make visual media content. Most freelancers would eat their own shoe to have consistent work like I've been very lucky to secure. Yes, most of it is commercial, promo and educational, but it keeps me shooting, editing and finishing constantly. Every shoot I try new things and get paid to do so. That kind of leeway is tremendous and it's hard to find in hollywood, but I've taken a substantial pay decrease, plus huge stress level, to make it work. If you think making a 60 episode educational series is less tricky then making a feature, you're bonkers. The difference is; the stuff I produce will be seen by millions and the ultra-low budget feature you make will probably be unwatchable and even if it IS watchable, very few people will ever see it. In the two years it will take you to make the feature, I will have shot around 50 different projects, every one with different genera's, different cast/crew and meeting new people every day. To me, that's the most important part because if you're just focused on one project long term, it will take you decades to reach the level of someone who is constantly working on new things, be them short, or not. This is another reason I haven't yet made a feature. It does take three years and it does occupy most of your time, something I'm not quite capable of doing yet. Hopefully soon though! Again, the film I made "A Fuller Life" was screened in theaters in NYC and Los Angeles. It was also shown around the world in 8 countries, translated into 6 languages and now we struck a deal for Criterion distribution. Our little film has already been seen by hundreds of thousands just during the theatrical screenings, it was well received and the director and I are very proud of what we accomplished with very little money. Our film won't be anywhere near Walmart or Target and if it ever winds up in the $4.99 bin, I will consider that a failure.

It's more about mixing the film in 5.1 and stereo. About exporting splits. About native and foreign language subtitles. About paying for clearance documents. Plus, iTunes round trip costs around $2k. I just did one, that's the going rate today. If you do Netflix, Amazon and Hulu at the same time, most companies will strike a deal since they mostly use the same delivering companies. You can get away with all this for under $5k if you do all the work yourself, including subtitles. However, once you hit foreign markets, you need to pay for translation subtitles. Depending on if you go to Asia (huge market) you could need English, Spanish, German, French and Italian subs right off the bat. Very few distributors are willing to do the subs for you, but I've seen it done before. Each language is around $1500 bux for a feature film, plus the encoding. These are the reasons why the cost just skyrockets. Now if you just sell your film to a Walmart DVD distributor, they don't care about any of these things really.

Ohh you're absolutely right, $50k is absolutely fantasy from a small distributor, but so is making a feature for $25k and it being good enough for distribution. I've worked with top distributors including Criterion and if your movie is good enough to sell (AKA they feel it's a good fit for their catalog), they will promote it, but they don't pay you a dime for it up front. It's a gamble, but again getting "free" marketing is pretty good and the percentage isn't too bad either. Obviously there are other channels for distribution, but without marketing (something the DVD distributor does), it's nearly impossible to connect viewer to product. Sure there is the "accidental purchase" and maybe a few hits on Netflix (who buy the way, will buy a crappy movie for $10k) or iTunes (which is costly to deliver to). What new people to the industry don't realize is that, a good percentage of your budget, needs to be spent on marketing/promotional and distribution. It costs quite a bit of money to meet the delivery specs AND deliver to VOD companies. I've worked on films that blew their wad on meeting the spec and then not having the money to submit.

Color negative is color negative and reversal is positive.

SO what does a $25k of production and post production budget actually get you? I mean honestly.. what does your budget look like? Dude, it's a toy. I shot and edited a feature made with the Canon D5MKII and I'm editing a feature right now shot with the GH4. I know what the cameras look like, I'm very familiar with them. It's not dissing you, it's just not going to look like anything a buyer would be interested in. It's called being logical, it's not elitist. Truth of the matter is, you can make anything you want, using any camera you want. That doesn't mean anyone will want to watch what you make. I'm not saying it's impossible to make something good for no money ($25k is no money in this town), I'm saying it's a road block that some of the most talented people haven't been able to crash through. RED, HA! Actually, I don't own a fancy digital cinema camera. I refuse to 'buy-in' because technology is moving so fast, what you buy today will be obsolete tomorrow. It doesn't matter though, my blackmagic pocket cameras are perfectly fine for 90% of what I shoot, which is commercial, promo, documentary and short subject pieces. Heck the feature we're shooting now, already has a distribution deal and it's 80% Blackmagic 2.5k and 20% Blackmagic pocket. For the bigger shows, I have film equipment which works great. I don't see the point in shooting any narrative you take seriously on digital, but thats because I've seen some pretty good low budget digital narrative films not get recognized BECAUSE they're digital. By contrast, even small things shot on film get huge recognition, even if they aren't very good. Not saying it has any impact on a $25,000 budget feature, but it's absolutely one of the biggest reasons I don't go out and shoot a feature tomorrow. Making your product stand out is harder today then it's been for quite sometime and "film" adds that extra layer. What's funny is that 15 years ago before I moved here, I believed the same things you did when it comes to simply making a feature. I wrote a pretty kick-ass feature that was my calling card to Los Angeles. Yet, I didn't make it because I realized there was more to this game. Just living here opens up your eyes to new possibilities and you realize, hey... there is more to this game. But what do I know... I've just shot and edited award-winning feature and short films.

Yea well, again you have limited experience on this subject. Adrian already gave some great examples of the people he's met on accident and how it's allowed his career to take off. It has nothing to do with meeting an executive, those people don't talk to you. It has to do with meeting someone just like you, another filmmaker who maybe has better connections then you do. It's about meeting 50 of those guys and they're easy to find because they're everywhere! If you're humble, outgoing and have the gift of gab, you will build relationships fast. Everyone has an "industry' business card on them, from the truck drivers to the VP's. They hand them out like they're free and if you stay in contact with them, if you kindle the fire so to speak, things will come of it. Most of your time is playing this ground game, talking with people in person, going to parties, going to screenings, just being visible all the time. Another part is always having a film in production on IMDB, which is why short's are so awesome. Just keep banging them out, so your facebook page is full of new/up to date on-set pictures, so your IMDB is growing fast, so your linked in page and personal website makes you look like you're in a thousand different places at once. Then when you hand someone your business card, and visa versa, you can look at each other and see what it's all about. This kind of networking is only done on the streets of Los Angeles, nowhere else can you do this and honestly, it's critical. One thing I learned years ago is that telephone calls don't mean poop anymore. People in this industry won't trust you until they know you personally OR know someone personally who can vouch for you. So you can be remote all you want, it doesn't work to the level you think it does, especially if you have nothing to backup your claims. This is the game we play, this is how you play it, there is really no other way unless you are a tradesmen. As you said, those jobs can be done everywhere and anywhere. Though "specialists" are generally based out of entertainment capitols like Los Angeles, San Fransisco, New York, Chicago, Georgia, etc. Well, television is an entirely different industry. Sure, single camera television drama's mimmic how films are made, so the "crew" are the same. But the television industry itself, is very different. If you want to be in television, you should get a job as an assistant for a successful producer and learn. You need to learn what a real TV producer does, you need to shadow them. This is actually possible here in L.A. It may take you a while to find the right person, but that's how you start. Once groomed, it's very easy for that person to recommend you to a network where you can get a job as a junior producer and work your way up the ladder. I know many people who have followed this route to success, one of them literally just left my house, she works for Disney and started as an assistant, now is lead producer for disney TV animation and she can't be a day over 30 years old. Pretty amazing if you ask me! But that story I hear constantly. It's a burn out job, but man does it pay well and eventually you can be a show runner, producing your own content. Otherwise, taking the short road like you want can be two fold. One... you succeed and you continue making products. Two you fail miserably and everyone who sees your products are turned away. Well, that's the truth. You can ask anyone who's been successful in the film industry and they have the same story, including myself. Everyone has worked hard and moved up the latter to be where they are today. What!?! What are you talking about? You won't get into festivals OR win awards without making a commercial viable product. How many festivals have you been to? Dude, this idea you have is delusional. I think Richards first feature cost a million dollars, you'll have to ask him, but that's what it says online. You can do a lot for a million dollars, you can do a lot for $500k, but you can't do much with $25k.

That would be correct and guess what, that's probably never going to change. There are PLENTY of indy films represented on the open market every year. May I remind you that Whiplash almost won an oscar and you don't get more indy then that. In 2015 there were quite a few internationally distributed indy films. The problem is, when you live in Ohio, you don't even know they exist. Why would any theater chain bother brining indy films to your town? There is just no reason. If they want to make money, the focus on the big cities that have several art houses. Again one of the benefits of living in Los Angeles, there is an audience for pretty much anything. It's true that most of his films have been made in Texas, but thats because he made a studio for himself. He wants to work around home and I don't blame him, it's why I like Los Angeles. Plus, he is absolutely in the minority. There are very few people like him in this country and most of them live in media-rich cities. There are literally thousands of sources for financing within a 50 mile radius. You can take 3 meetings a day for months without hitting up everyone. Plus, you find financing in the strangest of places. As Adrian said earlier, you literally bump into people at screenings and next thing you know, your film is financed. So yea, being here is a HUGE benefit to the financial aptitude of your product. It doesn't make it any easier, but it does open up a lot more doors. Absolutely, but what you're looking for isn't a one-time payment. You should be looking for a partnership (executive producer), someone who can help finance every movie you make. That's one thing that's much harder to do with a bunch of redneck doctors who you're about to screw with your first movie. And you really can't write, prep, shoot, edit, finish and distribute much of anything worth while with a decent cast for much less then $500k. In fact, most of the ultra-low indies I work on are in the 1.5 - 5M ranges. As anyone with a modicum of experience knows; 6 minutes of outstanding content, trumps 90 minutes of crappy content. Not only are there many short film festivals, but there are qualified buyers at those festivals, looking for the next big guy. You may not get them to watch your 90 minute drama shot on a handicam in your backyard, made for a few peanuts, but you will get them to watch your 6 minute short with all that money on screen where it belongs. 10 peanuts go a lot further with 6 minutes of content then they do with 90. Now it's true, once you've proven yourself to be a competent filmmaker, then it's easy to show people what you've done and find a producer with feature credits to help nurse the longer project along. People are so fixated on feature-length, they're almost blinded by the reality; they first need to find tune their skills as a filmmaker, before breaking into a much bigger project. Doesn't matter if it's a short, music video or 60 second advertisement. In reality, quality is #1 and the only thing that matters to an agent. If the content you produce is going direct to Walmart, no agent with any clients is going to talk with you. Remember, agents are just like actors, most really suck and the top ones get all the good jobs. The goal isn't to get "an agent" the goal is to produce such amazing products, you attract a top agent who can place you into a position knowing you'll do a good job. What? no support? Hogwash! There is more support here then anywhere else in the country, maybe the world. If you need a gaffer with a grip truck for a few hundred dollars a day, there are 50 of them waiting for your call. If you need a camera for almost nothing, there are rental houses willing to negotiate. Everything you could possibly need is here and ready for you, including jobs on set, where you can work from now until you're tired of it. No filmmakers are working in fast food, they're out busy working on projects OR have some sort of a normal full time job. It's the actors who fill the coffee shops, only because they have flexible hours for casting calls. Best thing about Los Angeles when it comes to jobs is that if you like filmmaking, and you're good at a particular task, you can work your way up the ladder as a tradesman pretty quickly. Yes, you have to be outgoing to do that, work long hours and sometimes at super crazy times of the day, but it's absolutely possible and happens every day, if it's what you want.

Sure and MOST major cities have movies being made in them. However, most of the creative crew and billing cast for those major productions don't live in Cincinnati, they're usually flown in from all over the place. So even though you see a production and it's all exciting, you can't live there and work full time on films, as a creative, like you can here in California or New York. Even though the resources exist, (like they do in most modern cities) working the deals and birthing the project, needs to be done in one of the capitols of the industry. I do know the advantages of shooting in small towns, I grew up shooting in one. I get the whole idea behind it and appreciate it's benefits for the simple act of production. However, making a movie isn't just about production, it really isn't. Production itself is a small part of the over all birth of your product and when those guys are done in your town, they will go back to Los Angeles or New York to "make" and "sell" the movie, which are the two most critical parts. Plus, your examples are from movies with multi-million dollar budgets, where filmmakers could go anywhere they choose. Please, tell me what little indy filmmaker has made and sold their movie 100% out of Ohio, that I could or can see in the theaters. The list of movies made and sold out of California each year is... well over a few hundred. If that's not an indication of where you need to be, I honestly don't know.

Of course they do, but they won't give you anything for it. If you walked up to them and said they could buy your property for $50k, they may do it if all your ducks are in a row. But they'd rather make it themselves because they're a factory. They have contracts to sell at place like Target and Walmart, but that doesn't mean much. You the filmmaker won't make a dime in those sectors. What you fail to realize is that the $4.99 bin at Walmart is where movies go to die. Those are NOT success stories and if your goal is to wind up there, that's a pretty limited goal. Plus, who would ever fund your next film if your last film is in the $4.99 bin just sitting there? Well the truth is, nobody. My goal is to explain how it actually works, not what you think happens, but what actually happens. You have admittedly zero experience in this arena, so to sit here and say my goal is different then your goal is just ridiculous. Everyone who wants to make movies as a filmmaker, wants to see their movie on the big screen at a normal theater. That's the goal everyone should take when making a product because it's the right goal. If you don't achieve it the first time around, so be it, but at least you tried hard and maybe missed out one thing. But to sit here and say what you've been saying... you'll make a $25,000 feature with a toy camera, non-pay crew and no known actors, which somehow leads to future success? If all you want is IMDB credits, that's one thing. If you want a bigger budget for your next project, that's the wrong way to go. There are already thousands of finished films at the market with actual known actors in them, shot on big fancy cameras, with actual budgets, with a story that's sellable, all of them way in front of you. All of that to say, the "disagreement" is that you have a lot to learn. Richard didn't even want to respond to you because he probably is busy making movies... and I'm only doing it because I'm an educator and I'm waiting for a render to finish again. Welcome to living in So Cal. You can get a job as an extra and PA no problem at all. Every one of my friends who moved here, landed off the plane and were working as PA's for $125/day the very next week. There is so much production here, there are literally not enough people willing to work for that low of a rate, for 16hr days. They beat you up badly, but hey, you're in the credits of a major feature film!

Yep, that's absolutely right. One of the big problems is that the people who buy finished products, give you brownie points for what it was shot on and how good it looks. If you market your film as being shot on Alexa or Red, people take you seriously. If you tell them you shot it on film, they take you really seriously. It's a way for them to automatically differentiate how much you really care about your product. In today's world, the DSLR feature is so common, most sales agents won't even bother watching your movie. So unless you're self distributing, it's important to get away from that negative stigma and shoot on something that will prop you up. To Landon's point above about Star Wars being shot on a crappy camera. It's true, but George Lucas can do anything he want's, he just sold the franchise for 4 billion dollars. He could have shot Star Wars on a iPhone and it would have made money because anything he makes, people will gobble up. When you're a young filmmaker, you need to make stuff that is more impressive then every other young filmmaker out there, that's how you get recognized. The sad part is, a lot of people put tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands into making products without this knowledge. They waste countless years making something that no matter how good the script is, no matter how amazing the effects are, no matter how great their friends are at acting, it will never get sold. Sure, 'tangerine' was shot with an iPhone and it looked horrible. But, it was funded by the Duplass brothers and the filmmakers had been making features for over a decade prior, with a few known titles in the indy scene. Plus, the story hit home for a lot of people, it was very out there and characters/actors were very strong. It wasn't that cheap to make, a few hundred grand if I recall, but the Duplass brothers knew they'd get their money back and with limited theatrical release and international distribution, they absolutely made money off it. It's a success story that only worked because they had BIG players backing it. As I always say, if you're on this forum asking a basic question, you probably don't have successful hollywood people backing our project. ;) So is the camera a big problem? Well yes and no. If you don't care about distribution... then no. Shoot with anything you want. If you DO care about distribution and you DO care about about selling it and getting the opportunity to make more movies, then what camera you use is vital. Honestly, having been in this industry for quite a while, I'd rather make something that looks and sounds like a hollywood feature, even if the script isn't the hottest thing ever, just because that's what sells!

Again, dvd's at Walmart, really isn't what I'd consider a "distribution". MTI doesn't buy films really, they are the financier, the people who make films for them are employees and they're made for nothing. Since they already have a guaranteed path for making a return on their investment; VOD, Internet, Airplanes, low-end retail DVD, they can make a profit off all of them eventually. I worked for one of these companies a few years ago, it was quite amazing how they worked. They paid their crew hourly rates like a standard business. They shoot at least 3 films at once, everyone sharing duties. One show Chuck is the DP, the next show he's the director, the next show he's the sound guy. They churn out a feature in a week, usually using porn stars or people from other disciplines who had no work. Then they start an LLC for each production to make it seem like someone else made it, but in reality it was just MTI. These companies are only one step removed from the porn market and MANY of the execs behind the scenes, are prior porn filmmakers. SO they have NOTHING to do with MR. "I wanna be a filmmaker, take my movie and make money from it". MTI is just a factory churning out crap one after the other. There are so many companies like it, but they are all on the edge of dying because there just isn't that much money in DVD anymore. People aren't willing to take that risk any longer. This is what we talked about earlier, you're very naive about this stuff. If you knew the reality of it, you'd probably stick to theatre.

Here in the US, if you make a good movie, if the script is excellent, if the production values match big hollywood films AND you have at least one known cast member, you can get decent distribution. The word "can" is critical here because if you're not good at self marketing, if you don't have the money to pay someone to do marketing and setup screenings, you'll never sell it. Rule of thumb; it costs around $50k to bring in a sales agent to help sell the movie. It costs between $10k - $15k to screen a film in a particular market as well. So if you screen your movie in Los Angeles and New York, focused on those markets only to start with, it would probably cost around $80k to get your film out there and seen by people. This is HYPERCRITICAL to success because without this, without these screenings and without the press going to review your product, you are basically giving up right away. Most of the budgets I do, we tack on an additional $100k to the top for marketing/sales of the movie, which starts the moment you've secured the finances to make it and ends when the film is bought. This includes marketing, screenings, making the prerequisite deliverables, plus; spanish, french, italian, german subtitles. If your film isn't brought to market by a sales agent who pushes it with that seasons portfolio, it's not going to get picked up. All of that pre-work; screenings, reviews, marketing/publicity, that's all done to attract a sales agent. The more money you pad their account with, the more they're liable to sell the movie. Funny enough, we work backwards out here in L.A. We talk with sales agents and discuss what they want to sell next year. Then we sit down, write a script and build a budget around a movie they want to sell. It sounds silly and ass backwards, but unfortunately that's the business. No sales agent want's to talk to you about a shitty movie that's going direct to video, they want their films seen in the theaters. So yea, that's a little break down of how it works out here. I've worked with many sales agents, I've been involved with several features that were picked up for distribution including one 10 years ago called http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0307879/ which was picked up and released in theaters, I was the colorist. Not much has changed on the quality of movies today, it's just the quantity has increased tremendously. This is why if you check off all those things I discussed first; script, production value, actors... PLUS make it current event like it's a family film about coming out of the closet, shot on film. You will get so much traction, it's not even funny. This is why to do it right, really costs around $500k. Yes you can do it for less if you have one location, but honestly it's far easier to raise the appropriate money then it is to write yourself into a corner just to satisfy your measly budget. If you don't want to do it right, then forget about anyone seeing your movie and if nobody sees your movie, how will you get money to make another?

Woo :wipes brow: Yee'got a lot to be learn' now don't yee? Which is awesome by the way! :) Some people consider 8mm/super 8 and 16mm "narrow gauge" formats. They are unique because the frame size is very small, so field of view and depth of field are different then say 35mm which has a much larger frame size. Since the vast majority digital cinema cameras have the standard (35mm) frame size, so people are just use to how that frame size works with focal length and depth of field. Experts at working with narrow gauge formats, need to use many tricks to get shallow depth of field including longer focal lengths and keeping the lens wide open. This isn't as necessary on standard (35mm) formats. Also, I assume you will be projecting your film and not transferring it from film to digital, which is very costly, since you're on a tight budget. IN that case, shooting for a "print" vs shooting for digitizing, they're almost two different animals. With printing, you gotta nail everything in camera, it's gotta be perfect because there is very little change you can do during the printing process. With digitizing, you don't have to work quite as hard, you can be a bit more sloppy and fix many issues in post, thanks to films tremendous latitude/dynamic range. In layman's terms, if you want to watch the film on your computer, you gotta pay some bux. Stock and processing can be A LOT LESS then scanning to digital. Ohh... so "perforations" or "perf's" refer to the sprockets down the side of the film. 35mm has FOUR current/modern formats; 4 perf (4 perforations per frame) 3 perf, 2 perf and horizontal 8 perf which is very close to the size of a standard 35mm still camera. This just refers to how big the frame size is. As a side note, with 8 and 16 formats, it's 1 perf per frame.

Well, http://www.reelgoodfilm.com/ is one shop. However, their inventory changes day by day, so don't call until you actually need the stuff and are ready to buy. May I ask if you plan on shooting negative or positive? Color or black and white?

Depends on where you live. I thought Los Angeles was crack city. :shrug:

Umm how about this one? I think you'd find the majority of people on here have worked with film quite a bit. With that said, working with narrow gauge formats (16 & 8) and projecting the output, is an entirely different philosophy and workflow then say shooting with modern negative, 4 perf super 35mm with a digital intermediate and DCP finish. So for students of film, working ONLY ON NARROW GAUGE FILM, with no digital finishing, there are a lot of other things to learn that digital people wouldn't have a clue about.

I mean the government changes the taxes on the population based on such silly things... that's the "scam" :)