production

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What is the safest way for a film maker to become a millionaire?

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1. Save on food
   Budget properly for catering. The more so if your crew is underpaid. The more so, the longer the shoot is.
   Doesn’t cost much more, but does wonders for crew morale.
2. 16 hour days, 5 days a week
   Just because this film is the No.1 priority for you, doesn’t mean it is for everyone else on set. Not only does the crew have a right to a life as well, and not only do they need to be able to work on their next film, but overworking the crew makes you liable for accidents that may - and eventuall will - happen.
   If all these arguments don’t count: My experience is that 6 days with 16 hours are not more productive than 5 days with 10 hours.
3. Concentrate on the money shots
   While nice for marketing and your show-reel, the audience will only sit through your film if it is good in its entity, not just some scenes.
4. Who needs a DP - I can buy a camera instead?
   An experienced cameraman will free you to concentrate on telling the story by giving your actors good instructions. An experienced cameraman will speed up the production by knowing what to shoot, what will work visually, which lenses to use, which stock to use, and many more things that you have never heard of.

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For the financially challed film producer, Good Music often is out of reach. There are many so-so sources for CDs full of royalty free music (we own a huge library of those and hardly ever use it - unless we need something cheesy).

Then there are places where you can preview and download music for a fixed fee per piece (Shockwave Sound and Q Music being my preferred ones), and then there is our dear Kevin MacLeod. He offers his collection of music free, as long as he gets credit in the film. If, for some reason, you cannot or do not want to credit him, you can pay a little fee (30 USD).

And now music artist Moby has made his own mini-website where he published over 60 tracks that can be used free of charge for non-commercial productions (commercial productions have to pay a standard fee, the full amount of which will be donated to a good cause). Here’s the incredibly blurry announcement:

Mike Flynn has a very interesting post on the costs associated with producing content on Blu-Ray:

[P]roducers of industrial and non-broadcast content are required to pay a $2,500 licensing fee to author and distribute Blu-Ray. Then, each producer is required to pay a $3,000 one-time AACS license fee, plus a per-title fee for EACH replicated Blu-Ray disc. […] Sony DADC is quoting that fee at $1,585 per title […].

Then there’s the per disc replication cost, which varies by quantity, and finally, there’s a $0.04 per disc fee for AACS and $0.01 per disc if you want SONY DADC to administer the payments to AACS on your behalf.

So let’s say a small local company ordered a little presentation film, which cost $2,500 to make. They want 50 copies on HD. This would then cost: 2500+3000+1585+50*.05=over $7,000. Or over $140 per disc. And that does not include the actual replication/duplication costs.
If this should really be true, it would put an end to Blu-Ray HD distribution for small productions, even before it had a chance to start. It would cost more to distribute a program than to actually produce it.

Doug writes a very interesting post on how his company lost a bid by not using a video.

While I have to agree that video is a powerful tool, I would like to make some remarks:

For that video to be powerful, it has to be well made. A badly made video hurts more than a badly written text. But a well scripted, well executed video can convey information - and emotion - more efficiently than written text can.

Rather than Video >= Images + Stories I would suggest a formula along the lines of value of a video = min (story; technical quality; execution). It’s the weakest link that defines the potential of your video.

There are many companies that call themselves “video production”, and even more people with a video camera. Video cameras can be had for little money, simple editing programs come with all modern OSes. While it may be tempting to go for a cheap in-house solution, as always quality costs.

Different clients need different presentations

Not all clients appreciate “meat”. One of the first bids we did was for a state controlled company. After the presentation we were told (unofficially), that our presentation was the most creative, most exciting. But, in the end they went with a production company that is used by most other state companies. They got an alright, off-the-shelf video, that is watchable. But not memorable.

While our solution promised to actually excite the audience, it also would have been a non-standard way of presenting. Our client was not prepared to take the risk of doing something unusual. So, they got a run-of-the-mill presentation, well executed, passionless. Something our client could safely show to his boss and say that he o.k’ed it.

Reading in the web time

I don’t think that people read less than before. It is just that the amount of data people have to process has exploded. I actually think that we read more, but we skim also more than before.

This weekend I got to see a fun film about the film business, The Last Shot (and don’t let the first 5 minutes of the film misguide you). Joe Devine pretends to be a movie director, and gets Steven Schats to believe that his film will be produced. At one point this dialogue entails between them:

Joe Devine: Have you actually seen a person die, watched them bleed to death, seen them take their last breath? I’ve seen that… many times.
Steven Schats: Why have you seen that?
Joe Devine: I used to produce music videos.

Which is especially funny if you have worked on music videos. Or pop promos as they are often referred to in the industry.

The types on a pop promo set

Pop promos are a totally different type of films from all the others; most notably there often isn’t a story, no one seems to worry about continuity, and generally there are 4 to 6 types of people on set: Read the rest of this entry »