Terrortory 2 Update, Plus Stuff

I know, been a while, right? It's almost like I've been busy. So here's a couple of bts pics from Terrortory 2.

Josh and Alex in the "Mad Gathering" segment. People should pay attention to this segment, because there's more than meets the eye here.

Two funny things about this shot: One, how fat I am here. Clearly I was putting on the weight, and I'm now down 20 pounds from there. Second, we barely used my steadicam rig at all--it's very time consuming when you want to change a lens, because it throws off the balance on the rig and you have to reset the whole thing. We don't have that kind of time on these shoots.

A little spoiler alert here--yes, the Midnight Clown AND Smiling Jack--together in one segment. The pic above shows you how much post-work goes into making Jack's head look hollow. I did a quick pass on the pic just to show you sort of what I have to do to EVERY FRAME of the movie that Jack is in. (remove the eye holes(on both side of the pumpkin "nose") and hollow out the head.

Anyway, the big stop on Terrortory 2 right now is the weather. We have one segment left to shoot, but because it features an actress being completely naked outside, covered in blood at night...well, under 50 degree weather isn't going to work.

I keep looking at every weekend of April, and have to keep pushing it. And every time I push it, I lose an actor or a crew member who can't work on a weekend. It's pretty frustrating.

This segment has been cursed. I've NEVER encountered as many problems on ANY shoot I've ever done like I have on this segment.

But I am nothing if not stubborn. We've got some great actors who are all committed to the new dates, so weather-permitting, we're shooting it soon. Hell, even if the weather doesn't cooperate, I may shoot it anyway at this point.

-----

I've started getting music from Terry, the composer to the main storyline. He'll also do the Mad Gathering segment, but so far he's sent about the first 8 minutes of music and it's great. It's very nice to not have to micromanage everything, and he seems to have a great grasp on what I was looking for.

One of the highlights of making a movie is when you get music to lay over your film. It never quite FEELS like a movie until the music starts going on. All of a sudden things start clicking, and a lot of the second-guessing of myself goes away.

I also talked to Ben, the other composer who will do more synth-based scores for the other segments. He's excited to start working. I sent him the Pumpkin Trail, and I'm as equally excited to hear some new stuff from him.

Lastly, I secured the end-credit song. Contract signed, money paid. The group is insanely talented, and I love a number of their songs so I was psyched when they said yes to me. (but I stayed silent until the contract was signed) More on them after the movie comes out.

-------

On the Amazon front, their new pay schedule started, but here's the rub: They are showing NO earnings estimates on any of the Prime movies now. They haven't since March 1st. I just this week finally sent them a message to find out what's up, when are they going to start showing what we're making, and this was their reply:

Thank you for contacting Prime Video Direct. I understand you would like more information on when Prime royalties will begin displaying in the Earnings Report again. Your Earnings report will display Prime royalties again in June (or sooner). 

I'm sorry for the inconvenience this has caused. In the meantime, exporting the Performance Metrics report will allow you to calculate the earnings for March, April and May's Prime streaming events. We issue payments approximately 90 days after the end of the month in which the revenue event occurred. 

This means that earnings for March will be paid in June. By the time the payment is issued, the Earnings report will display Prime earnings so that you can reconcile your payments properly. 

For more details regarding Royalties and Reports, check our Help pages: - Royalties: https://videocentral.amazon.com/home/help?topicId=202037410 - Reports: https://videocentral.amazon.com/home/help?topicId=G201973680 If you have any other questions, please feel free to contact us back.

So technically you can figure out what they owe you by adding up all your minutes, dividing by 60, and then multiplying by .06

But it's not as easy as they make it seem. The spreadsheet they send you every month is organized for the bi-polar. For me, there's 7 movies, there's a different line for each country for each movie(so you can see what you earned in pounds, in yen, etc), then a different line for the movie if someone PAID for it rather than just stream it for free.

It's all just thrown in randomly. Like, if all of Garden of Hedon's were together you might be able to figure it out, but it's like--screw it, I'll show you.

Obviously I blurred some numbers. But this should give you an idea.

I did look into Distribber and a couple of other options, but I'm not sure it's worth the amount of work and money I'd have to dump into it to get it all moving, and I'd DEFINITELY not be able to put the movie on Amazon in October if I did it. (I'd have to let it run through a lot of the other options before putting it on there).

So I think we're just going to do it the same way as the first and see what happens. We got a LOT of views on the first Terrortory, so I've gotta hope we can do at least that again. My entire month of September and October is going to be spent promoting the film.