Okay, you're probably wondering what happened to me, if you've been following this blog at all. When last I posted, I was moving ahead to shoot a film set in an asylum, a balls-to-the-walls action horror.
I was barely two weeks out from filming when I had a major problem. The actor playing the "monster" bailed on me out of the blue. I had already had the outfit custom made to his size(he's like 6 foot 7). I scrambled and found a couple of backups to take his place since nobody could commit to every night I needed him.
It was demoralizing to say the least. THEN I went to the asylum for last looks and to do some final tests, shoot some promo video/stills. Well, security busted us going in. They were nice but said "Don't come back", and that's when the whole thing died.
I was in a pretty deep funk. I haven't had to cancel a movie shoot that far in prep since BEFORE my first film, Hunting Humans. (we had cast two movies before that that never got off the ground)
For months I was pretty depressed, and not long after that, one of the actors I'd written a major part for died unexpectedly. (pre-Covid) I had been looking for other locations to maybe shoot for, but couldn't find any that were close.
I wheeled and wrote a new segment for Terrortory, figuring maybe I release it on Amazon and eventually it can go into Terrortory 3 if I make it. I cast the segment, started working on props, went out on a location scout back to the Terrortory woods...
and Covid hit. Nobody wanted to let us into their houses to shoot stuff. Actors were leery about coming out. We're on budgets so tiny that we can't possibly follow any protocols like getting people constantly tested.
So I dropped it all. Long story short, I have no plans right now to shoot anything.
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Remember my kinonation posts? How that didn't work out?
Well, they got bought out a while back and are now filmhub, and we've been discussing it on the FB forum that you MUST be a part of if you're a filmmaker. It's a wealth of knowledge and networking stuff.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/699825860525598
The movie I submitted to kinonation, "Bounty", is still in their system and is actually STILL live on FandangoNow even though I'd asked kino to remove it. Anyway, since Amazon pulled "Garden of Hedon" I figured I'd try to submit it to filmhub.
I uploaded the movie, plus like 8 different size one-sheets(seriously, there's some weird fucking aspect ratios they want), and submitted it. Got a QC rejection, asking if I had a higher-res mezzanine file. I did--I had submitted the video file I had used on Amazon--so I found the higher quality version and sent it, submitted it again.
Got a rejection, asking if I had key art with less nudity. This pissed me off, because they HAD the key art on my last submission. Why wasn't it rejected at the same time as the other? If I fix the new issues, will there be ANOTHER rejection for ANOTHER reason?
I'm used to QC's coming as a list of things to fix. You get the list, you fix, you send it in, done.
So I just dropped the whole thing. I think that was back in early 2020. Recently I was contacted, as they wanted to know what I intended, so I replied back with the exact details about why I wasn't happy. Someone named Alan contacted me and wanted to set up a zoom meeting today.
Well, zoom didn't work for shit, so we just had an old-fashioned chat on the phone. Alan seemed pretty nice, pretty knowledgeable. He gets why I was frustrated, and made some suggestions. The salient points of our conversations were this:
-- I'm most interested in getting some of my flicks onto Tubi, as I've heard it's paying pretty decent as those things go. This goes to the fact that he suggests I provide them new key art for Garden of Hedon because a lot of channels won't pick it up with that poster. Tubi was one he said probably wouldn't bite, and he said imdb TV also wouldn't, and he seemed to think that's becoming a pretty good place to put your flick.
He said they have guys who can mock up a new poster for like $225 and it will get taken out of any future payments. That's a fair price for key art, but the quality isn't as high as my guy, so I'll probably just get him to do a new one if I can think up a decent concept. I mean, the hot chick on the poster obviously brings the views, so what's the next option? Not sure yet.
--I said maybe I'd let them reopen "Bounty" and see if they can license it. He took a look at what I'd provided and let me know the bad news about THAT key art. You need about 5% of edge for your title in case it gets cut off by whatever channel or venue it shows on. You can see the problem in my "Bounty" poster:
See how it runs right to the edges? You need some room. Now, I don't have the original psd files of this from my guy and I don't wanna bother him to redo it, so I'm just gonna manually fix it. Will take some work but I can do it.
--I asked about Insights on their web site because I had seen someone else asking about them. They're sort of rough estimations on how much your flicks have earned, but someone online had said they were WAY higher than their actual earnings, so what use was the Insights if it were that far off. He more or less said it's their way of trying to be transparent, but it can definitely differ because it can't take into account refunds and other things that might happen. I don't have enough info yet to say much about it yet, but I'll let you know.
Hey, I'll try to get back to updating this blog on occasion. Did I mention that I shot a music video a couple months back for my buddy's band? You can see it here:
