Amazon Video Direct Part 2

So they finally got us a dashboard. It shows all of my movies, and some chart but it claims my movies aren't "published".

Not sure what that means. If I go search for my movies on Amazon, they're still there to stream.

I do some digging. I send an email when I can't find any answers.

And Amazon responds:
For migrated videos from CreateSpace, these videos will remain live on Amazon, even if you don't have Closed Caption files.

If you wish to submit changes for already existing content to be updated on Amazon by clicking "Publish," your video's will need to meet our Technical Specification requirements that can be found here:
https://videodirect.amazon.com/home/help?topicId=201973700

So my movies will stay as is unless I want any changes. And by changes, I assume that means if I want to now upload hi-def movies(which they never accepted before from us indie people). The downside is that I'll have to get subtitles created for each movie, which will be like $90-$120 depending on which movie.

And technically before I got that answer I was uploading the Bounty Subtitles--figured I'd publish it and see what happens. So I upload my subtitles and Amazon asks this--what's your movie? 23.976 drop frame, 23.976 non-drop frame, 24fps, 25fps, 29.97 drop frame or 29.97 non-drop frame.

I'm thinking--are you serious? I have no idea. I sent my movies in as dvds years ago(or uploaded an ISO). Why can't AMAZON look at the file and figure it out.

I take a guess and click Publish. Get a bullshit error:
Video assets: An error occurred while processing the captions/timed text file. This file won't successfully complete the encoding workflows. Please submit a new file

 Thanks for all that detail on what the error was. Technically it's an SRT file(which Amazon says is fine) and it was created by one of the companies Amazon recommends(though I got it done long before this).

So I go through and change it to different fps and keep trying to publish. I get the same error above. Pretty frustrating, so I gave up.

But if they accept it I can then get it on Amazon Prime if I feel like it. Won't be crap for money, but a lot of people haven't seen it who I think would want to see it.

Terrortory Coverage

iHorror takes a look with an exclusive pic! Check it out!

http://ihorror.com/fear-clowns-director-explores-new-terrortory/

Amazon Video Direct and Createspace

I was going to do this big post about how Amazon is changing their video system(which will mostly affect indie people like us), but then I came across this post that pretty much says everything I was going to say, and probably better.

http://www.focuspulling.com/amazonvideodirect/

See, the thing is that I've had Createspace for a long time. I like having full control of my movies because when you sign a license agreement with a distributor you lose all your rights(in general) for quite a few years.

Hell, I don't get Fear of Clowns back until 2020. I'm actually pretty surprised they haven't started streaming it places.

The first movie I put up on Amazon was Fear of Clowns 2 way back in the day when I turned down the Lionsgate offer for the flick. I figured it would do pretty well with the awareness of the first movie, and how often "scary clowns" gets punched into search engines.

And I wasn't wrong. It's done fairly well on Amazon, though we're still off from making our money back. It was my highest-budget movie, after all.

Then I put up Garden of Hedon. Then Bounty. All with no trouble.

I got Hunting Humans back, and went through the rigamarole of getting it to Createspace. (their method of delivery was for you to upload an ISO of a dvd of your movie. Yeah. Makes no sense. I gotta upload a snapshot of my dvd that they can rip the .vob file out of, rather than just uploading an .mp4 or otherwise)

I tried to upload it and kept getting failures. I contacted their support, who kept giving me stupid answers that presumed I know nothing about video and formats. After they figured out that was definitely not the case, they got me to tech support.

Who kept trying to say it was on my end. It was the browser. Changed browsers, still no. It's my cache file. Emptied my cache. Failure.

Try a separate computer. Failure. The iso is encrypted. (it wasn't)

Finally I just gave up. That's when it gets weird.

Amazon announces this whole Amazon Video Direct thing. Like a week later, even before AVD launches, Hunting Humans shows up on Amazon. You can stream it right now here:
http://amzn.to/1TWyore

I honestly only know about it because four people DID stream it last month--I just got my reports. How they found it, I don't know. I typed Hunting Humans into Amazon to see where it is. Gotta click on Movies. Then it shows up like six movies down. Probably because I called it HH Remastered to keep it clear of the regular HH.

Anyway, it's weird. Amazon never got back to me to say they figured anything out. I never uploaded anything else. But somehow my "encrypted" iso gets figured out.

So I think they were just in the midst of porting this massive thing over, and didn't want to tell anybody, which led to errors on uploading to their servers.

Anyway, if you're an indie guy who doesn't give a shit about the stroke-session of claiming "My movie got distribution from XYZ company" while also cursing yourself because you got zero money then perhaps you should try AVD.

Not sure about the Prime thing though. Seriously, FIFTEEN CENTS per hour?

If your movie is 90 minutes, and 10,000 people watch it(which, let's face it, is a homerun for us) then you're going to be a rich man! That's $1500, pal. Get ready to make your next epic movie!

A Terrortory Interlude Part 1

I'm gonna share a little of my private notebook on the making of the final segment of Terrortory I'm about to shoot.

What I won't detail is the problems finding actors on this one--without a real casting process, it's pretty tough. Doubling the problem is that there's no money, which sucks, but since I'm stretched thin on this now--having already done three segments when I originally thought I'd only do one.

I'll warn you that there is cursing and honesty, so if you're allergic to any of those then stop reading now.

I'll pick it up on:

APRIL 11, 2016

Went over to Mark's place to get the head cast done of one actress, and get my tripod legs cast. Here's the time lapse I did of the process. Was easier than actually rolling video, and takes up less space on my card.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdTcMUwQRvM

I like the new guy Mark's brought on to help with effects--his name's Rich and he's worked on some big movies like Riddick. Which is weird because he's actually an engineer.

But he seems really knowledgeable about FX which is sweet.

Still two actors short and we're 11 days away from filming.

This is fun.

Okay, that was sarcasm. It's sad because I WAS enjoying working on this flick up til now. I mean, the wrap around was pretty rough but NOTHING like this.

And to make it sadder my brain keeps chugging in the Terrortory. I've already got some really interesting(to me) ideas for Terrortory 2. Like, the return of Smiling Jack. (I have a feeling he's going to be a popular character)

I pretty much have the idea for the sequel's wrap already, which--let's face it--is always the hard part. You pretty much have to come up with interesting ways to get stories told, and most of them involve people sitting down to tell them. That's boring enough if that's all they're doing, but I fixed that by actually telling a STORY in the Terrortory wrap, and figured out a way for the stories to keep being told even as I was ramping up the tension.

Like, let's say two people are telling each other stories but after story two they are threatened by something. They're not gonna keep telling stories, are they?

Well I solved that problem in the first wrap, and I've already solved it in a different(and slightly ingenious if I do say so myself) way.

Anyway, trying not to think about it because I gotta just get done this flick and see what happens. After I'm done this I can write whatever the fuck I want and see what's what.

APRIL 16, 2016

So after a brutal 4 days of scrambling, begging, talking to filmmakers I know, and finally posting on a local message board I got an actor to fill each of the two roles I was missing.

Yes, 6 days before filming. That was tight...as a no-budget filmmaker you have enough things to worry about right before a shoot that casting shouldn't be one...

 APRIL 18, 2016

After all this stress and work to fill out my cast, the forecast seems to be saying not just rain on Friday but THUNDERSTORMS.

A little rain I can probably deal with. We'll be under a canopy(I think--I haven't seen what the woods looks like yet but I think the leaves have come in), so not too bad. The bigger worry would be finding wood that's not wet for the fire.

But thunderstorms? That's bad.

My choices then become: Shoot the day shots in between rain on Friday, and then literally shoot 15 pages in one night. 15 pages with FX.

If there IS no rain let up on Friday then we shoot all 18 pages in one day. A guaranteed 14-16 hour day.

Because I CANNOT get these actors back together again until June, and that's too late.

FML has never been more appropriate.

Kinonation Update #4

We just got notice that our flick got accepted to one of the "outlets". That's good news, right?

Well...it's okay news. The outlet is Vimeo Plus, and it's an outlet I could technically get the movie on myself. I gave them the rights to, because, why not?

Now I have Bounty ready to release it streaming on Amazon too, but Amazon's crappy way of doing things is that they will only stream SD video from us nobody filmmakers. Why? No reason that I know of.

So I'm debating about whether to give Kinonation the Amazon rights too, since they can get an HD version up there. Then I only have to worry about accurate reporting ,and possibly having to audit them if I think they're being shady.

I don't have any reason to think that, other than pretty much every aggregator and distributor I've ever dealt with has been, to some extent, shady.

See, the problem for me right now is that I--like most filmmakers--have limited resources to get the news out there. And I can't blow them all on telling the world BOUNTY IS AVAILABLE ON VIMEO!

I need the flick to get to as many places as possible, so I can hit up the horror web sites and tell them it's out and you can get it HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE.

Anyway, more news when I get it.

----------

Remember how I said in a previous post that "Terrortory Concludes(For Me)"?

Spoke too soon. Had some filmmakers who couldn't get their stuff ready in time. As I always do, I had a backup in mind. I finished the script, showed it to two people, and everybody wanted to do it.

It will be a return to killer clown territory for me. My brother Mike and I went out to the woods to do some scouting, lighting and camera tests.

Will be shooting in two weeks. Prepping FX and stuff now.

Kinonation Update #3

A picture from "Bounty", the flick we've uploaded to Kino

I know, you're like...#3? Yeah, with all these different blogs it's hard to keep straight where I'm posting them. So you can see the last post here:

http://bounty-film.blogspot.com/

Now there's some good news--I had basically given up on the freaking SRT file because it's insane how tedious it is. Then I lucked into this web site:

https://www.rev.com/

They will create a subtitle file in English for $1 per minute. Yes, that's right, I could have saved myself a lot of time all for the cost of about $80(since the movie, not counting final credits, is about 80 minutes)

I went ahead and paid it and they delivered within 48 hours. The SRT wasn't perfect, but most of that was because the audio at times is hard to understand. So I went through and corrected it, which took about an hour but was no big deal.

I HIGHLY recommend them. No, I don't get paid to recommend them.

So I uploaded all the files and the site told me I had uploaded "28 out of 28 items". I waited. Nothing. Eventually I emailed them to find out what happens next.

Turns out I hadn't uploaded a trailer. I'm not sure why it didn't tell me that, since it said I had done everything I needed to. Uploading the trailer is on a separate page in the whole thing.

So I can see why the site is still in Beta. But they DID get back to me right away every time I emailed them. There was an issue with the trailer, which I fixed and uploaded.

It only indicates you can upload one trailer, which seems strange. Most films have multiple teasers/trailers. I've asked about it.

Now I think I'm done. I guess I wait and see if they can place it anywhere. Will let you know how that goes when I hear.

btw: Just in case you want to see all the blogs I keep. This is the list:
https://www.blogger.com/profile/05306092145547452231

Old Enchanted Forest Pictures(Maryland) from Fear of Clowns Location Scout

I'm sure some of you who have seen Fear of Clowns remember the scene in the Enchanted Forest where Shivers watches Jacky, but he hasn't been given the all-clear to kill her yet so he hangs back.

The story that Tuck(Rick Ganz) tells about the Enchanted Forest is my story. My parents took me there when I was very young, probably about six years old. I only vaguely remember it, but I distinctly remember being terrified of the whole thing.

Particularly that whale. Someone was in its mouth I think, and I thought it would eat me next.

Anyway, back in 2000-2001 when I was writing the script for FOC I wasn't sure what was even there. I had heard that there were pieces of the Forest still there, but how much? Was it still creepy?

So Rick and I went out there. We found a hole in the fence--it's the same hole we actually show them going into in the movie--and ventured inside.

I was pretty excited to find quite a few of the exhibits were still there. I recently found some actual photos, you remember, on paper from 35mm negatives. Figured I'd scan them for people to see.

So here you go!

One final addendum I found as I was searching my hard drive for some video we shot there--didn't find them, but found this:

We had no permission to shoot there. I was worried the cops would be called because of the crew and equipment, so I looked up who owned the property. I typed up a permission letter and faxed it to myself so it looked like it was faxed. Then we shot on a Sunday, so I figured even if they tried to call the number on the paper there would be nobody there.

I'm not telling you to do illegal stuff like this if you have to; I'm just saying, I did it all the time. Whatever it took.

I removed the names of the company and the guy, but this is what the letter said:

Marauder Productions has been granted access to the grounds known as “Enchanted Forest” between September 26th and October 7th. The physical location is on Route 40 West behind the “Enchanted Forest” Shopping Center.
The previous permission is granted to Marauder Productions on the following:

•  Marauder Productions is shooting a video to be used in a classroom setting.
•  Marauder Productions will not bring more than six(6) persons on the property, and they will not remove or damage any of the existing property. They may take equipment in as long as all equipment is removed when they vacate.
•  Marauder Productions indemnifies MART from any harm or loss suffered while on the property.

If there are any questions regarding this document or Marauder Productions use of the property, please call me at the number below.