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The Elevator Most Belonging To Alice - Semi Final Bluecat, Runner Up Nashville Inner Journey - Page Awards Finalist - Bluecat semi final Grieving Spell - winner - London Film Awards. Third - Honolulu Ultimate Weapon - Fresh Voices - second place IMDb link... http://www.imdb.com/name/nm7062725/?ref_=tt_ov_wr
Well we FINALLY get to release Truth, the film I co-wrote, co-produced, and 1st ADed...on YouTube, of all places! And very soon we will find out if that's a stupid idea.
The film will be released on July 1st, our Canada Day, and will be accompanied by special features including deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes, and full length commentaries.
Our favourite part is that it will of course be free to watch, which is exactly the way I think digital copies should be...and I'm pleased to be able to put my money where my mouth is, so to speak.
This will be the first of two, and hopefully three, of our features to be released on YouTube this year.
Hey Chris, I'll be watching it! I've been following the progress for quite awhile. I'm always excited to see "old" SS members getting their scripts made.
I have one question though. I know you and I don't share our views on piracy and such, so my question is if that had anything to do with the decision to release it for free on YouTube, or would you have preferred to have it released by a distributor?
There were a couple major factors for the decision to go with YouTube. First and foremost, we think streaming is the way that distribution is going to go, at least for everything low budget.
As well, though, looking for DVD distribution was frustrating for a couple of reasons. The main one was that it takes a really long time, especially when there are always twenty movies around with bigger stars and more sex and violence. We have two more movies waiting to be dealt with and it just doesn't seem worth spending years of our lives on one. It's not like we're making masterpieces at the moment. As well, distributors generally wanted a couple key changes that the director wasn't really keen on, and we figure we might as well make movies the way we want to now, before there's a budget behind them and final cuts are totally out of our control.
Piracy didn't particularly factor into the decision. Since we retain all rights, we'll torrent the film ourselves. If we had gone with traditional distribution...who knows, a torrent might have turned up anyway...
Great! I am expecting lots of severe criticism from y'all.
One of our plans for the film going forward is to set scheduled times where people can join us on Google Hangouts to watch the film "together" over the internet...that way people can question, comment, and swear at us in real time
As well, though, looking for DVD distribution was frustrating for a couple of reasons. The main one was that it takes a really long time, especially when there are always twenty movies around with bigger stars and more sex and violence. We have two more movies waiting to be dealt with and it just doesn't seem worth spending years of our lives on one. It's not like we're making masterpieces at the moment.
That seems weird. FK, my film, was no masterpiece either by far, but it went fast. They got the deal in December, sent in the deliverables in Jan and it was digitally released in April. The physical release is supposed to be July. IMHO, if you want to continue to make films, it's worth it getting a distributor, because on these really low budget films, it's not that hard to make a little bit of money on the films, which come in handy when you go to fund your next one. Also, from how I understand it, they love filmmakers that have more than one film in their arsenal and it sounds like you guys do.
As well, distributors generally wanted a couple key changes that the director wasn't really keen on, and we figure we might as well make movies the way we want to now, before there's a budget behind them and final cuts are totally out of our control.
The distributor didn't ask for any changes at all to FK other than it had to be at least 70 minutes long. Which is why there is so much weird stuff in it with credits and stock footage.
Piracy didn't particularly factor into the decision. Since we retain all rights, we'll torrent the film ourselves. If we had gone with traditional distribution...who knows, a torrent might have turned up anyway...
The funny thing is that the distributor didn't want anyone to have any DVDs of the film for fear someone would upload it online while it was still being distributed by them. Two days after the release, there were already a minimum of 30 sites that had the film streaming.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing it. It looks great.
I think you'll see the difference between Truth and Finders Keepers about five minutes into Truth. Truth definitely has narrower appeal We could definitely have had distribution quickly if we'd changed a couple things -- from the first distributor we approached, in fact -- but that would have required a change that the director just wasn't happy with.
Truth is "artsy" and our next one, April, is only much "artsier", but when we do our next two, we're gonna go for mass appeal and with that, traditional distribution. We just needed to get these ones out of our system I think.
Hey Chris - the trailer looks good, really professionally done - I look forward to seeing the full film. I heard a lot of people going to u-tube now, but they're part banking on an ad revenue share ... are you proposing to get your capital back or not?
A very pertinent question. This year is our big experiment with YouTube monetization. Because we have three films with exTREMEly small budgets, we're betting that we can do pretty well on making at least our capital. This time next year, I may be singing a different tune. But we wanted to see how it would go...so the short answer is, yes. Breaking even would be nice...especially since the money comes through advertising rather than from viewers.