Katiedidonline Homeware Giveaway

January 7, 2012April 10, 2017 neilosemancostume, crowd funding

PLEASE NOTE: THE ITEMS OFFERED IN THIS POST ARE NO LONGER AVAILABLE.

Stop/Eject‘s costume designer Katie Lake of Katiedidonline has kindly donated some beautiful items from her Mayumi range of hand-made fabric gifts which we are delighted to be offering to new sponsors. We have two sets of pretty fabric coasters, two sets of cute baby bibs (a pair of boy’s bibs and a trio of girl’s bibs) and four stylish hostess aprons to give away. These lovingly upcycled, eco-friendly items would make great gifts for Valentine’s Day, Mothers’ Day or Easter.

£10 of sponsorship to Stop/Eject will get you a set of coasters, £20 will get you a set of bibs and £30 will get you an apron – while stocks last of course. We’ll do our best to accommodate any combination of those values, so for example if you contribute £40 you could either have both sets of bibs or one set of coasters and an apron – providing someone else hasn’t beaten you to those items! To be sure of getting one of these items you’ll need to contribute before we hit the £1,300 mark.

You can visit Katie’s shop for many more gorgeous hand-made gifts and remember you can see her discuss the Stop/Eject costumes in behind-the-scenes podcast #4.

Please note:

Postage to a UK, European or US address is included.
Katiedid items will only be given if we reach our £2,000 target by the Jan 18th deadline. At this time, if the target has been met, we will ask you for your preferences on specific Katiedid items, giving first choice to those who sponsored earliest.
You will still be entitled to the other rewards as listed on the summary page.
If you’ve already sponsored, you’ll need to increase your sponsorship by at least one of the amounts above to qualify for these gifts.

How to Make a Fantasy Action Movie for £28,000

January 4, 2012April 10, 2017 neilosemancrowd funding, financing, producing

This weekend, eschewing some sleep and new year celebrations, I completed a 20 minute video called How to Make a Fantasy Action Movie for £28,000. Presented by me, disguised as a homeless person who’s just been dragged through a hedge backwards, it’s a completely frank and open breakdown of Soul Searcher’s budget: where the money came from, how it was spent and how much the film made. It’s an invaluable tool for anyone considering making a feature, and since it also looks at the details of the distribution deals I was offered and why I picked the one I did, if you’ve just completed a feature and you’re wondering what you can expect when you sell it then this is definitely something you need to watch too.

Here’s the trailer for Soul Searcher to get you in the mood:

And here are the first few minutes of How to Make a Fantasy Action Movie for £28,000….

To see the full programme all you have to do is sponsor Stop/Eject £10 or more before January 18th. There are other great rewards for sponsoring as well, but you’ll get access to this programme straight away, regardless of whether we make our target or not. http://tinyurl.com/stopeject

Letter of the Week

January 3, 2012January 3, 2012 neiloseman

This is a genuine email I just received at the email address linked linked to my other website, The Dark Side of the Earth (a site about a family fantasy-adventure film).

Hi
I’d like to offer you a review copy of bestselling author and sex educator Dr. Sadie Allison’s newly released fifth book, “Tickle My Tush,” for you to review on The Dark Side of the Earth. Dr. Sadie has written a smart new paperback that helps women and men learn the true pleasures of the under-explored seat of love. I’ve compiled everything about the book into a microsite for you to check out here:
http://ticklemytushbook.com

The Swordsman prepares to thrust from behind

Please let me know if you’d like a review copy or would like to interview Dr. Sadie. If you post or tweet, please pop me the link as I would love to share it with her. If you have any questions, I am here to help.
Thanks you,
Barbara
—
Barbara Dunn
Tickle Kitty

Well Barbara, I’m very flattered that you thought of The Dark Side of the Earth when planning your marketing campaign for this obvious literary delight. I kept it quiet on the site, but The Dark Side of the Earth will be a film liberally sprinkled with anal love-making. In fact the main reason I’ve never made the pilot available online is because some more conservative surfers may be shocked by the graphic images of backdoor coitus it contains. Honestly, you don’t want to know where the Wooden Swordsman’s sword has been.

Whilst I’d love to review your book, its content so clearly overlaps with my film that I feel it would be a conflict of interest. I therefore decline your kind offer, but wish you every pleasure in your ongoing exploration of the seat of love.

Resolution

January 1, 2012 neilosemanwriting

Last year Katie made a new year’s resolution for me: to write down an idea for a film every day. I didn’t stick to it very well and gave up completely around Easter, but at least one good thing came out of it: the idea for Stop/Eject. (Just seventeen days to go – make your pledge now or never.)

I’m going to do it again this year, but here is a selection of the ideas I came up with in 2011…

22/1/11 – WHEN TRAFFIC CONES TURN BAD: What if the cones declared war on us? Perhaps starting subtly, by guiding drivers to the wrong places. Perhaps the mortal enemy of the cones is the Sat Nav.

16/2/11 – TROJAN HORSE: Aliens make contact and give humanity an impressive gift – which turns out to be full of alien invaders.

19/2/11 – A tramp who lives in a junkyard builds a rocket and flies to the moon.

24/2/11 – LAPTOP: Future-set film about robots that have laptops built into their laps. Awkward!

25/2/11 – Reality is controlled by some small children who do annoying things like removing objects from reality for a few minutes so people think they’ve lost them and hunt high and low only to later find them in the first place they looked.

5/3/11 – Clouds are really floating sheep-like creatures. Now imagine how freaky the shepherds must be.

7/3/11 – 4OD: Film about an infuriatingly shit on-demand TV website

16/3/11 – THE POINTLESS TOWN: Documentary about a reporter trying to find out just what the point of Leominster is.

17/3/11 – THE POINTLESS CITY: Sequel to the above, in which the same reporter visits Hereford.

20/3/11 – Psychological thriller about a man who descends into madness after repeatedly having good ideas for films and forgetting them before he gets around to writing them down.

1/4/11 – APRIL FOOL: Jim Carey vehicle in which an intelligent, successful businessman is cursed by a vengeful ex such that his IQ is temporarily slashed on April 1st each year, which always seems to coincide with a really important meeting at which it’s vital he makes a good impression.

Stop/Eject: Writing and Storyboarding

December 19, 2011August 3, 2013 neilosemancrowd funding, directing, financing, preproduction, storyboarding, video

Here’s the latest podcast. Only six days left now to sponsor Stop/Eject if you want to claim access to the exclusive new documentary about the financials ins and outs of Soul Searcher.

Christmas Present

December 15, 2011June 2, 2012 neilosemancrowd funding, financing

Need some cinematic inspiration and advice to get your 2012 filmmaking plans off to a flying start? As a special Christmas gift to Stop/Eject supporters, anyone who sponsors the film (any amount) by midnight on Christmas Eve will get access to an exclusive new featurette I’m currently creating: “How to Make a Fantasy Action Movie for £28,000”. This will be a detailed look at the budget from my feature film Soul Searcher, analysing where all the money came from and exactly how it was spent, examining the contracts given to the investors, comparing the distribution deals I was offered and revealing precisely how much money the film made. This is an unprecedented real-world case study of the financial realities of indie filmmaking. Get it in YOUR inbox on New Year’s Day by sponsoring Stop/Eject before Christmas. You’ll also get all the great rewards we’ve been offering all along. And don’t worry – if you’ve already sponsored Stop/Eject, you’ll get access to this video too.

Remember to keep spreading the word about Stop/Eject, just like Hereford Journal (left) and Sci-Fi London have done this week – thanks guys!

Jonny Lewis as Ezekiel in Soul Searcher. Photo: John Galloway

Stop/Eject Costumes

December 12, 2011August 3, 2013 neilosemancostume, preproduction, video

Here’s a brand new Stop/Eject podcast in which Katie takes us through some of the costumes and bags she has already put together for the main characters.

Looking for a unique Christmas gift for a film-loving friend or relative? Why not sponsor Stop/Eject on their behalf? They’ll get their name in the credits and receive exclusive souvenirs like signed DVDs and artwork.

Soul Searcher: The Schedule

December 3, 2011March 30, 2014 neilosemanpreproduction, scheduling, video

What would a six week shooting schedule for a micro-budget fantasy-action film look like? Possibly a lot like this. Watch Going to Hell: The Making of Soul Searcher to get the full story, or find out more about how the schedule was constructed in the featurette below.

Download Soul Searcher’s shooting schedule (.rtf, 204kb)

Networking

December 1, 2011June 2, 2012 neilosemancrowd funding, financing, networking

Everyone says crowd-funding takes up a lot of your time, and it’s true. This week I’ve set up an iTunes podcast, started a Facebook page, uploaded desktop wallpapers (in widescreen and 4:3 ratios), authored DVDs of the pitch video and am attending three events to network and spread the word.

The first event was a Herefordshire Media Network social. This was held in the back bar of a pub and involved myself and two other people giving little presentations and then general mingling/networking. As usual at these events there were a surprising number of people I didn’t know. Hereford is so small that I tend to assume that I must know everyone here who works in the media, but more people always seem to crop up.

The other speakers were Marc de Jersey, filmmaker and international broadcast journalist, and Nick Fogg, a filmmaker whose 90 second documentary Wake recently won the main award at Encounters International Film Festival. Both showed some of their work, which was really interesting in very different ways. I felt pretty shameless plugging my crowd-funding campaign, which – let’s face it – is essentially begging, but people responded well. After the presentations I talked to as many people as I could and handed out plenty of business cards.

The second event was The Neighbourhood Watch at Vivid in Birmingham. It’s been a very long time since I was last at Vivid, but I thought it would be worthwhile showing my face and trying to make some regional contacts. The event was an “open mic” film night, meaning that anyone could submit a film to be screened and none would be rejected, time permitting. I screened The Picnic, to the end of which I had added a caption telling everyone to visit my Crowdfunder page and sponsor Stop/Eject. I also mentioned the campaign when I introduced the film. Sadly there wasn’t much opportunity for networking, particularly since I had to leave early to get the last train back, but it did get my mind whirring on the possibilities of holding talks and screenings and using them to raise funds… of which more another time.

The third event, happening tonight, is a local meeting about community TV, which apparently is something the government is pushing at the moment. I don’t know much about it, but I’m going along to see what opportunities there may be to get involved – and don’t think I won’t plug my crowd-funding campaign while I’m there.

Thanks again to everyone who’s contributed so far, and to everyone who has helped spread the word by email, Facebook, Twitter and – shock! horror! – physical face-to-face communication with mouths and ears and vibrating air molecules.

Writing Soul Searcher

November 30, 2011March 30, 2014 neilosemanscript development, writing

What’s involved in developing a feature script? These documents from the early days of making Soul Searcher may provide some insight. (Though I’m certainly not claiming that Soul Searcher had a particularly great screenplay!) Here are a series of emails that my co-writer James Clarke and I batted back and forth while forming the script, followed by my first draft outline, and the final shooting script.

Neil Oseman

Director of Photography

Menu

Directed by Neil