This blog is intended to be an honest and (as far as reasonably possible) transparent record of the high and lows of filmmaking. This entry is unfortunately about a low.
Sometimes stuff doesn’t work out, despite your best efforts. This photo shows how many people turned up for Tuesday night’s Soul Searcher lecture in aid of Stop/Eject:
Hereford lecture
Yep, none.
Empty
Was it not promoted well enough? Did the fact that it was free make people think it would be rubbish? Are there just not enough filmmakers in Hereford? Was Pancake Day a bad choice of date? Did everyone stay home to watch the Brit Awards? Who knows?
Whatever the reason, the donations bucket remained empty.
Okay, technically a couple of people did turn up. Nathan, the Rural Media employee who was responsible for the projector and other equipment, and my friend Johnny from The Picnic. So we went back to our flat for coffee and a chat about Soul Searcher.
The Derby lecture, as part of Five Lamps’ Film Night on March 27th, is still going ahead, and should have no trouble attracting an audience as Five Lamps is well established.
But it’s back to the drawing board for fundraising ideas to close the gap of a few hundred pounds that will remain before we can shoot.
Hopefully you’ve already enjoyed Soul Searcher now that it’s online in full for free. Now you can enjoy the deleted scenes too…
Right, I have to get back to preparing my lecture about the making of Soul Searcher for tomorrow night (Tuesday). It’s at 7pm at The Rural Media Company, 72-80 Widemarsh Street, Hereford. Entrance is free, but satisfied attendees will be encouraged to donate a little cash to Stop/Eject at the end.
When selling films on-demand on the internet became a reality a few years ago, it wasn’t that different to other modes of distribution. The filmmaker licensed the exclusive IP (internet protocol) rights to their film to the platform – Joost, Babelgum, whatever – and it was then largely up to the platform to bring in the traffic. The platform then took a big slice of the financial pie and passed the dregs onto the filmmaker.
But in the last couple of years a different model has emerged, championed both by Distrify and Dynamo Player amongst others. Their set-up is more a like a YouTube with money. You upload your film to their site, you embed the film on your own site and wherever else you want, you drive traffic to it, and they take a relatively small cut of the money the film makes. No exclusivity, no middle men, no chasing sales reports – just log in and check the stats.
Distrify in particular has two unique features that appealed to me.
Firstly, the Distrify player doesn’t just allow the viewer to watch a free trailer and pay to stream the whole film if they like what they see; it lets you sell anything you want – other films (perhaps behind-the-scenes featurettes), downloads of films or any type of file, or physical objects which you mail to the buyer like you would with eBay.
Secondly, Distrify encourages people to promote your film by giving them a cut of the profits; anyone who shares your film by embedding it on their website, posting on Facebook, etc, etc, gets a percentage of the money the film earns through this embed/post/whatever.
So what this means in practice is: if you click the Share button in the player below you can earn yourself some easy cash – a 10% cut for doing pretty much nothing….
Here are some of the lovely things reviewers have said about the film:
“A fantasy action movie in the grand style… It looks great and moves beautifully… As a statement of potential, Soul Searcher must be one of the best-value films ever made.” – The Guardian
“This is ground breaking digital film-making, it has heart and soul, and action and excitement. You should be watching this George [Lucas]! If it doesn’t get itself a cult following, I’ll eat my keyboard!” – Impact Magazine
“British low budget film at its cheekiest, but at times breathtaking, best.” – Shooting People Review
“Miles ahead of some of the multi-million dollar blockbusters I’ve seen.” – Disorder Magazine
“Oseman’s film is entertaining, beautifully directed, well acted, and spins one hell of a fantasy yarn that you’ll dig.” – Cinema Crazed
“An enjoyable triumph of a piece.” – Rogue Cinema
“Soul Searcher defies its limitations to show itself as the work of a director and his crew genuinely intent on contributing to cinema.” – Frightfest
“I’m a little bit in love with this film.” – Horror Talk
Going to Hell is a 90 minute documentary which tells the whole tortured story of Soul Searcher’s production. This is not your typical “HBO First Look” style programme. It is not filled with actors explaining the plot of the film you’ve just watched and patting each other on the back. It’s a no-holds-barred, warts-and-all record of the many ups and downs (mostly downs) of the production. It’s like Lost in La Mancha, only Soul Searcher somehow got finished.
I was delighted to discover that Raindance selected Going to Hell as one of its top six documentaries about filmmaking, alongside such towering classics of the genre as the aforementioned Lost in La Mancha and Heart of Darkness. Read the article here.
Here’s the official Going to Hell synopsis:
In April 2002, writer-director Neil Oseman and writer-producer James Clarke set out to make an ambitious fantasy-adventure movie. Telling the story of an ordinary guy who is trained to be the new Grim Reaper, Soul Searcher requires martial arts, countless special effects and a climactic chase between a 1973 Ford Mustang and an express train to Hell. Despite the pair’s optimism and over a year of development work, they are unable to raise financing for the project. Oseman decides to go ahead with the film on a shoestring budget, and although Clarke has reservations, he agrees.
In October 2003 they begin a six week shoot, taking place almost entirely at night, with an unpaid cast and crew. They have just £7,000 in the bank. The shoot quickly becomes a nightmare with freezing temperatures, props that fall apart and a malfunctioning camera.
Filming on the roof of The Courtyard
But the problems are just beginning. Two weeks in, Clarke quits, leaving Oseman and his heroic Assistant Director Ed Reed to carry the project. The schedule overruns, exhausting cast and crew as they shoot from 5pm to 9am more than once.
As post-production arrives, the troubles continue. Reed drops out, the money is long gone and there are 250 FX shots to complete, not to mention that Oseman is dead-set on recording the score with a real orchestra. Can he complete what may just be the most ambitious movie ever made on a five figure budget?
Also from Monday, for £3.95 you’ll be able to rent the deluxe edition of Going to Hell, which includes some invaluable “how to” featurettes for any indie filmmaker covering low tech FX, lighting, martial arts, props and sound design. That’s almost two and a half hours of content for less than £4 – bargain!
You can say what you like about digital distribution, but nothing beats the feeling of opening a box of DVDs fresh from the duplicators, all packaged with lovely covers and on-disc artwork. The download generation will really miss out on an experience there.
Yes, today the DVD dupes of Video8 and The Dark Side of the Earth: Making the Pilot arrived, so I spent the morning signing them, parcelling them up along with thank you notes and posting them to the Stop/Eject sponsors. If you contributed £50 or more and you haven’t given Sophie your address yet, then please do so because you’re missing out on your well-earned rewards otherwise.
Soul Searcher, signed
The other thing that happened today is that Soul Searcher‘s five year distribution deal expired. If you’re interested to know how that worked out for me financially, just click on the donate button to the right and you’ll get access to an in-depth video on the subject.
As for the film’s future, I can now reveal that Soul Searcher will be online to view in full for free from next Monday Februrary 6th. Watch this space for the link.
In the mean time, here’s another DVD extra that never made it to the disc…
As previously mentioned, more money needs to be raised ahead of Stop/Eject‘s shoot – which we hope will be in April or May. I can now reveal one of the ways in which we plan to close this funding gap.
Ray Bullock Jnr. as Joe in Soul Searcher
In 2005 I completed Soul Searcher, described by The Guardian as “a fantasy action movie in the grand style”. With six weeks of night shooting, martial arts fights, 280 FX shots and a climactic chase between a 1973 Ford Mustang and an express train to Hell, Soul Searcher was a tough project to say the least, and I learnt loads from it. It was also my first film to be properly distributed, getting an international DVD release.
So over the next couple of months I’ll be delivering an in-depth lecture about how I financed, shot, post-produced and sold Soul Searcher in various venues around England. There will be lots of clips and behind-the-scenes footage and a Q&A session at the end. These lectures will be FREE to attend, but we will encourage satisfied attendees to contribute a little cash to Stop/Eject at the end.
So far we have the following venues confirmed:
Hereford, February 21st, 7pm at The Rural Media Company, Sullivan House, 72-80 Widemarsh Street, HR4 9HG
Derby, March 27th, as part of the Five Lamps Film Night at The Quad – details TBC
Details of further venues to follow as they are arranged.
The other big news for Soul Searcher is that, since its distribution contract expires this week, I’ll soon be releasing the film on YouTube. That’s right – it will be FREE to view in full. And there is more news to come regarding the extensive behind-the-scenes material, but I’ll save that for another day.
I’ll leave you with something I came across yesterday while looking through my old hard drive in preparation for this online release: a cheesy music video that was intended to be a DVD extra, but which never made it onto the disc due to lack of space. Enjoy…
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
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
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.
