Over the last few months, I've been compiling a bunch of interviews for the 1st edition of the "workbook" Each week I'll be posting a new interview on the workbook site. The interviews will live as a podcast and also be transcribed and included in the body of the 1st edition.
The workbook will launch later this year but if you're interested and want to get an advance copy sign up at http://workbookproject.com
Here's a brief example of one section that details how I bootstrapped a 17 city theatrical release.
DIY THEATRICAL - part 1 of 12
The thing I find most interesting after having gone through the first couple windows of release is how broken the system is. Now I know you're probably saying no shit but I think we're at a very interesting crossroads. When something is damaged it provides new opportunities but the difficult part is identifying them. Often it seems that going in a totally different direction is an answer OR you can work the current system to your advantage. For example a theatrical release with no cash, no distributor, no booker and no publicist seems insane - and it is in the sense that it's an insane amount of work BUT it is possible.
I took on a hybrid model with the release of my newest film HEAD TRAUMA. Had a world premiere at the LA Film Fest and used it as a springboard to a platform release for HT. In other words used it to announce the project and a few weeks after was in theaters across the country. The biggest driving force for a compressed release was to maximize my limited resources and push all the press and word of mouth towards monetizing the movie. I hit 17 screens across the country by doing a bootstrapped release.
I called a number of bookers / service companies to help me with my theatrical release. I quickly discovered that there was NO way that I could afford it. So I decided to create my own model that would require little to no seed money. Here's how I released my newest feature HEAD TRAUMA http://headtraumamovie.com on 17 screens across the country.
Here's the breakdown:
Travel, lodging and some food was offset with speaking engagements at various universities and film societies. This also provided free transportation and free meals. I ended up making about $4,500 in speaking fees.
I took $1,200 from a pre-theatrical speaking engagement and applied it towards making 27 x 40 posters. I knew from past experience that posters provide a great profit margin. I got them made for a $1.40 each and then sold them for 10 to 15 dollars. To date I've sold about 300 posters and pulled in about $3,500
When it came to the screenings I found sponsors for a number of weekly city paper ads for the cities that I felt need some extra promotion. And the rest of the promotion was done via social networking sites and my mailing list / fan base from my first film. I targeted independent theaters and cold called BUT I had a pitch ready - one that explained who my audience was and how I intended to reach them. I struck a favored nations deal with all the theaters - a 50/50 split because I didn't have the cash to four wall. And I did all my own press for the release.
The main goal for the theatrical was to help with DVD sales into retail and rental outlets. My hope was to use the theatrical release as hook for a national story, to get reviews and to prevent HT from being ghettoized as a straight to video release.
Well I got a ton of press, a lot of reviews and I ended up grossing close to 15,000 dollars. I took about half of my cut of the box office and put it into online advertising for the DVD release. I also worked out deals for a number of print ads in horror publications like Rue Morgue and Fangoria.
And so far so good - the DVD just hit retail and rental outlets nationwide. In fact this coming weekend Best Buy will be doing a special national promotion. The movie can be found at Barns & Noble, Borders, Circuit City in addition to other retail outlets. Its on Netfilx and in certain Hollywood Video and Blockbuster locations. It is also in independent video stores and can be found on various online outlets such as Amazon etc.
So for me theatrical made sense, I actually made some money AND I still own the rights to my work.
This is a follow up to my recent post about sellling my film "Killing Down"...
I'm still buzzing from my experience at digimart this past week. I was invited to speak about the making and distribution of HT. It was an amazing gathering of people from all over the world discussing three things I love - filmmaking, tech and new business models. There was quite a bit of speculation regarding the future of digital content distribution during the three day conference. Variety was on hand to cover the event.
I brought the newest prototype of the IndEx media server with me. On Monday night digimart held a special screening of HT. IndEx is a low cost exhibition solution that will be released later this year. It is meant to be simple and it is. I've been using it for a lot of my digital runs. For the digimart screening we used IndEx with a 2k projector. The result was a true HD screening with full 6 channel surround. It looked and sounded amazing.
Really good news for my film "Killing Down"... we made a deal early last week and sold our foreign rights. We sent out 75 screeners and got five offers within a week. Companies were rounding out their slate of titles to rep at AFM in Santa Monica the first week in November, so the deal happened very fast.
Hey guys. Sorry I haven't posted in awhile. When I first signed on I thought we were only a few weeks away from our premiere but there were delays for a variety of reasons. I'm sure most of you all know how it is having to beg, borrow and sell your soul to keep going. (In my case I had even less to bargain with because I sold my soul years ago at a pawnshop for a buck fifty. The next week it went out of business. I still have the claim ticket.) We will be premiering Elizabeth Gunness next week in Charlotte, NC at the Cackalacky Film Festival. We'll also be showing it a few weeks later at the Asheville Film Festival in Asheville, NC.
Starting Oct. 29th through Nov. 11th, Best Buy will be offering an exclusive promotion. Customers who purchase both HEAD TRAUMA and my first feature THE LAST BROADCAST will receive $5 off the final purchase price.
With brick and mortar retail stores forced to limit the amount of indie DVDs they can carry, this promotion shows a confidence in the films by a major chain. If sales of The Last Broadcast and Head Trauma live up to expectations, they could pave the way to more DVDs from independent filmmakers sharing shelf-space with leading studio releases.
The following sites are currently taking orders
weiler's online store - click here
amazon.com - click here 17.99
barns & noble - click here 15.98
bestbuy.com - click here 14.99
buy.com - click here 16.75
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT "HEAD TRAUMA"
"Any number of big-deal filmmakers - M. Night Shyamalan, for one -would be well-served by a viewing of the low-budget Head Trauma....this simple and effective psycho-thriller creates a mood of dreadand dissociation, and sustains it, without resorting to elaborate special effects, or a colorful crowd of actors, or other worldly mystical hooey." 3 out of 4 stars
- PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
"I'm giving this film my first ever 10 and have to say the hopes and dreams of the great American horror are now on Weiler's shoulders."
- CINEPHELIA.COM
"With his second outing, Weiler proves himself a seriously skilled director. His tone has much in common with the recent spate of Japanese horror films. There's the emphasis on atmosphere, the sad, restless ghosts of the past, the jittery camerawork. It's a wonderHollywood hasn't snapped him up to helm one of the countless J-horror remakes taking place stateside (The Ring, The Grudge, Pulse). It's almost depressing to think what Weiler could have done with the recentrevision of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 2001 chiller Pulse."
- THE ALIBI
"HEAD TRAUMA will leave you scratching yours in the midst of a fantastic, scary ride that leaves no unanswered questions and does its job with the utmost competence and sheer unalloyed glee." 4 stars
- FILM THREAT
"Works its way under the skin, raising neck hairs while teasing usto pry open its psychological puzzle box."
- LA WEEKLY
"The growling, hooded figure which dogs George through the story is an absolutely terrifying apparition, perhaps the simplest and most haunting monster to grace a movie screen since the debut of Freddy Krueger in the original "A Nightmare On Elm Street."
- BLOODY DISGUSTING
"One of this year's touchstones... Demonstrating once again that ingenuity and invention are more important than millions of dollars in budget, Weiler most effectively works within the confines of the dark house. As more and more unsettling things start to happen, it's almost as though the house were growing into a full-fledged, recently awakened character that is not sure what it wants to do when it sees that it's under attack... Head Trauma creeped me out."
- TWITCHFILM.NET
"A slick, original, attention-grabbing feature... pushes the medium to the edge of its artistic bounds."
- ALBUQUERQUE WEEKLY
"Horror outing that revives the under appreciated monster of the id to great effect."
- MOVIE CITY NEWS
"You know the ones: Jacob's Ladder, 12 Monkeys, even Lost Highway. Head Trauma is a solid induction into these halls of creepy mindfucks."
- THE PORTLAND MERCURY
"Elicits effective creeps. A well executed haunted house exercisethat treads the psychological vs. supernatural line."
- AIN'T IT COOL NEWS
"Incredibly creepy... good re-creation of 70's horror."
-TUCSON WEEKLY
"Fright classic... surprisingly effective chiller."
- THE OREGONIAN
"HEAD TRAUMA is completely pro. From packaging to film quality to the movie's website, it seems like there was big money behind this film."
- LOCAL IQ
Haven't written here in a while, so I thought I'd give a quick update...
On the radio with Bone from 97.9x
The movie also opens tonight in East Stroudsburg, PA at the Grand Cinema and in Brattleboro, VT at the Latchis theatre. I'll be traveling to both locations to promote the runs over the next week. In Brattleboro Steve Bissette will be joining me to do an intro and Q&A surrounding the film. As I've mentioned before Steve and his son Danny created the "Nothing But Grief" comic used within the movie. It will be great to see Steve again.
Earlier tonight I spoke to a large gathering of students at the Scranton Penn State satellite campus. In each of the tour stops I'm speaking at various schools or film societies. It's an excellent way to offset travel expenses. In most cases they pay a speaking fee, provide lodging and take you out for food and drinks! What it also does is help to promote the screenings and upcoming DVD release to my core audience.To be continued
Making travel plans, sending out e-mails, getting some DVDs & tapes ready for today's mail are the kind of "1 week 'till NYC screening" stuff I am attending to right now. Doing these one-off screenings are useful. So far each screening produced some changes to the movie. I think the version that will play on 8/31 @ Pioneer will be the very final version of the movie. So, screening #10, the NYC premiere, is coming up, & after that 100s more screenings to set up & do, DVDs to make & sell, & also need to look into VOD. Also trailers, clips on the web, posters, post cards, action figures. Right now DIY distribution is a full time commitment underwritten by full time dayjob work. DIY filmmakers/distributors are the hardest working (& sexiest :) people in show biz (next to James Brown, Michelle Mae & Ian MacKaye that is). But am glad the flick is getting out to customers, little by little. Here's all the info on the 8/31 screening in NYC. Tix are on sale now, see link below. Thanks!
Here's a quick update -
Earlier today iFilm featured the HT trailer and a special "Making Of" web short on the front of their site. Since then the trailer has been viewed over 9,000 times. And if that wasn't cool enough HT is ranked #2 just behind the Descent as the most popular horror vid on the whole iFilm site. The exposure resulted in a ton of e-mails and feedback. Gotta love the internet.
In other news I've been working on a new addition to the htMob (the film community for HT) and I'm happy to announce that it's ready for consumption. It's called Head Trauma radio and I've been seeding it for the last six months or so - making it available via myspace so that people could take the code and embed it into their own profiles, blogs or pages. I've gotten e-mails from Germany, Norway and a bunch of people here in the states that have embed the simple player into their profiles and pages.
What's really cool is that once it is embed in a page or profile I can update the audio tracks at any time. So it's like my own channel that rides over myspace profiles or any where else that someone embeds it. It allows me to update people about the project without them coming to my sites.
Here's what it looks like.
It's pretty simple - some would call it an audio blog of sorts others might call them podcasts but I'm calling it radio. HT radio is something that I plan to update as often as I can from the road. I'm trying to document all the phases of making HT. I started this past weekend with a couple posts about the Twisted Horror Weekend horror convention that I attended in Ohio. I plan to give simple audio updates about my travels in addition to interviewing various cast and crew involved in the making of the movie.
I've also setup a flickr account and over time I'll be uploading all the photos from the making of the film. Big props to Martin Pepe for all his behind the scenes photography. I'll also be snapping new pics from the road.
Checkout http://htmob.com/vlog or http://htradio.blogspot.com to listen and see the pics.
I just returned from a video dealer's convention in Vegas. I was invited to speak and ended up talking about my distro plans for HT. I meet some very cool people and made some great contacts. The show is the largest gathering of video dealer's and buyer's from around the country. I promoted the upcoming DVD release of HT with some mini comics of the website. I used a similar promotion at the LA FILM FEST a couple weeks back. There a great cost effect promotional tool with a strong impact. I do a limited run at kinkos and print them up on a laser paper. They end up costing about .22 cents a piece.
Front cover of the comic
On the theatrical end of things I've just booked the 12th screen of the run. Three more to go. I'll be posting a list of cities and venues within the next two weeks so stay tuned. If you happen to live in one of the cities let us know info @ headtraumamovie.com
The alternate soundtrack has a new release date. It will be coming out on Oct. 10th on Park the Van records. We're currently working on putting together a couple of shows that will feature some of the bands on the soundtrack accompanying the movie live. The soundtrack is called Cursed - the HEAD TRAUMA music project and features performances by:
Bardo Pond
The Capital Years
Dr. Dog
The A-Sides
National Eye
Marshal Allen (SunRa)
Greg Weeks (Espers)
Steve Garvey (Buzzcocks)
and many more...
This coming week I'll be unveiling the final package design for the HEAD TRAUMA DVD's. I'm so excited about the way the whole thing came together. I'll be posting some hi-res photos for everyone to see. More details about what's on the DVD and within the packaging will be announced very soon.
Lastly, I started yet another social network experiment for HT. So far I have a myspace and tagworld profile. And now the newest addition to the social networking family is a filmmaking social network called iklipz. It's too early to tell what I think of it. I'll keep you posted.
