Roy at the Tea Room here in Kensington, MD makes & sells a bunch of his own postcards. He told me he gets them done from modernpostcards.com, and that he gets 500 post cards for $125, and that they have a 5 day turn-around on jobs. Could be very useful for promoting
Date Number One. Will have to check 'em out this month.
If anyone has any recommendations on the following stuff, I'd love to hear about it:
- no budget/low budget D.I.Y. filmmaker friendly:
* graphic design programs
* sources for getting movie posters made
* great DVD & CD duplication deals/sources
* places to buy DVD boxes in bulk (i want to get some boxes w/ different colors, not just the basic black seen everywhere)
* shrink wrapping stuff (do i even need to do this for my DVDs?, will have to look into it)
* sources for stickers
Thanks!
Sujewa
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5 comments:
Wow, a ton of tips from david l., thanksalot!
re: shrinkwrappin':
I will be carrying the DVD at stores, starting most likely w/ Crooked Beat Records in DC, All Books Considered & Kensington Row Bookshop in Kensington, MD & a few others (& other cities will be added as I play in those places, most likely). I am going to set up shrink-wrapping & UPC coding capabilities for myself (I worked a shrink-wrapping machine at some video store dayjob once, & also there are cheap alternatives to it [plastic bags & a hair dryer? :)], and of course if I go w/ an outside DVD duplication service I'll get them to wrap them. also, I saw a doc on the web once about setting up UPC coding capabilities for indies - looked pretty easy, I'll follow up on that). Reasons for doing that stuff myself rise out of my plans to buy a mass DVD duplicating machine, one that can do several hundred in a few hours (lookin' into buying one for the same price it would take to get a 1000-2000 DVDs made from outside, I think a useful one would start around $1500, maybe cheaper).
Sujewa
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Discmakers is definitely the way to go. They'll send u a magazine with deals every few months.
for postcards, i used vistaprint.com. if you can design your own and upload the graphic, you get good quality and not too expensive. I think I got 250 for about $25. And once you order from them, they send you 'free' or almost free offers all the time. I just placed a re-fill order on postcards today, getting 100 more for just the shipping cost of $5.25.
I had someone help me design it -- using the poster image on the front (full color glossy) and black and white on the back.
Initial costs included fees for uploading the graphics, but once you do that, you don't have to keep re-paying for it -- just re-order the existing product.
I did business cards with them, too,
sujewa-
i've used modern postcard and had good luck with them (this was several years ago). now of course there are tons of places to do this. but modern was easy and the cards were very high quality.
you mention buying a "mass DVD duplicating machine". this is cool of course, but realize that they will NOT be the same as a true replicated DVD. duplicated DVDs are "burned" just like you can with any computer dvd burner. "replicated" are created from a glass master and are "pressed" for lack of a better word. this is what you should do for "retail" DVDs. They will play in any player, versus the problems often found with duplicating. and today, you can get high quality replicated DVDs VERY CHEAP - either printed on a spindle and you put them in cases (for around $0.75 cents each or less) or as a turn-key job as "retail ready" with printed disk, amary case with artwork, shrink wraps and a UPC code (for just over a buck or so). both these deals require a minimum order of 1000.
Diskmakers is a good source as some have mentioned, but they are more expensive than most places. just keep that in mind. if you'd like to email me privately i can give you more details...
-blake
Thanks a lot for all the tips everyone. I will explore the options presented early next week.
If you think of other useful screening promo & DVD packaging recommendations, feel free to share.
Thanks again!
Sujewa
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