Cooking & Brain Surgery

Last night I was re-inspired to love cinema by being in the presence of legendary editor Walter Murch who was guest speaker at an evening gathering of the excellent professional network Cinema Jam in Shoreditch.

He said some beautiful things and some insightful things and here are a few of them to share with you:

• "It is like writing history with electricity," said president Woodrow Wilson when he saw one of the earliest feature films (happened to be DW Griffith's ideologically indefensible Birth of a Nation, which is a sad start to cinema, but there it is).
  
  
• Murch showed us a picture which he said was of a moment that happened on every film - first blood. The editor had cut his finger on the machinery. "You knew you were really making a film when blood began to flow".
  
  
• Murch edits at a standing desk. "Film editing is a combination of short order cooking and brain surgery," he said. This is because it has such a strong time component that sometimes you just have to bash something out as quickly as possible and other times you need the fine precision of a surgeon.
  
  
• If a film is really good, you forget any of the artifice that went into making it. "It's happening right in front of you". That's how he explained Victor Fleming's quote: "Good editing makes a director look good. Great editing makes a film look like it wasn’t directed at all."

• How do you know when to stop? Murch says it's when the scene is "just happening" and you can't see yourself anymore in the decisions you made.
  
  
• The author Milan Kundera said: "Your novel should be smarter than you are" and Murch feels the same way about films.
  
  
• What is the future of actual celluloid film, the physical stuff, in the face of a digital revolution? Murch says watching celluloid is like swilling an expensive glass of wine with overtones of ebony and cinnamon. You have to ask yourself - what it takes to make those overtones, well, is that worth it?
  
  
• Murch spoke highly of Adobe Premiere Pro which he's currently using and which has apparently been very responsive in its development to filmmakers including Fincher and the Cohen brothers. For example, the software company installed an option for "dynamic trimming" at Murch's request. He explained there are 3 critical points in a shot: Which shot? Where to begin? Where to end? The end is vital and that cut point is for him "a place of musical sensitivity". He said he would never scrub and go frame by frame to find that end point, but rather run the footage and feel the cut.
  
  
• Apocalypse Now was 14,160 minutes of film which meant it actually weighed 7 tons. That kind of physical material needed an army of attendants and much higher budgets.
  
  
• "The motion picture and music love each other - sometimes too much". Murch said they are both temporal arts in which the viewer has to accept the time created by the medium. Personally, one of the things that has always annoyed me about watching films for work purposes vs reading screenplays is that in the former I can't skim or speed through at my own pace - I am bound to the pace of the picture or risk losing massive chunks of information and pretty much the essence of the work.
  
  
• Murch also said cinema and music are both modular. They go through modules of being in one state and then another and great power comes from the change between states.
  
  
• Both cinema and music are also very specific - in cinema, you see an actor's face in a moment in a specific light and you cannot imagine anything else. As a side-note he added that's what makes a good movie star - an actor whose face allows the audience to both see them for who they are, but also at the same time project a penumbra of hopes and desires onto them.
  
  
• Music in cinema can help make the very specific nature of the image more universal. For example, in Star Wars: A New Hope when Luke looks up at the sky on his home planet, the score lifted that moment out from the specific and made it a universal moment of "boy becomes man".
  
  
• As an Editor, Murch advocates working with the Composer and music like a trellis vine - keep an active exchange going and grow one off the other.
  
  
• Used incorrectly, Murch says music can be like steroids - it can buff you up emotionally, but it's not healthy in the long run.
  
  
• He said (jokingly) if he had a magic wand to change one thing about the industry it would be that every Executive who greenlights a project should be forced to retype the screenplay. Then they would have a forensic understanding of the project and be able to see in advance how much can be changed and moved etc. before its even shot.

Meet the Producers

Here are the nuggets of wisdom I gleaned from a great panel and award ceremony hosted by Euroscript at the British Film Institute this week. These are likely to be most useful for Screenwriters working in the UK, but also some great reminders for producers.

The panel consisted of three speakers:

Judith King, Head of Development at independent TV company Red Planet;

Robyn Slovo, independent Producer who has worked with Company Pictures and Working Title;

James Cotton, emerging producer who recently made the micro-budget Powder Room alongside Damian Jones.

And here are the wise words that resonated most with me:

• Stick to your voice. Red Planet has to sell to UK broadcasters before they can move to sell America, so you can write in an authentic local voice that feels true to you.
  
• Write a really amazing character you can cast well.
  
• There is a danger in doing a story that's too small.
  
• Most of the writers that get put forward to more experienced producers like Robyn have won competitions or have written for theatre. Theatre is a great place to get experience and to get seen.
  
• If you get traction with a fiction project in cinema, that's a good time to also approach television.
  
• Judith is looking for samples and talent when she reads unsolicited submissions more than just the pure idea. Her advice for email approaches is: "Go small on the sell and big on the introduction".
  
• James' pet peeve is when screenwriters say "the script is finished" in their intro email. Invite collaboration, acknowledge that it's not your role to say when it's finished.
  
• If you're not a collaborator, don't become a screenwriter. Become a novelist. As a screenwriter, you have to be open.
  
• Don't be too precious and defensive when you get notes. A really bad re-writer will sabotage their own career.
  
• At the same time, there's nothing more frustrating than someone who just lies down and takes your notes. As producers, we don't want to write the script. It's up to you as the screenwriter to decide which notes are good - and which ones are merely working as flags to point out there is a problem but no one knows what exactly or what do about it. No one except you.
  
• Keep it short.
  
• Most common for James is reading 10 - 20 pages and not knowing who the main character is or what's going on.
  
• How you begin is the most important thing.
  
• Structure: You have to learn the rules and then not use them when you write. Structure is very important, but you need to find your own structure and that is not always the same as the models taught in script classes and books.
  
• You don't have to like a character, but you have to be intrigued or interested. My personal take on this frequent note given to writers is that what is really needed is that we are able to understand the character. For example, if the main character is a serial killer we will follow their story happily if you put us in the shoes of the serial killer - make us understand why they act the way they do, even if it's for hedonism or power or from anger etc. Make a coherent character we can relate to - and often the fact that we can relate to that will glue us to the screen in morbid fascination at our own darkness. This is why Walter White from Breaking Bad works so well - we can understand how a guy who is sick and tired of being under-appreciated and poor could make some dubious choices and we can follow every step of his evolution into a monster. Every step seems so logical - and the result is mesmerising.
  
• It's hard to get big stories made as a first time writer - even The Kings Speech and The Theory of Everything were relatively small films.
  
• Underlying IP is a very strong thing to have in the US and protects you and your idea, even if it's not a very good book/play etc.
  
• Read a lot of screenplays.

Filmmakers Forum - The Re-Draft

Yesterday I attended the Sargent-Disc BAFTA Filmmakers Forum and gathered some golden nuggets of wisdom to remember and share. These are from the session on The Re-Draft and here is another post on Managing Production on Independent Films.

The first wonderful women to take the stage for these anecdotal conversations were Desiree Akhavan (Director, Writer and Actress) and Cecilia Frugiuele (Producer) who worked together on

Appropriate Behaviour.

They showed us some fun clips from Desiree's web series The Slope about superficial, homophobic lesbians which she would shoot for an hour or two per episode with friends. They wanted to capture this same sense of humour in a feature film and Desiree's initial idea was to write something that could be shot on weekends with favours alone, but when Cecilia came on board she insisted they do it "for realsies" (the technical term).

The Thesis Statement

After a few drafts, Desiree delivered a version which she calls "a clusterfuck of nothing" which seemed like a series of sketches and it prompted her to really work out: "What is the thesis statement of this film?"

It's a great way of thinking about it and in my own experience of development this question can actually be one of the most important discussions. As a producer I would love it to be addressed and worked out just after the main research phase and during the bashing out of the Treatment since it saves a lot of time later if everyone understands upfront what the film is trying to say.

In Desiree's case, she discovered when she looked at her screenplay that she was saying: two people can be cool and very much in love and still not belong together. Once she had thought of it this way she immediately saw parallels with Annie Hall and was able to use that film as a reference for structure.

Desiree and Cecilia would then read through drafts together on the couch to make sure they had "two feet on the ground" and were being honest and real.

Structure

Desiree mentioned that when she reads books like Story and the many other tomes on scriptwriting, she hears the same "nyahnyahnyah" noise in her ears as the Peanuts characters hear when adults speak. "I don't work that way," she says. I wholeheartedly agree with her that everyone needs to find they way they work and it's okay not to love those books. There are obviously other writers (like Tess Morris who wrote Man Up) who find it immensely helpful to work with a book on structure.

Desiree also mentioned that if a scene is really hard and you feel like you need elbow grease to massage it in, maybe you don't need that scene. It takes effort to make everything flow effortlessly.

Your Opening Shot

Desiree said she had somehow only remembered how important the opening shot is when she was in the edit suite. Now she's writing with much more awareness and pushes people she mentors not to choose a shot just because it "looks great" but make sure it actually means something.

"Your first shot needs to say something really important," she reminds us.

Name Cast

If you can, Desiree thinks it's better to work without name cast as a debut director. She thinks she would have been totally intimidated by someone on set who had years of experience which would have caused a power imbalance. Once you've made at least one film, then your name actor can watch your movie and they will be able to have a conversation with you, but before your debut no one knows what you can (or can not) do.

The next duo to take the stage were Juliette Towhidi (Writer) and Rosie Alison (Producer) who worked together on

Testament of Youth.

This was the adaptation of a 600 page book, quite a different beast from Desiree's auteur-driven original story.

Structure

Once again, the standard script structures didn't work for these women. They saw the story would not fit into the traditional 3-act structure and so they chose some important building blocks (eg. this is Vera's story) and then made the decision to build around them.

These blocks would also move around during the process. In an early draft they had opened with a prayer in voiceover and that moved all around the script and finally ended up closing the movie.

"With every screenplay you write, where you begin and end is key," said Juliette. It seems really obvious, but as Desiree mentioned above, it's all too easy to forget the importance of these book end moments. Juliette and Rosie worked through many versions of the opening, which they wanted to be a concise introduction to their main character Vera, and finally they hit on the idea of starting with Armistice Day, a day of celebration in which we follow Vera through a celebrating crowd and see she is out of sync with the others around her.

In an adaptation, they discussed how you have to bring out all the important moments in the character's journey and combine them into scenes which express all the same things, but did not exist in the book. This movie is based on an autobiography and there are scenes which never happened and are not in the book, but they are needed to concisely cover many of the points from the book. For example, in reality Vera only met her husband after all the events portrayed in the film, but it's not a good idea to introduce any characters - especially not key characters - at the end of a movie, so they introduced his character in an earlier scene where he took over the plot function of another person from the book.

It was also really important to play each scene so that it conveyed the most amount possible about Vera's character and how she was growing and changing throughout the narrative.

"You're always looking for ways to bring out your unique character," says Juliette.

Filmic Narrative

Juliette and Rosie talked a lot about how to play out moments in the most filmic way.

For example, (spoiler alert) there is a moment in the book where Vera receives a phone call on her wedding day to inform her that her fiancée has died. Traditional script wisdom says that a phone call is not very filmic and so Juliette experimented with setting the scene on Brighton Pier with Vera receiving the news from her mother in law, but in the end the best way to play this ended up being to suppress the emotion of the scene, have her receive the phone call and then play up the emotion in a later scene when she really feels the impact of the death (along with the audience) and finds the last poem her fiancée wrote for her.

"So much of what you write is not about dialogue," says Juliette. "It's about finding the images."

She shared the anecdote of a fellow writer who, when asked how the script was coming along, responded: "I'm almost done. Oh, nothing's written yet."

Of course every writer has their own process, but it seems to make sense that scriptwriters think very much about images, structure, dramatic expression and emotional journeys and however you work that out - "playing it out on the page" by writing in script format or simply chewing on an apple in a park while you think - there is a point at which it moves from "working it out" to "writing it down" and that last part is a very small percentage of your time.

Filmmakers Forum - Managing Production

Yesterday I attended the Sargent-Disc BAFTA Filmmakers Forum and gathered some golden nuggets of wisdom to remember and share. These are from the session on Managing Production on Independent Films and here is another post on The Re-Draft.

Clare Cahill (First AD, Art Ache, The Turtle and the Sea, Gridiron UK) who has worked on 27 films with budgets under £500k recommended over estimating your budget by 140% as you will often get around 80% of what you ask for. She also encouraged producers to be fair and pay people, saying that when someone tells her they made a film for £27k, she calls them a thief.

Terry Bamber (First AD, My Angel, A Christmas Star) suggested that for at least one day of the tech recce you pay for a Health & Safety Officer to come with you as their sharp eyes will help you avoid a lot of future expenses. He also stressed how important it is to keep to your word and know what crew you need. For example, a small movie may only need a 1st AD and a 3rd AD - know their roles and where you need (and need to pay for) high expertise vs where you just need someone to be there. He mentioned crew on low budgets also tend to prefer continuous 10hr days with a running lunch rather than 12hr days with a 1hr lunch break.

Producer's Vision

Terry also stressed the importance of knowing right from the start what kind of movie you're making. He gave the example of a TV movie where the producer was so excited by the footage that she wanted to turn it into a theatrical feature for Cannes. This would mean a longer film, so additional scenes that don't fit into the schedule (or presumably the script).

This seems to me a very important point which often causes trouble in the development process too. The vision for a film will suddenly grow (akin to the "feature creep" which happens when clients give you creative briefs in the commercials and tech world) - someone suggests a movie star for a comedy intended for DVD and suddenly you need a whole new budget level and strategic plan, which means you're script is suddenly not good enough for its ambitions, and you end up back in script development and financing. A clear and unwavering vision from the producer about what kind of film they are making can see a project through. If you wanted to make a theatrical Cannes film with a movie star, you should have started there with a script and finance plan for that purpose.

Peter La Terriere (Completion Guarantor, European Film Bonds) said anything below £2m is hard to bond because there's an element of maverick filmmaking which s hard to guarantee. Over £20m you will probably have a Studio which doesn't want a bond company to have take over rights. He also mentioned the key roles that influence the budget - the ones your guarantor will look at closely and have approval over - are Line Producer, Accountant, Director of Photography and Production Designer.

Gisela Evert (Post Production Supervisor, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, The Enfield Haunting, London Road) defined VFX neatly as "any manipulation of a picture element". Her top tips were to hire the best Sound Recordist you can find to avoid ADR, get the best Accountant you can find and do a Purchase Order for everything to make sure every cost on your production is closely tracked.

Clearances are also important - be aware of them from the moment you read the script. Hire a good Music Supervisor and also watch out for brand infringements such as the shape of a Pepsi bottle which is copyrighted. Clare suggested you could hire a clearance person for a day to read through your script and flag any potential issues.

Sargent-Disc is a great resource in the UK for production and accounts software and it seems like they are now launching a Purchase Order app which could be very helpful. If anyone has used it, let me know in the comments.

"T" who must not be named

TRANSMEDIA! Argh! I said it! I am hereby officially uncool in the circles of those who prefer not to mention "you know what".

Why can't we use the word Transmedia? It's just "storytelling" a prominent speaker at an event on "distributed storytelling" explained recently. We should call it "Crossmedia" now (Wikipedia tells us this is also known as cross-media, cross-media entertainment, cross-media communication, transmedia).

Another producer of "you know what" told me it's just not a very aesthetic word. It's like the word "networking" - no one wants to be associated with it.

Well, as a person who is keen to keep in touch with the global community (and there is one, you can name thought leaders and case study projects) and curious to explore more and not really that keen in having a movie from 2001 and a competition where authors read their books come up when I google "storytelling" - I want a #transmedia hashtag! I want a transmedia meetup group, I want to know when I'm talking to someone whether they know what a Storyworld is in transmedia terms or not.

"Ha ha!" they laugh at my little quip - we shouldn't be naming things based on what makes a good twitter hashtag, ha ha! Why not? When most of us involved in "you know what" spend oodles of time on the internet and naming things in a way that organises thought around them has been crucial since way back when.

Is Crossmedia really more apt and appealing and cool than Transmedia? Sounds angry to me.

Simon Says: Creativity is Imagination

"A lot of the time people don't know what they want until you show it to them" - Steve Jobs

That quote entered my world when Simon Wood, production designer on the computer game L.A. Noire, spoke at a BAFTA event earlier this week. More on that here. 

Simon had a lot of things to say about Creativity and Design, so I thought I would share some of those insights with you.

Simon Says:

• The primary requirement for creativity is Imagination.
  
• Generic Art appeals to no one, Specific Art gets opinions (even if those are negative opinions)
  
• Art Direction is about creating emotions, eg. comfort, familiarity, discomfort, fear.
  
• Justify everything. Things you see are there for a reason - they have been placed, dropped, they have fallen or crumbled...
  
• Always as Why Why Why. Simon used the example of a Spoon - if someone tells you to build a spoon, you should come up with at least 21 questions immediately such as "is it a metal or a wooden spoon? old or new? a clue? engraved or plain? has it got food on it and if so what food?" etc
  
• "People look but they don't see". Simon showed us a few photographs - one flipped, one with the "no entry" street sign facing the wrong way - and pointed out how it's important to see the details.
  
• If you want a job from Simon, you have a whole 15 seconds to grab his attention with your portfolio. And apparently this can be done by "thinking differently". Do something unusual. Add a twist to familiar design. Draw a straight line in the air with your finger (do it, now) - did you draw vertical or horizontal? Lines can go any direction.
  
• You can do whatever you want as long as a) it fills the brief, b) it's justified, c) it works.
  
• Be wary when people tell you your work is good - be your own harshest critic.

Simon ended his entertaining and insightful talk with an inspirational quote from Joan of Arc - 

"I am not afraid, I was born to do this."


You can see a video of Simon answering BIG QUESTIONS here on the BAFTA Guru Website.

LA Noire & Production Design

"Logic will take you from A to B, but imagination will get you everywhere" - Albert Einstein

A quote L.A. Noire production designer Simon Wood likes to use around programmers. Simon hosted a BAFTA masterclass at The Hospital Club last night and walked an enthralled audience through the process of creating a digital world that would take the players of Rockstar's acclaimed game back in time to the classic Los Angeles of Film Noir.

Simon's team created an impeccably detailed and highly filmic World using hundreds of reference images sourced from Hollywood studios, Archives and some crazy guy who took aerial photography of millionaire's homes in order to sell it to them!

Did you know that images from the game hold up equally beautifully in Black & White? This was intentional. Simon believes that images get their quality from light and if you get that right then the picture will work - colour is the second thought.

Aside from this L.A. Noire was considered revolutionary in its use of motion capture for facial animation. Have a look at this behind the scenes video:

Screamplay

House Rules is almost at the end of an extensive rewrite. The entire premise has changed, but the characters have stayed the same, and we've even resurrected one from a previous draft.


Here's a snapshot from the process:

What makes a good project?

"An evening of dramatic innovation" was the name of a showcase recently at the London Chamber of Commerce, where the government's Knowledge Connect programme together with the Central School of Speech & Drama showcased the various projects they had supported over the last few years.


In that context they asked the pertinent question: what makes a good project? As someone who often has to run projects, I thought I would share the pointers since they apply to many things we humans create with each other:

• Measure before and after to see the effect
• Identify why, who, what, where, when, how
• Make it specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound
• Make sure all partners put work in
• Don't lose momentum
• Use the result
• Maintain relationships

So simple, but often when working on creative projects the process becomes so exciting and wild that one loses sight of the simple things that make a good project.

Casting Revealed

Hester Schell from San Francisco was in London this weekend promoting her new book Casting Revealed and hosting a Q&A session for producers, directors and actors. 


It was interesting to note some of the subtle distinctions between working in the UK and in the States - the actor's union seems to be more demanding of producers/directors over there, which may be a good thing.


Here are some interesting tidbits of advice from the seminar - the book is on my desk and I can't vouch for it yet, but Hester seems to be a genuinely passionate collaborator and experienced in independent film.

• Use the internet - nobody does open casting calls anymore.
• There's a myth that "actors are a dime a dozen", but smart directors know actors are worth their weight in gold. You have to find the right one.
• When in doubt, keep on casting.
• Pay attention to how you feel and not what you're thinking - if there's any doubt, call back.
• If you're working on a low-budget film, your shooting schedule will be tight, so check to make sure an actor can take direction and that they understand technical aspects of the craft, ie. make the mark, match the action, frameline and eyeline.
• Have people bring in memorised material to check they can learn lines (and rock up on time!). In the States it is mandatory to send an actor the sides 24 hours before casting.
• Start casting at least 3 - 4 months before before the first day of principal photography.
• Who are the good teachers in your country and where did your actors train?
• When you're interested in an actor, google them, see how they present themselves.

One of my favourite quotes from the day was "when you share the wealth, we all rise up".

If you're interested in learning the nitty gritty of the casting process, you can buy the book here.

Brave New Storytelling

Where are we now? Show + Tell Films hosted a panel last week to discuss Content(ment). Film, television and advertisement are all changing, but we can't be sure yet how profound that change is or where it is taking us.


On the panel, Nik Powell (director of the National Film and Television School) played devil's advocate and claimed "the customer has always wanted what they want, how they want it, where they want it, and preferably for free - that's nothing new", later saying "we are making films for other human beings and what human beings want hasn't changed".


Justin Pearse (editor of digital industry mag New Media Age) was hosting the panel and challenged this idea saying the difference is now "people can change the story".


"I like to call it interactive, not digital" added Paul Banham from the established advertising agency JWT.


Ben Freeman from ITV cautioned that "you don't always want people to write drama because they're not good at it", though he did point out that there are many other ways in which audiences can engage with shows and not influence the writer's work directly, like a competition to design bowls that appear as part of the set.


Matt Smith (The Viral Factory) said "watching YouTube us a very different experience" and Michael Gubbins (former editor of Screen International) agreed that "how we're going to get these stories out there has fundamentally changed".So assuming the landscape has changed, what should content creators keep in mind?

• Viral video success remains unpredictable, but make sure to target universal language and appeal, make something that stands up to repeat viewing, and according to Matt Smith: "cute's just a big kinda deal"
• We are moving towards "a changed environment of complete total choice" according to Nik Powell.
• The 24 hour day is fixed, the challenge now is to win the audience's time.

The good news - this is a visual age, so filmmakers have a natural advantage and should adapt our 100 years of visual language!

The Found

The Forgotten ones are not alone - we have found proof, join us.

Secret Sci-Fi Project

I've teamed up with amazing indie producer Jade Alexander to work on...


Well, it's a secret. 


Right now we need some volunteers to do a very simple and cool job for us at the Sci-Fi London Film Festival, which is an awesome event, and you can find out more about the festival here.


Meanwhile, if you're interested in hearing what we need help with, email thembisa@gmx.net with the subject "The Found".

Script Under Construction

Once this was a producer's diary, and this weekend I am a writer. I believe rounded producer's have to really understand scripts and stories, so might as well learn by doing.


The script under construction (13th redraft, let's hope it's the lucky one!) is the horror House Rules. Going through my notes I came up with some of our old ideas for this film and they made me smile.


How would you respond to the brief "horror film that takes a happy family home and turns it into an automated death trap"?


Here's how we started:


The Tenants - have you read your lease?


Behind the Picket Fence - bless this mess


Bastion Crescent - most deaths occur in the home


Evil Psycho Death House from Hell - welcome, make yourself at home, and die!


Thanks to Andrew for that last one. Priceless.

Pitch Training

We've just spend the last week in pitch training at the Central School of Speech & Drama. There are a few tricks we learnt - mainly we did a lot of breathing exercises. The teachers made a good point when they said that most of our communication is non-verbal: tone and voice and body and eyes speak more loudly than we'd sometimes like.


Turns out communication (like so many things) is all about breathing.


Anyway, on the topic of pitching movies, here's one hilarious way (not) to do it:

Transmedia Storytelling

In the process of thinking about how best to market House Rules (the movie), we have obviously been thinking about ways to create audience engagement online.


The Blair Witch Project is a traditional example of a film that started telling its story online long before the movie hit cinema screens. A massive audience was created and the film was a box office success despite its low production budget.


It's silly to try and reproduce such success, but there's definitely something to be said about taking your story beyond the four walls of a feature film. What about live performance, print, digital and social media? There is a growing movement that believes stories should be told across media to transcend one medium and become transmedia stories.


Here in London, an organisation called Power to the Pixel has been exploring all things cross-media for a couple of years and today they are hosting a forum to discuss ways of financing and distributing stories. I'm certainly listening.

Movie fundraising is GoGo!

After our survey of crowd funding websites, House Rules Productions Ltd decided IndieGogo was the place to base our quest for investment. We are now well on the way to our first 90-minute movie - unless something goes horribly wrong. And speaking of things going horribly wrong - here's a link to the promo video we've produced to get us started:

Spread the word! Any feedback appreciated - kind or harsh. Though I retain the right to disagree if it's harsh and the right to love you forever if you help make this happen!

Birth Certificate

Our firstborn has a name! After a variety of cute and crazy suggestions, we have decided to call the film:


House Rules


This seems to actually very neatly summarise the plot, whilst also echoing the way in which young people live together in a house share. Of course, these rules are a whole lot scarier than "mop the floor on Tuesdays". And they are enforced by a machine - that can kill you.


So while we wait for the next draft of the screenplay, we are now ready to register our existence in the world.


In order to make the life of accountants and lawyers and stakeholders easier, every movie gets its own company. So while Devilishly Handsome Productions Ltd remains our umbrella company (and a key stakeholder in the actual project), the movie will be officially produced by another company. 


After all the title and tagline brainstorming we're now creatively drained, so we've simply called the company: House Rules Productions Ltd. A fat wad of paper has been sent to Companies House and we have invested our first pennies into the project - 20 quid registration fee.


Money has been paid. Now there's no going back!

What's the real story?

While the writer writes and the director draws, we producers are "packaging". Eventually, that will mean preparing a glossy little brochure to send out to to investors, but there's a lot of groundwork to be done before that.

We're meeting regularly to prepare our pitches and to start thinking about what needs to go into our budget. We're researching into other movies in the low-budget horror genre and noting how they performed in that imaginary "marketplace" out there. We've started thinking about our marketing and distribution plan, which is going to be an ongoing task until...well, maybe forever.

I'm taking the words of the theatrical sales manager I met to heart (more of her advice here). She said sales agents and distributors want "nerdy stats". I've also been told many times that you should deliver a movie that has an obvious and easy marketing strategy attached. For example, the UK zombie movie Colin has made it as far as a mention in this blog because of its genius marketing angle: "this feature was made with 45 pounds and a crowbar". Everyone knows about it, simply because it makes a short and interesting story to tell.

Paranormal activity was "the movie that got famous on the internet". Avatar was "the movie that the director of Titanic has been working on for years". Have you seen that Angelina Jolie movie? Are you going to the see facebook movie?

Few people enter cinemas because they like the film's narrative arc - they don't even know what that is until they've paid. People actively ask others not to tell them "what happens". They go into the cinema because of the other story.

So - what's our real story? We don't know yet, but we do know it's not the one in the screenplay.

9 Crowdfunding Websites

Opening our movie to the general public for investment has been something we've wanted to try ever since meeting producer AD Lane who seems to be making successful use of this strategy (more about that here).

Now that we have a solid script, we've had a look into what websites are out there. Special thanks to my colleague Andrew Faure for the research below.

1. Kickstarter: Respected name, but currently requires a USA bank account and address to use the site, so that cuts us out. Secondly it is all or nothing – meaning we set a goal of the money we want to raise, and if we raise that we get to keep it, if we don't hit our goal, all money that was pledged goes back to the people who gave it to us and we get nothing. Some other sites will give us whatever we do manage to raise.
   
   
2. Chipin: People can only pay using Paypal. Looks a bit amateur.
   
   
3. Cinema Reloaded: This is a specially set up website for 3 specific films. It is not a site we can use. However it seems to be a group of film-makers (like us) who are crowd-funding a slate of 3 films have set it up with a unique angle to fund their 3 films.
   
   
4. Ulule: They don't charge any fees. People an only pay using Paypal, and the money is paid directly into our Paypal account. You have to set a target, and if you do not reach that target then you do not get anything. We are not allowed to have our project listed on any other fundraising sites.
   
   
5. Biracy: This website is also to fund a specific project and it seems a bit Multi-Level Marketing. Definitely not what we're looking for.
   
   
6. InvestedIn: Not bad, and they have two options: set a goal and if this goal is not reached then you get nothing. Set no goal, and just collect as much as you can in a specific time period. You can only use Credit Card to pay – not everyone will have a credit card. They do not charge a fee.
   
   
7. Rocket Hub: Set goal, and if not reached, you do not get anything. They take 8% fee (transaction costs included). Seems like a good site, with s slightly different approach. Nice design as well. If you decide to donate money, you need to first sign up, which could be a bit of a pain and slight deterrent of someone just wants to donate a few dollars.
   
   
8. Massify: More a networking site than funding site.
   
   
9. Indiegogo: Set goal, but if you don't reach your goal you still get whatever you raise. People can pay via Paypal or Credit card. They take 9% fee (but return 4% if you reach your goal).