I’ve been promising you guys for a couple weeks that I was going to come up with some Micro Budget case studies – basically to showcase some of the filmmakers who are experiencing success at this budget level (success being defined as getting distribution for their films, achieving profitability, or both).
If you attended my Virtual Seminar last week on Micro Budgets, you know how important genre, cast, and budget can be even at this level (by the way Part 2 of the Virtual Seminar will take place on Jan.23 where I’ll be talking about financing, production, and distribution). So these case studies here on the blog will hopefully show you how to put everything into practice – also what works, doesn’t work, and what everyone would do differently next time. Reading case studies like this are a great way to shorten your own learning curve!
So without further ado, I’ll introduce you to our first case study…. Gavin Rapp and his film TRAPPED. Take it away Gavin….
What is the name and log line of your film?
TRAPPED
The suicide was easy, getting away with everything else could be murder. . .
What is the website for your film?
What is the budget of your film?
65k
What ‘names’ were in your film if any?
On our first feature “Trapped” we worked with Corbin Bernsen and Tom Atkins.
How did you finance your film?
With Equity Investments. Our investors get 90% back of everything we make up and till the recoup 110% then we split the ongoing profits 60/40 for us for perpetuity our investments was all Equity, and we also took advantage of the PA tax credit as well. (which was a lot of work)
How are you distributing your film?
We went the traditional distribution route and didn’t get any advances for our deals (we have a U.S and Canadian distribution deals). The deal with our distributors is that they get 25% each for any sales, and they also get to recoup P&A and expenses incurred for the sales over each quarter then we get the rest (which isn’t much). We signed 5 year deals, we have 3 more to go. Our distributors said it it usually in the 3rd year when we should start to see a profit on the sales then the rights come back to us which we will then keep and sell on our own through our website and “CreateSpace”
Why did you decide to do traditional distribution instead of self-distribution right away?
we thought about self distributing vs. traditional and wanted to see what if anything we could learn by going the traditional route first since we had a couple distributors interested. We sold about 500 copies of the movie on our own before we got the distribution option, and decided as a team to go for it to see how it would play out. That way we knew both sides of our options, we knew how to distribute and promote on our own (which is a heck of a lot of work, and we didn’t budget enough on our first feature to really promote it ourselves ), so when presented with an option to get into all of the Big Box retailers, even if for a couple of days, and then have an option to get “Trapped” onto cable and VOD we decided to go Traditional.
How did festivals play into your distribution strategy?
We didn’t really do to many festivals. We didn’t have the money. We had a premiere in Pittsburgh and were in a local theater for a weekend. (which was very hard to wrangle as well. No theaters played dvd’s so we had to transfer everything to DVCAM and then go spec out theaters to see how the film would look on the big screen. Sometimes we couldn’t even see the picture. Then we’d have to go back to Final Cut to turn up our brightness on the whole movie, and then get a DVCAM tape made again and then go back out to theaters to test it again. That took months.
What are some of the obstacles (if any) that you encountered and how did you overcome them?
It seems that in making movies on whatever budget scale, everything and anything can be an obstacle. It all matters on how you look at your situation. After making 2 indie features I have become accustomed to the landscape of production. It is always a pressure cooker. You never have enough time, energy, or money. I can say that I learned to delegate and hold responsible the people we work with. My first feature I was answering every last question from everyone, and I feel that the production suffered because of that, i.e. , when’s the food coming to the set, who’s getting it, where are the bathrooms, so and so can’t get a ride to the set today can you give them a ride, and on and on. I feel that with an extremely small crew of 4, I was overwhelmed. On my second feature, I made sure we had a few more experienced people on set to distribute the workload, such as a 1st AD, and a couple more grips, and we added additional responsibility to our production manager. With a total of 5 to 6 people working it was a big help and enabled me to concentrate more on the performances and specific shots I needed to get from our 2 sometimes 3 camera set ups.
What were some of your biggest mistakes or wastes of time/money?
I can’t name any really big mistakes we made on this feature. We had everything mapped out and had weekly production meetings to help us stay on course.
What resources or tools did you find most helpful during production, post, and/or distribution?
I would have to say our resources were both people and technology. A lot of local folks love to help out artists especially movie-makers. We would find out what locations we would need, and then would offer locals a chance to be in the movie as an extra. We had people offer places of business to shoot in, period cars, clothing, etc all for free. On the tech side we shoot HD and use our laptops with final cut, to edit the picture. All of which is pretty affordable.
Did you recoup your investors’ money?
We have made some money back but not break even yet.
If you had to do it all over again, what would you do differently?
I shot every weekend for two months. Which is a real drag. I also work full time at FedEx as their multi media specialist. So needless to say it was a grind. I don’t really want to do that again. I would rather shoot straight through 26-30 days and be finished with production. I would also make sure that you have an agreement with all named actors to be at the premieres. We didn’t do that, and Corbin and Tom were “busy” and didn’t show. I won’t do that again. . .
What are your next steps from here?
Thanks to your insight and posts on your website Film Specific about distribution and sales agents, we were able to send out screeners and Trapped was picked up for distribution.. Since we went with a traditional type of distribution we will just have to wait it out and see what happens. We are supposed to be on VOD and Cable this year. So we’ll see if that happens or not. It is a long, slow process.
####
Thanks Gavin for sharing! Any questions for us? Just post them below in the comments section. And if you have a Micro Budget success story that you’d like to share, please email me and let me know.
Related Posts:
|
Share the Love
|
Newsletter Sign-Up
|
...founder of 
Big thank you to Gavin for sharing this information since much of it shows the pitfalls, pain, and mine-fields typically encountered… not to mention, it’s tough to make a profit in this enterprise. Gavin faced it head on and is so very generous to share it with us.
Thanks for sharing your experience. You mention that you sold 500 copies on your own. Can you please let us know what you did for marketing/advertising when you were in self-distribution mode.
Hi Rich
My partner Ron and I discussed trying out the self distribution first to see what it would kind of effort it would involve to actually make and advertise and sell the dvds, and we ended up deciding to work with CreateSpace. We were able to send CreateSpace a master copy of the dvd including all of the artwork and they would end up taking care of reproducing the dvd, packaging and shipping it for us. So with our fan base, local and national, and then us purchasing some ad space on Amazon got us to almost 500 copies sold. Then we went to a traditional distribution set-up and have sold about 50 copies. But were able to be in Target, Walmart, BestBuy, Blockbuster etc. . .And we still are available in those retail stores online. Which I think in the long run has helped our resume.
We ran into a lot of similar situations with our movie. Premiere turned out awesome, but we had a second showing at a different theater and the audio was terrible. We had even checked it out prior to, but something was “tweaked” between then and the showing. We’ve signed with reps in LA and hopefully will be finding a distributor or buyer soon. Great to see that we’re not that far off the path of what we should be doing. Thanks for the case study.
great post Stacey, thanks!
Thanks Stacy for this, and thanks Gavin for sharing your experience. I am just at the point of sending out screeners for my film now, hope to have my own story to tell soon. Look forward to seeing Trapped wherever and whenever it is available.
Great post Stacey. And thanks for sharing your story Gavin!
Thanks Mark! I appreciate your comments. And good luck with your project as well!
Thanks for the info Gavin! I have a few follow-up questions:
Were you able to determine whether most of your 500 DVD sales came via your fan base or your amazon ad?
Can you elaborate a little more on taking out the Amazon ad, cost etc? And also how you went about building your fan base, both nationally & locally?
I’m also curious how difficult/easy it was to acquire your “name” actors. Was it a situation where they were coming in for short periods or did you secure them for several weeks of production etc?
Hi Steve
most sales definitely came from our fan/friends base. . . CreateSpace/Amazon gives you the ability to query detailed reports. We sold a few hundred through friends and fans and the rest were through Amazon to folks we didn’t know. I don’t know if the ad helped or not, but it showed that we got clicks and the generation of those clicks through to a purchase although in the end, not amounting to a whole lot.
The ad was a small banner ad. And the way we built our base was through our friends first, then their friends, and our family and their friends and family. After reaching out to lots and lots of folks via email, and through website it added up to some sales.
With our name actors – Tom Atkins lives in Pittsburgh, so I just called him up and set it up. That was easy. With Corbin, I had to call and talk to his agent, send him the script to see if he even wanted to be a part of the movie. After he said yes and that he liked the story we negotiated a weekend rate for him and when he was available and flew him in. We shot all of his scenes over one weekend. With Tom, since he was local, we shot his scenes over a few weekends.
Thanks Gavin! Great info!
If you have any other questions let me know and I will do my best to answer them…
You’re too generous Gavin! Here’s one: Now that you’re older and wiser (LOL), what would you do differently starting off today… Learning from this experience?
That’s a tough one. I will try to make my answer as short as possible. For those of us who like to write produce and direct in the independent world, and by independent I mean the (non-studio financially supported world) a side from what I mentioned before I would do things the same. This whole movie making process is very difficult and not to be underestimated, especially when you are trying to run it like a small business. There are very certain things you need to have in place before making the next steps to getting into production. It takes a long time, and if you don’t have another job to supplement your movie making income you can become discouraged and broke pretty quickly.
I can only speak to my situation because there are more than one way to skin a cat in this game. So with that I would say, have a day job in which you can live off of, and a job in which you can take the time off needed to film, plan your projects as best you can, have a business entity and a lawyer (at least when needed), and write and shoot what matters to you the most. Raise some money, and do the best with what you have. Also try to find your creative space. Is it in the Hollywood Studio system, or is it more indie. Both offer challenges and opportunities that require different commitments and time-frames as you can imagine.
I feel that the more personal the story is the better success you will have with it and more people will identify it. Don’t try to make something you think people will like to see. Make something that moves you and makes happy. That way you’ll be able to touch people in ways that are meaningful and important to them.
But I always like to say, what the heck do I know.
You know a lot! Wise words my man…
Would you mind sharing what kind of rate you had to pay for Corbin & Atkins?