The second Micro Budget Case Study in our series is Chad Haufschild’s WAKE THE WITCH. Similar to our first case study, the WAKE THE WITCH filmmakers also took advantage of traditional distribution deals to pursue profitability. However because they operated on a lower budget ($10K vs. $65K), WAKE THE WITCH has already achieved profitability, which is awesome!
So for now I’ll turn things over to Chad who was kind enough to write up a summary of his process. We hope that others can benefit from his journey with WAKE THE WITCH and if you have any questions for us, please put them in the comments section below.
Enter Chad….
In 2008, Unfiltered Entertainment, Inc. produced a horror movie titled “Wake the Witch” for $10K. Financing was raised from a generous group of family and friends. By late 2009, “Wake the Witch” post production was completed.
In early 2010 “Wake the Witch” was picked up by Gravitas Distribution for Video on Demand, Blockbuster streaming and Amazon streaming. In the summer of 2010 Eagle One Distribution picked up “Wake the Witch” for DVD distribution in the U.S. and DVD/digital distribution in the U.S., UK and Ireland. In early 2011 Eagle One put “Wake the Witch” on iTunes worldwide which put us in nearly every English speaking country, and then in late 2011 Gravitas got “Wake the Witch” a 2 year Netflix streaming deal for $15K.
Thanks to our distribution deals, Unfiltered has been able to pay the original investors back. As the distribution dollars continue to trickle in we hope to recoup enough to give some return to the cast and crew, as well as put some aside for a future film.
How we did it:
1) We did our research. We knew the horror genre has a ravenous fan base, doesn’t require name actors and is willing to look past low-budget production quality – all perfect for a micro-budget film.
2) We planned for distributor needs. That meant having a professional photographer on set taking scene stills and behind the scenes photos. Making sure all our legal paperwork was in place. Having a professional graphic designer design the poster and DVD elements. Setting up a website with cast and crew bios, plot synopsis, a from-the-set blog updated weekly, behind the scene pics, etc. Building a press kit. Being stringent about avoiding copyrighted music or products.
3)We promoted the technology. First we focused on making the absolute best use of all our tech – cameras, lighting, audio, post-production software. Then we promoted the tech we were using in web forums. Finally we reached out to the companies that made the hardware and software we were using, thanked them, shared our experiences and offered to promote their products in press releases and articles.
Wrap Up:
Distribution money continues to come in from “Wake the Witch”. Meanwhile, Unfiltered has moved on, completing production of another micro budget horror in 2011, “Blood Rites”. Post-production is almost complete and we are planning to reach out to our “Wake the Witch” distributors with the new movie in March of 2012.
We’ll do a few things differently this time. We originally planned to self-distribute “Wake the Witch” and had set up on-line stores to sell DVDs before we got on VOD. That actually hurt our VOD deal, as the larger cable companies prefer pre-DVD releases. For “Blood Rites” we’ll be ready to offer them that exclusivity.
Our on-line promotion (social media/press releases/articles) for “Wake the Witch” really started when we got the VOD deal. This time we’ll do that work beforehand to build an aware fan base that will be looking for the movie on VOD.
It’s certainly not easy and definitely requires a committed team, but the “Wake the Witch” experience has taught Unfiltered Entertainment that micro-budget films can be financially successful.
Wake The Witch links:
http://www.unfiltered-ent.com/
http://www.wakethewitchmovie.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Wake-the-Witch/
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Additional Resources:
Steps To Getting Your Micro Budget Off The Ground (Part One) – CLICK HERE
** Upcoming ** Steps To Getting Your Micro Budget Off The Ground (Part Two) – CLICK HERE
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Any questions or comments? Just post them below!
Got a Micro Budget Success Story you’d like to share? Email me and tell me about it!
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Well done. Congrats. Do you know what the marketing/promotion expenses were for WAKE THE WITCH? If not, general estimate? Thanks.
Cheers
Moe
HI, Moe. Thank you and good question.
We built the completely insufficient amount of $2000 into the budget (part of the $10k budget) for marketing, but not marketing in the traditional sense. We spent part of that on Facebook ads promoting the Facebook page itself and first our self-distribution then the VOD run. Most of the money was spent putting together and mailing a sweet “reviewer’s kit” to every online horror review site we could find. We got creative with the packaging to ensure they at least opened it. Many of them took the bait and you can find review on several sites based in the US, UK, and New Zealand. In short, we went right to the people who were interested in little movies like ours, the Horror fans.
I forgot to mention paying for good packaging and poster art. For a movie like this, good art is good marketing. And having a good looking product ready to press and ship really impressed our distributors. I think it helped us get those deals.
I’ve posted a couple of examples of this on Film Specifis forum under “$9K feature that sold” and I really enjoyed this post. It just goes to show you do NOT have to spin your wheels for years trying to find $200k or $300k or more to get your project made. Yes you will make many compromises on a $10 to 20K feature but look at the upside in this case. You have now launched your career in a shorter time and not gone broke doing it. Congrats Chad you deserve your success because you stopped talking and got working!!
So true, Phil. Thanks very much for the kind words. WTW has opened a few doors wide enough for us to jam our steel-toed boots in the crack! At home, better resources during production and better access to talent have helped make Blood Rites a better movie. And we’ve already had first contact with a few distributors. That’s pretty cool….
Thanks for the info Chad!
Very interesting to see how you turned such a small project to profitability.
I’m curious, what deals did you make with cast and crew to work on the project? Did they all agree to differed fees?
Thanks!
Hi, Dane. Great question. Our cast and crew worked so hard and we had as much fun as possible. That was the key, really. We made sure the project stayed as fun as it could while maintaining a productive set. And we fed them well, too! They still talk about the food!
We did write the differed payment stuff into the contract, but that’s not why people got on board the WTW train. We worked really hard in pre-production to find people who where passionate about what they do or, more accurately, what they wanted to do. We had very few “professionals” on set. My partners and I in UE all work in the production business making commercials and such, but the rest of the crew was made up of people who were really excited to part of it. The cast came mostly from local theater and some that were on their way to make a start in LA. They were exited, too. I don’t think any of them expect a paycheck from their work on WTW, but it would be cool to be able to give them one.
You hit on some important points Chad… If one is not paying the cast and crew, at least feed them well. I’ll bet that was a good part of that $10K. When the cast & crew start feeling the project is taking too long or is just too much hard work, that’s when you’ll start loosing them.
Absolutely, Frank. And feeding them well means taking the time to find people to cater. You just can’t serve pizza and Jimmy John’s everyday! We found what we called a “craft services coordinator”. She went out and found volunteers to take a day or two of production. These volunteers where given roughly $7 a head to cover costs. We had some amazing meals! We continued that process during the Blood Rites shoot.
Chad — did you find the Facebook ads you paid for were pretty effective? I’ve always wondered if it was worth it on a small level with no name actors on the cover.
Hi, Jay. We had moderate success leading horror fans to our Facebook page. Not all the clicks resulted in a “like”, but it raised awareness at least. What we couldn’t track was how effective it was when we promoted the VOD run. We could track click throughs to our website but that didn’t really tell us who was watching the movie.
If you measure success strictly looking at click throughs, then I’d say it was worth the money we spent. And since that’s all we can really measure… I’d do it again.
Chad, I’m very impressed with the response you got with your film. Being part of Gravitas catalog is a huge success. What was your approach to get your film with Gravitas?
Any other recommendation on how to reach distributors for VOD?
HI, Daniel. I wish I had some geat story or clever trick I could tell you about, but honestly, we got lucky. We were contacted by The Bosko Group about the deal after Mark Bosko had read about the movie in a couple of trade magazines.
We had gotten some press after the PR guy for JVC wrote about us using one of their cameras via a press release. Without that press release I know it would have been much more difficult for us, but I also think that the many hours we spent talking about our production on every online tech/fimmaking forum we could find lead to that press release.
I don’t know if it would or could ever happen again the way it happened to us, but who knows? I never thought there could be another Blaire Witch but then there was Paranormal Activities, so I could be wrong here, too.