Most Hollywood people probably aren't as candid and honest as I am about things. I prefer to just be open about as much as possible. I believe other people learn from my successes/mistakes and in turn relationships build.
First off, let's be honest, AWAKENING has received around 2,200 hits on youtube to date. The responses, though, have been great. A ton of people have responded that they were impressed. One of the local newspapers ran a really large story about the project with some pages in the entertainment section that were mostly full of very large pictures from the set. Local people responded by coming up to me in public and thanking me for posting it online for them to see. People were surprised that we were able to pull it off.
Last night the turnout for the AWAKENING Release/Networking Party was meager. With all the chatter about coming to the party, very few came to the party that weren't part of the cast. Many of the cast had already been committed to other obligations and couldn't attend. -That happens. This party was for the cast/crew, I'm not upset that some weren't able to attend.
When I evaluated who attended and why I found that no one attended because of the newspaper stories. Even though people talked about it, they didn't show up. No one came from the radio interview I did that broadcasted 3 days straight. Of the people who were personally invited (we passed out over 100 invite business cards), only 1 family attended.
What would I have done differently? Just have a room that fits only 50, or dependent on the production, just don't do one at all. I wanted to make sure I had enough room for all the people who had been involved (40 cast/crew) and for their guests. That's why we made a point to have seating for 100+. We then decided that we would open it up to the public. At the end, I don't think the public responds well to this kind of event, even though it was a one-of-a-kind event for this area of Michigan.
There were other factors that played a part in the smaller than expected response. The recession has kept a lot of people from wanting to get out and do things. The tragedy in Japan has people glued to their TV screens (which makes perfect sense) and Governor Snyder's proposal to kill the tax incentive has created a lot of nervousness and negative feelings in the film community and about film production in general. (to reiterate where I stand: My productions have never directly benefited from the tax incentive.)
There's something great that did develop out of the AWAKENING Release/Networking Party. I was able to meet others on a more personable side. When we did AWAKENING, I was just the commander-in-chief of the production. It basically was, "do this", "do that", "cut", etc. I didn't have time to really get to know anyone. But I did perceive, by the way individuals held themselves, what different people were like. So I made some much better connections with cast/crew people from AWAKENING, and met others who were interested in The House. There was some great conversations.
But to reiterate, this party would have been a much better experience had we gone with a smaller atmosphere. It may have also help to bring people into conversations more. The lack of numbers also had an influence on my enthusiasm/focus when speaking.
AWAKENING's response on the internet. I think what has bugged me the most has been the hit counts on youtube. It's not so much the hit counts themselves, but who the hit counts are. When I look into "insights", I can find out who is watching it and where they found it. Of the hits on youtube, almost exactly half come form a site called irove.com. It's this site where this guy trolls through youtube to find odd and different video clips and posts them on his site. I don't know much more about the site. With Facebook it was about 300 hits, the Detroit craigslists (we posted the link with the ad we posted about cast/crew for our next project so people could see my most recent work) 284, and then it dwindles down. With twitter.com it was just 92 hits. (In 2009 I had over 3,000 people watch a clip of AMNESIA in a couple weeks with just a few posts per day.)
Basically, with my invites to people I know, with the people in the cast/crew who posted about it on the internet, there was only 300 views. With the newspaper's sending people to our site to watch it, that number was low too. I'm having a much harder time to be able to figure out the real number here and wonder if in fact some how the views from our site don't count for some reason. If so, then our numbers may have been much higher.
My main point is that after all the promotion, my careful planning, it had very little effect on getting people to watch and share it. The important emphasis is the word "share it". If people really love it they share it. It's the natural human thing to do.
The natural artist thing to do is respond with, "WOW, I must really suck!". But, let's be more objective about this. When I look at demographics, that's when I start to become concerned with the real problem with AWAKENING. It shows that 67% of the people who have watched AWAKENING were males. Of the male population that watched it, over half are between the age of 44-64. Completely the wrong population of people to watch AWAKENING.
Now, I do think that I'm ahead of the curve on this micro-pilot medium. People keep calling it a short or a trailer. That's because they are just relating it to something they are familiar with.
One of the side comments I'm going to make is that I beleive that social media, like we thought it was 2-3 years ago, isn't what it is today. First off, Twitter has become a massive amount of link feeding. People either autotweet links or their blogs, facebook pages, etc are feeding links (people are busy doing other stuff than chatting on twitter like they did back in 2008), and with Facebook a large amount of the people on there aren't "really" on Facebook. They're on a Zenga game like Farmville and it feeds into Facebook, giving the impression that people are on when they really aren't. The fact is people don't really want to talk to "everyone" for months, years on end. The average person just wants a few close friends. I had already been noticing this trend away from SM about a year ago.
Had AWAKENING been released in November 2008, it might have gone viral just by tweeting about it. It may have gone viral on Facebook in 2009. But now... less likely. On those sites things are much more gradual.
My biggest concern is the issue of audience desire. Do people really want to see the next thing I make? I had mentioned before about finally creating the UTOPILAND micro-pilot that I had shelved. I beleive I can find enough VFX artists to help me make it, but even if I found all the money to do it, would anyone really want to see it? That's why I am seriously considering doing a crowdfunding campaign. I want to know whether this concept really has the demand to even make it into a micro-pilot, or if it would just be "shouting into the wind".
With the UTOPILAND micro-pilot I wouldn't publicize it with the local media outlets. I probably would even hold off on much of any mention on Facebook, Twitter, emails. My main focus would be sites like motiongrapher.com and Spyfilms, etc. If they loved it, then would write a post about it.
With THE HOUSE, things are different because there is a much more in-depth plan with it because it's a feature film. We would do a micro-pilot and other character "scenes" that would be posted a long time before the release, to build the demand.
Basically, with micro-pilots, the key is to just constantly make more. The more you make, the higher chance that one of them gains enough attention with the right demographics, to make a real impact.
Showing posts with label Michigan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michigan. Show all posts
Monday, March 14, 2011
Monday, October 18, 2010
Michigan Tax Incentive "gimmick"? Really?
I usually hold off on voicing my political thoughts on issues on the internet. But recent news articles and reponses people have been making on the Michigan Film Tax Incentives have finally pushed me to speak my mind.
Anyone who knew me several years back, knows that I didn't support the tax incentives. Recently, in the last few months I have changed my mind. I was wrong. Rick Snyder is too.
Rick Snyder, who's running for Michigan Governor, made a very blunt and aragant statement of calling the tax incentives "dumb" and a "gimmick". That statement is itself a gimmick.
First, to make that statement is to insinuate that all the Democrats and Republicans who voted for it (which was everyone in the state senate, except some woman from Novi) are dumb. Nice going there Rick. Just tell your fellow Republicans they're dumb.... especially Rep. Huizenga.
Second, anyone who understands politics of the last couple decades figures out that what candidates do is create easily quotable "sound bytes". That statement is a sound byte. And an extremely opinionated one designed to stir up his supporters (A.K.A. - The Teaparty). It's no different than John Kerry dropping the "F-word" dozens of times. No real substance, just a lot of hype and reaction.
For me, as an independent voter, when I see someone dropping blatantly arrogant and opinionated sound bytes like this what they're dong is a slight-of-hand. They are distracting you from the main focus by making you pay attention to something else. Truth is, he doesn't have a plan on how to replace what the tax incentive was creating. $300-$500 million dollars was spent in the private sector per year in the two years that it has existed. (The reason I know he doesn't have a plan is, that if he did, he'd be focusing on that, not saying it's "dumb".)
Michigan citizens had been complaining to the present governor that she needed to create jobs and diversifying the economy. Manufacturing is going the way of the Dodo Bird in this country. Why? Because the Asian countries have cheaper labor. There will always be cheaper labor some where else. Give all the tax incentives you want, the manufacturing companies won't be running our way. There might be a few hundred jobs added, but not a huge amount.
Plus, not everyone wants to work in an assembly line. Many of us want to use our talents and brains to do something creative with ourselves.
The entertainment business, specially film, is the number one export out of America... besides jobs. Avatar made $1 billion in the box office, Inception made $800 million. No matter how hard the film business was hit by the recession they are doing much better than most industries around the world. They are adjusting and adapting to the new economy... and one of those ways is to pursue states that offer tax incentives.
A young lady by the name of Evangeline Lilly, started out as a extra in British Columbia. Then she was noticed by an agent and eventually auditioned for a role in a new show that was named LOST... remember the character "Kate"?
Remember, she was in British Columbia... not L.A. Why would she have gotten discovered there? Because British Columbia had a tax incentive that drew in studios from L.A. After a while they built sound stages and other facilities there related to the film business. Then B.C. lowered the amount of the incentive but continued to draw in film business because of the original tax incentives and facilities.
My major issue is the private sector. The number #1 thing on voters minds is simply 3 things: jobs, jobs, jobs. Michigan has the highest unemployment numbers in the country. People wanted results. A tax incentive for film production gets money into the private sector the fastest.
Now people can debate whether seeing $300-$500 in the private sector is worth rebating 42% back from the state budget, but they shouldn't debate there are jobs. (Honestly, if the 42% was there the politicans would just spend it anyways). There are tons of Republicans that claim that "no one is getting hired, it's all out-of-staters". Then, as I saw in a freep.com article, someone commented that they made $50,000 working on Red Dawn as a crew person from within Michigan...
You know what response that commenter got? Republicans telling him, "nice you got a job, but I don't want to have to subsidize your income". Wait a second, so it would be better if this person was on extended unemployment.... or even better, if they ended up getting assistance from the state? You forget, he was working his tale off on a film production, building his resume, and pursuing a career! A career, may I point out, where you can be in a crew union and make around $27 per hour. Yes, $27, per hour, with time and a half and double time as standard operating procedures. They pay better in the film unions that the UAW does right now.
First they said that it's not creating real jobs, then when people come forward and state they made a great income on it, then the same people say, "I don't care". It's like you can't win with those people.
My point is this: GM and Chrysler both laid of a ton of people over the decade. Many other major corporations did the same thing in Michigan. So when $300-$500 million was spent in the private sector in the last year, and the vendors paid more tax money at the end of the year, the Michigan government had more tax money. There's a very good chance that the money paid in taxes by individuals and corporations involved in the film business help to make up for what was lacking from GM and Chrysler. I wonder what the state budget would lack if the incentives are pulled? What would Snyder do to make up for the people who won't be working? Does he have a plan for that?
What the tax incentives creates is opportunities and hope.
Making arrogant statements like "dumb" and "gimmick" is insulting to all of us in the film business, the people at the film office, and all the people in the State Senate that voted for it.
I'm not supporting one candidate or another, I'm simply stating my position on the tax incentives. The film tax incentives was the best thing that has happened to Michigan since the Big 3 Auto companies started decades ago. To change it would be the worst mistake in decades! Diversify or die... that's the choice the Michigan economy can't risk.
Anyone who knew me several years back, knows that I didn't support the tax incentives. Recently, in the last few months I have changed my mind. I was wrong. Rick Snyder is too.
Rick Snyder, who's running for Michigan Governor, made a very blunt and aragant statement of calling the tax incentives "dumb" and a "gimmick". That statement is itself a gimmick.
First, to make that statement is to insinuate that all the Democrats and Republicans who voted for it (which was everyone in the state senate, except some woman from Novi) are dumb. Nice going there Rick. Just tell your fellow Republicans they're dumb.... especially Rep. Huizenga.
Second, anyone who understands politics of the last couple decades figures out that what candidates do is create easily quotable "sound bytes". That statement is a sound byte. And an extremely opinionated one designed to stir up his supporters (A.K.A. - The Teaparty). It's no different than John Kerry dropping the "F-word" dozens of times. No real substance, just a lot of hype and reaction.
For me, as an independent voter, when I see someone dropping blatantly arrogant and opinionated sound bytes like this what they're dong is a slight-of-hand. They are distracting you from the main focus by making you pay attention to something else. Truth is, he doesn't have a plan on how to replace what the tax incentive was creating. $300-$500 million dollars was spent in the private sector per year in the two years that it has existed. (The reason I know he doesn't have a plan is, that if he did, he'd be focusing on that, not saying it's "dumb".)
Michigan citizens had been complaining to the present governor that she needed to create jobs and diversifying the economy. Manufacturing is going the way of the Dodo Bird in this country. Why? Because the Asian countries have cheaper labor. There will always be cheaper labor some where else. Give all the tax incentives you want, the manufacturing companies won't be running our way. There might be a few hundred jobs added, but not a huge amount.
Plus, not everyone wants to work in an assembly line. Many of us want to use our talents and brains to do something creative with ourselves.
The entertainment business, specially film, is the number one export out of America... besides jobs. Avatar made $1 billion in the box office, Inception made $800 million. No matter how hard the film business was hit by the recession they are doing much better than most industries around the world. They are adjusting and adapting to the new economy... and one of those ways is to pursue states that offer tax incentives.
A young lady by the name of Evangeline Lilly, started out as a extra in British Columbia. Then she was noticed by an agent and eventually auditioned for a role in a new show that was named LOST... remember the character "Kate"?
Remember, she was in British Columbia... not L.A. Why would she have gotten discovered there? Because British Columbia had a tax incentive that drew in studios from L.A. After a while they built sound stages and other facilities there related to the film business. Then B.C. lowered the amount of the incentive but continued to draw in film business because of the original tax incentives and facilities.
My major issue is the private sector. The number #1 thing on voters minds is simply 3 things: jobs, jobs, jobs. Michigan has the highest unemployment numbers in the country. People wanted results. A tax incentive for film production gets money into the private sector the fastest.
Now people can debate whether seeing $300-$500 in the private sector is worth rebating 42% back from the state budget, but they shouldn't debate there are jobs. (Honestly, if the 42% was there the politicans would just spend it anyways). There are tons of Republicans that claim that "no one is getting hired, it's all out-of-staters". Then, as I saw in a freep.com article, someone commented that they made $50,000 working on Red Dawn as a crew person from within Michigan...
You know what response that commenter got? Republicans telling him, "nice you got a job, but I don't want to have to subsidize your income". Wait a second, so it would be better if this person was on extended unemployment.... or even better, if they ended up getting assistance from the state? You forget, he was working his tale off on a film production, building his resume, and pursuing a career! A career, may I point out, where you can be in a crew union and make around $27 per hour. Yes, $27, per hour, with time and a half and double time as standard operating procedures. They pay better in the film unions that the UAW does right now.
First they said that it's not creating real jobs, then when people come forward and state they made a great income on it, then the same people say, "I don't care". It's like you can't win with those people.
My point is this: GM and Chrysler both laid of a ton of people over the decade. Many other major corporations did the same thing in Michigan. So when $300-$500 million was spent in the private sector in the last year, and the vendors paid more tax money at the end of the year, the Michigan government had more tax money. There's a very good chance that the money paid in taxes by individuals and corporations involved in the film business help to make up for what was lacking from GM and Chrysler. I wonder what the state budget would lack if the incentives are pulled? What would Snyder do to make up for the people who won't be working? Does he have a plan for that?
What the tax incentives creates is opportunities and hope.
Making arrogant statements like "dumb" and "gimmick" is insulting to all of us in the film business, the people at the film office, and all the people in the State Senate that voted for it.
I'm not supporting one candidate or another, I'm simply stating my position on the tax incentives. The film tax incentives was the best thing that has happened to Michigan since the Big 3 Auto companies started decades ago. To change it would be the worst mistake in decades! Diversify or die... that's the choice the Michigan economy can't risk.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Game Changer?
- That’s how James Cameron described his newest film, “Avatar.” He wasn’t referencing the script, acting, or music; but the way people literally saw film, especially big-box office CGI (3D) driven film.
In the same way, I believe that THE HOUSE, and the other projects I am currently working on (Utopiland and a project I will call "Untitled") will be “game changers.” No, I’m not trying to compete with Cameron and his latest mega-budget film, but I am trying to change the way people perceive independently produced movies with budgets under $1 million dollars.
Typically, people see independent films as “small personal films”… and nothing more. Yes, there are many cheap independent horror/slasher films and various shoot’em-up action flicks, but to come up with something that is original, story driven… and has an element of “epic” in it as well? That’s usually unheard of. Why can’t an independently produced film be epic-looking in its shots? Why can’t Indie films compete on the scale and scope of ideas that big studio films do? Are we really that “small?” NO WAY!
When you see my SM profiles on places like Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, etc. I always describe myself not as independent filmmaker but a “revolutionary” filmmaker. There’s a reason for that: I want to change things! A Game changer? Watch the opening scene of THE HOUSE below, and comment on our YouTube video. We want your opinion!
ps. This isn't just about THE HOUSE, it's about a completely different way of doing things. I'll go into this more later. But for me it includes Utopiland and the "Untitled" project (the reaction to the "Untitled" project may possibly change my course of direction on certain films). This new way of doing things has already radically altered my way of thinking.
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