Man, time is flying...

I come check on the blog, sure it's just been a day or two since I blogged last time, and somehow a week has gone by.

Lotta the same shit--the KS seems to have stalled very early on. It gets pretty frustrating trying to figure out why certain people aren't dropping a buck in. It also gets frustrating to watch actors who have parts in the movie pimp other stuff(even crowd-sourcing stuff) without ever mentioning the GOH experiment.

Jokes on them, cuz I got a long memory and NOBODY holds a grudge like I do. Can't wait til those fuckers either A) Ask for some footage for their reel or B) Audition for my next film.

Anyway, had a bit of a frustrating convo on FB. I didn't put the frustration out there, as I'm not looking to make enemies while I run this KS thing, but that's what my blog's for, right?

The Sword Scene In Question

The convo was with some friends and a filmmaker I don't know who shot a sword fight scene. It's actually pretty well done and I enjoyed MOST of it. But there some shots where they strapped a go-pro to the swords, and one shot where he strapped it to his foot as he did a dive/roll.

I watched the guy's BTS thing and he mentions that those kind of shots may get gimmicky. I commented on the FB thread that I agreed--they felt gimmicky. I think he got kind of offended and replied that's not what he said--he said he thought that EVENTUALLY they'd get gimmicky, but he thought his shots were good.

I pointed out that the problem on the shots, from my POV,  is that every one of them pulls you right out of the scene. You're disoriented at first, then you probably go "Hey, cool camera shot". And as a filmmaker I'd say that those two responses are NOT what you're looking to elicit from a viewer. What purpose in the scene did those shots serve?

I mentioned that in the thread. And he said his reply would be, "To show the audience a view they'd never be able to see."

That's where I stopped talking, because that is just stupid. That is not a justification for a shot in a movie. If your movie's about Ant Man, and he's on the sword in the middle of a sword fight--THAT is a reason to show the camera-strapped-to-the-sword angle.

Just to show a new angle nobody's seen? Serves no dramatic purpose in itself, and in fact works at opposite purpose, reminding you that you're watching a movie(and hey, look how cool the director is!)...

This is why I fear for upcoming filmmakers who have access to all this cool tech and gear without ever having to work to get there. It's Jeff fucking Goldblum's speech in JP. This is a shitty video of it, but THIS is exactly what I am afraid of:
http://youtu.be/JV0w-2sBocU?t=57s

Busy

Man, the KS thing just continues to consume my time. Last weekend we shot an update video featuring the popular clown from my clown flicks, which is the video linked above. Had a good time, came home and edited it in 2 nights.

We had written a script for one of the lead actors from GOH to do--sort of a parody of himself--and turns out, he doesn't want to do it. He thinks it's mean-spirited and not enough parody, so people who don't know him might actually think he's like that.

It's ridiculous of course. It's like James Van Der Beek or NPH--imagine if those guys didn't want to play that caricature of themself like they've done numerous times...

So we have to think of something else. I have a couple of other update vids planned.

As for our trajectory--we're way behind. Sure, we've passed two grand, but we need to average like $1500 a DAY. I'm not sweating it too much yet, as we still have over a month to the campaign, but it's certainly worrisome.

They say people wait til the last minute to put in, so we'll see. One of the reasons I didn't do the 30 day like KS recommends is because I knew it would take time for word to get out. More and more people seem to be stumbling on the news somewhere or other, so the longer it's up the better chance I think we have.

In other news, saw Iron Man 3. Thought it was pretty good, but not the best of the 3. Luke thinks it's not only the best of the 3, but one of the best movies he's seen this year.

Went over to Zig's house and watched Return of the Jedi, the ORIGINAL version. It's the first time I've watched any of the movies in 15 years. It was cool, but still kind of depressing; I remember when I really loved those movies, and now it's just a sour taste in my mouth.

Luke and I worked some more on the other script today. I'm actually getting kind of excited because--even if we can't get the names like we want with "bunker", this could get us some serious attention if we do it right.

So we continue...no idea of when we'd shoot it though. Hard to believe it's actually been nearly 3 years since I shot an actual movie...

KS Progress (UPDATED)

Been a busy week. Spreading the new about the campaign. Some of my news peeps are being slower than normal putting it up--not sure if they're backlogged, or just reluctant to post something related to crowd-sourcing. (cuz I'm sure they get tons of emails about people's campaigns)

Lead actor RC sent me this, after we chatted for like 2 hours on the phone:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/04/30/technology/three-years-of-kickstarter-projects.html?_r=1&

It's an info-graphic about 3 years of KS.

Here's a weird public website that gives stats about our campaign:
http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/1565131599/spread-the-hedonismgarden-of-hedon/

Horrortalk posted this about us:
http://www.horrortalk.com/news/3391-you-can-t-beat-this-price-on-hedonism.html


S Or T posted this:
http://smashortrashindiefilmmaking.com/

Horror Movie News
http://www.horrormovienews.net/item-2625-Garden_of_Hedon_Trailer_and_Crowd_Sourcing_Announcement.html

Horror Society posted this link:
http://www.horrorsociety.com/2013/04/22/feature-film-launches-first-of-its-kind-kickstarter-campaign/

Horrorbid has a handy You Post The News feature, that takes your post and cycles it to the newsfeed if they deem it worthy. Mine was:
http://www.horrorbid.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=280&t=23974

There was a Reddit post that blew up a little with some fairly weak-minded arguments against and a few for. Don't get me wrong, if you don't want to see the movie, don't drop a buck. But don't say there's "no incentive" to donate. I mean, unless you think there's no incentive to pay Red Box a buck when you take a movie, and no incentive to pay Netflix $7.99 a month to watch movies.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Filmmakers/comments/1cyxr4/filmmaker_uses_kickstarter_to_sell_already/

More stuff will be coming...maybe even stuff in PRINT. (that's an ancient type of media where they put words and pictures on paper, and people physically hold the pages and turn them to read more)

Also, the KS dashboard has some nice features, showing you where the pledges you got originated from. That way you have a better idea of where to concentrate your time. Here's what it looks like right now(as it tells me my average pledge is just above $22)

UPDATED:
Some new sources have hit:
Horrorbug
http://horrorbug.com/movies/news-garden-of-hedon-launches-first-of-its-kind-kickstarter-campaign/

Ain't It Cool News
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/62247

In addition you can see one of our new update videos on our Youtube page:
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8E46XSnBDI

Behind The Curtains of The "Experiment"

Just how long have I been working on the KS launch? I went back in my blog and can find me talking about it as early as October of last year.

So what took so long for the actual launch?

Well, planning was #1. I have put nearly as much work into this campaign as into an actual movie. I have researched why they fail and why they succeed. A huge part of it is the social networking, which I'm not particularly great at. So I've made more of an effort there.

You need people to hit your page a lot. You don't want to piss people off by constantly posting "Hey go look at my KS page!"

You can go around this by doing updates, especially video updates. If you have new content then it'll bring people to your page and not look like you're just shilling(which, let's face it, you are).

So I've got video updates planned--some of them are done already, others I'll be shooting in the next couple of weeks.

After all of this I figured I was ready to launch. That was like 2 months ago.

In order to use KS you must register to receive Amazon Payments. This involves registering your business and verifying a bank accout and promising your first-born child. It took an immense amount of time because they couldn't verify our business ID. They said get the letter that the IRS sent us and fax it to them.

So Luke had to get that from his accountant, which took time. Then he faxed it. Amazon said they didn't get it. So we faxed it again. Hey, they got it. We're approved. (took weeks)

But then I go back to KS and click the review button and it tells me my Amazon payments isn't complete. Click on a link to see what's missing. I click that link and it takes me to Amazon, where it automatically shows me 4 checkmarks with big letters YOU'RE APPROVED TO RECEIVE AMAZON PAYMENTS.

Weird. I go back to KS and get the SAME message. It's a vicious loop. I contact KS and Amazon. Neither is sure what's going on, and they take their time getting back to me. There's a chance, they say, that somehow the email I registered with at the beginning isn't linked to the project. But they don't indicate what email that was, and it was month's ago. (and I have like 30 emails)

I finally say fuck it and create a NEW project, copying and pasting it all over, every reward. Takes like an hour because I have to do the drop down tabs for where shipping is available as well as when each reward is to be delivered.

Then I click Review--and to my surprise it accepts it. BUT it's not for me to review...turns out KS has to review my listing and will get back to me within a few days to say if I'm accepted.

I did not realize that was part of it...now I have to wait LONGER.

THEN KS gets back to me and says, and I quote:
Thanks for submitting your project to KS. It looks interesting. However, KS hasn't traditionally been used as a straight distribution/marketing platform. Is there any aspect of your project you can focus on that still needs funding -- encoding for digital release, DVD creation, etc? If so I would advise you to focus on this aspect of the film.
Please give this some thought and let me know what you come up with. Thanks for your cooperation.

On the one hand I'm encouraged because they're basically telling me it hasn't been done before. On the other hand they're saying No.

I send them back a nice response basically saying that KS has made its name being non-traditional, and that my campaign is still in the spirit of KS--technically I could have asked for the money BEFORE we shot the movie, and promised to upload it free to the internet. But in this case I have ensured no KS funders will get ripped off, because the movie is DONE.

To my surprise they agree. Finally, I got to launch.

So that's where we are. Today I upload the first video update--the final trailer I put up here a few weeks ago. I have been very encouraged by the fact that a number of people have commented that they think it's a great idea, and wonder whether it's something they could do with their film.

We're only at like $400 right now, but that's with ZERO media support. I've begun contacting the various horror sites and torrent sites, so we'll see if it starts to pick up.

The sobering thing is that we have to average like $1200 a day to make it. We're way short of that since we've been live for 2 days, but like I said...it's all been word of mouth so far. 

The Experiment Is Live

So I been dropping hints now for months about something experimental I was going to try. That something is Kickstarter.

Now I know what you're saying--wtf? That's not new or experimental.

Well, what I'm trying to do with it is(and even Kickstarter said so...)

We're going to try to raise approximately our budget on GOH, my last movie we shot on the Red One. And if we do, I am literally going to GIVE THE MOVIE AWAY TO EVERYBODY. No, not digital downloads. I will upload it on Youtube, on Vimeo, on the torrents.

As far as I know nobody has done this before with a feature film. I am aware of some web series doing it, but they're web series by definition, so nothing revolutionary there.

But I am going to completely relinquish control over my movie without any hope of ever selling a single foreign territory or any domestic rights whatsoever. The only money I could possibly make after the release would be whatever Blu Rays we have left over from the rewards(the $40 reward gets you a Blu Ray), and possibly if I put some ads on the Youtube version after a year or so.

And if you read the fine print on my Kickstarter page you'll see I mention that this scares the shit out of me. It does. I don't work for nearly nothing. But the main investor in GOH says whatever money he gets back goes right back into our next film, for which we already have a dude who's good for $60-$80K.

We're looking for 52K which, after Kickstarter/Amazon fees and Reward Fulfillment, will net us around $42-ishK. It's a little more than the movie cost, but I took no fee whatsoever for dedicating 2.5 years of my life to it, so I'm getting the remainder as payment. I think it works out to like $3500 a year, which I think we can all agree is a fortune. If it wasn't for the cocaine and hookers I don't know why I do it.

Anyway, feel free to spread the link if you're inclined. I will shortly tell you about just why it took me about 5 months to launch this bad boy. Our first update for the campaign will be that final trailer for the movie. I have some more updates planned, one that I'm shooting next Saturday(hear that, Zig? We're on for the 27th)

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1565131599/spread-the-hedonismgarden-of-hedon

But my end result is to see whether this is something viable as perhaps a distribution paradign. I mean, let's say I make the $150K movie featuring known genre actors--is it a stretch to think we could perhaps Kickstart distribute that? I guess we'll see.

And if you have any questions about anything--yes, anything--post them here. I'll be doing video question/answer once a week for the campaign, and I won't be reading the question until I start rolling on the camera. It might be amusing.

UPDATE: This is weird. I launched the campaign around 2:30am. I told no one, figuring I'd throw it up on FB at like 8:30am. But when I went back to copy the link at 5:30am there was already 4 backers(at only $1 apiece).

But that's weird. Not sure where they came from, but it feels like a good omen. I mean, I'd love to get as many $1 donations as possible, because then it really will feel like a lot of people want to see the movie. (as opposed to having 1000 people put in $50 apiece)

Back FROM L.A.

 Universal City Walk

It went okay. Got to see Jacky, but Tom had a last minute thing so he didn't show up.

Jacky and I had dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe cuz it was close--I was walking distance from Universal City Walk. We chatted, had a good time, caught up with each other. She's getting married later this year and I talked her out of inviting me. (I hate weddings)

Weather was nice, as you can see here.A little chilly for CA at night, but by no means uncomfortable.

Fly back today to hear the bad Boston news...which was also a bummer because I was gonna launch my big GOH experiment when I got back...

...but anyway, I will outline it here tomorrow since it's imminent.

Hey, remember that unlisted video edit I did of that AWESOME movie? I only passed it to like 6 people. I thought I put a link here but don't see it, so check it out for yourself if you haven't already:

Anyway, somehow it's at like 100 views...I hope this douchebag doesn't get famous like that Birdemic guy. I hate people who get famous from being super UN-talented.

Back To L.A.

So Thursday I'm heading back to the alleged city of angels. Am going to have dinner with Jacky(leading lady from both FOCs) and the Proctor(star of Bounty).

Will get back by next Tuesday and if something hasn't happened regarding my "experiment", someone's getting murdered.

Hey, it occurs to me I never did put up anything about the one time I went out of town(can't remember, might have been New Orleans), and the couple in the next room were fucking so loud you could hear it plainly. How plain? Here's what I recorded from my iphone--I pumped up the volume with Sound Forge.

http://www.kangaskahnfilms.com/hotel-sex-girl.mp3

You might have to fast forward about 40% of the way in where she really kicks it into high gear. And no, it was definitely NOT a TV.

Saw Evil Dead and Jurassic Park 3D this past weekend. Evil Dead is decent...some cool gore from an FX guy I've never heard of. Didn't scare me at all, but it was better than most remakes. JP still kicks major ass and looks incredible. The movie is 20 years old and still holds up.