25 posts tagged “marketing”
LA Times reports that a dozen summer movies will top $100 million just for their marketing costs. It makes you wonder how much it cost to make the movie itself. Earlier this year, the MPAA, which normally gives the average studio movie budget for the year, declined to give out the budget statistics for 2008, saying:
"Year-to-year average costs comparisons are really useless and misleading,'' he said. "I'm not sure what these numbers mean anymore." (Quote from LA Times).
The biggest marketing cost for the studios is TV ads. It can cost as much as $3 million for a 30-second spot. But they say that TV ads are the only way to get a mass audience.
According to the numbers crunched by Thomas Trenker, the founder of Institute for International Film Financing, the theatre-released movies that made a profit are the ones that spent at least the same amount on marketing as they did on making the movie itself. It's an interesting stat except for the fact that filmmakers and studios regularly lie about their film budget. For an interesting perspective on the studios lying about movie budgets, check out the LA Times article, Why Everyone Lies About Their Movie Budgets. The article's author says that studios tend to say the budget was lower than it really was. In my personal experience, indie filmmakers tend to inflate their budget numbers so it doesn't smell like the backyard production it really is (for the record, I am very pro-backyard production. I think it's absolutely ridiculous that movies cost as much as they do.). Many of these indie budget lies can be significant, say, by an order of magnitude...
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
Speaking of Brits, Robert Pratten of Zen Films has an interesting post on social media marketing for indie films. While you're there, check out his latest animation video, Dairy of the Dead. It hilarious.
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
Stanford Continuing Ed is offering a class on Running Profitable Internet Ad Campaigns. The teacher is the COO of Media Flint, a company that does website development, Internet optimization and Internet advertising. I looked him up and it turns out that he has a 2:45 class online, available for free on Media Flint's site. It says it has "strategies on running highly profitable Internet ad campaigns." Nice. Thanks, Mr. COO!
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
Here's my 3D water, take 2...
Turned out I was doing more than I had to. Cinema 4D defaults to gravity and some kind of "natural" motion anyway. I realized this through trial and error after trying out some various motions. So in the end, I just took out the vibration and tried it out. Voila!
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
So here's my first Cinema 4D model and animation: water!
I could have bought 3D water but instead, I chose to learn C4D by trying to make it. The reason why I needed water was that I had a scene in my novel trailer (WAR GAMES) where one of my characters, "G," is climbing a cliff above water. I started my animation of G on the cliff in DAZ and just stuck a background of 2D photo of water (see "G w wrong perspective"). First of all, the perspective is wrong - it looks like he's crawling out of the water onto the ground. Secondly, when I animated it, it looked very wrong to have the water so still. So my challenge was to make water so I could choose the perspective and also animate it.
To make water, I followed this tutorial. I used the "metal" texture that comes with C4D for the material reflection, and "water" texture for the bump and environment. I tried a few of the other tutorials where the water looked better (by using caustics) but when I tried it, it took a l-o-n-g time to render and my results sucked. So this was the best way I've found.
Once the water model was made, I needed to animate it so it looked alive. I ended up applying "vibrate." Right click on the water in your objects tab, cinema 4d tags> vibrate. In the Attributes menu (click on the vibrate icon in your Objects menu), I used the following vibrate parameters: Relative, Enable Position, Amplitude 10, 0, 0. I'll refine the parameters as needed. I may want a gentler motion.
The next challenge will be to combine the animation of G climbing the cliff with the water animation. I have two choices: "green screen" G and composite it with the water animation in After Effects; or import G's scene into the water animation (or vice versa) and combine them. I'm totally new to 3D so everything I do will be an experiment. I've also never used green screens before so that will be a learning experience too. Right now, G and his climbing animation is in DAZ and the water is in C4D. I'll need to figure out how to import one into the other if I choose that route.
Anyway, I'm pretty excited about my first modeling results!
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
The Wall Street Journal reports that independent labels at the major studios spent an average of $25.7 million marketing a film last year, up 44% from 2006 and more than double what was spent in 2002. That has far outpaced the 44% growth in production costs from 2002 through last year. In response to the recession, studios have cut the number of films they release but haven't cut back significantly on marketing costs per film.
Why do they call these "independent" films? What kind of an oxymoron is an "independent label at a major studio"? To me, if you can afford to spend $25.7 million for marketing, you're a major studio unto yourself.
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
DAZ makes a couple of amazing and free 3D animation software. DAZ 3D lets you play around with animated figures and settings. You can buy premade elements - like playing house - and piece them together to make your own image. Bryce lets you build entire worlds. Bryce 6 is for sale but Bryce 5.5 is free.
Our very own Cannes guest blogger, Robert Pratton, filmmaker of Mind Flesh, made his own fun video as part of his marketing push for Mind Flesh. He bought a dog from DAZ, then used an alternative program, Poser, to animate it. (See how making these extras gets you publicity?) Check it out.
Cheers,
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com
Okay, boys and girls. This stuff is super cool. You can now make your own games and your own worlds even if you don't know how to program. Whoo-hoo! First of all, it's pretty awesome to be able to make your own game or world. But even if your primary focus is on your filmmaking or novels, with all the talk (at least on this blog) of cutting edge marketing for your product, this ought to be a cheap, DIY way to promote your film/book.
With Microsoft's XNA Game Studio, you can make your own games. With this product, you're better off if you know a little programming. They are now live.
With Metaplace, you can build your own virtual world. Just think of the possibilities! I've been watching these guys for about a year. They've had their first beta and have been closed to the public for months. And now, they just opened up their latest beta phase and are accepting applications for early users. Obviously, they're still testing out their system but if you want a taste of the world to come, check it out.
And this little gem is pretty sweet: Little Big Planet. It's a "game" for Playstation 3 that lets you build your own world/game. Check out this demo:
The NY Times has an interesting article today about games being used to market books. I checked out one of the games mentioned -- man, the author put a fair chunk of change into his game. Based on what I've seen of book trailers on YouTube, I was expecting it to look cheesy. But the look and feel is like a video game, not like a cheesy promo of a book. The artwork looks professional. The player can only continue to play if s/he answers questions from the book.
I did a little digging around and found out that the author/game maker (PJ Haarsma) has a small production company, has made a film, and makes a living shooting corporate spots. Ah-ha! I sensed a visual creative when I looked at his game and now I know why. He also designed the van remote on Dr. Horrible. :-)
He's a real pro when it comes to marketing. His site is gorgeous. He sells messenger bags in his store, along with his books. And he has a packed schedule of events. I'd love to know the results of his marketing. Amazon ranks his books at #385,237 and #124,807. His forum (of course he has one) has 744 users registered with over 35,000 posts. His third book is coming out soon and the NYT article sure couldn't hurt. But he's obviously made a big investment on his marketing and I'd love to know if and when it pays off. Based on his rankings and number of registered users on his forum, I'm guessing it hasn't yet. Games can take a lot of money to publish. I believe it's comparable to making a film. If nothing else, it sure raises the bar for the rest of us.
It's interesting to compare his numbers to another author's game. Random House also commissioned a game for the “Inheritance” fantasy series by Christopher Paolini (which I hate -- I couldn't find a single aspect about his first novel that wasn't regurgitated from every other dragon fantasy book out there). About 51,000 people have signed up since June. But his books are bestsellers and his latest book is #1 on Amazon right now. So it's hard to say how much the game has helped his sales. Also, Random House paid for the game. I'm sure that in the vast majority of cases, it would be the author who commissions his/her own game. That makes the economics a whole lot tougher.
Part of my interest is that the premise of Haarsma's book is very close to mine -- a pre-teen novel about a gamer who fights aliens in a computer game. Beyond that, the execution of the story seems quite different. (Confession time: this whole blog entry is just a way to avoid pinging agents again... I might be too indie to go through agents and publishers, but that's another blog entry...)
Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com
Great ad. This is worth checking out: Shake it
