Wfclogo

I went to the World Fantasy Convention this week at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose.  It was my first World Fantasy Convention and I have to say that it ranked as my favorite of the four SF/Fan conventions I've attended (2 WorldCons and Wiscon).  Just about everyone there was a writer, editor or publisher.  The crowd ranged from famous to aspiring.  Everyone was friendly, the feel was low-key, and the parties were great.  The best party I went to was a book launch party for Soulless.  The author, Gail Carriger, threw the party on Halloween, and it was beautifully catered by people dressed in full Victorian costumes.  The food there was impressive!  Her marketing efforts are working because a lot of people at the party said they have to buy the book, and I'm blogging about it right now.  So there you go, when your book or film launches, throw a memorable party.

Oh, and the convention gift bag can't be beat--a huge tote full of newly-published books and magazines.  :-)

Susan Ee
www.Tooth-Fairy-Movie.com
www.feraldream.com

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I learned the following things:

JPEG = good for natural shapes like photos.
PNG = good for sharp shapes like text.
GIF = old format, avoid if possible
Photoshop = good for photos, terrible for text
Illustrator = good for text and graphics.  Not sure about photos, seems okay.

When you make a poster/postcard of your film, work on the photo in Photoshop, then "place" it in Illustrator to put in the text.  Then print it out from Illustrator.  For some reason, my Illustrator CS3 defaulted on "save for web and devices" to GIF.  The photo looked terrible and it took me awhile to figure out why (see comment above re GIF).  Sadly, it's quite easy to make text with effects in Photoshop, but it looks all jagged when you print it out.  Illustrator's text looks great when you print it, but it's complicated to give it effects. 

It's frustrating to deal with such an overly-complicated system, but one of the things I love about shoestring budget filmmaking is that I learn so much about so many things...

Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com

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I've had a few people ask me about TOOTH FAIRY's website, so I made one.  It's a little different from other website designs, though.  Let me know what you think.  www.tooth-fairy-movie.com

Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com

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Our friend at Zen Films is taking on a very ambitious project.  It involves a game, a web series, a graphic novel, and a movie.  It makes me tired just thinking about all the work he must be doing.  That may be what it takes to market an indie film these days.  Major kudos to Robert Pratten for trying to kick off the shackles of the currently broken revenue strategy for indie films, and embracing the here and now. 

Plus he gets kudos for a storyline with parasites.  And metallic organs.  And no doubt, cool visual effects... 

Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com

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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

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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

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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

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3D Water

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

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3D Water

G w wrong perspective

G on Cliff

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

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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

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