My first review is up. Film and Digital Times gave Rebel without a Deal the once over. They even included their opinion on Kisses and Caroms.
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Rebel without a Deal [book]
- Thread starter sonnyboo
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This thread rises from the DEAD!
Hey, my second book, "11 Simple Steps to turn a Screenplay into a Marketable Movie: or, How I got a $10k movie to gross $1 Million through Warner Bros" is available for FREE to Kindle users this Thanksgiving weekend.
http://amzn.com/B009YKJ5UI/?tag=povert0f-20
I make no money, I'm just hoping to get it out there, and get some reviews.
Happy Holiday! and Happy Reading!
Hey, my second book, "11 Simple Steps to turn a Screenplay into a Marketable Movie: or, How I got a $10k movie to gross $1 Million through Warner Bros" is available for FREE to Kindle users this Thanksgiving weekend.
http://amzn.com/B009YKJ5UI/?tag=povert0f-20
I make no money, I'm just hoping to get it out there, and get some reviews.
Happy Holiday! and Happy Reading!
Thanks, I'll check it out and leave a review 
No disrespect to the guy, I don't know Vince. But, I see so many claims of films made for $7k or $15k which go on to get distribution and earn millions or hundreds of millions (Paranorma Activity or El Mariachi for example). I know for a fact that even if you spent all of the $11k just on sound, you couldn't even afford to have a Dolby print-master cut. I can't get the book where I live but is the point: Make a film for say $7k show it at a regional film festival, spend another $325k to turn it into a commercially distributable product and then become famous for making a distributed film for $7k? I'm not "having a go" here, just trying to understand how/why the system works. Is it ONLY about the hype and making out a successful film cost way less than it actually did or is there something else which I'm missing?
G
G
In the examples you cite, the filmmakers only spent the amounts they claimed. You are correct that, after the films were acquired, the distributors sank another few hundred thousand into them, mostly for sound work and, in the case of Paranormal Activity, to shoot a new ending.
Still, the films were strong enough on their own to attract theatrical distribution, which is no small feat.
2001: What you're saying in effect then is that with the example of say El Mariachi, $7k wasn't the film's budget, it was the amount spent by the filmmakers to convert an idea into something which attracted a studio/distributor to supply the actual film budget. To me, this is highly disingenuous because the El Mariachi which everyone saw reputedly cost $325k not the $7k touted! Working on this "El Mariachi" principle, the budget for say "Flight" (and many other films) was somewhere around $0 or whatever amount the filmmakers spent to create the marketing materials required to get a studio/distributor to put up the roughly $31m the film actually cost to make.
I am presuming therefore that the $11k mentioned by Vince is not in fact the amount his distributed film actually cost to make but the amount he spent getting a distributor to supply the funding for whatever the film actually cost to make? Vince states he made the film in 5 days for $11k and grossed over $1m. At the risk of appearing offensive, he seems to be lying or at least being extremely disingenuous (to enhance his reputation and book sales), unless I'm missing something?
G
I am presuming therefore that the $11k mentioned by Vince is not in fact the amount his distributed film actually cost to make but the amount he spent getting a distributor to supply the funding for whatever the film actually cost to make? Vince states he made the film in 5 days for $11k and grossed over $1m. At the risk of appearing offensive, he seems to be lying or at least being extremely disingenuous (to enhance his reputation and book sales), unless I'm missing something?
G
I don't know Vince, and I'm not a huge fan of the fact that he only stops by to promote his own products, but if you can make a film for 11k (or whatever) that a distributor thinks, at that point, is good enough to sink another few hundred thousand into getting it theatre ready then that's pretty impressive.
I'm sure that, in his book, he'll expand on the process that was required after the film was picked up for distribution. If not then, yes, that does seem disingenuous to the point of being highly misleading.
I'm sure that, in his book, he'll expand on the process that was required after the film was picked up for distribution. If not then, yes, that does seem disingenuous to the point of being highly misleading.
Your comparison can be accurate. If you are Robert Zemeckis, you can get Laurie MacDonald to give you her script for free, take it to Denzel Washington and John Goodman, get them attached then get Paramount Pictures to drop the dime. So maybe Zemeckis spent $0 to make Flight. So he's better at it then Smith, Rodriguez and I, but He ain't offering a book to teach you how to avoid his pitfalls, is he?.
I'm not Zemeckis, so I had to spend $11k. Oren Peli was not Zemeckis, Kevin Smith was not Zemeckis, Robert Rodriguez, Daniel Myrick, and Eduardo Sanchez were not Zemeckis. They all had to make a commercially marketable movie first (which my latest book, 11 Simple Steps to turn a Screenplay into a Marketable Movie does focus on), NOW they are Zemeckis. I however, am still trying to become Zemeckis.
Extremely? No. Marketing Spin? A little. What you're missing is, I detailed all the budgets, processess, and financial statements in my first book, Rebel without a Deal. I did make a movie in 5 days for $11k. The finished cost of the movie, by the time Warner Bros. acquired it was just over $60k.
Here is an excerpt from, Rebel without a Deal, Page 88:
Here is the Kisses & Caroms production budget:
$48.99 Banking Fees
$3,125.00 Crew
$660.38 Expendables
$1,148.32 Food
$458.17 Incorporation Fees
$135.00 Props
$2,459.00 Rentals
$2,920.00 Talent
$140.01 Wardrobe
$11,094.87 Production Total
This $11k represents an Edited version of the movie. I Dig'd it and Cut it. Had this cut version of the movie sucked, I would have stopped, scrapped it and started over. For $11k I made a movie that I was able to show and do test screenings with. (11 Simple Steps to turn a Screenplay into a Marketable Movie details how to conduct a test screening.) Based on this feedback I decided to continue investing in the movie.
By the end of the first year, I spent $20k on Kisses & Caroms.
Rebel without a Deal, Page 121:
$960.00 35 millimeter Blowup
$124.99 Banking Fees
$40.00 Book Shooting Digital
$182.17 Photocopies
$3,125.00 Crew
$100.00 Donations
$751.25 Expendables
$160.00 Festival Fees
$1,148.32 Food
$5,772.91 Hardware
$458.17 Incorporation Fees
$24.00 Membership
$734.52 Promotions
$135.00 Props
$2,459.00 Rentals
$140.00 Seminars
$17.10 Shipping
$3,020.00 Talent
$741.71 Travel
$140.01 Wardrobe
$20,234.15 Total for 2003
By the end of year 2, I spent another $3k on Kisses & Caroms.
Rebel without a Deal, Page 151:
$222.00 Banking Fees
$514.19 DVD
$37.00 Expendables
$600.00 Incorporation Fees
$59.00 Membership
$50.00 Promotions
$1,000.00 Score
$200.00 Talent
$250.00 Tax Preparation
$2,932.19 Total for 2004
By the end of year 3, I spent another $22k on Kisses & Caroms.
Rebel without a Deal, Page 231:
$132.00 Banking Fees
$1,191.34 DVD
$95.14 Expendables
$1,181.43 Festival Fees
$110.73 Food
$303.09 Hardware
$399.00 Incorporation Fees
$9,213.00 Insurance
$2,908.00 Legal
$283.95 Membership
$1,035.00 Post House Fees
$1,850.14 Promotions
$2,000.00 Rating
$860.94 Shipping
$500.00 Sound Cleanup
$250.00 Tax Preparation
$22,313.76 2005 Total
By the end of year 4, I spent another $13k on Kisses & Caroms.
Rebel without a Deal, Page 283:
$184.00 Banking Fees
$134.91 Domains
$130.85 Expendables
$27.99 Festival Fees
$1,777.06 Hardware
$200.00 Incorporation Fees
$276.00 Mail Box Rental
$99.95 IMDb Pro Membership
$2,481.30 Post House Fees
$2,520.47 Promotions
$609.50 Rentals
$548.10 Shipping
$250.00 Tax Preparation
$1,478.15 Taxes
$1,662.70 Travel
$397.50 Web Hosting
$12,778.48 2006 Total
Add the previous years:
$22,313.76 2005 Total
$2,932.19 2004 Total
$20,234.15 2003 Total
$58,258.58 Grand Total
Plus I paid a backend the following year of $4,500.00 for Sound Cleanup
$62,758.58 NEW Grand Total to get the movie distributed.
Now that I've laid this all out, you can clearly see where thousands of dollars can be saved by reading Rebel without a Deal and learning to avoid the mistakes I made. In addition Rebel without a Deal contains all the financial statements to see how much money I made. Further Kevin Smith lends his take and we discuss how much he made on Clerks.
We didn't have one, the movie was released in Stereo on DVD.
I'm just too busy trying to become Zemeckis to respond to posts. This post alone, took me an hour to compile. I give back in the form of books (a FREE one at that (till Monday, anyway, then .99)). Do I profit from them? Yes. but I only sell, maybe, 1 a day. Filmmaking books are not exactly getting the attention of the New York Times. I average $4 per book. Do the math, that's about $1200 a year for a 300 page book that was originally 700 pages and took over 4 years to write. I ain't doing it for the money. I'm trying to help.
The latest book, 11 Simple Steps to turn a Screenplay into a Marketable Movie focuses on HOW to make a marketable movie and does not expand on the process, as that was covered exhaustively in Rebel without a Deal.
Here's the link to the Book in the UK, It is FREE there too, until Monday, then .99. 11 Simple Steps to turn a Screenplay into a Marketable Movie
Kindle also has FREE PC readers and FREE smart phone apps, so It'll cost you nothing to get the book.
When you said Warner bros. distribution I assumed it was theatrical distribution. Stereo DVD is way, way cheaper of course from an audio point of view.
I am NOT belittling your achievement at all, whether you spent $11k or $60k, getting Warner distribution and grossing $1m is still a fantastic achievement. Neither am I saying that your book is a lie or disingenuous, it may provide extremely useful information for the indie filmmaker and maybe an excellent book.
I was just taking issue with your marketing and I noticed that you changed your wording in your latest reply. You are now much more accurately saying that you made "a" movie in 5 days for $11k. Rather than previously you said that "the" movie (the one which grossed over $1m) was made in 5 days and cost $11k. It's still not clear exactly what the movie cost to make, many of the items on your list are for marketing and other related costs, rather than the costs to make the final film. But it's clear it was considerably more than $11k and took considerably longer than 5 days. I'm also presuming that Warner spent no more time or money "fixing" your film once they acquired it, just distribution and marketing related costs?
I notice the advertising on the Amazon link you provided says "How I got a $10k movie to gross $1 Million through Warner Bros.". This is still disingenuous IMO because one of the things you did was to spend another $50k on it! I could write a book titled "How I built a car for $200 which won a national touring car race" and then after explaining how I built the car for $200 in the first chapter, the second chapter could say: "After the car was finished, the next thing I did was spend $100k on a race engine". I did build a car for $200 but the car which won the race actually cost $100,200! Would it really have been so detrimental to tell the truth about the actual cost of the film which grossed $1m? I for one would be interested to know.
BTW, I don't live in the UK and Amazon don't deliver to my location. I'll look into acquiring an electronic version though.
G
This thread has escaped me for so long. This book looks great, and I just bought it!
APE, you're mincing words. Yeah, we get it, the final products for all of these movies actually had larger budgets. But from the perspective of the ultra-low-budget filmmaker, it's still an $11K movie because that's what the ultra-low-budget filmmaker spent. We don't care how much the studio spends, after they've picked it up. We just care that they picked it up.
Congrats, Rocca! I look forward to reading it.
APE, you're mincing words. Yeah, we get it, the final products for all of these movies actually had larger budgets. But from the perspective of the ultra-low-budget filmmaker, it's still an $11K movie because that's what the ultra-low-budget filmmaker spent. We don't care how much the studio spends, after they've picked it up. We just care that they picked it up.
Congrats, Rocca! I look forward to reading it.
That's clearly NOT what this ultra-low-budget filmmaker is now saying!
Vince has not said how much, if anything, Warner spent after they acquired his film. What you're saying is that in theory I could make a film on my iphone for $100, then spent another $40k to fix it up, sell my $40k film to a distributor and then market myself on the basis that I made a film for $100 which got distribution.
Let's then say that the distributor spends another $150k sorting the film out and it goes on to gross $2m. Would I be justified in saying that my $100 movie grossed $2m or even that my $40k movie grossed $2m? The fact is, the actual product which grossed $2m, cost $190,100. In reality, neither my $100 movie nor my $40k movie was of sufficiently high standard to gross $2m. The most I can truthfully say is that my $40k film was of a sufficiently high standard to attract enough funding to turn it into a commercial product, which then grossed $2m.
You can't have it both ways, either the budget for Flight was $31m and the budget for El Mariachi was $325k OR the budget for El Mariachi was $7k and the budget for Flight was somewhere around $0. It may be of help/interest for other indie filmmakers to know that the filmmakers of Paranormal Activity spent $15k out of their own pocket to attract distribution but it doesn't help anyone (except the filmmakers who spent $15k) to state that a product which grossed $193m was made for $15k.
G
To be honest, I did not consciously make a distinction between "a" and "the"
I did make "a" movie in 5 days for $11k
and
"the" movie was made in 5 days for a cost of $11k
Both statements are true to me. But if it makes you happy to split hairs... So be it.
It all depends on where you want to start and stop counting the dollars. The hour I previously spent on responding to the previous post charged at my current Editing rate would be $75 for said hour. If the post results in you watching the movie, then do I add that hour to the budget of Kisses & Caroms?
Do you factor in schooling into said budget? If you have 3 USC film grads working on a no budget short, does its budget suddenly become $750,000.00?
Do I factor in Panasonic's R&D on a camera? Apple's? Where does it stop? The same place it does in Hollywood. All Hollywood budgets are production budgets. P&A is listed separately. Budgets do grow past production, as did Kisses & Caroms' and I detailed that in my first book Rebel without a Deal. But the fact still remains that I took $11k and made a movie that was worthy of Warner Bros. distribution.
Rodriguez took $7k and made a product that was worthy of distribution. Kevin did it with $27k.
Let's say I took $11k out of my pocket, made the movie, then another investor saw it, picked it up, spent more, then got it distributed, I still made a movie for $11k that landed distribution. The rest of the money invested did NOT change the movie.
The money invested in Rodriguez or Smiths films, did NOT change the movie.
Your car example really doesn't work, because the car changes with that engine. You can say that you took a $200 clunker and turned it in to a "national touring car race" Many people have said similar things about similar topics.
Let's say you took a $200 car and paid a $100k entry fee in to a "national touring car race" Your car wins. Did a $200 car win or a $100,200 car win? I'd say a $200 car won.
Nope, it was 5 days. Some say God created Earth in 7, but the earth is always in constant evolution, therefore, God is still creating Earth.
By this logic, Muybridge developed the idea of motion pictures in 1877, motion pictures have constantly evolved since then, and all the knowledge gained led to the making of Kisses & Caroms, so it then took just under 140 years to make Kisses & Caroms.
It is very much common knowledge that the time spent in production, is the time it took to make a movie.
They spent NO, I repeat NO money FIXING anything. I delivered a completed master, the distributor spent a few bucks on authoring the DVD and they charged me back that money, all these fees are also detailed in Rebel without a Deal. I've also detailed them below.
Yep, as long as that movie did not change, no reshoots were done. Then it's a $100 movie.
Columbia bought a $7000 movie. You saw a $325,000 movie, but Columbia bought a $7000 movie.
Warner never bought my movie, they only distributed it. Did they distribute an $11k movie? No, and I never said they did.
I wrote 314 pages of that truth, if you really are interested to know, would it be so detrimental to spend $14.95 on the book?
Your location is listed as Europe, I asume you have internet, Amazon is a click away. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe you're communicating through hieroglyphics.
It's not clear to me, how you want it calculated. I'm gonna give it a shot.
These fees are directly related to the final copy of the movie that was picked up for distribution:
$3,125.00 Crew
$751.25 Expendables
$37.00 Expendables
$95.14 Expendables
$130.85 Expendables
$1,148.32 Food
$110.73 Food
$5,772.91 Hardware
$303.09 Hardware
$1,777.06 Hardware
$182.17 Photocopies
$135.00 Props
$2,459.00 Rentals
$609.50 Rentals
$1,000.00 Score
$5,000.00 Sound Cleanup
$3,020.00 Talent
$200.00 Talent
$741.71 Travel
$1,662.70 Travel
$140.01 Wardrobe
$28,401.44 TOTAL
These fees were not part of the considered movie, but played a part of its distribution:
$9,213.00 Insurance
$514.19 DVD
$1,191.34 DVD
$2,908.00 Legal
$1,035.00 Post House Fees
$2,481.30 Post House Fees
$17,342.83 TOTAL
These fees might be considered related to distribution:
$124.99 Banking Fees
$222.00 Banking Fees
$132.00 Banking Fees
$184.00 Banking Fees
$134.91 Domains
$99.95 IMDb Pro Membership
$458.17 Incorporation Fees
$600.00 Incorporation Fees
$399.00 Incorporation Fees
$200.00 Incorporation Fees
$276.00 Mail Box Rental
$734.52 Promotions
$50.00 Promotions
$1,850.14 Promotions
$2,520.47 Promotions
$2,000.00 Rating
$250.00 Tax Preparation
$250.00 Tax Preparation
$250.00 Tax Preparation
$1,478.15 Taxes
$397.50 Web Hosting
$12,611.80 TOTAL
These fees really had nothing to do with distribution:
$960.00 35 millimeter Blowup
$40.00 Book Shooting Digital
$100.00 Donations
$160.00 Festival Fees
$1,181.43 Festival Fees
$27.99 Festival Fees
$24.00 Membership
$59.00 Membership
$283.95 Membership
$140.00 Seminars
$17.10 Shipping
$860.94 Shipping
$548.10 Shipping
$4,402.51 TOTAL
Additional distribution charges taken out of profits:
$308.00 Advertising and Mailing
$6,500.00 DVD Authoring
$2,003.00 Duplication and Post production
$4,000.00 Key Artwork
$250.00 Marketing
$1585.20 Public Relations
$14,646.00 TOTAL
If this isn't clear enough for you, then just for you, in your mind, imagine the title of the book to be
AN INFINITE NUMBER OF DIFFICULT Steps to turn LETTERS into a MOTION PICTURE: or, How I TOOK AN UNDEFINABLE AMOUNT OF MONEY AND MADE A movie IN JUST UNDER 140 YEARS to gross $1 Million* through Warner Bros.
*Depending on how you calculate the value of a dollar.
AND NickClapper wonders why I don't get involved in discussions. They're just tooooooo time consuming.
No he did not! Rodriguez made a movie for $7k which was worthy of attracting a distributor but to make it worthy of distribution cost $325k.
If the $325k movie I saw was identical in every respect to the the $7k movie Rodriguez made what on earth did Columbia spend the $325k on and why on earth did they spent it?
Did Warner agree to distribute the bunch of unedited clips you were left with when you finished production or did they agree to distribute the movie which included post-production? Did this pile of footage (which took 5 days to create and cost $11k) gross over $1m, as you stated in your first post, or was it the finished film which cost $28,401.44 and took significantly longer than 5 days to make? Unless of course you are saying, as you did with El Mariachi, that you spent more than double your $11k budget (an additional $17,401.44) to make no changes whatsoever?
Please consider these questions to be rhetorical. I've had enough of this BS and I'm bowing out of this thread now.
G
This seems pretty much what he's described. While you can nit pick the smaller details, by the sound of it (assuming the data isn't doctored, and I have no reason to believe it has been) he did make a marketable movie for 11k. Was it the movie they distributed? No. It had some upgrades done to it. I consider myself a rather intelligent person, when after reading this, I'm sure I'll be able to get a general feel for what's right and what isn't. I also have an interest in this material. I haven't yet read the book (and congrats, you got your pound of flesh from me - 99c) and as soon as I can refigure out how to download a kindle from Amazon, I'll start.
Just a single tidbit that a film maker could get from this is worth many times your asking price and you're taking, so thank you. It looks like its worthy of reading.
Distributors all the time spend money on movies they distribute. While this is often in distribution costs and advertising. When a distributor spends extra money on a movie doesn't mean that the movies budget gets changed too.
While APE is right on some point, where the deliverable ended up costing somewhere in the 60k mark it does sound a little misleading, it's still a fantastic feat and the story that comes along with it should be well worth reading for those who's interested in becoming a film maker. Hell, this is the movie business right? Most of Hollywood would be in jail if it was illegal to fudge some details.
Well done, congratulations. Good luck in your journey. I hope you make it.
Great quote. Thank you. I hope you enjoy the book, and after reading it, I hope you'll feel good about posting that quote to Amazon.