Authoring and Marketing and Bears. Oh My.

Well, no, not bears.  That was "Indiscretions".  But on "Jack vs Lanterns" we're  up to the point where the movie is finally finished and I have to move in to getting it out to the public.  For a lot of filmmakers this would mean hitting festivals to try and drum up some buzz.  For me that would mean spending more money on entry fees and waiting longer for the movie to start paying off.  This movie has been in post way too long for me to wait another year to start selling it, no less adding another 25% to the budget spent on very unsure entry fees.  (It's not really a "festival baby" kind of movie.) Add to that the fact that the cast is scattered to the four corners of the country (well, three) and very busy, so lining any of us up to be present at conventions or festivals means we would have to get into some very specific shows.  If any conventions want to host us after it is available for public consumption, I'll gladly work with them the best I can, but my impatience is showing here.  I do think a panel on the still sub-$5k feature would be helpful since so many people now try to raise more than that for shorts.

So, that moves me on to getting the DVD authored, the cases designed (we usually have two separate designs), I worked on a Blu-ray version and of course we have our VOD files being reviewed.  The reason I have two DVD case designs is simple.  I go with a higher ink consumption design for the discs available through CreateSpace.  For the ones that I'll be printing on demand here and for the cast I go with a design that uses high contrast on the back. where the description is.  Also, it's easier to use CS's designs since they'll be adding graphics after the fact and inevitably it will overlap with something in my design no matter how much I follow the downloaded templates.  (I swear they move that "DVD" box every few months.)  Both versions are DVD-R, but the ones I make myself are generally only available for a limited time because I eventually get burned out on making them in small batches.

High Contrast Back panel for in-house DVD-R case.

This time around I also tried something new.  Blu-ray.  A lot of the movie is just gorgeous and I want people to be able to own it in HD, not just stream it that way.  But, up until now I have only used BD-R's for screeners.  No menus.  No extras.  So, I foolishly believed the disc could hold the 25GB advertised and that the files were the sizes they said they were.  I had the brilliant idea to fit both "Lumber vs Jack" and "Jack vs Lanterns" on one Disc.  With loads of extras.  And in the initial set up it looked to be working.  I kept track of the memory the whole time, but after the encoding, the numbers all shifted up and the disc wouldn't burn because there wasn't enough room.  I started cutting content. This took two days partially because there were a lot of menus involved and I also tried more compression on some of the extras.  In the end all I had left was "Jack vs Lanterns" and a blooper reel from "Lumber vs Jack".  I was pretty disappointed.  So, there may be a BD-R version available, but it probably won't have as many extras as the DVD, which I don't like.


Now I'm in the waiting game.  I'd love to give an official release date, but with closed captions for 1hr and 45 min of movie waiting to be proofed by Amazon and knowing that they may think my rating is "inappropriate", I don't want to give a date until all of the files are approved.  I should know more by mid-week.


My question now is, how do I get the word out?  How much do I spend and how much do I try to do with press releases and teasers?  How do I keep the message that this is a monster movie with a retro tone rather than a blood and guts gore fest or an edge of your seat horror film?  The movie is finished, but the work isn't near done.  And these aren't my favorite tasks.

Catch the original On Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/v/hocusfocusproductions



Thoughts and suggestions in the comments would be great.