RJ Amort
New Contributor
- Joined
- Sep 15, 2009
- Messages
- 10
Hi Everybody!!!
I'm starting at the beginning and going forward, eventually it will develop into what my plan is..., bear with me.
Ok, so...
I have been an insane horror movie fan since I was 5 years old (I'm 32 now). It started when I saw Swamp Thing on HBO, I was up later than I was supposed to be with a fever, and my Mom was sitting with me on the couch. I remember her constantly asking me if I was scared every time something crazy happened, and I was, but I knew by the way she was asking that if I said so, it would be turned off. I remember my Mom saying it was midnight when the movie ended, and I was amazed that I had actually stayed up past the legendary "midnight" that I had only heard of, but never "experienced".
From there it was a rolling snowball, I figured out how to read the tv listings in the paper and would look for anything related to "scary" and highlight it..., I watched Psycho, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, The Shining, and a ton of others before I was 8 years old.
When I was 8 we got a VCR and I went insane when I realized what doors were then open to me. When my mom would grocery shop, I would go to the video store next door and put the videos from the return bin back on the shelves, in exchange, the manager would let me rent movies for free. I saw EVERY horror movie in that store 3-5 times by the time I was 12, at that point I was in such good standing at the video store that the manager let me choose what horror films to order every month. My room was covered from ceiling to floor with posters and promotional crap that would get sent in with the videos, I even had 2 life sized cardboard standees of Freddy Krueger and Leatherface. I lived and breathed horror films.
I found an ad in the back of Fangoria magazine for an instructional video that promised to teach me how to make horror special effects, and saved up the $100 (which was a lot to save with my $5 a week allowance) and ordered it. The video was an hour long and taught me very little, but it gave me an idea of how to do a few things, so I took to designing my own methods. At 14 I sent pictures of stuff I had made to a school in Florida that taught FX, they were impressed enough to offer me a tuition scholarship to their school, but my family was poor and couldn't afford to pay the living expenses for me to move from Virginia to Florida for a year. Because they were good people, and because I called them 3 times a day for a year asking questions about how to do things I was working on, the school sent me their books and teaching materials for free since I couldn't come to their school, and I was on my way.
I had been making weird little videos with my best friend's parent's camcorder for years, but when I started making my own effects, the videos became my only focus. I made tons of movies, I would try to recreate effects from my favorite movies, and would spend countless hours designing creatures from supplies I would steal from the local Ben Franklin craft store (liquid latex and such were too expensive for me).
This went on until I was about 17... then I discovered girls and pot, and the whole thing became something I got away from for a few years.
Three days after my 24th birthday my little brother (he was 21) committed suicide, which knocked me on my a$$. All of a sudden going out and partying didn't have the same flare it once had, and I found myself at home and in a daze..., I started watching all my old videos, as he was in a lot of them, and somewhere along the way I decided to get back into horror movies. I hadn't watched most of the stuff that had come out in the previous 5-7 years, so I took to catching up on all I had missed. Over the next couple years I took to studying film making and all that went into making a movie. I bought a camcorder to practice with and started shooting things, learning how to frame shots and such in a proper way. I utilized some contacts I had made in my youth (Lloyd Kaufman, the President of Troma has been an invaluable source of info over the years), and learned the ins and outs of film distribution. I also found out that one of the guys who used to teach at the school I had wanted to go to had become a screenwriter. I bought some books that taught me how to format a script and what "beats" were needed to write a movie properly. I wrote 4 short scripts over that summer and sent them to him to see what he thought, he took two that he liked most and submitted them to a contact he had, and within a few months they were bought up by a small studio, though they were never made into films (which is common in the film industry). I got $5,000 each for them and used the money to buy a high grade professional camcorder, that could shoot film quality on a minidv tape, and a laptop that I could edit the footage on. I practiced shooting and editing, and started to plot out the film that I was going to make.
By the time I was 27 I felt prepared to write and make a movie on my own. I started writing my screenplay and took all the horror movie knowledge I had in my brain to try and write a movie that was a throwback to all the cheesy 80's horror films I loved so much as a kid. I planned out every facet of the film before I wrote it. I knew I wouldn't have a huge budget to work with, so I started by finding locations that were freely available to me. I knew it would be easier to create puppet style creatures to film, than to rely on human actors that would need to be put in make-up every time we were to shoot. I made a long list of things that needed to be considered, then with list in hand I started to write the outline of my film, I finished it around Christmas 2007.
I have spent almost two years trying to figure out a way to raise the money to shoot the film.
I need right at about $35,000 to shoot it, and $20,000 to start the distribution process... from there it will pretty much a perpetual motion machine.
Once the money is raised, the film will take about 4-5 weeks to prepare to shoot, then about 2-4 weeks to shoot, then another 4-6 weeks to edit it...., a rough look at budget breakdown goes like this...
Equipment/Props - There is about $20,000 worth of things that will be needed. A second camera, lights, a boom mic and some clip on microphones, tapes, an external hard drive, a digital audio recorder, battery packs, tapes, etc... I have a detailed list, but that's the gist of it. Once I have this stuff, I can make more movies, for much cheaper, as I'll already have the equipment in hand
Casting - I intend to use mostly students from VCU, as they have a ton of theater majors who are more than happy to jump on board any projects that pop up, Craigslist is also a good place to find people who want to be in movies. I don't plan to pay most of my actors, but I do have seven minor celebrities who have agreed to do cameos for free, assuming I provide travel and lodging, this will run around $2500
Crew - I will do 90% of the work behind the scenes. I have 2 close friends who will assist me, one is a photographer who has amazing skills when it comes to lighting, the other is an all around helpful guy who has been by sidekick through the whole process of creating this movie.
Special Effects - Though I will do most of the blood & gore effects, I found a guy who is a graduate of a prominent fx school and does remarkable things with very little money. He can create the creatures I designed for less than I could, and in half the time. He has already agreed to do the work, and has even made some concept stuff based on my drawings and such. He need's $3000 to make about 30 puppets of various sizes and shapes, $2700 is for supplies, $300 is all he asks for his time. It will take him 3-4 weeks to make them
Locations - I need to rent a bowling alley and a skating rink, that will run me $800-$1000... other than that, most of my locations are covered by using friends and relatives houses and property
Misc. - Food (I'm not paying anyone, but I will feed them for spending all their free time working on my film), LLC license, Insurance, wardrobe, make-up, fake blood..., this should set me back about $2500
Emergency Funds - You never know when you will need a new bulb for your lighting rig, or a new white tshirt for your actor who gets fake blood on him, or a million other random things that can happen on a low budget movie set, I want to have $5000 set aside for such things, if it isn't needed, good, but if it is, i want to know it is there.
Distribution
Once the film is shot, and everybody goes home, I will spend the next few weeks locked in a dark room with two guys who I've collaborated with before on their projects, and are amazing at editing. They have agreed to help me edit my film for free, as i have helped them for free numerous times over the years and we are cool like that with each other. While we edit the film, I have 2 composers who will be working on the music, and 4 designers who will take stills from the film, and concept art I've made and do the layout for the dvd. Also, I intend to have the film subtitled in Japanese as an extra feature, as the Japanese are huge fans of the type of horror film I am making and I want to open myself up to as many people as I can.
Also, while editing, a website will be put up, this will run around $500-$1000... it will host a trailer, and info about the cast, crew, etc.
When the movie is finally a finished Master Copy, it will be taken to a duplicator and we will have 2000 copies made, this will cost $3200.
200 copies will be sent out to radio stations, websites, etc. to be used for contests/promotional giveaways
100 copies will be sent to various horror critics for review
50 or so copies will go to the cast
$5,000 will go into buying a half page ads in Fangoria and Rue Morgue magazines, the highest selling horror publications in the world. Interviews have also been arranged with both magazines, so there will be more promotion in the press it gets.
The rest of the distribution money is for setting up booths at the horror conventions that pop up all across the nation. for anywhere between $250-$1500 you can rent a booth at the festivals. To set up a booth you would need posters and 8x10's of the stars, at least one or two of the film's stars to sign autographs, plus hotel rooms and food, gas, etc. With the remaining $10,000 or so, I should be able to hit 5 smaller conventions that average 10-20,000 people, and 5 major conventions that get upwards of 70-100,000 people.
My plan is to use a quarter of the money that comes in to keep the promotional angles working and to print more dvd's as they sell, a quarter of it to go toward a bigger and better sequel, a quarter of it will go to me, and a quarter of it will go toward paying back my investors
I figure I can sell 10,000 copies of the film in the first 90 days I have it out, and with such a prepared push I expect it to sell at around a 1000 copies a month, on average, afterward for a year or so.
At $15 (well, $14.99) I can expect to make $150,000 from the first push, and then $15,000 a month afterward... and that doesn't even factor in the conventions and festivals, which are more about promotions than sales, but will still see sales (likely more than is needed to cover the cost of going)..., nor the push of sales to be expected from interviews and such that I have set up for numerous national radio/tv shows (Opie and Anthony, Ron and Fez, Adam Carolla, Jimmy Kimmel, etc.)
These are lowball, realistic figures..., to double, or even triple, them wouldn't be crazy. Most of the low budget horror film that are made cost between $500,000 and $2million, they also have small studios putting up the cash, and 200 people working on the films. I've cut out 175 of those people by learning to do the stuff most filmmakers don't bother to learn and rely on others to do.
Once the film is out there, and the big push has been made, I want to start shooting a sequel, as well as an entirely different film, both of which are mostly written. Within 3 years I hope to have 3-5 films under my belt, and then hopefully I will have the cash to shoot a film that isn't as low budget (It will take $5 million to make it, as it will require a real crew) that I have been working on writing over the last year, while trying to scrounge up the cash to make this one
There is also one other important selling point, which is the title. See, when someone see's your title, even without the artwork on the dvd cover or whatever, it should sell them..., it should tell them what they are going to see, and it should grab them by the balls and really force them to hand over their money, you have to make it something they instantly want to watch, and make it so they instantly know what they are getting in to..., for a low budget horror film, this is crucial.... The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a great example of a title that captures this, a lesser known (well to people who don't watch low budget horror a lot) title that does this is Sorority Babes In The Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama..., it got "Title Of The Month" back in 1987 from Video Business Magazine... it was made for $250,000 and made over $5million in VHS sales, not to mention that it was later aired on the USA cable network (they likely paid in the $2million range to air it), and later released on dvd and was sold at Best Buy. When you see that title you know you are getting something that will have a lot of boobs, blood and gore. You expect bad acting, you expect it to be nothing but cheesy, but you also expect it to be fun and wacky..., and if you haven't seen it, it is all of those things and more.
With all this in mind, the title of my film is....
Demonic Aborted Sewer Fecal Fetuses Revenge
It is about aborted fetuses that have been flushed down the toilet by a low rent abortion doctor in an effort to cut costs, that get possessed by a demon spirit that is conjured up by a woman seeking revenge for the murder of her pedophile husband
And that, is how I intend to make my millions :smxF:
I'm starting at the beginning and going forward, eventually it will develop into what my plan is..., bear with me.
Ok, so...
I have been an insane horror movie fan since I was 5 years old (I'm 32 now). It started when I saw Swamp Thing on HBO, I was up later than I was supposed to be with a fever, and my Mom was sitting with me on the couch. I remember her constantly asking me if I was scared every time something crazy happened, and I was, but I knew by the way she was asking that if I said so, it would be turned off. I remember my Mom saying it was midnight when the movie ended, and I was amazed that I had actually stayed up past the legendary "midnight" that I had only heard of, but never "experienced".
From there it was a rolling snowball, I figured out how to read the tv listings in the paper and would look for anything related to "scary" and highlight it..., I watched Psycho, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, The Shining, and a ton of others before I was 8 years old.
When I was 8 we got a VCR and I went insane when I realized what doors were then open to me. When my mom would grocery shop, I would go to the video store next door and put the videos from the return bin back on the shelves, in exchange, the manager would let me rent movies for free. I saw EVERY horror movie in that store 3-5 times by the time I was 12, at that point I was in such good standing at the video store that the manager let me choose what horror films to order every month. My room was covered from ceiling to floor with posters and promotional crap that would get sent in with the videos, I even had 2 life sized cardboard standees of Freddy Krueger and Leatherface. I lived and breathed horror films.
I found an ad in the back of Fangoria magazine for an instructional video that promised to teach me how to make horror special effects, and saved up the $100 (which was a lot to save with my $5 a week allowance) and ordered it. The video was an hour long and taught me very little, but it gave me an idea of how to do a few things, so I took to designing my own methods. At 14 I sent pictures of stuff I had made to a school in Florida that taught FX, they were impressed enough to offer me a tuition scholarship to their school, but my family was poor and couldn't afford to pay the living expenses for me to move from Virginia to Florida for a year. Because they were good people, and because I called them 3 times a day for a year asking questions about how to do things I was working on, the school sent me their books and teaching materials for free since I couldn't come to their school, and I was on my way.
I had been making weird little videos with my best friend's parent's camcorder for years, but when I started making my own effects, the videos became my only focus. I made tons of movies, I would try to recreate effects from my favorite movies, and would spend countless hours designing creatures from supplies I would steal from the local Ben Franklin craft store (liquid latex and such were too expensive for me).
This went on until I was about 17... then I discovered girls and pot, and the whole thing became something I got away from for a few years.
Three days after my 24th birthday my little brother (he was 21) committed suicide, which knocked me on my a$$. All of a sudden going out and partying didn't have the same flare it once had, and I found myself at home and in a daze..., I started watching all my old videos, as he was in a lot of them, and somewhere along the way I decided to get back into horror movies. I hadn't watched most of the stuff that had come out in the previous 5-7 years, so I took to catching up on all I had missed. Over the next couple years I took to studying film making and all that went into making a movie. I bought a camcorder to practice with and started shooting things, learning how to frame shots and such in a proper way. I utilized some contacts I had made in my youth (Lloyd Kaufman, the President of Troma has been an invaluable source of info over the years), and learned the ins and outs of film distribution. I also found out that one of the guys who used to teach at the school I had wanted to go to had become a screenwriter. I bought some books that taught me how to format a script and what "beats" were needed to write a movie properly. I wrote 4 short scripts over that summer and sent them to him to see what he thought, he took two that he liked most and submitted them to a contact he had, and within a few months they were bought up by a small studio, though they were never made into films (which is common in the film industry). I got $5,000 each for them and used the money to buy a high grade professional camcorder, that could shoot film quality on a minidv tape, and a laptop that I could edit the footage on. I practiced shooting and editing, and started to plot out the film that I was going to make.
By the time I was 27 I felt prepared to write and make a movie on my own. I started writing my screenplay and took all the horror movie knowledge I had in my brain to try and write a movie that was a throwback to all the cheesy 80's horror films I loved so much as a kid. I planned out every facet of the film before I wrote it. I knew I wouldn't have a huge budget to work with, so I started by finding locations that were freely available to me. I knew it would be easier to create puppet style creatures to film, than to rely on human actors that would need to be put in make-up every time we were to shoot. I made a long list of things that needed to be considered, then with list in hand I started to write the outline of my film, I finished it around Christmas 2007.
I have spent almost two years trying to figure out a way to raise the money to shoot the film.
I need right at about $35,000 to shoot it, and $20,000 to start the distribution process... from there it will pretty much a perpetual motion machine.
Once the money is raised, the film will take about 4-5 weeks to prepare to shoot, then about 2-4 weeks to shoot, then another 4-6 weeks to edit it...., a rough look at budget breakdown goes like this...
Equipment/Props - There is about $20,000 worth of things that will be needed. A second camera, lights, a boom mic and some clip on microphones, tapes, an external hard drive, a digital audio recorder, battery packs, tapes, etc... I have a detailed list, but that's the gist of it. Once I have this stuff, I can make more movies, for much cheaper, as I'll already have the equipment in hand
Casting - I intend to use mostly students from VCU, as they have a ton of theater majors who are more than happy to jump on board any projects that pop up, Craigslist is also a good place to find people who want to be in movies. I don't plan to pay most of my actors, but I do have seven minor celebrities who have agreed to do cameos for free, assuming I provide travel and lodging, this will run around $2500
Crew - I will do 90% of the work behind the scenes. I have 2 close friends who will assist me, one is a photographer who has amazing skills when it comes to lighting, the other is an all around helpful guy who has been by sidekick through the whole process of creating this movie.
Special Effects - Though I will do most of the blood & gore effects, I found a guy who is a graduate of a prominent fx school and does remarkable things with very little money. He can create the creatures I designed for less than I could, and in half the time. He has already agreed to do the work, and has even made some concept stuff based on my drawings and such. He need's $3000 to make about 30 puppets of various sizes and shapes, $2700 is for supplies, $300 is all he asks for his time. It will take him 3-4 weeks to make them
Locations - I need to rent a bowling alley and a skating rink, that will run me $800-$1000... other than that, most of my locations are covered by using friends and relatives houses and property
Misc. - Food (I'm not paying anyone, but I will feed them for spending all their free time working on my film), LLC license, Insurance, wardrobe, make-up, fake blood..., this should set me back about $2500
Emergency Funds - You never know when you will need a new bulb for your lighting rig, or a new white tshirt for your actor who gets fake blood on him, or a million other random things that can happen on a low budget movie set, I want to have $5000 set aside for such things, if it isn't needed, good, but if it is, i want to know it is there.
Distribution
Once the film is shot, and everybody goes home, I will spend the next few weeks locked in a dark room with two guys who I've collaborated with before on their projects, and are amazing at editing. They have agreed to help me edit my film for free, as i have helped them for free numerous times over the years and we are cool like that with each other. While we edit the film, I have 2 composers who will be working on the music, and 4 designers who will take stills from the film, and concept art I've made and do the layout for the dvd. Also, I intend to have the film subtitled in Japanese as an extra feature, as the Japanese are huge fans of the type of horror film I am making and I want to open myself up to as many people as I can.
Also, while editing, a website will be put up, this will run around $500-$1000... it will host a trailer, and info about the cast, crew, etc.
When the movie is finally a finished Master Copy, it will be taken to a duplicator and we will have 2000 copies made, this will cost $3200.
200 copies will be sent out to radio stations, websites, etc. to be used for contests/promotional giveaways
100 copies will be sent to various horror critics for review
50 or so copies will go to the cast
$5,000 will go into buying a half page ads in Fangoria and Rue Morgue magazines, the highest selling horror publications in the world. Interviews have also been arranged with both magazines, so there will be more promotion in the press it gets.
The rest of the distribution money is for setting up booths at the horror conventions that pop up all across the nation. for anywhere between $250-$1500 you can rent a booth at the festivals. To set up a booth you would need posters and 8x10's of the stars, at least one or two of the film's stars to sign autographs, plus hotel rooms and food, gas, etc. With the remaining $10,000 or so, I should be able to hit 5 smaller conventions that average 10-20,000 people, and 5 major conventions that get upwards of 70-100,000 people.
My plan is to use a quarter of the money that comes in to keep the promotional angles working and to print more dvd's as they sell, a quarter of it to go toward a bigger and better sequel, a quarter of it will go to me, and a quarter of it will go toward paying back my investors
I figure I can sell 10,000 copies of the film in the first 90 days I have it out, and with such a prepared push I expect it to sell at around a 1000 copies a month, on average, afterward for a year or so.
At $15 (well, $14.99) I can expect to make $150,000 from the first push, and then $15,000 a month afterward... and that doesn't even factor in the conventions and festivals, which are more about promotions than sales, but will still see sales (likely more than is needed to cover the cost of going)..., nor the push of sales to be expected from interviews and such that I have set up for numerous national radio/tv shows (Opie and Anthony, Ron and Fez, Adam Carolla, Jimmy Kimmel, etc.)
These are lowball, realistic figures..., to double, or even triple, them wouldn't be crazy. Most of the low budget horror film that are made cost between $500,000 and $2million, they also have small studios putting up the cash, and 200 people working on the films. I've cut out 175 of those people by learning to do the stuff most filmmakers don't bother to learn and rely on others to do.
Once the film is out there, and the big push has been made, I want to start shooting a sequel, as well as an entirely different film, both of which are mostly written. Within 3 years I hope to have 3-5 films under my belt, and then hopefully I will have the cash to shoot a film that isn't as low budget (It will take $5 million to make it, as it will require a real crew) that I have been working on writing over the last year, while trying to scrounge up the cash to make this one
There is also one other important selling point, which is the title. See, when someone see's your title, even without the artwork on the dvd cover or whatever, it should sell them..., it should tell them what they are going to see, and it should grab them by the balls and really force them to hand over their money, you have to make it something they instantly want to watch, and make it so they instantly know what they are getting in to..., for a low budget horror film, this is crucial.... The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a great example of a title that captures this, a lesser known (well to people who don't watch low budget horror a lot) title that does this is Sorority Babes In The Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama..., it got "Title Of The Month" back in 1987 from Video Business Magazine... it was made for $250,000 and made over $5million in VHS sales, not to mention that it was later aired on the USA cable network (they likely paid in the $2million range to air it), and later released on dvd and was sold at Best Buy. When you see that title you know you are getting something that will have a lot of boobs, blood and gore. You expect bad acting, you expect it to be nothing but cheesy, but you also expect it to be fun and wacky..., and if you haven't seen it, it is all of those things and more.
With all this in mind, the title of my film is....
Demonic Aborted Sewer Fecal Fetuses Revenge
It is about aborted fetuses that have been flushed down the toilet by a low rent abortion doctor in an effort to cut costs, that get possessed by a demon spirit that is conjured up by a woman seeking revenge for the murder of her pedophile husband
And that, is how I intend to make my millions :smxF:
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