Micro-budget filmmaking is bloody hard work.
After wrapping production on ForeFans – our sixth micro-budget narrative feature – at the start of the month, I can feel that in my tired bones. And creaky knees.
We spent two weeks filming guerrilla style all over Zagreb and Paris, 18 different locations, a skeleton crew of only three or sometimes two (only Sarah and I), 12 to 14 hour days, 5 hours sleep a night.
To say it was exhausting is an understatement. We were stretched too thin, multi-tasking like mad, putting into practise philosophies for micro-budget filmmaking that we teach in our own educational courses: “Use a small crew to move quickly and keep costs down.”
But halfway through filming I realized something about this philosophy and perhaps micro-budget filmmaking in general: I’m getting too old for this.
Setting a Release Date for your Indie Film Still Matters
On May 20th, 2022, we released our latest feature film Machination via Vimeo On Demand. We knew this would be our release date since early April. We contacted a PR agency, October Coast, to premiere our trailer, spread the news about the release, garner interviews and reviews for the film, and basically help launch Machination. So far, so typical, right?
Not necessarily. The trend these days seems to be to release micro-budget films via a small distributor or a marketplace like FilmHub, wait for platforms like Amazon or Tubi to pick-up the film and randomly begin streaming it, and only then begin promoting the film. The idea is to release “everywhere all at once” so viewers have choices where to watch the film. They can also watch it immediately, instead of waiting for a particular date.
It is the instant gratification release, designed for an audience who have infinite entertainment options, and no patience to wait for your micro-budget film.
Read MoreThe Boldness of Youth
I have been in Melbourne longer than intended. What was initially only meant to be a visit for a month or so, has stretched into a stay over four months as I’ve helped my mum move into a retirement village and sell the family home. Cleaning out the house has taken me for a trip down memory lane as I’ve discovered props, pictures, and DVDs from my first ever film: Shades of the Soul.
Hardly a soul has seen the film. Pun intended. I made it back in 2006 together with my friend Heath Novkovic, co-writing and co-directing. It is actually a feature film, 87 minutes long. I also played the antagonist, Leviticus, a military commander leading an expedition in the jungle when he is attacked and corrupted by a demon. He puts on a mask (we knew so little about copyright the mask in question is a replica from the band Slipknot) and begins gruesomely killing his own unit one by one, until the final confrontation with the lead protagonists and lovers Alexandra ‘Ice’ Peterson and Marcus ‘Dracon’ Maitlin. It was typical slasher fare with a touch of occult, only more poorly done than most, due to our total lack of experience and budget.
It’s such an amateurish film that it was never released, and I don’t even count it in my filmography. We were a bunch of dreamers running around the ‘jungles’ of Brimbank Park with camcorders, playing at filmmakers. But as I sat down and watched the film for the first time in many, many years, inspired by the nostalgia this trip to Melbourne instigated, I realized something: there is freedom in naivety.
Read MoreSEX, VIOLENCE & CENSORSHIP
Exposing the Double Standard Surrounding Sex & Violence in Film & Art
Our new film In Corpore is too sexy for Tubi.
This is something we learnt two weeks ago, and we’ve added Tubi to our list of platforms and apps we cannot reach with the film. All our attempts to advertise In Corpore on Instagram fail. Our trailers and teasers are flagged on YouTube. When we wrote in the film’s IMDB synopsis “a sensual, sex-positive exploration of contemporary relationships”, the synopsis suddenly disappeared. Trying to advertise the film through GoogleAds is an ongoing battle and we are losing – Google restricted our ability to market the new release through YouTube due to images being deemed “adult content”. Images, mind you, of people dancing, fully clothed. And for a year leading up to the film release, we couldn’t even share the In Corpore website on Facebook or Instagram because it was blocked by those platforms. The crime: too sexy.
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