I decided to finally group our 3 part Color Correction tutorial into one blog post. Apart from the constant mocking of Mikes voice (and accent) they seem to have been well received. Mike should be making a few more How To type clips in the not so distant future.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

So you have just sat down at opening screening of the latest Hollywood blockbuster, the theater is full, you look around and think “this Cinema must be creaming it”. A quick calculation of 200 heads at $10 a ticket yields a $2,000 take just for that one screening...

But in reality the theater is only making $200, aka a dollar per person. Whats going on here? ReelClever looks into the world of price cinema pricing...

Its a regular occurrence to see in the daily paper a mother write in about how taking her family to the cinema is an expense that she can no longer afford, she voices her concern to the theater demanding they lower their prices. What she does not realize is that the theater for the opening week of a film, the most popular week, is usually losing money on ticket sales alone.

When a film hits the theaters the movie studio behind the film often gain something along the lines of a 90/10 split of the ticket takings. As with the above example a $10 ticket equates to a dollar per person for the theater. When the film is in its final week of showing, which is when the theaters are largely empty, the split will have been reversed in the theaters favor. A staggered percentage share happens during the middle weeks. Each film is hammered out under a different deal, often only signed just days before release.

The simple reason for this is that Hollywood films cost a lot to produce, every time you spend money on a ticket you are in fact paying for the production and marketing of the film, as well as for its viewing. Should a studio find its not making a return they under the arranged contract use a clause that allows them to dynamically change the profit split for each corresponding week of viewing. The theater is very much under control from studios when it comes to ticket price and such slim profit margins encourage monopoly business. There is simply too little room for effective competition. Also the extra ticket fee attached to 3D films goes straight to the company that provided the 3D projection system, bypassing both the theater and studio.

It should be mentioned that this system is a necessity and debate about the greediness of movie studios aside, big budget films simply require this kind of profit sharing. But what this system does allow is for conscience consumers to make informed decisions. For instance...

• If you happen to like a local cinema then going to see films after the first week of opening this will give the theater more finical support.
• Equally buying their overpriced popcorn will directly benefit the theatre.
• If you enjoy films from a particular studio then you can support the studio by seeing their films in the first week.
• Art house films and re runs tend to have a more even split. This is the reason boutique cinemas with limited patronage are able to survive.

So what this means for the Indie filmmaker is that having a premiere, or a one off showing at a theater is surprisingly economical.

If you have made a film recently, ensure that all copyright issues are in order and have a chat to the manager of your local cinema (preferably independent). Chances are they will be happy to support local content and will most likely offer you a screen to rent for a modest set price, allowing you to keep all the takings from your ticket sales. With most cinemas of any size sporting at least one digital projector these days there is really no reason not to treat your latest work of film art to a silver screen outing.

This story takes place during and shortly after my first viewing of Christopher Nolan's Film Inception. The film had left me with a heightened awareness for the surreal. Which proved convenient as i experienced four odd real life occurrences that would have been more at home in a dream than in reality. I call them “Inception moments”

Inception Moment 1

The first inception moment actually happened during the viewing. There was a city wide power cut about two thirds of the way through the film. Initially my friend and I questioned if the total shutdown of sound and imagery was an inspired Avant-garde move by Nolan. But the rational explanation from the staff member quickly quashed that theory. After five minutes of fiddling with back up generators everything was back on track. I could see the irony in having my perception of time warped beyond the pace of the editing, as if the movie had spilled over into real life. I shrugged my shoulders and under my breath muttered “Inception” while contemplating just how fitting the power cut seemed.

Inception Moment 2

Post film with ideas of dream states still fresh in our minds my friend and i walked home and upon turning the corner to the street on which we reside we noticed a group of theatrical fire dancers right in front of the door to our apartment, breathing and whirling sticks of fire with much finesse. Needless to say its not something one regularly sees in an urban environment and certainly like nothing we had ever seen on our humble street before. I slyly muttered to my friend “Inception” and jokingly looked around, half expecting to see Ellen Page as the architect somewhere in the distance winking at us.

Inception Moment 3

A little later on that night we were walking down a street en route to a birthday party when we experienced a second power cut, the lights around us for a few blocks suddenly went out, with some lights taking longer than others to die. By now we were getting used to these occurrences, so we just looked at each other shrugged our shoulders and both said “Incpection” and continued walking. It was bizarre being in a void of light, when we could see houses lit up all around us in the surrounding hills. About two minutes later everything flickered back on.

Inception Moment 4

Upon reaching the aforementioned party I was chatting to a friend in a noisy room about a recent trip I had completed. She asked me the names of my companions for the trip, I mentioned two who I thought she might know, but she miss heard both names. She then repeated back two names that she thought she had heard. To my surprise they were names of two other members of the trip, but not the ones I had mentioned. This was a coincidence of extreme proportions. I interrupted her and said, sorry “I'm having another damn Inception moment”.

Realizing this night was starting to get ridiculous and that I had no totem to confirm my reality, I decided the only choice was to reach the next level of consciousness by walking off to grab a much needed second beer...

The moral of the story is Christopher Nolan has created a film that was so immerse it kept me in its grips beyond the cinema. While I never genuinely questioned my existential reality I found the film engaging to the point that I could relate it's concepts directly to real life occurrences that questioned my status quo. These moments could have occurred on any night, but perhaps i only gave them deserved notice because I had just watched such a stunning and smart film.

So thank you Nolan for creating a not only a wonderful film, but also a full nights worth of engagement.

Has anyone else had inception like moments while, or just after watching the film? Feel free to post them below.

You've probably seen them around the net before. We aren't really sure if there is a named genre for these explanatory videos but we watched one which provides a visual element to Dan Pinks's talk on motivation and really liked the synergy between the narration and animation. So decided to make our own to promote our marketplace service.

We thought it might be worth blogging about the process incase our readers wish to create something similar for a client, so here are a few things we learned along the way.

We simply wanted to get across that its easy with ReelClever to find film makers then work with them to get a video project completed. So firstly we wrote the narration and refined it down to about 40 seconds, ensuring that each line was relevant and captivating.

Next we brainstormed some accompanying images in a literal way. If your talking about a person, then just draw them, don't over analyze, keep it simple. Its the obvious connection between the narration and imagery that give these videos their punctuality. The extra elements will come naturally as the concept progresses. The brainstorming sessions were done in short bursts over a few days and provided a nice creative break during the working day.

Once we had the narration locked and the general imagery sorted our wonderful graphic designer Kyreena worked out the layout on a whiteboard and refined the imagery to suit her style of drawing.

Technically we decided it would be easier to draw with a horizontal whiteboard, the camera was mounted with a simple tripod/ladder combo. We lit the board with some halogen work lights, though they tend to throw a nasty yellow light, as the imagery was largely white, white balance was easy to correct. We decided to take an image stream rather than use the video mode on our Canon 7D. After a quick test it was decided that the 4fps mode was more suited than the ridiculous 8fps mode.

We just held down the shutter button while Kyreena was drawing and ensured we took a few good still frames with her out of shot for the points where we were planing to pause the action. 12 gigabytes of images later we were done.

Post production work consisted of using quicktime to create an image stream video of gigantic proportions, then importing it into a 720p sequence in Final Cut Pro. While we assume 720p is of high definition its nothing compared to still image capture of DSLR's. Our pictures were the lowest quality the 7D could take and were still 2592x1728 pixels, over twice the size of a 720p frame. This allowed us a generous amount of digital zoom and pan while retaining full quality. Narration was loaded into the sequence, and the speed of the video was adjusted to fit. Things were pretty much complete. Just a quick transfer into Motion for a contrast boost, and vignette to keep the eye focused.

We are very happy with the final vid and look forward to making a few more with what we learnt making this one, here are a few pointers we picked up along the way...

• Do it the old fashion stop motion way by taking stills, ensuring higher quality and great freeze frames
• Ensure you have full control over lighting, we had the sun battling it out with a rouge cloud which meant more correcting in post
• Plan simply and fully
• Play around with slower shutter speeds to get a blurry fast motion drawing effect
• Lock the camera and zoom/plan in post, ultimate flexibility, the quality is there.

Reel Clever caught up with Cody Campanale, a film maker we found on our ReelClever Facebook Page. Using the power of electronic mail we asked him a few questions about his film Roofies and romance. Then complied the electronic emails into a single article to make it look like it was a casual conversation, seamless! We hope you enjoy.

Cody, can you please give us a quick synopses of your film (subject, running time, locations...etc), and elaborate on what inspired you to make a film about such a grave subject.

My first short film Roofies & Romance, produced with a grant provided by Ottawa's SAW Video Co-op, is a psychological portrait of a sociopathic date rapist prowling for new victims on a lonely night. In his search for fresh blood, he sets his sights on one unfortunate young woman, but discovers he’s not the only predator in search of new prey. The film was shot on location in Toronto, and runs just over 12 minutes.  

It recently won an Award of Merit at the Indie Fest in California, and will have its first public screening at the NewFilmmakers Festival in New York City on April 2nd 2010.

I was inspired to make this film after coming to the conclusion that most people in my age group (I'm in my early 20's) don't really understand what date rape is. Most of us are ignorant to the fact that rapists more often than not, know their victims. I myself was ignorant to this until I began reading about the topic. I used to think that rapists were the type of predators that hide in the bushes. Though these types of predators do exist, more often than not, they are the people you call your friends. 

It was completely by coincidence that I stumbled upon the subject matter too...one day I came across an article online that stated, 'in the last 30 years, the number of violent crimes against women, statistically speaking, have increased'. What a shocking statistic I thought. And so began my research into sociopathic behaviour, sexual violence, and the darkness that surrounds those issues. I'm a very curious person, you see. I often find myself compelled to stories that explore the evil and often neglected side of human behaviour. I feel like our society doesn't like to discuss things we don't fully understand, and rape, in my opinion, is one of those things. Also, this film gave me the opportunity to tackle the subject matter from a unique perspective, a male's perspective.

Congratulations on the award, its nice to see an indy film go down the traditional route of film festivals and screenings. 

Thanks a bunch. It feels really great to know that people are responding well to it. Also, I should mention we just got excepted into the NSI's Online Short Film Festival. It's pretty prestigious, so keep an eye out for the movie on their website. 

What sort of critical feedback regarding your subject matter did you receive pre and post production?

During my research, I began a filmmaker's blog, where I posted every once and awhile my thoughts and feelings towards the project. I had already a large group of friends from facebook and other networking sites, so I would send links to them every time I posted an entry. This was how I started building hype around the film.  You can now find my blog on www.roofiesandromance.com.

I was met with hesitation from some people about what I was trying to accomplish. Some questioned the fact that I wanted a date rapist to be my central character. One time, I received an email from somebody who thought that making a date rapist the lead in a film meant I was trying to have audiences sympathize with him. I sent an email back, 'saying that I was very happy that she voiced her concerns, but I feel that making a film about how a date rapist operates, and having us watch him interact with others, exposes an audience to the behavioral patterns that most people are unaware of, and that was my most important goal in making this film.' While doing research, and I did a lot of it, I found allies in those who I interviewed. For example, I interviewed police officers, lawyers, date rape councillors, and many others. The one thing you realize when you speak to enough people about date rape, is how frightfully common it is amongst young people. This desire to educate others on my findings kept me moving forward.

It's hard work producing and distributing an indy film, what challenges did you run into along the way? 

Surprisingly, I didn't have very much trouble putting together a crew and cast to work on the movie. We spent almost 6 months developing the script, so what we had in our hands was polished, and people always respond better to a polished script than something that needs work. Producing a decent script is always a good way to get professionals to work for free or really cheap. You'd be surprised to see how many bad scripts are floating around the indie world. Or maybe you wouldn't be surprised. Ha ha. 

Here's a pretty funny story and a good lesson for any young filmmakers out there. Unless you work in a bar, or have the money to pay for a location, don't write in a bar as your primary location. I spent almost 5 weeks trying to find a bar that would let us shoot in it for free. I either had to pay for it with money I didn't have, or I could only have the location for a couple hours a day, which would be impractical. Thanks to my production manager, he found me a fantastic Art person, Caroline Pandeli, and her and I worked on transforming a UofT's fraternity basement into a seedy underground bar. We managed to do this for almost no money and if you see the film, you'd never know. Fantastic art direction on her part. 

There is no doubt that producing a movie the indie way is difficult. I was lucky that I had a team that was resourceful and passionate about the story we were trying to tell. This film would never have come as far as it has without them.

But as for distribution and trying to get something out of your movie when it's all finished, it requires an incredible amount of entrepreneurial skills. Most indie filmmakers who manage to do well, have taught themselves that filmmaking is not only an art, but a business. There are a number of ways to distribute a movie, you can approach traditional distributors or be inventive and find your own way to make a dime. As for this film, I've found that the best market to be selling to universities. I'm currently in talks about getting the film into a number of university libraries. This would be a good way to bring awareness to these issues.

Right now, I'm riding the festival circuit and I'm in pre-production for two new short films, "Teach'er" and "Scars". I'll have more updates about distribution for "Roofies & Romance" shortly.

Thanks Cody for sharing your experiences with us, to find out more information on Roofies & Romance the official site can be found here. www.roofiesandromance.com