In preparation for my movie, I read as much about financing and producing independent films as I could, and all the stories ended up being true. It always takes more money than you have (no matter how much you have), and post-production takes just as much as production (surprisingly), especially if you’re working from film, which we were. Also, the money runs out faster than you expect, and things cost more than you want. In the urgent heat of production, it turns out the fastest way to solve problems is to throw money at them. Time, reasoned thought, and careful marshalling of resources are all things that are luxuries when you have dozens, perhaps hundreds of people organized and scheduled, and equipment rented (often by the day, and for specific days).
There may be
a budget posted somewhere else on this website, but suffice it to say the money flow slowed before the end of shooting, the credit cards were filled up, and there was seriously no money left by the time we needed proper editing facilities set up (never mind renting them from someone else). We barely got the last few weeks of shooting finished, with a much-reduced crew and with pages torn out of the script. I had put together a list of shots, inserts and linking moments needed to create a coherent cut of the movie. Every film is a manufactured document illustrating the dichotomy between the intended vision and the resources available at the time of production. A product of the specific time of its creation. Usher would be proof.
We got the footage processed but couldn’t afford to pay to get it out of the lab. I had also had them transfer all the reels to Beta SP tapes with the original idea we’d have access to an Avid machine to edit. This didn’t come to pass. So I was stuck with no way to view, much less edit the footage. My DP had gone out and spent $4000 on equipment, with the explanation that it was cheaper to buy than to rent, since we were going so far past our production budget, by weeks and weeks. And at the end we’d own it. I guess he was right, but if we’d stayed on our production schedule, we wouldn’t owe $4000 on equipment I never wanted to look at again. With a pile of debt, film to be hostaged out of the lab, and a pile of equipment, I decided to sell some of it off.
We’d bought some used Smith-Victor 710 and 750 floods from a local rental house, which normally retailed for $150 to $200. We’d gotten them for $75 each. I put them up on eBay with pictures I’d copped off a website and managed to get over $100 for each of them over the course of a month. This paid for my film to get out of the lab, and brought my credit card limit down a couple of hundred dollars so I could buy food for the last couple of nights of shooting. I had changed a day scene into a night scene because we only had 400t film stock left, and were shooting in the middle of the night at the theatre after everyone had left. We kept the camera close to prevent the need to light the entire space.
Next I collected a bunch of my old laserdiscs I didn’t intend to look at ever again... or that were titles that were coming out on DVD. (This was in 1998, and DVD was just beginning to hit). I’m a laserdisc faithful to the end, and actually prefer their harder analog image (when mastered correctly), but I knew I would inevitably shift slowly to titles that were updated on the new format. Besides, if they’re in print, I don’t REALLY need copies at home.
Usually I bring them into the local record store for credit, so I can convert it to new movies or music, but I decided to continue a concerted effort on eBay to get real cash, not just credit.
The beautiful thing about eBay is that it’s on the internet - open 24 hours, to the entire world. You have a potentially infinite amount of shoppers for your items, and if they’re remotely collectible, you get top dollar since collectors lurk, surf, and bid up your items often beyond their worth, since it’s so easy. With the auction time limits, it creates a false sense of urgency. This slightly addictive, dysfunctional behavior has made eBay what it is. I did a certain amount of research and quickly discovered which titles were out of print, or had extras not replicated on the DVD releases, and put those up for sale first.
You could still get over $25-40 for a good title on laserdisc in those days. (Not anymore - laserdiscs are the 21st century’s 8-tracks.) I managed to turn about 20 titles into about $400 within 4 months. Most of them I don’t miss. I sold any titles that were coming out on DVD first, before the value plummeted.
With this money one of my co-producers (Rip, my sound guy) bought a huge (at the time) 70-gig hard drive and configured his computer to run Final Cut Pro, so we could edit at his house for free. We rented a beta machine and spent a “long weekend” (Friday to Monday) transferring all 12 hours of tapes and logging each individual cut.
Meanwhile, I began to haunt video stores liquidating their laserdiscs. Older Criterion discs such as “Man Bites Dog,” “Pulp Fiction,” and “Confidential Report” all fetched nice prices. (I ended up buying another “Confidential Report” — still not on dvd.) I bought a series of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” from the 5th and 6th season (with 2 episodes on each), and sold them all for at least $100 per disc! This was before these were issued in season-specific box sets on DVD that went for $99 per season. I also got a copy of Terry Gilliam’s long
out-of-print first film “Jabberwocky,” a murky full-frame transfer from Columbia that went for an astounding $170 on eBay. Far be it from me to belittle the poor buyer of that disc, as I am also a Gilliam completist, but a mere 2 months later “Jabberwocky” was issued in a widescreen deluxe edition on DVD with a Gilliam commentary for under $15.00. I really lucked out on the timing of that one. I hope that guy doesn’t find me.
I was paying down over $25,000 of debt spread over 6 credit cards. I could barely keep the minimum balances paid since I was still working at a movie theatre. The benefits of that of course are free movies and all the free promo stuff you get. So I began to sell some of the promo stuff.
I sold a huge vinyl “Planet of the Apes” banner (it had a big picture of a monkey on it) for over $150. (After the movie came out, they were going for $12.) I sold candles with “From Hell” embossed on it, “Waking Life” postcards, a cake cutter for “Titus,” and posters. Some stuff never sold. Some stuff people paid ridiculous amounts for. It was all in the timing. I never sold any “Star Wars” stuff. Apparently George Lucas would have shut down your auction.
Most of the money went to paying down the credit cards as quickly as possible, putting an extra $200 or so a month towards the unpaid balance, although I eventually had to take out a loan anyway to consolidate them.
I sold all my old Daredevil comics when that movie came out. I received much of my money through Paypal, and with the money in that account, I was able to pay for a cd library of foley sounds transferring the funds directly through Paypal. Great.
By the end of the year it was time to submit VHS copies of the film to festivals. There was no way we could get back onto film, either 16mm (which would cost perhaps $15,000 (I couldn’t sell that much stuff!) or 35mm (which would cost as much as 10 times that). We were limited to festivals that could show the film on Beta tape or DV formats.
There are over 900 festivals a year, many of which exhibited in a digital or tape format. Festival fees are around $50 per film and then there’s costs of copies, stills, and press book development. In October and November alone we spent over $200 just on preparation for festivals. The Paypal credit card allowed me to pay for the festival submissions painlessly.
I’m still working on the final sound mix-down with all the foley and bad dialogue either hidden by the score or replaced with something that sounds sorta like the sound it’s supposed to be (generally it’s a fist hitting a couch - amazing how that sound can be put in almost anywhere, for almost anything).
Director’s Statement
Signs and Meanings
References
