Angelo Bell's Painfully Exhilarating Adventures in Independent Filmmaking
Thursday, June 18th, 2009
"PULP FUSION: RAW Shorts Collection" DVD cover
I just reduced the price of my short film collection DVD PULP FUSION: (five shorts) – Save $2.50. Order it through CreateSpace and save!
https://www.createspace.com/263219
*Note: the price reduction has not taken effect on Amazon yet, so make sure you order from CreateSpace!
Friday, April 3rd, 2009
Click the link about to get the $10 discount. It is not available on Amazon.com yet
Sunday, March 29th, 2009
http://www.amazon.com/Pulp-Fusion-RAW-Shorts-Collection/dp/B00212TYIO/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1238348813&sr=8-5
Thursday, March 26th, 2009
Business on my mind
Something has been on my mind for a few weeks and now it’s time to commit. There’s no way I am going to finish my b-cinema film “Pulp Fusion: The Resurrection of Serious Rogers” within the original timetable. There have been far too many events out of my control that have delayed it. So, it’s time to roll with the punches and adjust my timetable. I think pushing everything back until the end of April will work well.
Pushing the deadline for the rough cut back to April also allows me to focus on “pushing” news about the release of the first Pulp Fusion series DVD, “The Raw Shorts” which is a collection of five short films from myself and Daryll Harkless. The DVD is currently available on CreateSpace (www.createspace.com/263219) and will soon be on Amazon.com, Amazon Unbox. At some point the shorts collection will also be available for VOD.
These changes give me time to work on creating opportunities to screen the “The Resurrection of Serious Rogers” locally when it is ready.
Lastly, there are a few changes I plan to make to my film, “The Broken Hearts Club” as well, in preparation for the film to go direct-to-DVD sometime this fall.
Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009
PULP FUSION:
The Raw Shorts Collection by Angelo Bell
This is a Brand New, self-made DVD collection by independent filmmaker Angelo Bell. I self-distribute my films using my MacBookPro. I have 13 film credits, two “best in fest” awards and I made history at the Los Angeles ShortsFest in 2007 when FOUR of my shorts were accepted into the festival. My credits are at http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1479226/
This DVD short film collection comprises the first of several “Pulp Fusion Series” DVDs that I’ll be releasing as part of my Independent self-distribution model. My films are now available to a global audience. The second film in the series, “Pulp Fusion: The Resurrection of Serious Rogers,” is actually a 2-hour feature film and contains several clips and sequences from “Pulp Fusion: The Raw Shorts.” The next DVD will include director interviews explaining how I rewrote the narrative for a previous film to include clips from several of my other films. It was an amazing process. But more on that later. Let’s talk about RAW.
On the DVD you get FIVE short films and a director video totalling over an hour of entertainment. The short films cover the gamut of genres and often contain multiple genres. There’s art house, action, drama, noir, girls-with-guns, satire and comedy. The films discuss drug abuse, heroin addiction, human trafficking, murder, love, sisterhood, friendship, sacrifice and of course, murder in the first degree. It’s great entertainment. And you’ll want to want each short film over and over again. If I do say so myself, the writing is exemplary and has gotten many kudos.
As I mentioned, you get FIVE films. Get Spielberg, Renounced, Valerie & Sid, The First Time and I know Who Shot You. Here are the trailers for the films
View the trailer for GET SPIELBERG here: http://www.319prods.com/films/getspielberg/
My Official Amazon DVD ships March 30th for $24.95. But you can get it here on eBay at a $10 discount. I manage my own DVD replication but my DVD’s are guaranteed to work. If the DVD doesn’t work on your DVD player or laptop for any reason, you’ll get a new one. Period. Just ship it back. My DVD discs do come with an affixed label.I ship within 48 hours of receiving payment. DVD arrives in a cardboard mailer in a DVD sleeve. No case.
I’ll also enclose a coupon for $5 off the second film in the Pulp Fusion Series, “The Resurrection of Serious Rogers” which will be available in early April right here!
Monday, March 2nd, 2009
Today I setup my Amazon/CreateSpace account for the DVD release of my short film collection, Pulp Fusion: The RAW Shorts Collection. The DVD will include five short films: Get Spielberg (a Hollywood satire), Renounced (a drama about heroin addiction), Valerie & Sid (a drama about human trafficking), I Know Who Shot You (a suspense thriller), The First Time (sociopathic murder drama). Note: I make a cameo appearance in one of the above-mentioned films
"PULP FUSION: RAW Shorts Collection" DVD cover
The CreateSpace account setup was fairly simple; I’ve completed similar tasks while submitting my films to film festivals and screenwriting contests over the past nine years. The interesting part came when the site called for my DVD cover artwork and disc artwork.
I make a habit of making an Internet sized film poster of all my films. Doesn’t matter if the poster is cheesy, plain, ordinary or what, I just make it to have it. I’m lucky enough to have gotten fairly well-versed at photoshop, particularly as PSD files are concerned. PSD files are more robust than simple jpegs.
I jammed and quickly grabbed screenshots from my films, or I used the previous film posters (one-sheets). Since this is a short film compilation I needed to find five posters for the five films that will appear on the DVD. I found them, layered them on a textured background, created a drop shadow so each posters stands out and moved on to the text.
Again I’m lucky. I’m a writer and writing comes easier for me than speaking — however sad that may sound. Truthfully, I can literally adapt on the fly and write anything. Thankfully, in the past I’ve also studied promotion and marketing (ie advertising). The blurbs for the DVD cover insert were written and proofed within the 2 hours it took me to complete the assignment.
Like editing, I’ve had to learn to do this stuff on my own. I’ve worked with editors and graphic designers int he past, but I’ve never been satisfied with the levels of commitment to the work. While many of these folks are better than me in skill, they haven’t proven to be as good as I in commitment. And there you are.
What remains is for me to receive the DVD proof of the artwork from Amazon and then ship my DVD to them. One these two last items are checked off, my DVD will be on the market! Wow, I’m excited. This is the culmination of many years of hard work: writing, producing and churning out as many films as possible.
As I mentioned there are five films included on the DVD. This DVD actually serves as a prelude to my next DVD release (coming very soon) Pulp Fusion: The Resurrection of Serious Rogers. The reason the RAW shorts collection is a prelude is because I used many clips and sequences from the RAW shorts to complete my neo-noir art house drama, The Resurrection of Serious Rogers. Those who obtain the first Pulp Fusion Series DVD will be ahead of the game in spotting how I was able to adjust the narrative of the feature to include the clips from the short films.
Originally I had decided to include the shorts on the feature film DVD and make it a two-disc set. However, because of the contracts involved with the short films, the resulting pay-outs would tap into my margin. Since The Resurrection of Serious Rogers is my film creation I thought it best to separate the two Pulp Fusion Series DVD’s.
Tuesday, February 24th, 2009
There exists an incredible amount of information very pertinent to the independent filmmaker embarking upon the task of self-distribution. The only aspect of the old model of distribution that holds true is that filmmakers must think about distribution BEFORE one sequence of the film is ever shot. Doing this creates a focus on results.
The only caveat I have is the overwhelming statistical data and numerical comparisons used in discussing the old incumbent model vs the new emerging model. Every film is different. Many films have completely different audiences and the way to reach these audience vary by increasing degrees. Podcasts may not work for every film. A local theatrical run may not work for a film while an overseas theatrical run, via festivals, may work wonders.
Filmmakers should have a presence on the web and free Internet tools and social networking sites such as Vimeo, YouTube, Twitter, Myspace, Facebook, Wordpress, Blogger, etc should direct the prospective audience to that web presence (site). Trailers and new versions of trailers are good examples of visual content to make this happen. Promoting a recorded Interview is another way to make this happen. However, I for one, cannot imagine how giving away your content –a completed film– could help a filmmaker unless that was his intention from the start.
In the end, it’s about hard work getting to know your audience(s). My distribution mentor, Tony Comstock, once told me that you should never commit to making your first film unless you’re committed to making your third. It’s about building your audience. Documented examples like “Four-Eyed Monsters” are exciting but rare. It’s difficult to emulate a film’s success especially when you have a different kind of film.
In my personal experience, I realized that there was a 99.999% chance that I’d have to self-distribute my film, The Broken Heart Club. However, being new to this arena I also realized the importance of education. I didn’t want to “learn” on my pride & joy, so I pulled another film out of the cobwebs, dusted it off and prepped it for self-distribution. The process not only revived the film (I ended up shooting another sequence and a narration) but it revived FIVE other films as well. My self-education unearthed glorious and empowering examples of low-budget film distribution. Now I am as excited about distributing Pulp Fusion: The Resurrection of Serious Rogers as I am about The Broken Heart Club.
Empowerment is the key. If independent filmmakers truly believe we don’t need Hollywood to make a film, shouldn’t we also believe that we don’t need Hollywood to distribute our films? We’ve proven the former. Let’s prove the latter.
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009
I just spend the better part of this morning making significant changes to my website and my blog, I’ve gotten rid of the blog sub-directory. My blog comes up as my index page whenever you type in my domain name AngeloBell.com. I also went into my header and style pages to adjust my site’s keywords and make changes to the fonts. I’ve become increasingly fond of Trebuchet MS.
Basically, I’m gearing up my pages for the upcoming distribution of my upcoming DVD, “Pulp Fusion” in March (hopefully) and Broken Hearts Club later this year. I’m also rethinking the new production company title. While it may be apt, I think the bigger issue is brand recognition. I think it’s important to begin branding me, and what better way to do that then simply by using my name — as pretentious and/or uninspired as that may be.
I saw a few videos this weekend, the last videos from the credit left on my Blockbuster Video account. I’ve said buh-bye to BB. I saw Meet Dave, The Secret Life of Bees, and Bablyon AD. Sorry, but I’m not going to bother writing a review or any of these films. Not worth my time. There were some super silly moments in Meet Dave that cracked me up, but other than that, the film suffered a bag case of miscasting and poor promotion. It was the same with Babylon AD
Thursday, February 5th, 2009
DVE= Dominant Visual Element. This is the graphic part of your website (and or sales page) that draws the attention of visitors. There is only one DVE. All other graphics should be much simpler than the DVE. Here are some proposed DVE for my upcoming page for Pulp Fusion: The Resurrection of Serious Rogers.
I’d love to know what you think. Hit me back, playa
Thursday, January 29th, 2009
I took some time to recut a slightly different trailer for “Pulp Fusion: The Resurrection of Serious Rogers.” As I stood out on my patio I was thinking that it probably wasn’t a smart move to try to emulate the big studios when I cut a trailer. I’m not Miramax, MGM or Dreamworks — people don’t know me. I decided that I needed more information in my trailer since the trailer, was going to be a big part of getting people to the website to buy. The time difference was negligible at five additional seconds, however, I added additional title cards and added or swapped-out a few shots.
I’m serious about self-distributing “Pulp Fusion: The Resurrection of Serious Rogers” using internet marketing techniques. I’ve always believed in the power of sales on the Internet. Today my research led me to consider avoiding CreateSpace for distribution. With the $4.95 cut they take of each DVD sale it can become a huge expense to you as you begin to sell more and more DVDs.
For example: at 1000 units @ $19.95 you’d have made $19,950. Not bad, but you would have paid Amazon/CreateSpace $4950 of that money. Now let’s look at 10,000 units. For the filmmaker that equals gross sales of $199,500, of which you’ve spent about $10k for DVD and packaging. If you sold your movie from your own website that money goes into your pocket. If you were selling through Amazon/Create Space you would have shelled out $50,000 to them. $50,000?! That’s enough to make another low budget film, like that cool horror flick idea you’ve had for eons.
I know what I need to do. I’m finalizing details of my strategy daily. I’ve already begun little plugs here and there about my little art house, neo-noir, film. I’m going to do this.
Find me on these social sites.
Angelo Bell's Painfully Exhilarating Adventures in Independent Filmmaking
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