The VUDU (VUDU - Home) caches the first few minutes of most of the films they have, so you can start watching immediately while it downloads in the background. HDX movies require you to download for a few hours.

The only short film that I know of that's made a lot of money is Alex Ferarri's Broken (BROKEN: A Tale by Alex Ferrari) and he and his team are terrific filmmakers and marketing/salespeople.

Heath

In Canada, it's simple: you go to distributors at the pre-production stage looking for money. They turn you away at the door and tell you to come back when the movie's done and you've submitted it to festivals on your own dime. They they sign a contract, sit back and take 50% of all the sales resultig from the buzz you've generated at your own expense.

Me, bitter? Naw... ;-)


J.

Make sure you have a good sales agent

British zombie movie that cost just £45 to make is set to become surprise hit at Cannes | Mail Online

Although, I do rather suspect that he wasn't really adding up his costs over that 18 month shoot, buying his cast the cheap meal would blow that budget. But it sounds good for the marketing.

Also, he came at the overdone zombie horror movie subject matter from a different angle. The consumer camera look may help in this case.

Did they really make a lot of money?
Looking at that zombie movie it's hard to believe Cannes would have even watched it. I suspect a lot of that had to do with his sales agent who "suggested taking the movie to Cannes"

I hear that the $70 zombie movie is very clever. It beat out a lot of other higher budget movies to get into Cannes.

Roger Ebert reviewed and liked Broken and I know they did very well with DVD sales. They even have a "how to make an indie film look like a big budget film" featurette.

heath

I haven't seen the movie so I can't tell for sure. But every time I've seen the latest dirt-cheap production generating a lot of buzz, it looked... well, dirt cheap, and the buzz was self-generated (buzz about buzz). And let's face it, the zombie genre is dead tired (no pun) and the expectations of the horror genre fans are very (very!) low. I haven't seen a good (i.e. not derivative to the extreme) horror movie in a long time.

As you said, "Colin" seems to be more about marketing than writing or technique, but even if it's so then kudos to the maker because that's also an important part of independent filmmaking.


J.

Now that you mention it I vaguely remember Blair Witch having promotional stunts, suggesting that the movie was real. Seems like one could have a lot of fun with marketing generating buzz, even if it's false.

Aric,

Yes they did--www.blairwitch.com (the original one) made it seem like it was a "real" legend. Heck even the "1970s documentary" they did seemed like an authentic supernatural doc you'd see in the 1970s and re-run into the 2000s.

I did something like it with my film's website Skye's Cool Web Site to way less fanfare, but it was fun to take the lead character and have her "build" her own website. It also helped that I couldn't (and still can't) design websites so it looked unprofessional and I could get away with it.

Heath