NOTES FROM THE INDEPENDENT HORROR SCENE

I attend the Creation Weekend of Horrors. The Independent Filmmakers Panel is a quiet revelation. Four filmmakers - Mike Flanagan, Sean Cain, Dave Reda, and James Ryan Gray - gave us the lay of the land - and it ain’t pretty. Just some notes I took:

Give your first film away. The marketplace is flooded with good-looking indie features. And distribution is in a transitory period. In most cases, you give your first film away in order to create a brand for yourself. And by branding yourself, that means getting press and building a fan base.

Does the cream rise to the top? Everyone said yes - except Sean Cain. He laid it out like this: you make a film for two audiences - your fans and WalMart. You can try to create a brand for yourself and build an audience, either via Facebook or VOD, for no money. Or you can try to sell your movie to WalMart and cater to their tastes and make some money (emphasis on some).

The payday is gone. Distributors are not giving indie guys the big pay days. The market is too flooded. Let’s say you make a feature for $70K. They’ll offer you $50K, minus advertising and other costs. Distributors don’t care how good your film is. They only care if they’re happy. Netflix owns your film if you give it them.

The alternative is to bypass the middleman via VOD or self-distribution to individual theaters - but even then, you’re getting pennies on the dollars (which is why the lower the budget, the quicker you’ll see a return).

Career vs. hobby. Mr. Cain also said it like this: when it comes to the industry, do you want a career or are you a hobbyist?

He gave the example of the Shiny Box: you make a shiny box so it attracts the magpies (distributors). But inside the box, you've made something for yourself. You have the best of both worlds.

Most of us on the outside looking in would say we’re hobbyists.

Why bother? The John Carpenter panel was even more interesting. The moderator ran down his resume, asking him to reminisce about his impressive body of work. Midway through his the panel, Mr. Carpenter cut him off and said: "Can we cut to the end. I want to answer audience questions. I don't want to go through my resume because all my answers are going to be the same: I worked very hard on it, it came out, it flopped."

All of his films, when they were released, were panned. Few were hits. Most are now revered. How does that make him feel? "When my films came out they were hated. Now they're loved. Love is better than hate."

When asked what he looks for in horror scripts, he says “Nothing. There are no rules. Tell a good story.”

Sequels to hit movies have to crowd source now. At the Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon reunion panel, Scott Glosserman, the director, explained how he's scrambling to make a sequel. Via Dread Central:

"We're trying to get all the elements together," says Glosserman. "We're even trying to crowd fund in part. We might enlist the Hatchet Army. We've talked to the Alamo Drafthouse, and we're talking to people like Dread Central. The idea is to maybe pre-sell DVDs on the website to raise money to be able to go see distributors and get a co-financier or pre-sell some territories."

And this for an established film with a preexisting audience! - albeit, a cult audience.

I assume they're asking for a cool mil. There’s no money out there for them, so they announced they’ll soon be starting a Kickstarter campaign (their Facebook is HERE).

So what have we learned, class? Well, first of all, you must never make fun of WalMart ever again. Everybody and their grandmother is making a movie nowadays. The lower your budget, the quicker you'll see a return. And by low, I mean really low. In a few years time, I believe, one can make a feature for under $100K. Even less. With the right gimmick, it can be done.

I still believe you need stars attached. You still need names. When was the last time you paid money for a movie that had complete unknowns? What was the last DVD rental you saw that had no faces you recognized? Stars are the faces of your movie. You need them. But the good news is they need you.

Should you make your movie? Mr. Carpenter, of all people, said yes. "You have no reason not to make your film. It's your generation. Take the reins and go."