The Redwood Massacre - A Micro-Budget Film Production: Raising Funds & going it alone..

The Redwood Massacre - A Micro-Budget Film Production: Raising Funds & going it alone..: We thought after having some success with Attack of the Herbals, raising a budget for our new feature would be easier. I was wrong.  We mi...

Raising Funds & going it alone..

We thought after having some success with Attack of the Herbals, raising a budget for our new feature would be easier.

I was wrong.  We missed out on the networking attached to promoting Attack of the Herbals by signing with sales agent Camelot Entertainment before it was finished.  Looking back this was probably a mistake.  If we had taken Attack of the Herbals to some UK  film festivals, we would have been able to mix with producers & other film makers which in hindsight could have helped when looking for investment for our new film.

There is a lot of tax breaks & incentives for investors in the film industry.  There is SEED EIS & EIS, this allows investors to get up to 50% tax relief given by way of reductions of tax liability..

I put together a business plan (which took months of work) & come up with what I thought was a watertight plan, one that I knew investors would be interested in.  We became SEED EIS assured, were offering 30% of our business shares & profits to get our investment.  Our story & script was good - I mean the Evil Scottish Highlander... that's a cool killer!  The actors we had planned for were great, & the horror genre is worldwide commercial, so i'm thinking with some money behind us, we could potentially make an amazingly scary horror & better... a lot of money.  Getting an investor will be easy now right.... Wrong!

I spent a lot of my time after that trying to find ways of getting my plan into the right hands.  I even spent a fortune uploading my plan onto 'angel' investment schemes. 

We gave ourselves a year while David developed the script to get an investment, then in April 2013 myself & David sat down and decided that we had two options keep waiting or scale back the production & pay for it ourselves again. 

David always said he wouldn't make another film unless we got enough money to hire a proper crew, but here we are again with the prospect of going it alone again.....  Can pull together half decent actors that are willing to see the potential and work on deferral?  Can we pull a crew together that will work on deferral & that we can rely on?  I know if we were paying them properly we could guarantee everyone was on board & would work hard, turn up etc, but if people are doing it for free (even if we are paying them as soon as the film makes money) can we rely on them....  Scary thought.

Here is another problem.....  as we cannot pay & are using people who have REAL jobs, we face the sad fact that the only time we can shoot is weekends, which means we will be working for weeks on end without a break (between corporate video & feature) for the foreseeable future.

Decision made... We are going to go it alone.  Dave goes back to the script & scales it back..  minimises the cast, locations & I get rid of my wish list of prosthetics, props, make-up & equipment.

Our film has gone from micro-budget to none existing budget. 

6 months on, having highs & lows, somehow 15 days into our 40 day production everything good or bad has up to now worked out for the best.

Introductions to Clear Focus Movies

Clear Focus Movies Limited, Aberdeen Video Productions - www.clearfocus-productions.co.uk

Introduction to Clear Focus Movies Limited

Please bare with me as this is my first ever blog.......  Whats my reason for blogging? well, we are about to embark on our 2nd micro budget film and want to record all of the trials and tribulations, so we are never stupid enough to attempt this again!

Ill quickly tell you about us, then you will have the pleasure of living our micro-budget feature with us.

My name is Lorraine & my business partner David Ryan Keith set up Clear Focus Movies in 2009, we specialise in corporate video, training video, promotional video, web streaming, advertisements & feature film production.....  Our main goal is to make movies for a living, but while we chase our dream, the corporate video is here to stay...

Dont worry, I wont bore you with corporate work, this blog is purely for our films. : )

In 2010 we finished production on our first feature film 'Attack of the Herbals' (www.attackoftheherbals.com).  We ploughed £15,000 of our own money into the film, this paid for our camera and any camera equipment we needed, props, costumes, cast & crew food & a shit load of Ben Nye blood.  In fact, the most expensive part of our budget was our music score from composer Leah Kardos.

Nobody in the cast or crew got paid for 'Attack of the Herbals', as we simply didn't have the money, but this also meant that we couldn't hire real actors.  We roped in most of our friends & family, who all gave up their weekends for nearly a year to help us make the film.

'Attack of the Herbals' has been a massive learning curve for us...  alot of what we learned came after the film was finished! :(  but in retrospect, its put us in good stead for this next feature.

One of the biggest lessons came in the form of film tax credits, sales agents & distribution.....

Film Tax Credits - We missed out on qualifying for film tax credits due to the fact we were not a limited company at the start of the production, this meant we missed out on a rebate of 20% of our budget! :(  little did i know that this is very common practises in the UK film industry.

Sales Agent - Although having a sales agent has a lot of positives to it, like getting our film places we at the time never thought we could get to like the 'Cannes film markets' etc, & selling to distributors that we could only dream of, like the UK distributor 'Showbox', USA's 'MTI Home Video' it also has alot of disadvantages, what we have learnt is that a sales agent only has one agenda, and our low budget little film so close to our hearts is NOT one of them.  We spent £15,000 of our life savings making 'Attack of the Herbals', the film has now made around $50,000 of which we have not seen one penny.  The sales agent however, has made alot of money off our blood sweat & tears!

When the sales agent took us on we had to sign an agreement with them with an initial $35,000 fee out of any film profits & 25% of any money made after that.  Even though we had cut a really cool trailer & poster they charged us $10,000 to make their own artwork & trailer (only one problem - David HATES with a passion the trailer they cut, and has done everything possible to stop in getting released.... We think its got a lot to do with why the film sales have not been great, as the trailer is sometimes all the distributor gets to see.)

Distribution - There are 44 territories in the world, this means there is potential to make alot of money.  We realised that even if we could sell our next film for £10,000 per territory, that's a potential £440,000.....  We made a few mistakes with 'Attack of the Herbals' 

1. We made it to slapstick, too much comedy, not enough horror. Horror is one of the most worldwide commercial genres.
2. We made it to slapstick, too much comedy, not enough horror. Horror is one of the most worldwide commercial genres.

   'Attack of the Herbals' would have / could have been a great kids film, but its full of un-necessary swearing. Bottom line is we didn't get our target market right! :(

Its nearly 2 years since we finished Attack of the Herbals, we are now ready to move forward with our next venture.  I have put together a business plan for another horror film 'The Redwood Massacre'  this film needs a cash injection of £80,000.  All this pays for is the actors, locations & crew, the post production will be finished by us, and invested into the budget to push it up to £190,000. 

While we wait to find investment for the next film we have decided to make another micro budget horror film.  We plan to invest our own money again, and self distribute. 

Lets see if we can have the same success of Attack of the Herbals. 

Keep following our blog to find out how/if we succeed.  At the moment the crew consist of myself & David. 

Good times! : )