We’re leaving Myrtle Beach tommorow, stopping in Wilmington to take a tour of the Screen Gems Studios complex, and then driving straight through the night home.

Chris

So far through the whole process of filmmaking, I’ve discovered the worst part is after post-production.

Marketing.

So we have this film right? It’s all done. We think it’s pretty cool (for what we did with 10 year old cameras in 2 days) and we want to show it off to the world.

Problem is, marketing is in a transition phase. We’re slowly trying to learn the ropes of what is good and bad in web marketing, and its tough, especially for those of us who are new to the whole deal.

Do you buy ad space? Do you send press releases to blogs? Do you send an email to all your friends, praying somewhere along the line a forward button gets hit? I don’t know. We at Comitar haven’t a clue.

Right now, DVDs are our cash cow. Early adopters are going the download route, and we aren’t in the early adopter spotlight, so we aren’t getting said early adopters.

We’ve done everything that everyone else has, and more, offering DRM-free, Creative Commons licensed full resolution downloads (in an open format, XviD), but people aren’t heading to the site.

We’re making preparations on iPod and PSP formatted downloads, at a special reduced price ($1.99). Again, Creative Commons licensed, and no DRM at all.

So what is a teen filmmaker to do?

Well, we’re banking on our DVDs, the premiere, and a mixture of other things. It’s difficult, especially in this new age, when you really are making it up as you go along. Learning from your mistakes (don’t send blogs press releases, they ignore them), and figuring out new techniques (viral marketing is hawt).

We are definitely not yet at a point where virtual sales will eclipse actual stuff, e.g. DVDs. I don’t know if that time will ever come. I do know that if (more likely when) it comes, it won’t be soon. People are too slow to move over to new technological advances, and I have to say we’re really lucky now that digital music is doing so well.
The difference between music and movies is that movie systems (players, burners, discs, drives, screens) are far more expensive than music is, and will ever be. It’s far more of a hassle to work with portable video, and it’s because the MPAA made it so. The MPAA is worried that portable video, conversion tools, the whole deal, will lose them money. However, they fail to look at the bigger picture, and instead continue to lose money.

Summary:

• Breaking into the spotlight, no matter how long, is near impossible for no-names.
• Digital downloading likely won’t eclipse hard copies, at least in the film dept.
• Hollywood caused portable video to fail, and they’re in a scramble to undo the damage.

The end.

-Chris

[tags]movie, marketing, filmmaking, ipod, psp, creative commons, drm, teen, dvd, mpaa, download, hollywood, portable video, portable audio, video, audio, press[/tags]

We launched The Comitar Shop (http://shop.comitar.com/) and released The Bet (http://shop.comitar.com/display?id=The_Bet or http://www.comitar.com/movies/thebet/) yesterday.

Check them out, and enjoy!

[tags]comitar shop, comitar studios, the bet[/tags]

Rendering in less than 5 minutes (seeing if I can squeeze in a defrag)…

Here’s the final timeline, in PNG form.

Loverly, eh?

- Chris

[tags]the bet, timeline, png, image, filmmaking, movie, comitar studios[/tags]

There is going to be a slight delay with the DVDs… I emailed Sony asking for information on the DVD software I use (the disc can’t be encrypted or else the company will have trouble copying…) but they haven’t responded.

I’m reading into buying Adobe Encore DVD 2.0 (academic edition because I can!) so expect the DVDs in about a month.  Downloads are still on track though, and I’m debating a special “if you download, you get the DVD cheaper” deal.

Peace out.

Chris

[tags]dvd, burning, sony, adobe, encore, academic software, download, distribution[/tags]

As you should note, we are now wide. 790 pixels of ramblicioius goodness. Yay.

Also, I’m making an effort to move some stuff over to CSS from the HTML it was before. I’m too lazy to put the whole layout into Divs, as far as I’m concerned if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it (unless you’re fixing from scratch) so I like this.

Chris

[tags]layout, web design, redesign, css[/tags]

This post is for dummies (and I don’t mean Calacanis).

[tags]fordummies[/tags]