DjfunkmasterG
26-Oct-2008, 07:31 AM
Well, here I sit at 2:00 in the morning typing out this thread, to tell you, the people who have been following the movie for the past year, and supporting me as well as the flick, that the premiere was almost a 100% success.
The Bad
Before the night started off, I was having PC issues, and couldn't render the flick until the last minute. I was supposed to be at the theater at 6:30pm, didn't get their until 7:51pm, 9 minutes before the show was supposed to start because of my PC system crashing everytime I rendered the movie. This event has already sold me on going to a MAC for future projects because I don't want to have these issues in the future.
On my way to the theater I learned that the $300,000 digital projector won't stay on longer than 15 minutes and it keeps shutting off. the head projectionist wasn't there like normal and wasn't reachable by phone so I had to trouble shoot a piece of a equipment I have only operated a handful of times. According to the display screen the projector lamp was overheating at start up and this is nearly impossible to happen because the room the projector is in is set to a temperature of 68 degrees, with an AC unit blowing on the projector, so to keep it running I would have to hit the lamp reset every 15 minutes to keep it going until finally during the playing of MZ's short the lamp went out and we had to halt the show.
Pissed off, I trotted up to the projection room and threw the 3-phase system into shutdown and did a hard reboot on the projector, this time it seemed to load up with no fault errors, but not taking any chances, I went ahead started Deadlands 2 immediately, and didnot finish the shorts.
(Sorry MZ, however the good news is almost the whole thing played before it wigged, so I told everyone I would get them the You Tube addy for the flick and email it to them so they can see it.)
Now, we get the film going and suddenly the film is playing in B&W. This is because the red Connector for the HD system decided it didn't want to work, this gold pin connector which costs like $100, decided **** it I don't wanna work, so if you lose one color the projector goes into B&W mode by fault. Some people thought this was awesome, and thought I was showing Honor to Night of the Living Dead which celebrated its 40th this month, but during the Q&A afterwards I explained the problem, but luckily the problem wasn't all night long, sometimes we had color, just not during the gory scene, no biggie though.
Side note: this projector, to fill you guys in, is the same projector Disney uses to project on their wall of water screen at the Magic Kingdom in Orlando. It was designed by JVC with help from Disney and Lucas arts, and has a 17,000 Lumen blub so bright that if run at full bore, it can show the steel gurder work that holds the movie screen up when run at 75% brightness, at 100 it can cut through fog at a drive in movie. So this thing is set at 60% for indoor use. Lucas arts would only allow this projector to be used when showing the digital version of Episode 2 of the Star Wars series and there is only 20 of these units in existence. Disney owns 17, the H10 owns 1, and a local tech guy has one in his house. The last one is sitting in storage in Baltimore, MD
The Good News:
yep there is good news. We broke our old record. When I showed Deadlands; the Rising at this theater in April 07, I had 150+ patrons for one show. The other movie I competed against that night was Disturbia, which only had 151 people for the whole day, we had 157 in one show and beat disturbias box office take for that night.
Tonight, we had 250+ in attendance, 230 paid. I competed against SAW V tonight and beat its box office take by $49.00. Saw V had 223 patrons for the day, the entire day, 5 shows, we out did its daily Box Office take in one show, and the theater got to keep more money from Deadlands than it does from Saw V. 70% of everything Saw V made had to be returned to the studio, the theater got to keep 60% of my box office take, so to them I am the hero fo the day. BONUS :D
Did the audience like it? Yes, I was given a nice loud applause when it ended, and even with all the glitches and me having to run up and down the stairs to attend to the projector all night, it still turned out to be a hit.
I was busy after the show selling posters and signing them, even people were buying the first Deadlands DVD, and some brought their own copies to have me sign which I did, because Hey, if you bought it you deserve a free signature, plus I can't understand charging for your signature. I mean hey if thats what you want to do so be it, but I could never fathom charging for my autograph... Guess I am just happy people are even asking for it, so why charge them.
All in all it was a cool night, not a super night because of technical issues, but all in all, it worked, everyone was a happy and local media loved the movie, and will be putting an article about it in Mondays paper to tell the town to run out and see it.
The most asked question of the night was how did I manage to take $6,000 and turn in a movie that looks like $100,000.00, and was the budget really $6,000.00?
Here is the answer to that. Physical money spent to make the movie was just under $6,000.00, actually $5800.00 we came in under budget. However, if you calculate time for the cast & crew, and other stuff it would probably have cost about $20,000.00 - $25,000.00, but we did it on $5800.00 and the biggest comment was it looked way above its budget.One couple thought I spent $500K, I said if I spent that I would have shot on film, but I am glad you think I spent that kind of money, so I did do something right.
The one thing sticking with me tonight is the B&W issue. Everyone loved the B&W look, and like I said this was a projector technical problem, not anything I did, but ya know, I was kind of digging it even though it made me mad. So I was talking to my A.D. Lonnie Martin, he thinks it should stay color, but I am leaning towards converting it... What happens is anyones guess. You will just have to find out what I do when you get to see it, but as of right now it was shot with Color in mind and will most likely stay that way, but...in the words of Peter Washington... "Ya Never Know".
The Bad
Before the night started off, I was having PC issues, and couldn't render the flick until the last minute. I was supposed to be at the theater at 6:30pm, didn't get their until 7:51pm, 9 minutes before the show was supposed to start because of my PC system crashing everytime I rendered the movie. This event has already sold me on going to a MAC for future projects because I don't want to have these issues in the future.
On my way to the theater I learned that the $300,000 digital projector won't stay on longer than 15 minutes and it keeps shutting off. the head projectionist wasn't there like normal and wasn't reachable by phone so I had to trouble shoot a piece of a equipment I have only operated a handful of times. According to the display screen the projector lamp was overheating at start up and this is nearly impossible to happen because the room the projector is in is set to a temperature of 68 degrees, with an AC unit blowing on the projector, so to keep it running I would have to hit the lamp reset every 15 minutes to keep it going until finally during the playing of MZ's short the lamp went out and we had to halt the show.
Pissed off, I trotted up to the projection room and threw the 3-phase system into shutdown and did a hard reboot on the projector, this time it seemed to load up with no fault errors, but not taking any chances, I went ahead started Deadlands 2 immediately, and didnot finish the shorts.
(Sorry MZ, however the good news is almost the whole thing played before it wigged, so I told everyone I would get them the You Tube addy for the flick and email it to them so they can see it.)
Now, we get the film going and suddenly the film is playing in B&W. This is because the red Connector for the HD system decided it didn't want to work, this gold pin connector which costs like $100, decided **** it I don't wanna work, so if you lose one color the projector goes into B&W mode by fault. Some people thought this was awesome, and thought I was showing Honor to Night of the Living Dead which celebrated its 40th this month, but during the Q&A afterwards I explained the problem, but luckily the problem wasn't all night long, sometimes we had color, just not during the gory scene, no biggie though.
Side note: this projector, to fill you guys in, is the same projector Disney uses to project on their wall of water screen at the Magic Kingdom in Orlando. It was designed by JVC with help from Disney and Lucas arts, and has a 17,000 Lumen blub so bright that if run at full bore, it can show the steel gurder work that holds the movie screen up when run at 75% brightness, at 100 it can cut through fog at a drive in movie. So this thing is set at 60% for indoor use. Lucas arts would only allow this projector to be used when showing the digital version of Episode 2 of the Star Wars series and there is only 20 of these units in existence. Disney owns 17, the H10 owns 1, and a local tech guy has one in his house. The last one is sitting in storage in Baltimore, MD
The Good News:
yep there is good news. We broke our old record. When I showed Deadlands; the Rising at this theater in April 07, I had 150+ patrons for one show. The other movie I competed against that night was Disturbia, which only had 151 people for the whole day, we had 157 in one show and beat disturbias box office take for that night.
Tonight, we had 250+ in attendance, 230 paid. I competed against SAW V tonight and beat its box office take by $49.00. Saw V had 223 patrons for the day, the entire day, 5 shows, we out did its daily Box Office take in one show, and the theater got to keep more money from Deadlands than it does from Saw V. 70% of everything Saw V made had to be returned to the studio, the theater got to keep 60% of my box office take, so to them I am the hero fo the day. BONUS :D
Did the audience like it? Yes, I was given a nice loud applause when it ended, and even with all the glitches and me having to run up and down the stairs to attend to the projector all night, it still turned out to be a hit.
I was busy after the show selling posters and signing them, even people were buying the first Deadlands DVD, and some brought their own copies to have me sign which I did, because Hey, if you bought it you deserve a free signature, plus I can't understand charging for your signature. I mean hey if thats what you want to do so be it, but I could never fathom charging for my autograph... Guess I am just happy people are even asking for it, so why charge them.
All in all it was a cool night, not a super night because of technical issues, but all in all, it worked, everyone was a happy and local media loved the movie, and will be putting an article about it in Mondays paper to tell the town to run out and see it.
The most asked question of the night was how did I manage to take $6,000 and turn in a movie that looks like $100,000.00, and was the budget really $6,000.00?
Here is the answer to that. Physical money spent to make the movie was just under $6,000.00, actually $5800.00 we came in under budget. However, if you calculate time for the cast & crew, and other stuff it would probably have cost about $20,000.00 - $25,000.00, but we did it on $5800.00 and the biggest comment was it looked way above its budget.One couple thought I spent $500K, I said if I spent that I would have shot on film, but I am glad you think I spent that kind of money, so I did do something right.
The one thing sticking with me tonight is the B&W issue. Everyone loved the B&W look, and like I said this was a projector technical problem, not anything I did, but ya know, I was kind of digging it even though it made me mad. So I was talking to my A.D. Lonnie Martin, he thinks it should stay color, but I am leaning towards converting it... What happens is anyones guess. You will just have to find out what I do when you get to see it, but as of right now it was shot with Color in mind and will most likely stay that way, but...in the words of Peter Washington... "Ya Never Know".