Case study #1: Documentary, pitched by Senain Kheshgi
This documentary is about the case of the 10 Muslim student alliance kids at U.C. Irvine who protested/heckled the Israeli Ambassador at a speech in 2010 and were charged with federal offenses.

Budget: $575,000 (about half equity, the rest non-repayable grants and foundations).
Needs: About $100,000 to finish film.
Distribution: Has a $45,000 deal from TV broadcaster… who also wants first right of refusal on VOD/digital distribution. Unclear whether those are subscription VOD rights or ad-supported VOD rights, or if they can be negotiated.
Status: The film is in rough cut.

Josh Braun
Giving up TV rights too soon for too little money in the US is not advisable A 52-minute TV-version is key; without it, you lose opportunities. Selling for $45,000 and not carving our key digits rights is a bad idea, as it severely limits sales potential and theatrical investment. You can do multiple subscription VOD deals, so as the lines blur between TV and Internet platforms, it will likely be harder to carve out rights. The key to preselling TV is that the sale should amount to at least 50% of the budget.

Indiewire.com | Read the Full Article

When I woke up today it was morning in America, but it wasn’t until the afternoon before I realized I helped create the dawn. That’s when I saw Newt Gingrich’s “Rebuilding the America We Love” ad and noticed those images that all political pundits where dissecting where in part created by me.

Turns out Newt used part of his Tiffany-esque $250,000 ad budget to pay me $64 in royalties for the right to use one of my Stock Videos as a main component in his spot that some are calling “Morning in America 2.0.”

Now my work is being compared to everyone one from David Lynch to Michael Bay. I hope that isn’t what they consider “fair and balanced.”

You may remember this image I posted in a review of the Sony AX2000 back in April of 2010.

Ignoring the bizarre lighting on Newt’s talking-head shot (looks like he’s trying out for “Best Tan” on Jersey Shore) and the fact that its reminiscent of Ronald Regan’s “Its Morning Again in America”, see if you Eagle-Eyed Filmmaker IQ followers can spot it in Newt’s ad:

That’s right, there it is at 0:04.

I also featured the exact same clip in the video review:

Here is the classic Ronald Reagan TV Ad: “Its Morning in America” from 1984.

Now unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your political stance), my small contribution to Newt’s Campaign has not had a positive effect. Since posting the ad on December 5th, Newt’s numbers have been steadily declining…

Perhaps it was because like Newt’s smile that white picket fence is made out of plastic.

Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond dared ask in this article: “Can you identify all the Iowa landmarks?”

Well Mr. Hammond, the location is Harveston, a man-made lake just under 5 years old in the City of Temecula, CA. The flag from the stock shot is down and winter has stripped the trees of their former lusciousness.

Here is a quick image of myself in the historic spot captured from an iPad. I rushed out to grab this before the sun went down and I left the CF card for my DSLR at home.

How did a clip from a camera review end up in a highly contested Republican Primary?

Well being a starving filmmaker with a healthy appetite, I recycled that footage to microstock website iStockphoto.com – selling it for anyone to purchase and download. (Hint, you should purchase and download as well)

In the year and a half it’s been there the file has done very well. It was nominated and placed in their premiere Vetta Category (translation: Most Expensive) and has brought in about $700 in Royalties.

iStockphoto doesn’t show you who purchased the file, only when, so I’m forced to guess the agency that created the ad purchased it on October 14th, 2011 for which I received a handsome royalty of $64.40.

From a quick shot grabbed with an unfamiliar camera to a brief 2 second highlight in a national political campaign, this little clip has sparked considerable internet commentary.

It was first brought to my attention while browsing Cracked.com in an attempt to avoid doing anything productive when I saw this:

Some more on what the media is saying about the ad.

The ad begins, almost David Lynch-like, with scenes of small-town America, panning in slow motion at times, most effectively, when a large hand is shown in close-up gently sweeping over a wheat field, suggesting a wise farmer — or perhaps the hand of the Almighty himself? — tending to his precious crop. You may not realize it when you watch this unusually evocative image — one of several in the ad — but that’s very likely Newt’s own hand on camera, and the wind-blown golden harvest beneath it is the proverbial “amber wave of grain” meant to symbolize the resurgence of the American heartland, overseen, of course, by the very white-haired shepherd who once angrily shut the entire federal government down.

Huffington Post

It’s an upbeat spot themed on a slice of Americana — some of the shots are reminiscent of the movie “Armageddon”

Politico

Some people say the America we know and love is a thing of the past. I don’t believe that because working together I know we can rebuild America,” Gingrich says in the ad, over video of a landscape and the American flag hanging from a front porch, blowing in the wind.

ABC News

The campaign confirms to CNN that it will spend $250,000 to run the spot state-wide in Iowa, which holds the first contest in the presidential caucus and primary calendar.

CNN

His one-minute commercial will be seen on cable and broadcast networks in Iowa, said a campaign spokesman, R.C. Hammond. The upbeat and positive ad features strong patriotic themes, with Mr. Gingrich speaking directly into the camera.

New York Times

Newt Gingrich began this week by releasing a minute-long campaign ad titled “Rebuilding the America We Love,” in which the veteran Republican insists that the wholesome, idyllic, small-town America that we all recognize from movies and advertising still exists. The ad is not terribly convincing, partly because it’s a rather uninspired retread of Ronald Reagan’s famous “Morning in America” spot from 1984, and partly because, while Reagan was talking up the good times, Gingrich is talking down the bad.

Slate

Newt Gingrich has a new ad up, and it’s clear what he’s trying to do. He’s trying to get elected as Richard Milhous Reagan.

Esquire

Gingrich’s ad feels eerily similar to “Morning in America,” the iconic ad President Ronald Reagan aired in his 1984 reelection campaign. Set to an almost identical soft soundtrack, it blends footage of a suburban porch and humming factory, a mountain sunrise and main-street flower shop, as well as a couple of quintessential Iowa scenes: the State House in Des Moines and fields of grain.

Washington Post

He delivers his rosy message over images literally lifted from “America the Beautiful” — predawn scenes of “amber waves of grain” and “purple mountains majesties.

The Atlantic

The spot is being supported by a near Tiffany-esque $250,000 ad buy in Iowa.
Mediaite

The ad itself is well-produced, and captures some of that elusive Reaganian “Morning in America” quality, very obviously the intent of his campaign team.

Hot Air

It sounds like Newt is promising “Morning in America” again

National Review

Where this starts to get weird.

They say imitation is the greatest flattery, but I don’t think that is what these parody and remix creators where thinking. I guess they each owe me $64 now. Oh well, it’s the Holidays I guess I won’t sue. Plus that last guy scares the shit out of me.

Parodies aside, it’s a good thing Newt paid me that $64 and didn’t steal that stock video. Not only because now I can afford healthcare. But because… Don’t Cross Us. Ever. Seriously. Just Don’t.

Watch the rest of the panel here.

VIA: Createasphere

…Action

The whole point of copywriting is to get the reader to take action.
You want them to buy your product, subscribe to your RSS feed, join your email list, or just spread the word. Before you write your next piece, decide what you want your reader to do.

Brevity

Cut unnecessary words.

— CopyBlogger.com | Read The Full Article

Highlights:

Full Talk:

…Initial Delivery Items
A. PUBLICITY MATERIAL
1. Key Art – Physical delivery of key art in fully layered photoshop files on CD.
2. Advertising/Publicity Material – All publicity which may have been prepared in connection with the Picture, but not less than one complete set of all advertising materials available, including, without limitation, press books, posters and publicity material. In addition, a written report of all additional photography in existence, including, without limitation, special shoots, photo agency art, etc. These materials may be delivered on CD or DVD.

— Sheri Candler.com| Read The Full Article

VIA: SXSW

Edward Jay Epstein is author of The Hollywood Economist: The Hidden Financial Reality Behind the Movies you can also see Epstein in Oliver Stone’s forthcoming Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps wherein Epstein plays the head of the Fed.

Edward Jay Epstein talks with Bloomberg’s Betty Liu about the role of film libraries in the financial health of movie studios and the outlook for independent filmmakers.

Excerpt: ‘The Hollywood Economist‘

The Hollywood Economist: Can Indie Movies Be Saved?

by EDWARD JAY EPSTEIN

The Achilles’ heel of the independent movie business is American distribution. No matter how brilliant an indie movie may be, and no matter how many awards its wins at film festivals, it needs to get into theaters to be seen. That feat is no longer easy for an indie movie.

The Big Six six studios–Disney, Paramount, Universal, Warner Brothers, Fox, and Sony–are also distribution juggernauts. They dominate both American and foreign distribution . Each of them employs a small army of salesmen, publicists, media buyers, theater-relations liaisons, merchandising specialists, and lawyers to get its movies and coming attractions on the best screens in theaters, its stars on the top TV shows, and its DVDs in the prime space at video stores. Because of their enormous clout with theater chains, the Big Six can open their movies on 4,000 screens in the US and thousands of additional screens overseas. They also have long-standing merchandising deals with fast-food chains, toy companies, and other mass retailers to assist these global openings. Since their distribution machines have enormous overhead, the Big Six studios need to confine their releases to potentially huge grossing movies. The size of the gross is crucial–even if there is no net profit–because studios, take a hefty cut of it off the top in the form of a distribution fee (typically, on movies that studios finance, it is 30 percent) which helps offset the overhead. The requisite, however, often leaves producers of smaller films out in the cold. Consider, for example, the sad story told to me by one of the most successful indie producer. In 2009, he brought to a major studio a project that had a budget of a mere $20 million with a well-regarded director and stars. After running the numbers, the studio estimated that its potential box-office was $100 million, which would yield it, just from the distribution fee and the output deal with HBO, a 100 percent profit on its investment. Yet, it flatly turned down the project because, as its executive told the producer, “We don’t do films that do not have a projected box-office of at least $150 million.” The reason is that each studio has only a limited number of slots for their releases, and they have to fill them with so-called “high value” films with a potential to generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue to pay their overhead. Indie films, even if they return a profitable on a relatively small investment, cannot be counted on to do that job.

So how does an indie producer get an American distributor?

- Edward Jay Epstein | Read the Full Article