A little company called Amazon.com...

As you may or may not know, us Dead Harvey guys are working on a pilot for a show called Dead Harvey TV. You can check out our posts on its progress here, here and here. Anyhow, as much as I fantasize about it being the next "Three's Company" or "Alf" and that networks will crawl all over each other to take a look at it, I have to face facts... they've got bigger fish to fry and, well, we're more like a barnacle in the ocean that they play in. So, I've been thinking about alternate forms of distribution, outside of the mainstream, that may be viable options. I was thinking about XBox or PS3 and wondering if they would be interested in something like this for their online networks. Maybe Netflix or some VOD service would have a use for it? We could work with some web-based company and stream it, maybe? I mean, there's lots of options out there. Well, what if no one wanted to pay us for it and we just wanted to find an audience? Well, what about Amazon.com? So, I looked into it...

But first, check out this email that ended up in my inbox...

"Dear Reader,

We are excited to announce that Box Office Mojo has been acquired by IMDb.com, Inc., a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. This is a major landmark in the nine year history of our company.

Box Office Mojo will continue to operate as a standalone business and produce analysis and the most comprehensive box office tracking freely available online. Our headquarters will also remain in the Los Angeles area.

We expect this change to allow us to expand our offering to readers like you by leveraging IMDb's comprehensive database of movies and those who make them. IMDb is committed to further developing the Box Office Mojo brand and building upon the success of the past nine years.

Our readers have been a vital component in our success, and we are grateful for your continuing support. Please feel free to email us with your questions or feedback at mail@boxofficemojo.com.
We realize this is important news for our community, and we are confident that this acquisition will benefit Box Office Mojo readers and provide us with many opportunities for future growth.

Regards..."

Okay, so... interesting, huh? Now, go to Withoutabox.com and tell me what it says at the bottom... you don't really have to go there, I'm going to quote it, but that's right, "A division of IMDB, an Amazon.com company". Alright, so what? So, let's tally this up. Amazon owns: IMDB, box office mojo and Withoutabox. That's a lot of film related stuff. So, where am I going with this? Well, check out what's at the bottom of an email I got from Withoutabox.com...

FILM MARKETING 101
1) Get an IMDb Title Page for your film. Most films now qualify as soon as their first Withoutabox submission is received by a festival.
2) Bring that Title Page alive by uploading video ASAP: Trailers, Clips, or even your Full Movie to build momentum and word-of-mouth.
3) Sell copies of your film on DVD and Video On Demand, on Amazon.com and other channels, all via CreateSpace. Setup is free, risk is none, and it works as well for selling 10 as 10,000.

Filmmakers who take charge EARLY in these ways see the benefits every day. You can, too. Your Withoutabox Account Home Page has complete step-by-step details to help you find your worldwide audience. So log in today, get with the program - and let us know how else we can help!

So, why would Amazon be promoting CreateSpace.com, an on-demand publishing company that allows you to make your own books, music and video's available to millions of customers? Oh, that's right... it's another Amazon.com company.

It looks like Amazon.com doesn't just own a lot of film related companies, they own a lot of INDIE film related companies. Really, if you've just finished a film, you can submit it to all the festivals, easily, through Withoutabox. Then you can get listed on IMDB.com and promote it. Then, you can submit it to CreateSpace.com and have it available on Amazon.com and Amazon VOD... and it can all be tracked and talked about on Box Office Mojo. ALL companies owned by Amazon.com... I don't even need to find a distributor. Amazon does it all and it doesn't even cost me much.

Long and short, who the hell knows what the future holds for media and media consumption? Only time will tell. But until we find out, you and we, both, do have a lot of options when it comes to finding a company or place to distribute our content, and I think more options are coming. But right now it looks like all of us indie filmmakers better get to know Amazon. They're a one-stop shop for indie filmmakers and it looks like they've got some sort of plan to be involved in the scene for a while...

Dead Harvey TV/Lobsterface Screening

This will be a short post since I'm about to leave to do some drinking. I just wanted to remind all our readers that dead harvey is a site that represents the people. And that's why we're inviting you to our screening of dead harvey tv. The screening is free. It's not like those Hollywood movies that rip you off and charge you twelve bucks and make you watch garbage and twenty movies of shitty previews and fifteen minutes of pre-show non-entertainment.

With dead harvey, you get to be subjected to our garbage for free. Plus, there's going to be free beer. It's just our little way of giving back to the community. I guess, deep down underneath all the booze we're just really nice guys.

So come one, come all. Dead Harvey TV: Episode One will screen first, followed by Jonathan Ritter's, "The Lobsterface Chronicles" (it's a beauty, it's got a puppet in it). Further info is on the attached flyer. Hope to see you there!

Ted's note: Don't worry, we'll keep reminding you about this...

Dead Harvey TV: Episode One (Day One)

I'm so f'ing lazy... I'm writing this after we've already shot the episode. But whatever, I just wanted to admit to it.

Moving on, I wasn't really sure how day one was going to pan out and I was nervous before we started. The other thing that was shitty was getting up early. I hate getting out of bed before the sun rises, but it was a necessary evil because if you don't get started by seven or eight am, the risk of finishing on time is much higher. Especially when shooting nine pages, as we had planned.

The day started out rocky, with an outside scene that we had planned to only take half an hour. We scheduled that scene at 7:30 with one of the actors and had the others arrive at 8:00. That's when Murphy's Law stepped up to the plate and started cornholing us. Every car behind the actor moved and new ones kept taking their places. A garbage truck pulled up next to us and starting dumping a large pile of s into a new construction site. A-holes kept walking through the shot and staring at the camera. The list goes on. Thank God the rest of the s we had to shoot that day was in the apartment.

Due to every a-hole on the street f'ing up our shoot, the rest of the actors arrived and had to wait until we finished an hour and a half late. That sucked because I hate making people wait and it's makes us look like unprofessional douche-bags.

Fortunately, everyone was cool and got along famously. The actors started boozing, but no one got of out control. Everyone was friendly and professional and I can honestly say that this was the best group of actors we've ever had. There were no divas. There was no bullshit. It was a comfortable environment and everyone was having fun.

Then the neighbors upstairs started making noise. Loud, irritating, banging and clanging noises. I flashed back to a couple days before, when the wife came over and introduced herself.

"Hi, we're your new neighbors from upstairs", she said. "Over the next couple weeks it may be a little loud. We're going to be doing a lot of work up there so just let us know if things get to be too much".

"Motherfucker", I thought to myself, quickly followed by, "And I bet they'll start on the day of the shoot".

They did.

Flash forward back to the day of the shoot with the loud ass neighbors. "Fuck it", we decided. We'll just write it into the script. And our fearless team kept going.

Fortunately the noise decreased after a bit and we reached the point where we could actually hear the actor's dialogue.

The last scene involved me on the toilet and, for some reason, the d.p., Joe, started laughing his ass off. The look in his eyes was one of a small child who's just discovered candy. Pure, unadulterated glee. We wrapped and he added that that was officially his favorite scene so far. I have no idea why he enjoyed filming me on the toilet so much but I was glad he was happy because it was a long day and the last memory of the day tends to stick out in your mind the most. It's like when you watch a movie and it's all shitty but the last twenty minutes is good and it kind of makes you forget about how shitty the other hour and ten minutes was.

Anyway, we finished between eight and nine pm. A good, twelve hour shoot. Long but not torturous by any means. We shot an s ton of coverage and completed everything we had scheduled that day. Then we hung out for a bit, had some beers and shot the s. You know it's a good shoot when everyone wants to stick around and hang out when the day is done.

I went to bed happy, looking forward to the next day.

Day two post to follow just as soon as I can muster off the strength to get off my lazy ass again and get some more work done. Hopefully, i'll be able to finish all the posts for this thing before the screening. Until then, take care my friends and thank you for reading.

Dead Harvey TV Post 2: Preproduction

Brad wrote up a small post last week on how we're shooting a pilot episode for "Dead Harvey TV" and if you missed it, click here. Anyhow, we thought it would be cool to document the whole process and share what's going on with you, our dedicated reader. Much like everything else on this site, maybe others can learn from our mistakes. Before I send this over to Brad, I would like to duly note the three legends on set there! From left to right, you've got Brad Paulson himself, then Chris Watson and, finally, Aaron Burk. What you can't see is the hoards of screaming fans outside that window who kept disrupting the set... now, on to Brad.

This time it was really easy. Unlike the previous movies (The Bloodstained Bride, The Van, Evil Ever After) we wisely decided not to have multiple locations and actors. No-budget filmmaking is a bitch enough as it is without making things worse. Instead, we followed the five people, one location formula of the last short we did, "Reservoir Drunks".

The first episode of Dead Harvey TV has roughly five characters and takes place 80% in one set: our apartment, which we decorated to look like a public access style TV set. Our DP kept telling us to put the emphasis on production design. This is something we seriously neglected on previous projects and I had no idea just how important that was until we did this one. Since we were spending out of pocket on this one (and have no money to begin with) we resisted this but were convinced by several people it would make a big difference.

It made so much of a difference I felt like a complete asshole for neglecting it so much on the other movies. For a couple hundred bucks we were able to coat the apartment in production design and when you see how filled the screen is in all the shots it takes your mind off the fact you're watching something micro, and you're more prone to get caught up in the atmosphere and the world the characters live in.

The other elements fell into place as well. We didn't audition anyone, instead picked the people we knew would work the best and haven't screwed us over.

We spent one night introducing everyone, having some beers and doing a readthrough/blocking session. That helped tremendously in getting everyone comfortable with one another and building a comraderie. So much so that, when we got around to filmmaking it felt like we were in summer camp together.

Another important aspect was also covered: we scouted the two locations outside of the main one before we shot there. This turned out to be very important because the bar were were going to shoot in had a skylight which we wouldn't have known unless we scouted it before. This allowed us to change our shooting times in advance.

It's amazing that we let such simple things that make so much of a difference to the wayside on the other projects. We spent so much time concentrating on other aspects that we forgot to take care of the most important ones first.

Lastly, we got ourselves a great dp. We spent so much work on the other projects getting everything into place and ready for the shots, but we're not dp's... so it failed. You can spend a million dollars, but if the shot isn't exposed properly it will end up looking twenty times more unprofessional. Why did it take us so make movies to learn these few simple things? I have no idea. I'll just blame it on the excessive drinking for now.

The next post will cover day one of production. See you then!

Dead Harvey TV Intro

As some of you may or may not know, we here at www.deadharvey.com have been working on a spec. pilot for a Dead Harvey TV show. The basic premise is it's about a bunch of drunken micro-cinema filmmakers who host a talk show from their shitty apartment. They interview underground indie. horror filmmakers and it's shot in a reality show style ala "Curb Your Enthusiasm". Antics ensue around a sitcom format. There is cursing (which will be bleeped), boobs (which will be titled), and a big guy in a monkey man outfit branding a machete (who you don't want to f with).

Through the next series of blogs, I'll do my best to document the making of the first episode. Hopefully, if the show continues, there will be many more to follow.

The first episode starts with a courier who can't believe he's delivering a package to a bunch of assholes who host a TV show in their apartment. The apartment is a shrine to micro-cinema and drinking with strong, surrounding Hawaiian themes. The apartment is filled with a bitter cameraman who looks like John Goodman in "The Big Lebowski", a stoned sound man, a drunken secretary and a man in an adult baby outfit. No one can figure out how to work the equipment right.

The host pisses off the adult baby and waits for his headline guest to appear: legendary micro-cinema filmmaker Chris Watson (Zombiegeddon, Slaughter Party). He's so slow he doesn't realize that neither his co-host or main guest haven't arrived. The rest of the episode includes the kidnapping of Chris Watson, his statements about the state of independent filmmaking and the struggle to keep a show which no one's even getting paid for on the air on a porn channel at 3am somewhere between, "Star Tramps" and "Robosluts".

The way we've designed it, each episode there will be ongoing storylines with the main characters centered around a new underground horror filmmaker as a guest star.

The next blog will document pre-production. Then, we'll move onto day one. I've got to go now because my computer broke and my friend is about to kick me out of his house. I'm cutting into their internet porn time.

See you on the next one.