The Dead Feed - An Interactive Web Series

I've had various meetings with different producers and industry folks over the last little while about some projects that we're trying to get off the ground and what I've found to be very interesting is how much clout is given to online status.  I guess it makes sense, it's something that's measurable.  What's crazy is... and I don't mean to take anything away from the festivals, they're very important... but if your video on Youtube has over 1 million hits, you're going to get noticed faster than if you win best picture at a film festival.  Not only that, your ranking on imdb matters, anything on Youtube matters, how many unique visitors your site gets, whatever.  Long and short, if you've got Google juice, you can use that to your advantage and it can open up doors.

The truth is, how we use the internet for entertainment purposes is still in it's infancy.  Sure, the internet can deliver a film to you through Youtube, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, whatever...  but that's just a delivery mechanism.  How about really using all the tools that are out there?  Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, etc.  Now, what if we actually start integrating these?  We're starting to see experimentation and when one of these projects rises to the top and gets noticed, we could see a revolution in how online is used for entertainment.

So, who's doing this?  Well, I received an email from James O'Connor about a month or two ago.  He's part of a new interactive web series called THE DEAD FEED.  The first episode aired a while ago, on August 17th, but a new episode has aired every two weeks.  The series follows three groups of people during the start of a zombie apocalypse and it's truly interactive... it utilizes Facebook, Twitter and users can upload Vlogs and more.  If you want to check it out, their Youtube channel is called "The Deadfeed" or you can just go to www.deadfeed.com and watch there.  When there, you'll also find all the links to the characters Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, etc.  The teaser video is embedded below.  It's a very cool idea and we wish them the best of luck.

Exclusive Dead Harvey Interview With Roger Scheck, Director of "Nobody Loves Alice"

When I received a copy of "Nobody Loves Alice" I thought it was just going to be another run of the mill slasher flick that I'd end up fast forwarding after the first half an hour. To my surprise, not only was I drawn into the movie, I was highly impressed. This film has gore, fantastic performances, great directing and a well written script. I was even more impressed when I found out it's director, Roger Schek, made it when he was in school. To say the least, "Nobody Loves Alice" is an outstanding debut that we here at Dead Harvey highly recommend. Keep an eye for Roger Schrek. I have a feeling he's going to be a major talent.

DH: Tell us about yourself. Where are you from and what got you into making movies?

RS: I was born in Kansas and raised in McAlester Oklahoma. In high school I became interested in still photography. Soon after that a friend of mine introduced me to the idea of making movies. He gave me the movie True Romance and told me to watch it. I took it home and watched it
three or four times. That movie really made me think, “I have to do this”. Right after that the same friend gave me The Last House On The Left, I went home and watched that film about four times that night. After that I realized, “I can do this”. That summer I made my first
short film and have never stopped.

DH: Film school: yes or no?

RS: I attended the North Carolina School of the Arts. I learned so much at NCSA. It truly is an incredible program. In my opinion it's the best film program in the country.

DH: What was the inspiration behind, "Nobody Loves Alice"?

RS: I had written several screenplays before Nobody Loves Alice but due to budget I couldn’t make any of them. I set out to write a script I could afford to produce. I was waiting tables at the time when my boss received a phone call from a woman that said she had been in that day
and he was so sweet to her that she had to meet him outside of the restaurant. Having to deal with customer satisfaction he told her that he was glad she had a good experience and to come in and have a drink on the restaurant. He then proceeded to tell her that he had a girlfriend. Not two minutes later the phone rings again and it’s his girlfriend, she said that the previous call was her friend and that she just wanted to see if he would cheat on her. In that instant I know what Nobody Loves Alice was going to be about.

DH: Are there any directors or movies that influenced, "Nobody Loves Alice"? If so, how?

RS: So many films and directors have influenced me. My biggest influence at the time of making Nobody Loves Alice were Asian horror films, especially films by Takashi Miike. I enjoy the slower evolution of the story. After all it’s about the story and characters, not the splatter
and gore. Don’t get me wrong that is part of it, but it’s not the reason I sit down to watch something.

DH: Describe your directing style.

RS: My style is very loose. I give my actors a lot of freedom to meld the character and make them their own. If I like what they do I let them run with it, but I have no problem letting them know something isn’t working. However some of the greatest moments in Nobody Loves Alice
come from the actors being able to just play with the lines and emotions.

DH: "Nobody Loves Alice" was impressively made on such a small budget. How did you pull it off?

It was challenging but we were very strategic where we spent money. The majority of the money had to go to converting Alice’s room and the blood effects. I had a very talented and resourceful crew that was able to make things look great with very little. We only had twelve
days to shoot the film so that also cut down budget.

DH: The performances in the film are outstanding. Describe your casting process and how you selected the leads.

RS: I worked with Nitzan Mager (ALICE) on a short film entitle Motherhood, you can see that film on my myspace. I actually wrote the part of Alice for her. So, knowing what she was capable of I was able to create a great character that I knew she would be great playing. Philip Ward (ALEX) acted in a film that I was Cinematographer on. I also knew his abilities and created that part for him. Phillip was enrolled in the acting program at Elon University at the time so he was able to bring me a lot of the cast from people he had worked with previously. He was sort of the casting director. He had actually been scene partners with Amanda Taylor (Abigail) in school so they already had a relation ship they could play off and bring to the film.

DH: What did you shoot on and how long of a shoot was it?

RS: We shot on the Canon XL2. In my opinion Canon blows it’s competition out of the water. The image the XL2 produces is a big part of why the film looks so good. It’s build to be lit like you’re working with film. It’s competitors at the time were point and shoot idiot proof cameras and their image quality suffered. We shot for twelve days over our winter break from NCSA. We never went over 12 hours during production except for the last day. That was the final fight scene and Dave Martin, the cinematographer and I had to stage the fight scene. That took about 18 hours.

DH: What obstacles did you overcome to get your film made?

RS: There were several obstacles that could have presented themselves. However, the production went very smooth. We planned everything out so meticulously in preproduction that we had very few problems. It was so smooth that on one particular day I was able to get 48 different camera setups.

DH: How did you secure distribution? Any tips for people trying to get their movie out there?

Distribution is a painful process, especially when you don’t have a named star. There are a lot of sharks out there and all they want to do is steal your film. I had a couple of different offers on the table and when I asked around I found out that they all had tricky ways of accounting for income, ways in which they hide profits from filmmakers. In fact I talked to about 100 people all of which have never seen a penny from these companies. Indie-Pictures is a new company that is changing the face of distribution. I have a substantial voice in all the decisions made regarding the distribution of my film from what festivals we enter to designing the artwork to how we spend money on advertising. My advice for those filmmakers seeking distribution is to ask around about the companies interested in your film. Try to put a named actor in your film even if it’s a small part. Get even a C list actor if you can. But, if I knew then what I know, the most important piece of advice I would give to you is skip the sharks and contact Todd Taylor, CEO of Indie-Pictures he is revolutionizing the distribution process for filmmakers. www.indie-pictures.com

DH: What's next? And, last but not least, any plans for a sequel?

RS: I have several projects I am trying to get off the ground in all different budget ranges and genres. As far as a sequel, there are two more installments of Nobody Loves Alice. We are currently working on the scripts and have investors interested. So keep your eyes open for the sequel to Nobody Loves Alice, Somebody Loves Alice.

Sincerely,
Roger A. Scheck
Scheck Media
www.myspace.com/scheckmedia
www.myspace.com/alicefilm
www.nobodylovesalice.com
roger@nobodylovesalice.com

Digital Is the Future of Entertainment and, I guess, Warner Bros. hasn't figured that out yet

I came across two articles today, the first one was Media, Entertainment Execs: Digital Is the Future - but How to Get There? on some site called marketingcharts and the second one was Warners axes Picturehouse, WIP on some other site called The Hollywood Reporter. At first, I was going to write two separate posts, but when I started thinking about it, I thought I could tie them together. It'll be long and I may ramble, but who knows? I may come up with something good here...

Everyone knows who Picturehouse and WIP (Warner Independent Pictures) are, right? If not, for shame... you should. Picturehouse is the joint venture between HBO and New Line and they released "The Orphanage", "Pan's Labyrinth" and "King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters"... WIP is the specialty division of Warner Bros. and they released "Funny Games", "A Scanner Darkly" and "The Jacket". None of those films would be considered 'indie' by our readers, but by Hollywood standards, these are as indie as they get, but that's really not my point. The point is, you have to take a step back and see what this means... and keep in mind that New Line was shut down and consumed by Warner Bros., as well. Consider this quote in there, "After much painstaking analysis, this was a difficult decision to make, but it reflects the reality of a changing marketplace and our need to prudently run our businesses with increased efficiencies." Translated - We can't figure out how to make money on this indie shit, we're going to stick to making films that do make us money and keep our investors happy, such as: "Harry Potter", "Speed Racer" and "Dark Knight". And with that, the divide between the studios and indie filmmakers widens...

Now, let's look at the other article, where media and entertainment executives agree that digital is the future, but they don't know how they're going to get there. If you're too lazy to actually click on the article and read it, I'll sum up: no one's making money on downloading, VOD, digital advertising or user-generated content right now, yet content is being developed for consumption on those formats. New platforms and new ways of delivering content is where things are going and they're all going to pursue a "multi-screen" distribution strategy, which includes theatrical, TV, online, mobile, everything... Finally, in the future, they almost all agree that the advertising supported business model is where it's at. So, in conclusion, your entertainment content will be available in various formats to be played on whatever device you want, it will be ad supported (so, it won't cost you anything, ie. TV) and it will be available whenever and wherever you like, on demand. I'd like to focus on one aspect of this... and that's the 'on demand' part. With Tivo, VOD and digital downloads, we're basically at that point now, but it's just a matter of how long it takes for everyone to adopt. Further, by definition, 'on demand' means that the consumer picks WHAT they want to watch, WHEN they want to watch it... and to get those consumers eyeballs, you better have choice. If I want to watch a low-budget, indie horror, by golly, I'm going to watch one... whether you have it or not. Media companies are going to have to have a lot of content available, as to try to keep me from going to another provider... and it's not like you need a massive warehouse to house a shitload of content because digital content doesn't take up shelf space, it's just stored in a computer. Now, let's juxtapose this with the first article...

Entertainment executives admit that we're going digital and people are going to want more choice, yet Warner Bros. is steering away from making smaller, niche films and they're sticking to making high-gloss, PG-13 theatrical releases... which, in my mind, just means a whole lot of the same, generic releases meant for a mass audience. I could REALLY rant at this point, but let me bring this all together and tell you why it's good for the indie filmmakers of the world... the media and entertainment landscape is obviously moving to where people can consume any kind of media on numerous devices and when that happens, your film is just as easily put out there as "Speed Racer" or "Dark Knight". If you think about it, the market for these big budget theatrical releases is fairly saturated right now and the market for indie films is not. Seriously, if I want to see "Iron Man" today, I can... but if I want to see "Evil Ever After", I probably can't. So, really, for indie horror, there's way more demand than there is product... and that means there's a market that's waiting to be served. The long and short is, it's just too costly right now to make sure that everybody who wants their copy of "Bikini Bloodbath" gets it. However, the executives themselves say that's changing... the market place is going to open up and there's going to be lots of consumers out there who are ready to buy your indie film and, hopefully, when that time comes, you'll be ready. Meanwhile, the big studios will be sitting around, wondering why no one's going to see "Harry Potter 8" and the latest Kate Hudson romantic comedy in the multi-plex.