My last feature film KILLING DOWN is now available in the U.S. and Canada on DVD.



















You can buy or rent it starting Tuesday 1.06.09 at these places, and others:

Amazon

Blockbuster

Netflix

Best Buy

Walmart

I haven't even seen the final DVD with all the menus, commentary, extras, etc. so I'm really looking forward to checking it out - and I hope you are too! :)

-Blake

I spoke on a panel at the Lonestar International Film Festival last weekend, and so did my friend Julio Cedillo - and he was kind enough to share a few pictures...

That's him on the far right, along with Lauren Vélez from "Dexter" and I'm not sure who the guy is - at the bottom is Kim Matula, star of "PINK" Season 2 and my upcoming show "Exposed".

Very cool music video for Low Vs. Diamond and the song "Heart Attack"...

http://www.studiodaily.com/filmandvideo/currentissue/10092.html

It's mainly a "single shot" of two people kissing and then rapidly aging. Seamless visual effect work.

There's a link on the page to watch video, then you can read article about how they did it.

-Blake

My friends in Big Fantastic produce the show Prom Queen (and also Sorority Forever that's on TheWB.com now) and they just released the series on DVD.















You can buy it at Amazon for $17.99.

Please support New Media shows! We're going to release PINK on DVD in the near future too.

Thanks,
Blake

We wrapped "Exposed" this weekend. Shoot went great. I'll post details here soon, but right now I need to get some rest... :)
















-Blake

Our PR company got PINK on the Reuters digital billboard in Times Square! It was up for about 12 hours on the premiere date 9/16...

Okay, so I was going to try and blog daily during production, but that was waaaay too ambitious a thought. What I'm now going to try and do is a weekly blog about production and post.

WEEK ONE went pretty smooth. We have a really great cast & crew. Most I've worked with before, but we do have several shiny new faces onboard too, and they have worked out well so far.

Only major issue is we somehow broke my Letus Extreme 35mm adaptor on the third day of the shoot. Didn't drop it. Didn't hit it. Not sure what happened. But the inside mirror cracked. Luckily, my filmmaker friend Russ Pond owns a Letus as well and so we're now using his until mine gets repaired (which is hopefully very soon).

This week was a six-day week, so today we're all resting (well, I'm actually working on "Pink" and a few other things), but this coming week is a five-day week. We're doing the typical 12 hour days and for the most part hitting that petty well.

One of the coolest things about this shoot is we're actually editing along the way. Cliff Richhart is on-set editor. This is the first time I've done this and I must say it is greatness. Having a rough cut of the scenes you shot in the morning THAT AFTERNOON is a huge help.

Until next week...

-Blake

We had a Street Team (aka Hot Chicks) at Comic-Con handing out and applying temporary PINK tattoos. They supposedly handed out around 4000 and applied 1000. I didn't get to go to the event, but it looks like it was a good time...

I always like to see film production and film financing out of Texas and I hope this one succeeds. But I've known several groups trying this over the years and none have worked out (yet). This one might have the right ingredients though based on the below article. You have true money managers running the investment fund (with an existing client base), and then "movie" people running the production side. It could work...

So you wanna be in (independent) pictures? Now you can, for $50,000














Fort Worth money manager launches fund with hopes of hitting upon the next 'Juno’

By JIM FUQUAYjfuquay@star-telegram.com

By some estimates, 7,000 to 8,000 independently produced films are completed each year. Most never see the light of a projector bulb.

But some do, and a few, most recently Juno, go on to pull in millions of dollars at the box office, video store and syndication. Now a Fort Worth money manager wants to give well-heeled investors a shot at participating in a winner without taking too much of a bath on the inevitable losers.

Riley Hutto Wealth Management said it has created Independent Film Capital Llc., in partnership with Los Angeles-based IndieVest, a 2-year-old firm that will review scripts and oversee film production and distribution. Riley Hutto’s job is find people with at least $50,000 to invest in independent films.

Bill Riley and Greg Hutto started their firm in January after working together in the investments industry for a decade. They are the first in what IndieVest founder Wade Bradley hopes will be a stable of investment advisers who will offer his company’s films to accredited investors, generally described as individuals whose net worth exceeds $1 million.

Investing in movies

Riley said the path to Independent Film Capital started when he was looking for alternative investments — instruments other than stocks and bonds — to offer his clients.

Big foundations and endowments put sizable portions of their assets in real estate, commodities and private equities, he thought, so why not offer something similar to affluent investors?

Movies got into the picture when he met Bradley, a venture capitalist who was looking for financial support for his company. Bradley’s concept is to take some of the risk out of film investing by forming a kind of "one-stop shop" that connects investors with film projects that he has screened and — perhaps most importantly — can assure distribution in theaters.

Do indies make money?

How many independent films actually make money?

Hard numbers are difficult to come by, because although box-office receipts can be had, movie budgets and distribution expenses are rarely public. Likewise, ticket sales are only a part of a film’s earnings. Video rentals and sales, plus TV licensing, can far outearn the original box office.

In 2007, 751 newly released films played in theaters at some time during the year, according to The Numbers, an industry news service. Right in the middle of those films, as ranked by box-office receipts, was Broken English, a romance distributed by Magnolia Pictures, the company owned by Dallas entrepreneur Mark Cuban and partner Todd Wagner.

Broken English played in 41 theaters at its peak and grossed just under $1 million during the year, according to The Numbers.

Cuban, in an e-mailed response to the Star-Telegram, said that as challenging as it is merely for an independent film to get produced and distributed, "doing any box office at all . . . is even more difficult."

Distribution in the nation’s more than 5,000 theaters is a huge hurdle. About 600 films a year are rated by the Motion Picture Association of America for U.S. distribution. Big studios produce 200 to 250 of those. Independents vie for the rest of the spots.

IndieVest, as part of its pitch, guarantees distribution. Bradley said his strategy is to first place a film in 25-50 theaters the first week. That keeps down his distribution costs, the biggest being production of prints and advertising, collectively termed P&A.

"At the end of the day, we decide whether it’s gaining traction," he said of a film’s early screenings. If it is, he ups distribution to perhaps 200 theaters, then 500, up to as many as 1,500 theaters.

Starring Steve Buscemi

IndieVest principals include Mark Burton, who was executive producer for Water, nominated for an Oscar last year in the foreign-language-film category.

Its advisory board includes actors Don Cheadle (Hotel Rwanda, Crash, Boogie Nights) and Liev Schreiber (The Painted Veil, TV’s CSI: Crime Scene Investigation).

Bradley said the company is about to start filming its first project, titled Saint John of Las Vegas, featuring Steve Buscemi, the hapless and horny kidnapper-turned-murderer in Fargo.

The film has a $10 million budget. That’s considered relatively low in the business these days, but enough to provide a shot at bankable personnel and a competent script.

A "moderate" scenario detailed in investor materials envisions the film bringing in $21.6 million in net revenue and returning about $6.5 million to investors. Under a "low" scenario, it brings in just $3.4 million and returns nothing.

Cuban said in his email that he tries to improve an independent film’s economics by distributing it via his own Landmark Theaters, Magnolia Video and HDNet, the high-definition television channel he launched in 2001. He just started a new strategy of releasing films first on HDNet’s video-on-demand service, hoping to build some buzz before the film’s theatrical premiere.

"Leveraging the promotion of the VOD on cable and satellite allows us to be more precise in our P&A spending, which in turn leads to profitability on not all, but more of our releases," Cuban wrote.

Harold Vogel, principal of Vogel Capital Management in New York and author of Entertainment Industry Economics, said investing in movies is not for the faint-of-heart.

But he thinks IndieVest is going about it the right way.

"I admire the innova- tiveness of their structure," Vogel said, because it provides the equivalent of a reality check on a filmmaker’s hopes.

Riley Hutto added its own wrinkle to risk management by packaging investments in units that include five different films. Averaging out the returns of several movies, Riley said, should lessen the chance of suffering a total loss while boosting the chance of landing a hit.

Vogel also liked that idea.

"That’s the correct approach," he said. "Never invest in just one film. The smart way is to get a portfolio of projects that spreads the risk.

Riley said his Independent Film Capital project has been well received by clients.

"They know it’s risk capital, and it’s fun," he said. "If you’re an investor, your name is on the credits as one of the producers."

Click here to see actual article at Fort Worth Star-Telegram site.

-Blake

My last feature film KILLING DOWN is slowly starting to pop up in places around the globe. As you know distribution is very difficult to get and then once you do get it (if you get it) it's usually a slow go for the film to be released.

Sold the foreign rights back in fall of 2006 (at the American Film Market) and just two months ago it was released in Greece on DVD (several other territories have been sold, but movie has just not been released yet). That's it so far, until now.

My friend Julio Cedillo, and on of the leads of KILLING DOWN was in Mexico last week on a film shoot. He went back to his hotel to get some rest, turned on the TV and low and behold KILLING DOWN was on Movie City - I assume this is like a premium cable channel in Latin America. This is the first I'd heard of the film showing up on television. And it's pretty cool I must say. Never happened to me before in the 12 years I've been trying to get stuff produced and sold. So we're all pretty pumped about it. As a matter of fact, Julio was so pumped he actually took a picture of the TV screen. Thanks Julio!

If anyone else is traveling abroad and sees the movie on TV or in a DVD store, etc. PLEASE LET ME KNOW. I'm very interested to hear how it plays to audiences. I pretty routinely check IMDb.com for comments, reviews, ratings, etc. and they too are starting to trickle in.

BTW, the U.S. DVD will tentatively be released December 3rd this year.

So hopefully over time people will get a chance to check out the movie and enjoy it. As a filmmaker that's really all you can hope for.

-Blake

Hey ANY press is good press! "Pink" got a small mention in the Hollywood Reporter today...

Check it out here.

I didn't realize the series was a "cult hit". :)

-Blake

Good article this morning in USA Today featuring many talent agents, including the guys at UTA they rep me and "Pink". Also, they interview several filmmakers who have current or upcoming web projects online (however, ahem, they didn't talk to Mike or myself about "Pink" - I think we need a new publicist). ;)

"There's a huge cultural change going on out there," Nadler says (from UTA). "The model of how people consume their entertainment is totally up in the air."

That's not the only thing up for grabs. The foundation of Hollywood's dominance in pop culture and the entertainment industry is being threatened by the democratizing force of the Internet, which posits that anyone with a snappy idea and a video camera can dish up features to the masses.

As a result, top Hollywood agencies such as UTA, Endeavor and Creative Artists Agency are diligently mining the Web for raw talent. The process quickly has become as crucial to entertainment talent scouts as trawling smoky comedy clubs or screening obscure movies has been for generations.

Click here to read full article

-Blake

Best concert I've seen in ages. No warm up band. First set Pink Floyd greatest hits and a few solo songs. 15 minute intermission. Then "Dark Side of the Moon" played front to back. Greatness...